The use of Enthymeme in Advertising

Most of us already know by now what an enthymeme is, and we’ve seen it in a lot of political speeches, advertisements, and even public speakers who are not politician. Enthymeme is a rhetorical device which definition is “an argument in which one premise is not explicitly stated”. How has it been connected to our society? I’ll tell you!

Nike is one of the most well-known company in the world, and it produces all kind of shoes, cloths, etc… in their most recent advertisement, they use the phrase “Just do it” as their title I would say. When we here the phrase just do it what do we think about? We all ask this question ‘just do what’? They use this word so vague so that you can interpreted your own definition of it. The first time they used that ads, an 80-year old man was the definition of ‘it’. Recently, they stated ‘it’ as any sacrifices or step that you take to become better at what you do is the “it” that you should just do. The reason that they use that is because we’re so quick to interpret anything we here as if we already knew the answer or the message that was being conveyed to us. Therefore, we end up of making the best out of some quotes that we don’t know the actual meaning behind.