Chapter 6 Conclusion
5. Ideology of women
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Other than the two maxims mentioned above, Approbation Maxim is violated more frequently in skin-care ads than in cosmetic ads, but Sympathy Maxim is obeyed more often in cosmetic ads and in skin-care ads. When skin-care ads describe the consumer’s skin flaws, although the advertiser dispraises the consumer, and thus violates Approbation Maxim, the advertiser might mean to show concern and sympathy to the consumer’s problems, which can be taken as conformation of Sympathy Maxim.
4.5 Ideology of Women
4.5.1 Beauty product advertisements as a whole
In advertisement discourse, ideology is one of the crucial factors that would determine how an idea is verbally wrapped. In women’s fashion magazines, gender
ideology prescribes the ways how women should behave and how beauty is evaluated.
In this thesis, ideology of women is divided into three components: physical appearance, psychological status, and social recognition. Physical appearance refers to the skin condition, psychological status indicates emotions, and social recognition includes role, the personal features women have; uniqueness, every woman is special;
identity, the concepts which women identify with, and beauty, women’s being physically attractive. Table 15 demonstrates how these three components are revealed in the data collected.
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Table 15. Distribution of the three components of woman ideology
Physical Appearance 51.1% (194)
Psychological Status 8.7% (33) Social Recognition Role 3.1% (12) Uniqueness 2.6% (10) Identity 2.6% (10) Beauty 31.6% (120) total 40.2% (152)
Total 100.0% (379)
According to Table 15, physical appearance scores the highest (51.1%), followed by social recognition (40.2%) and psychological status (8.7%). This result suggests that the advertiser appeals to physical appearance and social recognition, but women’s psychological status is not the focus. A possible reason is that physical appearance and social recognition are under the control of social norms, which are
collective expectations of the whole society; while psychological status is concerned with an individual’s personal preference. Since the advertiser wants to gain profits
from the general public, it is natural that they choose to comply with the social norms, instead of satisfying her own individual differences. For these reasons, the proportions of physical appearance and social recognition score higher than psychological status.
Moreover, since personal psychological status reflects an individual’s inclination;
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therefore, if the advertisement only takes the consumer’s psychological status into consideration, it can merely satisfy a small number of consumers, and the profit retrievable is small. Thus, psychological status plays the least important role in beauty product advertisements.
4.5.2 Comparison of types of advertisements by woman ideology
It was expected that skin-care ads would put more stress on physical appearance, while cosmetic ads emphasize social recognition. Table 16 demonstrates the results.
Table 16. Differences between two types of ads by woman ideology
(A= components of woman ideology, B= types of beauty products)
According to Table 16, for physical appearance, skin-care ads surpass cosmetic ads (66.0% vs. 34.0%); however, for psychological status and social recognition, it is the opposite, with cosmetic ads overriding skin-care ads (57.5% vs. 42.5%, and 59.2%
vs. 40.8%, respectively). Moreover, the largest gap between the two types of ads lies
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in physical appearance (with a difference of 32%). It is not surprising that skin-care ads put a heavy stress on physical appearance; after all, the nature of skin-care ads is physical. As for the other two components, the gaps between the two types of ads are relatively small. Based on these findings, it seems to be safe to say that physical appearance is the primary factor to define what attractiveness of women is in Chinese culture.
About the four components of social recognition, role means the personal features women have; uniqueness indicates that every woman is special; identity represents the concepts which women identify with, and beauty suggests women’s being physically attractive. A general pattern found in the data is that cosmetic ads are expected to be more functional for the purposes of the four components. In social recognition, cosmetic ads are associated with the social roles women play, the uniqueness which women are urged to chase, and the identity which women are bestowed or dream of. Role, uniqueness, and identity all belong to the concepts which are not physically innate, but social-culturally nurtured. To reach goals as such, cosmetic products are more functional than skin-care products. In other words, when using make-up, women do not just change their emotions and appearance; they also change the way other people treat them. Thus, women, after they change their looks, can play different roles and have different identities. This is why cosmetic ads are
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strongly related to social recognition. As for beauty, the difference between the two types of ads is small. In Taiwan, women’s beauty is emphasized, no matter it is natural beauty, which can be obtained by skin-care products, or artificial beauty, which can be instantly substantialized by cosmetics. Since the use of cosmetics can bring about instantaneous but powerful beauty to women, cosmetic ads score higher than skin-care ads do.
