Less words, please! Visual ads as evocative rhetorical constructs of the modern age

Contemporary language of advertising is subject to change - one can see a fundamental departure from the textual and a clear shift in favour of the pictorial component. Nonetheless, this is by no means damaging to the quality of the message transmitted; on the contrary, visual ads are perceived as particularly evocative rhetorical constructs of the modern age due to the multilayered nature of meaning they carry. This study seeks to understand to what extent visuality and visualism have dominated contemporary advertising messages. Basing on a collection of Polish, English, and French ads, it will aim at tracing the visual structures of the examples provided. The author will argue that less words may equal more meaning owing to the fact that images offer numerous shortcuts to other, either cultural or personal connotations, for it is the addressee that eventually decodes the message and invests it with meaning.