Advertising and Beauty Product Advertisements Essay

This study examined beauty advertisements in topical anaesthetic English magazines from a small Discourse Analysis perspective. This study mainly focused on the use of wrangle in beauty advertisements and strategies employed by advertisers to interpolate and influence their customers. The digest is based on Faircloughs three-dimensional framework. It demonstrates how the ideology of beauty is produced and reproduced through advertisements in popular local womens magazines. A qualitative research was conducted on beauty harvest-tide advertisements in two popular local womens magazines, Cleo and Womens Weekly.The findings indicated that advertisers used various strategies to manipulate women. The advertisements promote an idealised lifestyle and manipulate readers to a certain goal into believing whatever that is advertised is indeed true. This study revealed how the ideology of beauty is weeed and reconstructed through magazines by stereotyping how beauty products argon synony mous with a better life. Advertising language is used to control throngs minds. Thus people in power (advertisers) use language as a means to exercise control over others.Keywords CDA, advertisements, power, manipulate 1. Introduction The stiff competition in attracting potential customers has forced advertisers to employ spry advertising strategies techniques such(prenominal) as, construct a problem that can only be solved by using their products. Similarly, beauty product companies advertise their products to change women. Magazines ar a good example of a powerful media which regularly reach a vast number of women. The local English Language magazines are constantly flooded with beauty product advertisements.Some of them provide quite a lot of information such as, the background of the product, its effectiveness, feedback or testimonies by distinctions or women who have used the product, price, and so on whereas some are quite short and condensed. These advertisements tend t o manipulate readers to a certain extent into believing whatever that is advertised is indeed true. The major stakeholders in advertising are the manufacturers, consumers and advertising agencies. Advertisements reach come forth to consumers through various media such as internet, radio, television, magazines and newspapers.In golf club to ensure that advertisements are able to reach the target group, advertisers need to select the right medium. For instance, if the target group is the generation Y group, wherefore internet would be the best source as many young people today go online when purchasing products be it clothes, gadgets, books and so on. As bring out media such as magazines can reach both young and old alike, advertisers or manufacturers of products take opportunity to promote their product through this media. Visuals and language in the advertisements play a pertinent role to attract women. The next section will discuss on the role of language in advertising.Cook (2 001) points out that advertisements inform, persuade, remind, influence and perhaps change opinions, emotions and attitudes. In other words, his contention is that advertisements do not only sell products but change society and make people bargain things they do not want or need. He also feels that advertisements do give warnings or information to people. Hence, advertisements can help create awareness, construct identities and attitude. There are many advertisements in womens magazines that advertise beauty products influencing women and 61 www. ccsenet. org/ass Asian affable Science Vol. 9, No.3 2013 beauty has become an overbearing religious imperative for women, thus pressuring them to do their best to hold their beauty (Baudrillard, 2005). The ideal women is stereotyped through visual and textual aspects of the advertisements. Advertisers use visual and linguistic means to persuade their audience. It is argued that advertising is the most influential institution of socialisa tion in modern society (Jhally, 1995). This scenario has brought into perspective on how people who are in control of advertisements manage to exercise their power and at the same time manipulate womens beliefs.Lau and Zuraidah (2010) perceived that advertising has been subtly distorting reality and manipulating consumers to make them buy a way of life as well as goods. Thus studies on advertisements in womens magazines would be of great relevance to advertisers. In order to know how advertisers influence women, it is necessary first to understand what advertising is all about. Advertisements are important but not many studies have been conducted in the local context from a CDA perspective. Thus there is indeed a need for studies to investigate the use of language and other semiotic modalities in beauty product advertisements.The findings of such research efforts can contribute further to the field of advertising as well as language and society. This study will address the interest research questions 1) What are the linguistic features used in beauty product advertisements? 2) What are the discursive techniques employed in beauty product advertisements to manipulate women? 2. methodological analysis & Theoretical Framework The theoretical framework employed in this study is Critical Discourse Analysis framework (2001). Advertisements are seen as media discourse as they involve language and social processes.Hence this framework is used to show the link in the midst of the nature of social exercising and the properties of language texts. A qualitative design was adopted for this study. A qualitative study was appropriate in this study which seeks to investigate how discourse in advertisements involves peoples construction of meanings. hit product advertisements in English Language local magazines were analysed. Hence for a descriptive analysis, a qualitative analysis is more appropriate rather than a quantitative analysis.Purposive sampling was done as the s tudy was to investigate only on beauty product advertisements where not many studies have been conducted videlicet lipstick, mascara and eye cream. Data was collected from two local womens magazine, Cleo and Womens Weekly from six issues consecutively from January to June 2012. Every advertisement on eye cream, lipstick and mascara from these magazines was retrieved and analysed. The data analysis is based on Faircloughs Critical Discourse Analysis framework (2001). Hence this framework is used to show the link between the nature of social practice and the properties of language texts.His three-dimensional framework includes a conception of discourse as text (micro level), discourse practice (meso level) and sociocultural practice (macro level). Its aim is to explore the relationships among language, ideology and power and to find out how advertisers persuade the women to buy their products. Thus, this study focused on analysing the linguistic features of beauty product advertisem ents in womens magazines in Malaysia and highlights how the use of language tends to manipulate women beliefs based on the content of the advertisements. Figure 1.Faircloughs three-dimensional model, 2001 62 www. ccsenet. org/ass Asian Social Science Vol. 9, No. 3 2013 3. Results and Discussions The analysis is presented at the textual (micro), discursive practice (meso) and social practice (macro) level based on Faircloughs (2001) CDA framework. 3. 1 Textual Analysis The textual analysis relates to research question 1 on the linguistic features in the advertisements analysed. At this level of analysis the linguistic features such as vocabulary, syntax and rhetorical devices employed in advertisements are discussed.In the study there was a great use of direct address in the advertisements for both ideological and practical reasons. The use of the second-person personal and possessive pronouns such as you and yours seek to address the readers directly and personally. When people are addresses individually rather than as part of mass audience it is considered highly valued. This handling of people on an individual basis is referred as synthetic personalization (Fairclough, 198962). Based on the complete fifty eight beauty products advertisements analysed, twenty had used direct address. Examples are as shown below ?