‘Fine Lines’ in Media: Unattainable Discourse of Beauty in Cosmetics Advertisements

Abstract

Language is considered as a powerful tool of persuasion. For this reason, advertisements use language as a medium to gain control and subjectify people towards it. Due to the increased concept of glorifying fair complexion in society, advertising agencies manipulate the use of language for the promotion of their beauty products and to promote good-looking ideology. This study focuses on how language in advertisements of fairness products for women and men persuades and manipulates common people in the Pakistani context. The key aim of this study is to concentrate on the use of language in some beauty product advertisements and reveal how these advertisements use language as a medium to grab the audience’s attention. This paper presents a multidimensional study of the language used by advertising agencies to have a ‘look good’ influence on both genders. This study using Foucault’s theoretical perspective on “The subject and Power” employs Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar’s Ideational, Interpersonal and textual levels to explore contextual semantics implicit in the advertisements. The study also surveyed through a questionnaire to explore the impact of language on people. The results of the questionnaire were compiled through SPSS and it reveals that the language of advertisements has equal influence on both genders and 80% of the people tend to buy products because of the language used in advertisements. It tries to understand how these advertisements can increase their customer numbers by using “one line statement” or “a simple bolded phrase” and capture the attention of people by their persuasive language and celebrities performing in these ads, who may have limited knowledge about the products and may not use the products themselves.
Keywords: Language, Power, Advertisements, subjectification, beauty products.