Description
This discussion will concentrate on the ways that Seventh Generation's "sustainable" and "toxic-free" household and beauty products and their packaging rely on ideographs to persuade ideologically disparate groups. In order to examine this issue, I adopt renowned twentieth-century rhetorician Kenneth Burke's conceptions of "identification" and the summarizing function of language, and put them in conversation with rhetorician and social critic Michael C. McGee's definition of "ideographs," or "paramorphic receptacles." I suggest that for the purposes of environmental advertising, "nature" and "natural" function as "ideographs" and, thereby, as rhetorical loopholes in the problem posed by persuading a variety of ideological groups. Specifically, I assert that over time "nature" and "natural" have become increasingly ambiguous terms that hold a range of social content and that the categorical meaning of these terms remains static, even though the exact meaning crystallizes in various forms. Ultimately, I conclude that McGee's ideographs serve as a particular instance of Burke's summarizing function. To demonstrate this function of these ideographs in environmental advertising, I concentrate on appeals to "nature" and "natural" on three Seventh Generation products: "Natural Dish Liquid," "100% Unbleached, Recycled Paper Towels," and "Natural Skin Serum." By analyzing the rhetorical approaches that these products rely on, I examine the way Seventh Generation positions consumption as an environmentally friendly activity, despite the acknowledgement amongst environmentalists that consumption will always yield negative environmental effects. Moreover, I argue that corporations with pro-environmental practices place blame for environmental degradation on consumers, particularly those of lower socioeconomic status, while simultaneously perpetuating the constant consumption of the capitalist system and propagating the myth that consumption is a solution to environmental problems. This is not to say that an entire economic upheaval is necessary, but instead to bring these issues to both the academic's and the population writ large's attention, and to, in turn, encourage a critical look at environmental advertisements and consumption behaviors more generally.
