BEAUTY PRODUCT ADVERTISEMENTS IN PAKISTANI ‘SHE’ MAGAZINE: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Abstract

This study examines the beauty advertisements in local English magazine (print media) ‘SHE’ from the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis. This study mainly focuses on the use of language and visuals in beauty advertisements and strategies employed by advertisers to manipulate and influence their customers. For this purpose, five advertisements from ‘SHE’ magazine have been selected and analyzed linguistically and visually. The linguistic analysis of these advertisements is based on Fairclough’s ThreeDimensional Model (1995) and the visual analysis is made through Kress and van Leeuwen’s Grammar of Visual Design (2006). This research is qualitative in nature. The findings show that the advertisers used various strategies to manipulate women by showing them an ideal image of beauty in the advertisements. The advertisements promote an idealized lifestyle and manipulate readers to a certain extent into believing whatever that is advertised is indeed true. This study reveals that the ideology of beauty is constructed against women by marginalizing them and limiting their role in society by the advertisers, who are actually the people in power and have their vested interests. The study also indicates that the language of advertisements is used to control people’s minds. Thus people in power, i.e. the producers of advertisements use language and visuals as a channel to exercise control over the female consumers of Pakistan. The future researchers can apply same models of analysis to study television advertisements to find the representation of women and survey can be conducted on why women are unable to realize that they have been manipulated by the advertisers in the name of beauty. Also, same models can be applied on to Pakistani Urdu magazine (print media) and T.V (electronic media) advertisements.