Şcoala Naţională de Studii Politice şi Administrative

Argumentation Theory
-Final Paper-

10

Andreea Gospodariu

15

Master Comunicare şi Publicitate cu predare în limba engleză

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I. Introduction

I chose as object of my analysis an advertorial that appeared in the May 1962 issue of
Mechanix Illustrated, an American magazine founded in the first half of the 20th century. It
25presents the story of a journalist who decides to follow “the fastest way to grow hair” and tries
out a skull falsie. After he tells his editor that he’s curious about “Tashays” (this was the name of
the hair pieces), he gets a reply that motivates him to write the advertorial that I am about to
analyze (annex 1).

I chose this in spite of all the other advertorials because it’s almost 50 years old and I was
30really curious if it would be so much different from the ones we can see nowadays. I also chose
this, and not one of the other advertorials presented in the magazine’s site, as I thought this
subject is funny and outdated now, because there are other ways to resolve the baldness issue,
but at the time, it was rather controversial.

Throughout the paper, I will establish the standpoints and substandpoints at stake in the
35text, I will discuss and exemplify the dialectical stages present in the advertorial. I will also
formulate the main arguments which the author puts forward for his standpoint and I will
identify and analyze the argumentation schemes and how strategic maneuvering occurs in the
text, as well as the role of pictures in the advertorial. In the last page I will try to identify the
violations of the ten rules of the critical discussion, and analyze the fallacies present in the
40advertorial.

I found the strategy of starting off the discourse by being rather skeptical, becoming more
and more enthusiastic and finishing it in a positive note that stated that choosing the “Tashays” is
the best solution for the bald people, a really good one because faking empathy is, in my opinion,
one of the most important features of an advertisement or advertorial.

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II. Analysis

I start off with the idea that at the time, most of the people considered wearing a toupee
tasteless, as it looked fake and unnatural. Given this, they may be seen as the antagonists that
50oppose to the ones that originally developed and wore the toupee, and the writer is, at first, on
the antagonist’s side, but as we keep on reading, he switches teams and starts bringing pro
arguments in wearing it. So, in this advertorial, the readers of the magazine are the antagonists
and the author starts out by agreeing with them, but changes his standpoint and becomes the
protagonist.

55 The text is part of a retrogressive presentation, as the standpoint precedes the

argumentation (EEemeren, 2002, p. 37). Also, the argumentation is based on the power of
example, as the author uses his own experience as an argument. The main standpoint in the text
is that “There is only one cure for baldness and that is the toupee”(1). From the author’s point of
view, this means two things that also become implicit premises: baldness is a disease (in a
60pejorative sense) and it must be cured – so bald people must always hide their lack of hair and
hope that no one will notice that they are wearing a some kind of wig. Another standpoint is that
the mystery and jokes about the toupees have come to an end with the argument that the idea that
toupees are bad “has changed” (3) [because] “a man named Louis Feder has made them
absolutely undetectable and non-skid [and] has won for them a wide social acceptance” (3-5).
65There are no other explicit standpoints or arguments in the text, there are only experiences meant
to appeal to the emotional part of the audience. But it is implicit that the audience (the
antagonist) thinks toupees are fake, ugly and a subject of joke, while the writer (seen as the
protagonist) has a common standpoint at first but starts to change it (through the experience of
trying out a “Tashay”) and ends up believing that toupees are a good idea and that they can look
70natural.

The argument “a man named Louis Feder has made them absolutely undetectable and
non-skid [and] has won for them a wide social acceptance” (3-5) becomes a standpoint with

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 several arguments that are implicit, in the form of the author’s stories about experience with the
“Tashay”. This is a coordinative argumentation, as the arguments “must be taken together to
75constitute a conclusive defense” (Eemeren, 2002, p. 65). The arguments are dependent on each
other for the defense of the standpoint “because each argument by itself is too weak to
conclusively support the standpoint” (Eemeren, 2002, p. 65).
Therefore, “a man named Louis Feder has made them absolutely undetectable and non-
skid [and] has won for them a wide social acceptance”:

