Multimodal Construction of Female Looks: An Analysis of Mascara Advertisements

Abstract

Multimodality involves the interaction between verbal and visual components in various discourses. Advertising discourse is one of the discourses where multimodal analysis is used quite frequently. This study documents the operation of multimodal strategies in the advertisement of beauty oriented products in women’s magazines with an emphasis on the interplay between visual and verbal communication channels within the theoretical framework of Critical Discourse Analysis. It describes how similarly advertising discourse uses descriptive and persuasive verbal and visual strategies to exploit the image of an idealized female beauty with a specific focus on mascara advertisements in the Turkish context. Two Turkish women’s magazines (Seninle and Elele) and two localized versions of well-known women’s magazines (Elle and Vogue) were analyzed multimodally to compare the exploitation of idealized female looks through mascara advertisements. The multimodal analysis showed that the advertisements set “ideals” for the perfect “look” in the eye, by concentrating on the “eyelashes”. They also set “ideals” verbally. The qualities of this “ideal look” (voluminous, long thick, curved eyelashes) provide a linguistic frame to interact with the visual frame.

Keywords

• critical discourse analysis
• multimodal discourse analysis
• advertising discourse
• semiotic analysis
• mascara advertisement