In meeting the needs of psychological status, cosmetic ads (57.5%) score higher than skin-care ads (42.5%). This consequence results from the attribute of the cosmetic ads. Women use cosmetics to make themselves more attractive, which makes them feel confident and delightful about themselves and about the way they are treated. Their emotional status is linked with their appearance after change. In other words, if they want to change their emotions or the way other people look at them, they only have to use cosmetics to make up a mask, no matter how they look originally. In this aspect, women’s psychological status is more strongly influenced by cosmetic ads than by skin-care ads.
4.5.3 Comparison of components of ideology by types of advertisements
It is anticipated that different components of woman ideology will perform differently. Table 17 shows the results of data analysis.
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Table 17. Comparison of components of ideology by types of advertisements (A= components of woman ideology, B= types of beauty products) psychological status (8.7%). In social recognition, beauty (31.6%) scores the highest, followed by role (3.1%), uniqueness (2.6%) and identity (2.6%). A possible explanation is that beauty is on the surface, which can be judged easily; while role,
uniqueness, and identity are underlying concepts, which can not be appreciated easily.
Since women’s being beautiful is a basic social expectation of women, it is anticipated
that the advertisements of beauty products comply to this social norm. When a woman has attractive appearance, she is unique and is thus given an identity. Women have been so strongly conditioned by this social norm that they fail to look at themselves through their own eyes. In beauty product advertisements, sexism on females is so
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well reflected
When types of beauty products are taken into consideration, in cosmetic ads, social recognition (51.5%) scores the highest, followed by physical appearance (37.7%), which is followed by psychological state (10.8%); however, in skin-care ads, it is physical appearance that scores the highest (62.7%), followed by social recognition (30.5%), and then psychological status (6.8%). As for psychological status, in cosmetic ads as well as in skin-care ads, it is attended least frequently. This tendency results from the viewpoint that psychological status belongs to personal preferences, and since each consumer has different preferences, if the advertiser appeals to change women’s psychological status through the use of beauty products, they fail to cater to the potential consumer’s needs, and thus loose the chance to gain the potential profits.
4.6 Linguistic Devices
In this section, two linguistic components are examined, namely, the referential contents of the advertisements and the use of hedgers and boosters.
4.6.1 Referential contents
There are four types of referential contents emerged in the beauty product advertisements—time, singularity, annexation, and scope. Time includes instancy, duration, and simultaneity; singularity refers to the first appearance and
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distinctiveness of the product; annexation indicates the additional function of the product; scope contains width and depth. Table 18 presents the distribution of referential contents in beauty product ads.
Table 18. Distribution of referential contents in beauty product ads
Time Instancy 8.8% (12) (18.5%), first of singularity (2.9%), and width of scope (27.4%) score the highest in each of the categories. These results indicate that scope, time, and annexation are emphasized in beauty product advertisements; whereas singularity is the least important category in referential contents. Singularity is the least related to the effect of the beauty products, while scope, time, and annexation are all related to the effect,
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gives the distributions of the types and subtypes of the referential contents found in the two kinds of advertisements.As Table 19 indicates, cosmetic ads and skin-care ads show similar patterns in the expression of time and singularity, but differences between cosmetic ads and skin-care ads in annexation and scope are conspicuous. All of these referential contents aim at two goals: efficiency and effectiveness, with time related to efficiency;
and singularity, annexation, and scope related to effectiveness. Results of data
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analyses reveal that there is little difference between the two types of advertisements, except annexation and scope in depth. Skin-care ads score higher than cosmetic ads in annexation and depth. This result indicates that skin-care ads use a lot of terms about annexation and depth to emphasize the function and effectiveness the products produce.
Table 20 describes comparison of the referential contents of cosmetic ads and those of skin-care ads.
