Commercial advertising discourse in the print media and its role in the construction of social identities

Abstract

dvertisements have been said to be part of the modern way of life. Language has gained an increased economic importance. This has led to a deliberate intervention to mould language practices. This study therefore sought to examine how advertisements construct the social identities of readers, and whether the readers offer any resistance to this construction. It was hoped that the findings of this study would demonstrate that language affects society through ideology and power relations. It also strove to provide for alternative possible readings of the text. The research also hoped to reveal the abuse of power in discourse with a view to stirring the readers to make a critical reading of any text, to capture its truthfulness. The objectives of the study were to describe the language of advertisements, to examine how social identities of readers are constructed in advertisements of cosmetics and to establish whether readers offer any resistant reading to these advertisements. The study purposefully selected twenty advertisements and described their language. It also subjected them to a Critical Discourse Analysis, analysing the linguistic and semiotic features, establishing how they construct the social identities. From the analyzed data. it was gathered that the semiotic features construct the social identities through exposure of the characters’ skins, facial expressions of the actors and close proximity of men to women. Three linguistic features were instrumental in constructing the social identities. They included: referential strategies, predicational strategies and argumentation strategies. The findings revealed that the advertisements presented a worldview, which is Commercially advantageous to the powerful industrial group. Thirty female college students were given questionnaires to indicate how they respond to the construction of the social identities. The responses were computed in percentages. The findings showed that majority of the readers did not offer a resistant reading. It is necessary to mention that, although majority of readers did not resist the construction of social identities, there was an effort to resist albeit not successfully.