80 -because toupees are made from natural hair bought from live peasant women- because
the hair of most women is unsuitable- because it has been dyed or permanently waved (22-24) –
argumentation based on a causal relation

-because ”Tashays” are made from several colors of hair as do most human heads (25-28)

-because you can choose the cut-out (43)

85 -because Feder’s craftsmen can crochet 750-1,000 hairs into one square inch of hairpiece
as there are 1,000 hairs per square inch in a full natural head of hair (52-53)

- because the stitches used give the hair a bristly, natural, upstanding look (54-55)

-because they can cut, trim and apply double-faced adhesive (57-58)

-because they barber the hairpiece to your natural hair (58-59)

90 -because you can swim in a “Tashay” (66)

-because you can drive in an open convertible with no harmful results (66-67)

-because even you can forget that you are wearing it (68)

-because good old average Joe Bloewe can hold his head high secure in the knowledge
that his Tashay will stay up there without betraying him (so even average men are not betrayed
95by this particulary toupee) (80-81)

The first dialectical stage, the confrontation, is present in the first 7 lines of the
advertorial, where the difference of opinion starts to become more obvious and the two parts

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 silently establish that there is a difference of opinion: the author changed his mind throughout the
investigation of the “Tashays”, while the audience still thinks toupees are a really bad idea.

100 In the opening stage (8-10) the author decides to bring proof and justify his action (of
changing his mind) by testing out the “Tashay” himself.
He makes an appointment to personally see Louis Feder, the father of the “Tashays” and
share his experience with the audience, and this is the start of the argumentation stage (11-70). In
my opinion the concluding stage is the part where the author starts writing about how to take
105proper care of a toupee and stating the prices (71-81). The last 5 lines are the ultimate try to
convince the audience that toupees are actually great through an attempt using “Joe Bloewe”, a
name used to refer to a man whose name is not known or whose normality is being emphasized.
The author tries to demonstrate that his views reflect those of the common person. The
concluding stage is another weak point of this advertorial, due to the fact that the argumentation
110was pretty weak as well. Because his arguments were subjective, a subjective and weak
conclusion follows and it is only deducted: the “Tashays” look very much like the real hair, they
are well made and fitted and they can stay on the head for a very long time. It is not a very
powerful conclusion and cannot answer any of the possible questions of the audience like: “Was
it worth the money in the long run?”, “Was it obvious that you were wearing a toupee?”, “Did it
115make you feel different? How?” or “Did it look natural on your head?”.
The argumentation stage is actually the biggest part of the advertorial, as the author
explains in a very detailed manner how he perceived the experience from being received by the
people working at the toupee store and how they managed to help him get past his anxiety, the
way they explained step by step the process of toupee-making, and how they managed to realize
120his own “Tashay”. In my opinion it would have been a better approach if he presented
convincing arguments to support his standpoint, not only to tell the story in detail, but to show
some positive reactions to his improved new look, or how people perceived him as being
younger, better looking, more confident etc. Sticking to his own opinion, clearly affected by
subjectiveness, makes his argumentation scheme a weak one.
125 The images used in this advertorial talk for themselves, as the first picture shows a bald,
sad man, while the second presents the same man with a toupee, smiling (annex 3). The images
also have a description below them:

