Virtual Reality as a Persuasion Device: Virtual Rhetoric in Boursin Sensorium

Abstract

The main topic of this thesis focuses on how virtual rhetoric is used to convey persuasive, ideologically loaded messages in virtual reality advertising. The intention here is to argue that virtual rhetoric or virtual reality rhetoric cannot limit itself with only visual elements, as some of the previous research suggests. To comprehend virtual reality as a communication process which employs virtual rhetoric to convey persuasive messages, all the sensorial aspects in virtual reality must be considered. For the corpus, a virtual reality advertisement Boursin Sensorium was chosen. The theoretical part of the thesis is based on various scholars concerned with visual rhetoric and virtual reality, for instance linguists Charles Hill and Petra Aczel, and virtual reality scholars William R. Sherman, and Alan B. Craig. The critical reading of the corpus and semiotic methodological approach is based on Roland Barthes’ semiotic analysis and Umberto Eco’s encyclopedia.