Table 20. Comparison of referential contents by two types of ads (A= referential contents, B= types of beauty products)
A B Cosmetic Skin-care Total (42.3%), time (31.1%), annexation (22.9%), and singularity (3.7%). In beauty product advertisements, the advertiser wants to persuade the consumer to buy the products, so
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the advertiser uses a lot of terms about scope to emphasize their certainty of the effectiveness of the products advertised. Following a similar line, time, which is related to efficiency, tend to emphasize how time-saving for the target products to improve the consumer’s appearance and how lasting the effects of those target products are, both of which are the consumer’s interest. As for annexation, it is used to emphasize the additional functions of the beauty products. It can help the consumer have extra benefits from the products advertised.
4.6.2 Hedgers and boosters
Hedgers and boosters are modifiers which are frequently found in advertising discourse to persuade the consumer to buy the products. Table 21 shows differences between cosmetic ads and skin-care ads by the use of hedgers and boosters.
Table 21. Distribution of types of advertisements by types of modifiers (A= modifiers , B= types of beauty products)
A B Cosmetic Skin-care Total
Hedger 60.0% (3) 40.0% (2) 100.0% (5) Booster 39.0% (181) 61.0% (283) 100.0% (464) None 54.8% (416) 45.2% (343) 100.0% (759) Total 48.8% (600) 51.2% (628) 100.0% (1228)
According to Table 21, in general, hedgers are rarely used either in cosmetic ads or in skin-care ads. As for boosters, they are used more frequently in skin-care ads (61.0%) than in cosmetic ads (39.0%). In cosmetic ads, this finding seems to indicate
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that the advertiser is less confident with the effects of the products due to some of the consumer’s personal factors, such as the consumer’s knowledge, experience, and skills of using the cosmetics. As a result, the advertiser has to tone down their certainty and use fewer boosters in cosmetic ads than in skin-care ads. Though the uncertainty is not advantageous for the advertiser, it will avoid the consumer’s distrust on the exaggerated advertisements of beauty products. That is, the advertiser uses hedgers in a relatively conservative way to trade off the consumer’s trust and to sound more reliable. As to skin-care ads, the advertiser has more confidence in the products advertised because the effectiveness can be verified easily; therefore, boosters are used far more in skin-care ads than in cosmetic ads.
Also, it was expected that both hedgers and boosters would be used in both types of ads. Table 22 presents the results of data analysis.
Table 22. Distribution of types of modifiers by types of advertisements (A= modifiers , B= types of beauty products)
A B Cosmetic Skin-care Total
Hedger 0.5% (3) 0.3% (2) 0.4% (5) Booster 30.2% (181) 45.0% (283) 37.7% (464) None 69.3% (416) 54.7% (343) 61.9% (759) Total 100.0% (600) 100.0% (628) 100.0% (1228)
According to Table 22, most advertisements of beauty products (61.9%) do not carry modifiers; only 37.7% of them contain boosters, and hedgers are rarely used
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(0.4%). Also, in the use of boosters, it is found that skin-care ads score apparently higher than cosmetic ads. The reason for this difference lies in the effects of using the two different kinds of products. To be specific, skin-care products are used to improve the facial skin condition, and if the product itself is effective, the improvement of the skin condition will be revealed. That is, since the consequence of using skin-care products can be judged objectively, the advertiser is more certain and confident with these products, which allows the advertiser to exaggerate the functions of these commodities.
When the consumer uses cosmetic to improve her facial outlook, the skills to apply the cosmetic products are important. Since different women have different skills and preferences of using cosmetics, there are individual differences. More importantly, individual differences are also reflected in the judgements of beauty. As a result, the advertiser can not promise that the make-up will definitely make the consumer look better. Since the certainty is relatively low, the advertiser uses fewer boosters.
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Chapter 5
Qualitative Analyses of the Interviews
This chapter presents qualitative analyses of the interviews, which aim at the subjects’ attitudes on a 5-point Likert scale of persuasiveness toward the advertising
approaches, felicity conditions, CP, and PP. The related data are first examined by the subjects as a whole, and then by the subjects’ social characteristics.