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 -the first with the bald man – “SAD AND PENSIVE client of the House of Fender before
being fitted with his Tashay”
130 -the second with the same man, but with a toupee – “JOLLY, CONFIDENT client
wearing Tashay. Friends soon forget you ever were denuded.”
The images along with the description are not a very subtle suggestion that bald men will
be happier using a “Tashay”, therefore reinforcing the author’s arguments.
Some critical questions that could appear are: “Is the case mentioned as example indeed
135representative?” and “Is the case sufficient to justify the generalization?”. As I said before, the
argumentation scheme is not very powerful as it is sentenced to a subjective interpretation – the
author’s. To successfully sell a product one must use testimonials from a number of people,
positive reactions to the product or any other outcomes the buyer would have from it. So the case
mentioned in the advertorial is not representative, nor sufficient to justify the generalisation or to
140support the purpose of the text itself – to increase the sales of “Tashays”. Even if the people
working at the toupee store were very helpful and the toupee itself is a great product, the
advertorial presents only a day in the life of the toupee-buyer, and a not very important one – the
day when his “Tashay” is made and very few details from the future experience of wearing it,
while the important part, the feed-back one gets from people, is clearly ignored by the author
145What the author clearly lacks is powerful evidence: he narrates the story adding up his own
opinion about the product, opinion which is definitely subjective, so the arguments don’t carry
any weight as they are not supported by an objective view or at least someone else’s subjective
view. The text sells readers to advertisers, but not customers to Louis Feder, the owner of the
toupee-store (Slade, 2002, p. 1).
150 The toupees are clearly a high involvement product and “advertisements for high
involvement products may require the target audience to reason, the reasoning is only part of the
message, and affective components (the feel), are equally important” (Slade, 2002, p. 1). Here,
the reasoning part as well as the affective components are ignored. The affective component
would have been achieved if the author told a story about how the toupee made him feel in some
155relevant situation of if the presented some reactions from friends or family. The reasoning part
would have also been emphasised by some stories about how his baldness affects his everyday
life. These components are merely presented in the two pictures from the beginning of the
advertorial, but they should have been developed as a more detailed story.

6
 According to Kress and van Leeuwen’s textual metafunction as “the
160meaning of compositional elements of the image” (Slade, 2003, p. 3, annex
4), the appearance of the text and the pictures is a not very correct one as in
the upper left part should be the Ideal Given and in the upper right the Ideal
New (Slade, 2003, p. 3). We can notice in the magazine that in the upper left
is the picture with the bald man, while in the upper right the one with the
165same man wearing a toupee. The context, though, is not necessarily a
proper one for using this theory, as this is a magazine, not a printed
advertorial by itself, and the arrangement follows the logic scheme of
moving our eyes forward, or to the right part of the page. Also, the picture
itself shows the man from his chest up and the reader may sense some kind
170of physical or metaphorical approach to the person in the picture, and this
may try to fill up the need for the affective component of the advertorial.
“Advertisements are the prime example of visual argumentation precisely
because they are conventionally read as persuasive images” (Slade, 2003,
p.4) but even if the pictures could have a powerful effect on the reader, we
175cannot use the images as being arguments, at least not without a real
written argument to support them, as Fleming (1996) says that “if all
argumentation is by definition verbal confrontation, then evidently non verbal confrontation is
not argumentation” (Slade, 2003, p. 4).
Regarding the strategic maneuvering in the confrontation stage, it “aims for the most
180effective choice among the potential issues for discussion, restricting the ‘disagreement space’ in
such a way that the confrontation concentrates on the subject or the points the speaker or writer
finds easiest to handle” (Eemeren, 2000, p. 6). In this case, the issue of discussion becomes the
toupee, as it is easy for the writer to approach this subject because he experienced the “feeling”.
In the opening stage, strategic maneuvering aims to “creating the most advantageous starting
185point, for instance by calling to mind – or by eliciting – helpful ‘concessions’ from the other
party” (Eemeren, 2000, p. 6). In this advertorial the starting point is the idea of trying out a
toupee and deciding to narrate the experience: “Like many bald men, I had long toyed with the
idea of trying out a skull falsie and one day while talking with MI editor Bill Parker, I mentioned
this secret thought. His reaction was, “Well, Bob, why don’t you look into the matter and give us
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190a report?” So, here it is.”. In the argumentation stage, “the speaker or writer can, starting from
the list of ‘status issues’ associated with the type of standpoint at issue, choose strategic lines of
defence or attack that involve selecting from the available loci those that suit him or her best”
(Eemeren, 2000, p. 6). The strategy here is presenting the arguments as experiences with the
toupee, explaining in detail the whole story, from the author’s visit to the headman of the
195business, to the rather short positive personal feed-back about the “Tashay”. Regarding the
concluding stage, in theory all efforts must “be directed toward achieving the result of the
discourse desired, for instance, by pointing out the consequences of accepting a certain complex
of arguments” (Eemeren, 2000, p. 6), but in the advertorial, this never happens. The author does
not tell the readers how felt about his purchase, if he got positive feed-back from other people, if
200he was perceived in another way due to the fact that he was hairless no more, if the toupee was
useful in any way or even if it was a good experience in the long run.
Returning to the power of the arguments, they should be “as persuasive as possible its
rhetorical moves must, at all dialectical stages of the discourse, be adapted to the audience
demand “(Eemeren, p. 163) meaning that they must “create a certain amount of empathy or
205‘communion’ between the arguer and his audience” (Eemeren, 2000, p. 6). In this case, the
empathy is totally missing as the author’s stories regard the product itself and not the user’s
feelings and gratifications. The author does not even try to enhance the “status of personal
feelings and impressions to that of widely shared value judgements and the status of subjective
values to that of facts”(Eemeren, 2000, p. 6), mainly because he does not share any personal
210feelings about the product or stimulate fraternization more that what we would expect a “seller”
to do. In the following lines of the text we find the author using “prolepsis – the figure of
anticipating and clearing away objections” (Eemeren, 2000, p. 7): “Long the butt of jokes and
scornful remarks, there was once a “plain brown envelope” sort of mystery surrounding the
making, selling, buying and wearing of cranium cozies but all that has been changed. A man
215named Louis Feder has made them absolutely undetectable and non-skid. Most important of all,
perhaps, he has won for them a wide social acceptance”. The author tries to anticipate some of
the audience’s arguments against the toupee (the users of the toupees are an easy target for jokes,
people can tell when you’re wearing a toupee, you are not socially accepted if you wear a toupee,
it is tasteless to wear such a thing etc) and to clear them away with some remarks that are not
220sustained in any way throughout the written material.

