Helen Ringrow

The language of cosmetics advertising

This book offers a cross-cultural comparison of French and British cosmetics advertisements and explores how the discourse of beauty advertising represents ideas about femininity in French and English language contexts. As the global beauty industry expands and consumers become more critical of the claims made, the topic of cosmetics advertising discourse is examined using Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis. One common theme underlying most cosmetics advertising discourse is that the female body always requires ‘work’ to fix its ‘problems’: flat skin, dry hair, and so on. The author uses themes of language and gender, media and identity, and advertising across cultures to expose exactly what is going on in the language of cosmetics advertising and to offer a first step towards challenging these ideas and thinking about alternatives.

Book review: Jarmila Mildorf and Bronwen Thomas (eds), Dialogue across MediaMildorfJarmilaThomasBronwen (eds), Dialogue across Media, John Benjamins Publishing Company: Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 2017; ix + 296 pp.: ISBN 9789027210456 (hbk), ISBN 9789027266156 (ebk).

betray the ‘illogical and emotional argument’ of the song’s lyrics, sung from the point of view of ‘a UK welfare officer castigating a welfare-dependent mother and subjecting her to his particular brand of classed and gendered vitriol’ (p.53). I find this claim entirely unconvincing, and a more careful attention to the song’s lyrics, allied to a more objective approach to its ideology, would have produced a more subtle and nuanced reading, one that sees the song – and, indeed, Morrissey’s oeuvre – as hugely ambivalent ideologically and politically. Although a hugely significant moment for literary studies, the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Bob Dylan was a moment that unfortunately largely passed the discipline by. It is therefore positive to have such a book as this to continue the debate on the omnipresent cultural phenomenon of popular music, and how it works as a multimodal entity. There is already a large literature on music from the viewpoints of ethnomusicology and popular music studies, and the book adds critical discourse studies and social semiotics to that reservoir of approaches. What these approaches lack, however, is a principled account of a song’s lyrics, and how they function within the song as a whole – something that, I believe, a stylistic approach would be better able to provide.

Introduction: Borders in Translation and Intercultural Communication

The introduction to this special issue discusses the notion of border and its position in current scholarship in translation studies and intercultural communication. It then analyses ways in which borders can be useful for thinking, focusing particularly on Walter Mignolo’s notion of “border thinking”. It reviews how borders are viewed in both translation studies and intercultural communication and offers some possible directions for future research before introducing the papers in this special issue.

The Case for Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis

This final chapter reflects upon the approach employed in this book, which is Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (Lazar 2005a, 2007). This framework, which has not been universally adopted amongst language and gender scholars, critically analyses texts from a feminist perspective and can be viewed as a sub-discipline of Critical Discourse Analysis. This chapter explores how the key principles of Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis are used in this book, and finishes by examining the role of this paradigm in challenging media assumptions.

Beauty Advertising in a Cross-Cultural Context

This chapter outlines some key current debates around gender, media, and identity. It argues that beauty advertisements merit attention from the perspective of critical linguistics in order to interrogate gender ideals in contemporary media discourse. This chapter also explains the data used throughout the book and the overall approach taken, which is that of Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis.

Femininity as a Sensual Identity

This chapter examines how cosmetics advertisements connect femininity to sensuality. Key debates surrounding sensual and/or sexual representations of the female body in media discourse are addressed. The chapter moves on to explore sensual discourse that describes cosmetic products’ qualities, actions, and effects, in addition to visual signifiers of sensuality such as parted lips, nudity, and the use of sensory modality in product images. The chapter compares and contrasts sensual advertising discourse in English and French contexts, with a particular emphasis on nudity across cultures.

Language, Gender, and Advertising

The chapter begins by exploring how the language of beauty advertising is inherently linked to questions of language and power. Relevant language, gender, and advertising research in Anglophone and Francophone contexts is then outlined, with an emphasis on how contemporary feminist linguistic research tends to focus on the construction of gender in certain contexts. In cosmetics advertising in particular, femininity is equated with consumption in order to improve one’s appearance, which is always seen as in need of ‘fixing’. By examining the language of beauty advertisements, female media representation can be explored and challenged.

Problems and Solutions: Pursuing the Youthful, Ideal Body

Many contemporary cosmetics advertisements display a pattern commonly known as the Problem-Solution pattern (Hoey, On the surface of discourse. Allen and Unwin, London, 1983; Textual interaction: an introduction to written discourse analysis. Routledge, London, 2001) in which the beauty product is presented as a ‘solution’ to a ‘problem’ apparently faced by the target consumer. Within the context of the media pressure on females to fit into strict beauty ideals, this chapter explores how cosmetics are discursively constructed as ‘tools’ to help achieve an improved appearance. Hoey’s Problem-Solution model is adapted for specific application to cosmetics advertising discourse, comparing how this pattern manifests itself in UK versus French advertisements.

Scientised Beauty Advertising Discourse: With Peptides or Paraben-Free?

A common technique in contemporary beauty advertisements is the use of various ‘scientific’ claims, lexis, and imagery. This chapter identifies, and compares, some common ‘scientised’ discursive strategies in French and English beauty advertising, aiming to provide a more concrete framework for analysing this aspect of cosmetics advertising. The chapter finishes by addressing a more recent counter-phenomenon: a ‘green’ cosmetics advertising discourse, in which brands emphasise a lack of chemicals and a more ‘natural’ approach to beauty.