Delving into Speech Act of Argumentation in English and Persian Advertisements

ranted that advertisements reflect the dominant mindset of a society, this study intends to scrutinize the use of argumentation speech act in both Persian and English advertisements with the purpose of discovering the underlying conventions of these argumentations. With that in mind, based on Toulmin’s (1958) model of argumentation, one hundred advertisements (50 Persian ads and 50 English ads) were randomly selected from the popular magazines published in both Persian and English languages. The advertisements which were selected in this study were published in the last decade. Chi-square test analysis revealed significant differences between the Persian and English advertisements, indicating that claim outweighs the other elements of the argumentation speech act in the Persian advertisements. However, the English ones employ data more than the other modules of the argumentation speech act. In the end, the cultural reasons causing the differences were discussed.