15 8
 Regarding the violations of the ten rules of critical discussion, there is just one thing to
discuss. I believe that in this advertorial there is a violation of the Rule 8 regarding the validity –
denying the antecedent. The mistake made in this case is that a sufficient condition is treated as a
225necessary condition (Eemeren, 2002, p. 133). The author starts the article from the rather
unexpressed premise that toupees that are made from artificial hair will always look fake.
Afterwards he affirms that the “Tashays” are made from natural hair from live peasant women,
therefore the result is that “Tashays” must look real because they are made from real hair.

230 If a toupee is made from artificial hair (antecendent) it looks fake. (consequent)
“Tashays” are made from natural, real hair. (denial of the antecedent)
Therefore: “Tashays” don’t look fake. They look real.

235

III. Conclusion

This advertorial has a very weak concluding stage that is so important in advertising,
240because the argumentation was weak as well. It was also too long, with no evident traces of
arguments. As I said, it would have been a better approach for the writer to present convincing
arguments to support his standpoint, not only to narrate the story of how he got his toupee done
in 2 weeks by a bunch of great people. He should have shown some positive reactions to his new
look or some feedback from other people and how they perceived him as being handsome,
245younger or more confident. The text looked promising at the beginning, but after a further
reading and a closer look, it became more and more obvious that it was just a long story with no
happy ending. Even being so long, and losing the audience at the half of the advertorial, many of
the readers may have tried to read the end of it, maybe out of curiosity, to see the aftermath, the
conclusions and what the author gained from buying the “Tashay”, and found some not very
250convincing facts and no trace of strong evidence that they should try out another toupee. People
who were afraid of wearing a toupee because of other people’s reactions, would look for reasons
9
 not to be afraid anymore, but they only found some weak arguments dressed in a long story, as
there were no opinions at all about the product or the experience.
There is another thing important here, the first sentence of the article “There is only one
255positive cure for baldness and that is the toupee”, that even made me, as a non-bald girl to feel a
little offended. This means that the author states that baldness is a disease that must necessary be
cured. Yes, it is the advertising industries’ role to create new needs in our minds in order to sell
more and more types of products, but not by offending people.
In conclusion, I believe that this advertorial may have done its job at the time, but today
260this piece of material would not get the chance to be published because of its lack of
effectiveness.

