Lexical Variations in the Punch Lines of Marketing the Beauty Products: A Comparative Analysis of Pakistani and British English

Abstract

Language is critical in the formation of social ideologies and consumers' perceptions particularly in the beauty sector as advertising discourse constructs the ideologies of femininity and desirability. This study focuses on the lexical variations of beauty advertisements in Pakistani and British English in order to identify how language represents culture, social norms and ideological orientation. The study intends to find the lexical variations in beauty products’ advertisements in both places and to explore pragmatic and interlinguistic functions of lexical variation. Using a qualitative comparative design based in Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 2001), the study examines twenty real-life beauty advertisements, ten from sources in Pakistani English and ten from sources in British English. Appearance, lexical choice, metaphorical language, evaluative adjectives and pragmatic strategies such as persuasion, modality and direct address are examined. The results show that the commonest literature in Pakistani advertisements favor the lexical items emphasizing fairness, transformationalism and social acceptance using words like fair, bright, radiant, glow, etc., as they are imbued with postcolonial and gendered ideologies. The lexical grids employed in British advertisements were related to individuality, confidence and authenticity which is the reason why British advertisement was characterized by the following words, natural, revive, pure, confidence, etc. Practically, the Pakistani advertisement was premised on promises and emotional appeal but not the British advertisement, which is premised on a subtle empowerment and self-expression. The results have indicated that this linguistic distinction in the beauty advertisements could potentially represent extended socio-cultural ideologies in either one situation or the other. It is an extension to its spheres of applied linguistics and discourse in the sense that language can be used as a tool of marketing and propagating ideologies within the globalized aesthetic consumer culture.