A critical analysis of metaphors used in Arabic and English cosmetics advertisements

Abstract

This study aims to critically analyze metaphors employed in Arabic cosmetics advertisements and compare them to those used in English advertisements. A specialized corpus including 250 advertisements (125 Arabic advertisements and 125 English ones) of different cosmetics products was compiled. The method adopted for data analysis was based on Charteris-Black’s (2004) Critical Metaphor Analysis framework (CMA). Data analysis demonstrated that advertisers in the context of cosmetics advertisements use different conceptual metaphors to depict cosmetics, beauty, skin/hair care and skin/hair. The findings revealed that both languages share 5 conceptual metaphors out of 10. Moreover, some metaphors reveal how both Arabs and Westerners perceive the beauty of skin or hair.