Beauty product advertisements: A critical discourse analysis

• 發表在: Asian Social Science
• 主要作者: 2-s2.0-84874698521
• 格式: Article
• 語言: English
• 出版: 2013
• 在線閱讀: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84874698521&doi=10.5539%2fass.v9n3p61&partnerID=40&md5=95164447cce42dfb83acba00126494f8

This study examined beauty advertisements in local English magazines from a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective. This study mainly focused on the use of language in beauty advertisements and strategies employed by advertisers to manipulate and influence their customers. The analysis is based on Fairclough's three-dimensional framework. It demonstrates how the ideology of 'beauty' is produced and reproduced through advertisements in popular local women's magazines. A qualitative research was conducted on beauty product advertisements in two popular local women's magazines, Cleo and Women's Weekly. The findings indicated that advertisers used various strategies to manipulate women. The advertisements promote an idealised lifestyle and manipulate readers to a certain extent into believing whatever that is advertised is indeed true. This study revealed how the ideology of beauty is constructed and reconstructed through magazines by stereotyping how beauty products are synonymous with a better life. Advertising language is used to control people's minds. Thus people in power (advertisers) use language as a means to exercise control over others.