Beauty Metaphors in Advertisements: An Ecological Discourse Analysis

Ayesha Asghar Gill; Ghazala Kausar; Aziz Ullah Khan

doi:10.47205/plhr.2021(5-II)1.44

Beauty Metaphors in Advertisements: An Ecological Discourse Analysis

Authors

Ayesha Asghar Gill

Lecturer, Department of English, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Punjab, Pakistan

Dr. Ghazala Kausar

Assistant Professor, Department of English, National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad, Pakistan

Aziz Ullah Khan

Lecturer, Department of English, University of Science and Technology, Bannu, KP, Pakistan

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47205/plhr.2021(5-II)1.44

Keywords

Eco-Linguistics Framing Grammatical Metaphor Ideology Metaphor Nominalization Stratal Model

Abstract

Skin whitening creams (SWCs) advertisements frequently manipulate beauty metaphors to frame the cognition of the masses for their sale promotion. This research aims to decode the link between the symbolic discourses of seven advertisements of SWCs and the exploitation of human feelings for commercialism. An ecological discourse analysis of the Grammatical Metaphor (GM) used in SWCs advertisements has been conducted. The study draws on Fairclough's perspective of CDA in the systemic functional linguistic framework of the stratal model (Martin,1993b; Halliday, 1985). The results demonstrate that Ideational and interpersonal GMs are deployed to impart information that seems to be neutral through nominalization, mood, and modality to justify the sociocultural divide of fair and not fair beauty norms for commercialism.