Valentina Galindo

Kelby Harrison
Phil. 025
Fall 2015
Advertisement Analysis
Advertising is implemented everywhere. Many forms of advertisement can be
found on television, cell phones, billboards, in magazines, and in many other forms of
media. If you look anywhere you are almost always guaranteed to find something trying
to persuade you to try their product, vote for their candidate, or change your view on
something. Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish rhetorical devices or fallacies from
good reasoning in all these advertisements out in the world because they are both
different in some areas. The advertisement I chose to analyze is an advertisement
made by PETA for people to stop eating meat, it includes fallacies such as straw man,
false dilemma, slippery slope, and scare tactic. This advertisement was meant to evoke
certain emotions from the people that would view this image, and to try to sway them to
the side of vegetarian/veganism.
One of the main devices I saw in this advertisement is the straw man fallacy. The
straw man fallacy is characterized by, When a speaker or writer distorts, exaggerates,
or otherwise misrepresents an opponents position (Moore/Parker 216). This particular
advertisement is an example of a straw man fallacy because the creator of this ad
(PETA), exaggerated the idea that all meat eaters are guilty of child abuse because they
feed their children meat, which will cause them to gain weight and become obese. This
is problematic in the sense that there are meat eaters that are healthy, and feeding your

child meat has no correlation to child abuse because it would mean that because your
child is fat that they were abused by their parents, which doesnt make sense and isnt
true. They distorted the image so that the hamburger is shown as being roughly as large
as the young mans head and gives hime huge jowls. This lends to the straw man
fallacy because of the distortion of the image and the statement placed with it is a
misrepresentation of people that eat meat. It exaggerates the idea that people that eat
meat (the opponent) all are fat and/or unhealthy, and if your child is fat and/or unhealthy
then that is considered child abuse.
Another fallacy I managed to detect in this image is slippery slope fallacy. The
slippery slope fallacy is most commonly seen as, If we let X happen, the first thing you
know, Y will be happening (Moore/Parker 222). This is displayed in the advertisement I
chose to analyze because it fits into the slipper slope formula. The example being, If
you let your child eat meat, then you are a child abuser. This is fallacious because there
is no reason why feeding meat to a child is considered child abuse. In addition you can
also view this advertisement as being a slippery slope in the sense that if you eat meat,
then you are unhealthy and/or overweight. This is again fallacious because PETA
offered no explanation to how the first action will lead to the second.
The false dilemma fallacy is another fallacy I found in this piece of advertisement.
The false dilemma fallacy is a fallacy that, Occurs when you limit consideration to only
two alternatives although other alternatives may be available (Moore/Parker 218). In
this case these two alternatives are you can either allow your child to consume meat
and live a unhealthy lifestyle, or you can convert yourself and your child to vegetarian/
veganism and be healthy. This concept is fallacious because it doesnt take in to

account that it is possible to be healthy and still eat meat, and it is possible to not be
healthy and not eat meat. Another example of the false dilemma fallacy in this particular
advertisement is that you can either allow you child to eat meat and be a child abuser,
or you can switch your child to a plant based diet and not be a child abuser. This is
fallacious because it doesnt account for parents that are child abusers but still allow
their children to eat a plant based diet, and doesnt account for parents that allow their
children to eat meat and are not child abusers.
The most obvious of the devices that I detected from this advertisement is the
scare tactic fallacy. The scare tactic fallacy is characterized as a fallacy that is, Trying
to scare people into doing something or accepting a position (Moore/Parker 188). This
advertisement is basically trying to scare people into thinking that if they dont feed their
kids a plant based diet then they are child abusers because they will allow their children
to be obese. This also scares children into thinking that if their parents dont feed them a
plant based diet then their parents are abusing them. By getting people to substitute
fear for reason and judgement when they are trying to take a position on an issue or a
subject, the it is ultimately always a fallacy. In addition, it is a fallacy to give in to such a
technique when other people use them on us to make a point. This fallacy is largely
based on emotion, so in order to avoid translating fear (or any emotion) of something
into an evaluation of some other thing that is unrelated, we must be clear on what
matters our fears or any other emotionare relevant to.
In conclusion, this advertisement is attacking a certain group of people those
that eat meat under false information and false circumstances that is being used
against them in order to prove a point to others. This advertisement is stating that if you

feed your children meat then you are a child abuser, which is untrue in many
circumstances. In addition this advertisement also states that if your eat meat then you
are unhealthy, which is also untrue due to the fact that not all people that eat meat are
unhealthy. This advertisement features fallacies such as scare tactic, false dilemma,
slippery slope, and straw man which makes the entire advertisement fallacious. In
general, the advertisement PETA created was intended to sway the viewer to their side
by evoking certain emotions.

References:
Moore, Brooke Noel., and Richard Parker. Critical Thinking. 10th ed. Boston: McGraw
Hill, 2007. Print.