The rhetorical figures in advertising language and its influence in society

Key words: Advertising, rhetorical figures, influence

With this project I suggest that you immerse yourself in the world of advertising. Its main objectives  are: to know how advertising is created and how it affect us. We look for implicits messages of publicity and analyze rhetorical figures of ads. We learn that rethorics play a great role in the advertising world industry in deed. We would be really surprised if we knew the real intantion of the publicist when he wants to sell us a product. Methods as sophisticated as subliminal publishing or the use of rethorical figures are only one of the themes that we deal with this project. A rigorous analysis of the different kinds of advertising products is made and therefore we get to know the different kinds of methods actually used in them.

My comments in other classmates' blogs

I commented in the following blogs:

Tiziana's blog

Pau's blog

Júlia's blog

NEWS: Katy Perry Dark Horse video edited

Katy Perry's latest video has beed edited because it received a petition signed from a community of Muslims saying that it was blasphemous.

The problem was that in the clip featured a person with a pendant which had the Arabic word for God in it reduced to sand. This scene was considered offensive for more than 65000 people.

As a response to these complaints, Katy Perry's company or Youtube (it is not clear who did it) erased the word "God" from the scene satisfaying the urges from this Muslims.

Before and after - the pendant featuring Allah, the Arabic word for God, has been digitally removed from the scene

Opinion: I think that the Muslims' petition was justified, because all religions must be respected. However, people cannot acuse Katy Perry for blasfemy because it is most likely that putting the name "God" in the pendant was not her idea. The most important thing in this piece of news is that Katy Perry or Youtube erased that pendant from the clip in a peaceful way. Other artists can learn from this fact because these clips are viewed by millions of hits and can be understood in lots of different ways.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-26366249

NEWS: Yahoo webcam images from millions of users intercepted by GCHQ

This piece of news is about British and American agencies that intercepted and stored webcam images of millions of Yahoo users around the world. These users were not suspected of wrongdoing but these agencies still kept their images.

These two agencies did this since 2008 and 2012, and the images stolen were stored in databases. An interesting piece of data shows that in a six-month period alone, these agencies collected photos of more than 1.8 million Yahoo users. 

When asked, Yahoo said that they had no idea about this, and they denied any prior knowledge of the program abd accused these agencies of privacy violation. 

My opinion of all this is that the Internet is no longer a save place. Piece of news like this prove that we are controlled in a lot of ways and arouse a big question: if even countries can spy us, what is left? Are we really free? Or are we in George Orwells' 1984 book? 

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-nsa-webcam-images-internet-yahoo

Morocco's mosques

Mosques are really important in Morocco as the country itself is a muslim country. Every village has its own mosque and in big cities like Tangiers and Tetuan we can find amazing and beautiful architectural works. These mosques often coexist with synagogues and churchs. These buildings have huge domes and minarets. Their colours are bright: green, red and with-ish colours are the predominant colours. Friday is the sacred day for muslims, so hundres of people gather to pray the second pray of the day in mosques. To perform this prayer, people take out carpets so worshippers can pray outside the mosque as there isn't enough space inside. All this features show the importance of mosques in Morocco and its significance within society.

Holidays in Morocco

Me and my family decided to spend winter holidays in Morocco. It was a journey by cruise that lasted 3 days, from Barcelona to Tangiers. We had 4 cabins that had its own bathroom, but they were a little bit small. We ate in the cruise's restaurant. Their speciality was fish and it was really good. We spent two nights in the cruise, and on the morning of the third day we arrived to Tangier's port. We got off the cruise and we went by car to our place. Our house is located in a residential area called "Doha". In the last years they built lots of buildings and new houses there. Our apartment is on the first floor and it is really lovely. It has three rooms, small terrace, kitchen, bathroom and a quite big living room. We spent two weeks there and I came back with my two sisters on Epiphany's day. Our parents stayed until January the 15th because as it is obvious, they did not have to start school again. 

Morocco's taxis

Morocco has two kinds of taxis: the blue and the beige ones. The blue ones can pick up to tree people. The beige ones are able to pick up to six passangers instead of four (which would be the legal numer of passengers). The blue ones are more expensive because they have a tool called "corsa". This tool is similar to a regular taximeter, but beige taxis are not provided with it. What is really unique of taxi drivers in Marocco is their particular way of driving. They are really agressive when driving because most people dont follow driving rules. However, we must say that people are used to this kind of driving and that it is not dangerous to take a taxi in Morocco.

These photos were taken by me