265

270

275

280

References:

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 1. Eemeren, Frans, H., van, Grootendorst, R., & Snoeck Henkemans, A.F. (2002).
285 Argumentation: Analysis, evaluation, presentation. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.

2. Slade, Christina. (2002). Reasons to Buy: The Logic of Advertisements. Canberra:

University of Canberra, ACT 2600.
290

3. Slade, Christina. (2003). Seeing Reasons: Visual Argumentation in Advertisements.

Canberra: University of Canberra, ACT 2601.

4. Eemeren, Frans, H., van, Houtlosser, Peter. (2000) Rhetorical Analysis Within a
295 Pragma-Dialectical Framework. The Case of R. J. Reynolds. Amsterdam: University of
Amsterdam.

5. Eemeren, Frans, H., van, Houtlosser, Peter. Argumentation in Practice.

Source:http://books.google.ro/books?
300 id=SaOfcsyWudAC&pg=PA163&lpg=PA163&dq=Atkin+
%26+Richardson+argumentative&source=bl&ots=XBtm0GsqM6&sig=yaA8NgdlvsZ5mQ6i
eOzhmRm219E&hl=ro&ei=EyBLTa_2Ao6SOvib8d8P&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&r
esnum=1&ved=0CBgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Atkin%20%26%20Richardson
%20argumentative&f=false – available at 28th of January 2011
305
Source for the advertorial: http://blog.modernmechanix.com/issue/?
magname=MechanixIllustrated&magdate=7-1966

310
Annex 1

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 The Fastest Way to Grow Hair
By Robert Brindley
315
There is only one positive cure for baldness and that is the toupee.
Long the butt of jokes and scornful remarks, there was once a “plain brown envelope”
sort of mystery surrounding the making, selling, buying and wearing of cranium cozies but all
that has been changed. A man named Louis Feder has made them absolutely undetectable and
320non-skid. Most important of all, perhaps, he has won for them a wide social acceptance.
Mr. Feder presides over the House of Feder in New York City. His hairpieces are known as
“Tashays” (not only a word he coined but a device for which he was granted a U. S. Patent).
Like many bald men, I had long toyed with the idea of trying out a skull falsie and one
day while talking with MI editor Bill Parker, I mentioned this secret thought. His reaction was,
325“Well, Bob, why don’t you look into the matter and give us a report?” So, here it is.
I called the House of Feder and made an appointment with Ben Z. Kaplan, executive
vice-president and walking advertisement number one for Louis Feder. Kaplan wears a dark
brown, flecked-with-gray, crew-cut Tashay. He has a missionary zeal for his work. I put the
question to him straight. “How about the chances of this brain beanie” -(he winced)- ”blowing
330off or sliding into the vichysoisse?” He bent his head toward me and said, “Pull it.” I grabbed a
handful of his hair and gave it a good yank. Absolutely nothing happened (not even a wince). I
was convinced on that score.
Kaplan then took me next door to Mr. Feder’s office to meet the head headman.
He is a genial sort, obviously proud of his calling. He has probably caused more acres of skin to
335be covered than the Legion of Decency. In the course of an hour or so of talking with him I
learned that he gets the hair for his Tashays from various New York importers who have agents
traveling all over Europe buying hair from live peasant women. (The hair of most American
women is unsuitable, having been dyed or made weak and brittle from permanent waving.) It
only takes about an ounce and a half of hair for a man’s Tashay.
340 I also found out that he keeps an assortment of almost 200 shades of hair on hand in his
storeroom and that most, hairpieces contain several different colors (as do most human heads of
hair).

