A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Cosmetic Advertising English

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a newly developed branch in analyzing the discourse as a social practice, which is a trans-disciplinary theory and combines the research achievements in the fields of linguistics, psychology and sociology. It is a kind of analysis method integrating language, language use with ideology. CDA not only studies what language is but also why language is so. It presents the interest not only in the meaning of language, but also in how the language produces the meaning. It aims to discover the relationship between language, hidden ideology and power through its language from different aspects. One important point CDA pays close attention to is the effect of ideology, namely the function of discourse in instilling, maintaining and changing the ideology. Since the birth of CDA, more and more scholars and researchers have paid much attention to its theory and application.As an effective way for people to get information about the product or service, advertising is everywhere nowadays. Advertising language is factually a kind of persuasive language, aiming at passing information to the consumers and persuading them successfully. Loving beauty is common to everyone. As a special product, cosmetics are attracting more and more attention. Cosmetic advertising, with its special charm, attractive language and beautifying effects, has drawn numerous customers'attention, especially women. Advertising has been a hot field of research. So far, many researchers and scholars home and abroad focus on advertising analysis from different perspectives. But few studies probe into cosmetic advertising English from the perspective of CDA.The research data of the thesis are the collected fifty-five cosmetic English advertisements. The present thesis firstly concentrates on the linguistic features of cosmetic advertising English, including some major lexical features, syntactical features and rhetoric devices often appear in cosmetic advertising texts. From the perspective of CDA, the thesis then illustrates the ideology of the consumers and advertisers through the advertising language of the collected cosmetic advertisements. The thesis finally aims to reveal how cosmetic advertising English affects, misleads and persuades the consumers to take purchase actions. Besides, the analysis of cosmetic advertising English from CDA can improve the reader's sensitivity to cosmetic advertising language, make them realize the subtle relationship between language and the modern social life, the complicated connection between language use and the unfair social power relations, finally help them read critically and strengthen their awareness of resisting the control of the public discourse.