{"title":"Female Representation in Online Advertisements: A Feminist Stylistic Analysis of Beauty Products Advertised on Instagram","authors":"H. Raslie, Aina Nadhirah Mohd Zaidi","doi":"10.17576/jkmjc-2022-3804-21","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"An advertisement is a promotional strategy to introduce a product, brand, or service to a targeted viewership; with the intent to pique their attention, encourage interaction, and ultimately, attract sales. Containing pictures, words and graphics that are familiar and present in the targeted group’s realities, advertisements, in addition to financial gains, it also greatly reflects and influences the socio-cultural construct and worldview of a community. In advertising operations carried out particularly via social media platforms, the use of language to manipulate gender depiction as an advertising strategy is recurrently observed. On this premise, this qualitative study looked into the language used in Malay advertisements for beauty products available on Instagram, a social media application. The feminist stylistic framework (Mill, 1998) served as the foundation for the textual analysis approach used to examine 150 Instagram adverts for Malay beauty goods. The stylistic features in particular were evaluated based on Verdonk (2002)'s framework, with a focus on the use of language in depicting women and the role of the language in shaping the depiction. The results demonstrated that the stylistic features utilised in Malay beauty products advertisements contained characteristics that are stereotypically assigned to women. The extensive effect of patriarchy, stereotypes, and woman sexualisation as a marketing tactic is also evident in the seller's language use. This study aims to offer evidence-based justifications for changes to be made to the existing social media advertising practice, especially in terms of language appropriateness and ethics. Keywords: Feminist stylistics, Malay beauty products, advertising language, female representation, social media advertisement.","PeriodicalId":45197,"journal":{"name":"Jurnal Komunikasi-Malaysian Journal of Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7000,"publicationDate":"2022-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Jurnal Komunikasi-Malaysian Journal of Communication","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.17576/jkmjc-2022-3804-21","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
An advertisement is a promotional strategy to introduce a product, brand, or service to a targeted viewership; with the intent to pique their attention, encourage interaction, and ultimately, attract sales. Containing pictures, words and graphics that are familiar and present in the targeted group’s realities, advertisements, in addition to financial gains, it also greatly reflects and influences the socio-cultural construct and worldview of a community. In advertising operations carried out particularly via social media platforms, the use of language to manipulate gender depiction as an advertising strategy is recurrently observed. On this premise, this qualitative study looked into the language used in Malay advertisements for beauty products available on Instagram, a social media application. The feminist stylistic framework (Mill, 1998) served as the foundation for the textual analysis approach used to examine 150 Instagram adverts for Malay beauty goods. The stylistic features in particular were evaluated based on Verdonk (2002)'s framework, with a focus on the use of language in depicting women and the role of the language in shaping the depiction. The results demonstrated that the stylistic features utilised in Malay beauty products advertisements contained characteristics that are stereotypically assigned to women. The extensive effect of patriarchy, stereotypes, and woman sexualisation as a marketing tactic is also evident in the seller's language use. This study aims to offer evidence-based justifications for changes to be made to the existing social media advertising practice, especially in terms of language appropriateness and ethics. Keywords: Feminist stylistics, Malay beauty products, advertising language, female representation, social media advertisement.
期刊介绍:
All scholars are invited to submit manuscripts to Jurnal Komunikasi, Malaysian Journal of Communication. This journal provides a forum for empirical inquiries on human and mass communication and welcome conceptual, philosophical and theoretical essays or debates, book reviews and essay reviews directly contributing to communication or indirectly affecting it as a discipline. We suggest the following broad areas of research: -Communication and Policies -Globalization and Social Impact -Youth and Media Globalisation -Audience Analysis -Media, Democracy and Integration -Media Literacy and Media Education -Media and Development -Health Communication -Politics, Hegemony and the Media -ICT and Power -Gender and Sexuality in The Media -Social Media and Subcultures -Media, Popular Culture and Society -Media and Religion -Media and Identity -War, Conflict and Crisis Communication -Strategic Communication and Information Management