language of advertising Flashcards
paragraph plans:
- men’s/ women’s heath magazine
- toy adverts
- job adverts
- brand adverts
- weasel words
gender magazines front covers:
- women’s magazine: beauty tips, maintaining a small physique and ‘staying sexy’, ‘covering aging’, ‘appear flawless’, how to have fantastic sex, appear younger, and permanently erase cellulite!
- men’s magazine: ‘fighting aging’, getting back in shape, workout tips and feeling confident, power, energy and wealth
- reinforces the idea that women must fulfil the idealised thin body that is damaging, yet so common in the media. this reinforces the concept that women must be seductive and appear a certain way to attract the attention of males.
health magazine model paragraph:
Take magazine articles as an example of the normalisation of bias in the language of advertising.
The comparison of a men’s health magazine and a women’s health magazine contribute significantly in creating this never-ending divide between men and women. The vast emphasis placed on maintaining a small physique and ‘staying sexy’ in the women’s health magazine reinforces the idea that women must fulfil the idealised thin body that is damaging, yet so common in the media. This reinforces the concept that women must be seductive and appear a certain way to attract the attention of males.
Contrastingly the men’s health magazine focuses on getting back in shape, workout tips and feeling confident; using words in bold and bulky text, such as power, energy and wealth. Why is it that for women, the topic basically relates to how to have fantastic sex, appear younger, and permanently erase cellulite! All these things don’t shape ‘the perfect woman’, they merely enhance their appearance to make them more appealing to males, which is what the media assumes all females have the desire to achieve. The language of advertising complies to harmful stereotypes, with the thought that their audience will appeal to this and in turn, buy their product. This isn’t the olden days anymore, who are these covers helping? Nobody, especially not you ‘Women’s Health’.
toy adverts:
- ‘girly’ toy adverts often reference physical appearance a great deal more, using words such as pretty, glittery and cute. supporting the
preconceptions that girls are
emotional, sociable, and caught up
in gossip rather than real life
concerns. - male narratives contained more aggressive words, and more references to power, destructive action, science and technology. supporting stereotypic masculinity
associations that boys are only into
action toys and detrimental
weapons rather than dolls and
animals - David Crystal says ‘language has no independent existence apart from the people who use it.’
I believe what he is trying to relate is that language and its usage are dictated by the people using it. The language used in these toy adverts satisfy the masculine and feminine stereotypes by plastering each gender with conventional language that creates the gender divide we so commonly see today
toy adverts model paragraph:
At such a young age, stereotypical perceptions often stick and contribute to the low number of girls pursuing fields like science and technology that are directed at boys, and men pursuing careers in childcare or as beauticians.
This is all due to the way these roles are advertised using specific characteristics and language that favour a particular gender, as seen through the use of toy advertisements. In almost every toy shop or toy advert the great amount of disparity between girls and boys toys is immense, ‘girly’ toy adverts often reference physical appearance a great deal more, using words such as pretty, glittery and cute, supporting the preconceptions that girls are emotional, sociable, and caught up in gossip rather than real life concerns. Male narratives contained more aggressive words, and more references to power, destructive action, science and technology, supporting stereotypic masculinity associations that boys are only into action toys and detrimental weapons rather than dolls and animals. I can’t believe that these toys created for young children are still being categorised to a particular gender, simply depending on the language being used. How often would you see a young boy wandering down the aisle in a toy shop filled with pink barbies, princesses and beauty roleplay? Barely ever! This matter isn’t even down to the fact that boys don’t like ‘girly toys’ it’s simply because of the way these toys are described using language that divides them into two categories, boys have been raised to believe that liking princesses or anything pink is wrong as it’s ‘meant for girls’.
Language guru David Crystal says ‘language has no independent existence apart from the people who use it. I believe what he is trying to relate is that language and its usage are dictated by the people using it. The language used in these toy adverts satisfy the masculine and feminine stereotypes by plastering each gender with conventional language that creates the gender divide we so commonly see today.
job advertising:
- ads for stereotypically male jobs had more masculine wording, which led women to; 1) think more men worked there, 2) believe they would not belong in that position, 3) find the job less appealing. however, this wording did not affect their abilities to do the job. these differences due to subtle language differences in job ads may help explain the on-going gender pay gap in historically male-dominated fields
- a few years ago, social scientists at Duke University coded a long list of adjectives and verbs as masculine or feminine, then scanned a popular job site to look for those words. they found that job ads in male-dominated fields (software programming) tended to use masculine-coded words such as ‘competitive’ and ‘dominant’ much more than job ads in female-dominated fields. follow-up research confirmed that such words made those job listings less appealing to women
- research shows that when employers reduced the occurrences of masculine-coded words and replaced them with neutral words, the proportion of female applicants was projected to increase up to 54% (from 40%).
brand advertising:
- last week a very big piece of news was announced about something apparently very small; a single word. on International Women’s Day, Unilever committed to eliminating the word ‘normal’ from its beauty and personal care brands’ packaging and advertising. banning ‘normal’ is important, as silly as it sounds, because it recognises that so many of the harmful gender norms unwittingly perpetuated by brands lie in the ‘not so obvious’, in your face packaging and advertising, which do actually have consequences on females who are spoken to and seen through this advertisement.
- you’ve probably heard the term ‘always a bridesmaid, never a bride’. that’s actually from an early Listerine ad, where the story is about this woman, suggesting if she doesn’t use Listerine she’s never going to get married. ads have traditionally exploited individuals’ fears, for example, fears for women in the early 20th century, were very much based on being s good wife and mother. so the advertising industry tapped into these fears and provided products that could ameliorate these fears whilst promoting their product.
weasel words paragraph:
I will put in an honest effort while writing this and create a wonderful essay. This sounds like a claim that assures the reader they are about read something that is of great literary merit, but is only a vague claim, if carefully dissected. The problem with the claim is that I fail to explain what I consider ‘honest effort’ and ‘a wonderful essay.’ This opening sentence used weasel words, which is an on-going debate in language, and is one of advertiser’s favourite hooks. Weasel words are meant to give an impression that what is being said is something extremely meaningful, when in fact they only create a vague claim. They allow advertisements to state a claim that requires no scientific support or data, as long as ambiguous phrases are used, which can be moulded to imply whatever the advert desires.
I’ll give you some examples of these weaponised weasel words; for example, common ones I can assure you would’ve come across; BEST, NEW, BIGGEST. Which leads me to the question, biggest.. according to who? It is highly believed that not a lot of laws are preventing these fraudulent adverbs in advertising. Meaning that companies can throw out any of these hollow words with no care in the world if any of its true or not.
- HELPS - worse weasel word, e.g. helps wrinkles. Trident gum created a commercial where they claim that chewing Trident ‘helps fight cavities’. By using the words ‘helps’and ‘fight’, Trident isn’t legally making a medical claim that their gum will prevent cavities, through the utilization of these weasel words, Trident implies that their gum will greatly assist in the prevention of cavities. The reason this advertisement works is that they create the illusion that their product will prevent cavities without legally claiming something that they can’t prove. Due to their use of weasel words in their advertisements, Trident uses terms that imply that their product is actively combatting cavities, while in fact Trident may be doing nothing to benefit the consumer’s mouth.