12
 After chatting awhile, Feder stood up and walked behind the chair I was sitting in, saying,
“Now let us measure the extent of your baldness.” With that he took a grease pencil and traced
345right onto my head of skin his conception of where my hairline used to be. Then, with calipers,
he took various measurements and called them out to an assistant, who made notes of each. He
then slapped a wet sheet of blotter like paper on my head, molding it firmly until it had assumed
the true shape of my skull. He removed it carefully and while it was drying Mr. Edward Karp,
vice-president and general manager of the House of Feder, came in with six different try-on
350styles of Tashays. They sat me in front of a large mirror and tried each of them on me for effect.
First, came the “Madison Avenue” a casual, devil-may-care style which featured a part. Karp
laid it on my head and then combed the long sides and tail of the hairpiece right in with my own
remaining locks. There were bright fluorescent lights over the mirror and I swear, even without
the piece being glued down, I couldn’t tell where the Federated hair ended and my own began!
355“Show me more!” I exclaimed, with a longing glance at the Dean Martin type of hairpiece,
tousled and curly.
We tried it. But just as Feder had warned, it didn’t look right. We tried a few more,
including the pride-and-joy of the House of Feder a crew-cut. Feder beamed, “That’s it!” When I
confessed to him that crew-cut was the way I used to wear my long-gone curls, he beamed all
360over. “Okay,” he said, “come back in two weeks and we’ll have a custom-made Tashay ready for
you.”
When I returned for the fitting, I took a tour of their factory (over 100 employees) and
saw what had happened to the paper mold Feder had made of my head. From it they had made a
base consisting of a light, yet strong, nylon under layer (which lies next to the scalp) and an over
365layer of extremely fine but durable Swiss lace, into which the actual hairs were crocheted in
clumps of three or four.
Feder’s craftsmen can crochet 750-1,000 hairs into one square inch of hairpiece. There
are 1,000 hairs per square inch in a full natural head of hair. The clumping together gives the
illusion of normal thickness. Feder uses a secret stitch on the front hairline which gives the hair a
370bristly, natural, upstanding look.
I was shocked when I saw my very own Tashay for the first time. It was about the size of
a large beaver pelt. Richard Wolkis, Feder’s top fitter, showed me how to cut, trim and apply the
special double-faced adhesive to the Tashay and form it to my head. Then he carefully barbered

25 13
 the hairpiece to my natural hair. When he finished, there were quantities of hair cuttings on the
375floor around the chair such as I hadn’t seen in 15 years. It felt great.
Wolkis then combed the fake fur in with the real, applied some hair dressing and handed me a
standard Feder service kit. It contained a roll of the special tape, a small paintbrush for applying
the solvent which removes the tape, a can of “Fed-erene” (cleaning fluid for the hairpiece) and a
jar of liquid adhesive. Finally I stood ready to face the world, with a full head of hair and a
380wagonload of trepidation.
Feder says you can swim in a Tashay. I didn’t try that but I did take a 50-mile drive in an
open convertible while wearing the Tashay with no harmful results. I slept in it twice (the first
time because I forgot I had it on). It was still on straight in the morning although it contained a
few snarls. I seem to recall this is natural with a stock head of hair.
385 With proper care, a toupee should last from one to seven years, depending, naturally, on
how often you wear it. Feder suggests buying them two at a time so you’ll always have a
wearable one if the other is back at Feder’s being repaired (or having gray hairs spotted into it, as
you grow older). The spare should be kept in a tight box containing moth flakes or a few old
cigarettes. Moths love hair but hate tobacco.
390 The going rate for a Tashay the size of mine is $175 although smaller “divots” (just to
cover a bald spot in the back) can run as low as $80.
Louis Feder has brought the artificial hairpiece business out into the bright sun-fight and
found it can survive the most careful scrutiny. For years, people in show business have worn
hairpieces and their fans knew and accepted that fact. Now, thanks to the strides that have been
395made in this field, good old average Joe Bloewe can hold his head high secure in the knowledge
that his Tashay will stay up there without betraying him.

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 Annex 2

Standpoint 1. There is one positive cure for baldness and that is the toupee.

400

Standpoint 2.

Single argumentation

1. The mystery and jokes about the toupees have come to an end with the argument that
the idea that toupees are bad “has changed” (3)

1.1[because ]“a man named Louis Feder has made them absolutely undetectable and non-skid
[and] has won for them a wide social acceptance” (3-5).

Standpoint 3.Coordinative Argumentation (+ Subordinative Argumentation)

405
 Annex 3

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410
Annex 4
415