I need help with my English homework

Recognizing appeals to needs and values is almost certainly going to help in the evaluation of an advertisement. Being able to recognize these will not only help you define how an advertisement works, but might also provide you with ideas about discussing the advertisement in a greater social context.

In Elements of Argument, 7th ed., Annette T. Rottenberg says, “The most familiar classification of needs was developed by the psychologist Abraham H. Maslow in 1954…[and that] he arranged them in hierarchical order from the most urgent biological needs to the psychological needs that are related to our roles as members of a society” (172). Her book provides the following list:

Physiological needs Basic bodily requirements: food and drink; health; sex

Safety needs Security; freedom from harm; order and stability

Belongingness and love needs Love within a family and among friends; roots within a

group or community

Esteem needs Material success; achievement; power, status, and recognition by others

Self-actualization needs Fulfillment in realizing one’s potential (172)

While needs tend to be universal to humans, values are more cultural and societal in their origins. Groups of people, both large and small, are frequently defined by shared values. Time, also, can have a direct bearing on values, as social, political, religious, and even environmental conditions change around us. Even technological advances can influence a group’s value focus. Regardless, one finds it “hardly surprising that values, the principles by which we judge what is good or bad, beautiful or ugly, worthwhile or undesirable, should exercise a profound influence on our behavior,” and that “[v]irtually all claims, even those that seem to be purely factual, contain expressed or unexpressed judgments” (174). Unfortunately, value appeals cannot be so readily categorized as those of needs, but there is a sense of hierarchy in that “some are clearly more important than others to the people who hold them” (174). For writers, this means that only a consideration of the intended audience will determine the focus of appeals to values. However, because our audience (at least in the classroom) is typically one of our contemporaries and peers, the situation is not so dire as it may at first appear; we can assume, at least to some degree, that they hold many of the same values that we do.

Rottenberg, Annette T. Elements of Argument. 7th ed. Boston: Bedford / St. Martins, 2003. Print.