Cosmetic products

nonfunctional products1. IntroductionCosmetic products be very important in human life re dedicateable to the improve workforcet of the living standards. And by filling the products to potential customers, cosmetic publicizings be quite popular in on the whole instru ment of media. Actually, cosmetic advertisers puzzle the products to customers in contrastive paths which depend mostly on who the customers atomic number 18. In former(a) actors line, they design assorted advertisements of the identical product to come out diametrical chemical separates of sighters, namely men and women. The differences among such advertisements motivate me to do a small-scaled interrogation on one of the factors that lead to such different features the linguistic processs occasiond in those advertisements. In to a greater extent(prenominal)(prenominal) details, this essay aims to examine if any sexual practice-based linguistic differences foot be utilized in cosmetic adver tisements with the purpose of targeting and influencing viewing sense of hearing of different genders by coiffureing the following look questions Why do advertisers teach aim more than one advertisement for ONE same product? Is voice communication one of the most important differences (among other differences like characters, oral communication, other advertise techniques ) between the two kinds of advertisements? Then why and how important is it in do such difference?2.Theoretical backgroundIn this section, a common view of advertising and gender differences will be introduced in piece to generate a basic background to answer the very first research question before the chief(prenominal) focus of the essay is discussed ab come out of the closet tho details of lyric poem utilisation in advertisements. A special assist is paid on the theory of gender differences in lyric poem procedure in advertisements, which will be examined in seven different advertisements for score Shampoo in the later part of the essay.2.1. An overview of advertisingNowadays, businesses and manufacturers atomic number 18 rattling aw ar of the great importance of advertising their products or services since a thriving advertisement justt end bring them great profits whereas an piteous commercial house lead them to bankruptcy (Sadek-Endrawes, 2008). Thus, businesses and manufactures always savor their high hat to find out ways to design the best advertisements for their products and services with the usance of effective techniques. Those techniques then ar utilise as tools to attract attention, immerse minds, trigger emotions and change what people think (adcracker.com a famous website for tips, tools and techniques to prepargon world-class advertising ideas). Among them are special metaphors (a symbolic representation for the product), promises of clear or problem solving, offers of free samples, features of human-like and life-like, features of eye candy, etc. Writers from adcracker.com excessively believe that it might be expendful to tell apart or shape their avow characters who are put in some special situations, for evidencecase conflicts, which can be exaggerated. But the most and foremost important techniques that all advertisement designers need to know are the techniques of choosing the target viewing audience and run-in wisely and correspondingly. That is the reason why there are sometimes more than one advertisements designed for only one single product.2.1.1. Language use as a originatorful advertising techniqueIt is obvious that delivery plays a vital role in the society in cosmopolitan and in anyones life in particular. We use language of all kinds either day, if it is not to say, every moment to communicate with other people, to get ourselves and our own opinions expressed and vice versa to get the same things from others (Gyllgard, 2006). Mastering that communicative power of language, sensible adv ertisers search to always try their best to utilize language as a powerful tool to influence the viewers. much specifically, they very much try to use language quite distinctively in hostel to catch viewers attention (adcracker.com). For example, they sometimes play with words, use them out of context, and create new ones in order to aid viewers remember a certain marque. Sometimes, those words become the famous slogan for the brand like Moving Forward for Toyota cars or Malaysia Truly Asia for Tourism in Malaysia. Language in advertisements is also used as internationalized (Sadek-Endrawes, 2008), which is expected to be beneficial in order to create same response from viewers of different countries in case the product comes into the global market. Another notice which is recorded by French researchers closely language use in advertisements is that 50 percent of all words are supposed to be nouns and verbs. In expiration, with the wise prime(prenominal) of language, adve rtisers can make outstanding do on advertisement viewers.2.1.2. Viewers targeted as an influential advertising techniqueMost advertisers know that advertising techniques have persuasive energy and that the chroma of such persuasive energy is measured in some(prenominal) ways, save most importantly in relation to a target audience (adkracker.com). It is explained by adcracker.com that different target audience have different lifestyles, different attitudes, different feelings and emotions, which is consequently resulted in different behaviors. Thus, successful advertisers are ofttimes sensible in building adverts that can get people to take action or plant a belief in the minds of their likely buyers by closely associating their adverts with the targeted viewers. It is also agreed by itvdictionary.com that the in-personization to a group of target audience can lead to greater awareness. More specifically, in a ChoiceStream survey, they noted that 38% of respondents say that the y are more willing to pay attention pay attention to such each focused advertising. 2.2. An overview of gender difference2.2.1. Gender difference in generalMen and women are different in various aspects which can mainly be categorized into biologic and hearty factors. Consequently, different price are coined to show such differences, for example sex and gender.Sex is be by Eckert and McConnell-Ginnet (200310) as a biological categorization which is based in the main on reproductive potential and gender is the sociable elaboration of biological sex. This means that sex is something fixed before birth (Thomas, 2004) with while gender is something that the social life shapes on us continuously in every pace of our life (Graddol and Swann, 19948). And it is believed and proved by many researches (Coates, 1993 Tannen, 1993 and Trudgill, 2000) that gender has a major influence on language use by a process named socialization (Tannen 199384)2.2.2. Gender difference in language useA s afore-mentioned, language is an important part of an psyches life which helps to form his/ her social identity (Gyllgard, 20061) by different linguistic habits which reflect different individual biographies and experiences (Graddol and Swann, 19945). Coates (1993144) also claims that when children adopt linguistic behavior considered appropriate to their gender they bear on the social order which creates gender distinctions This means that language is among the most large factors, bedsides social roles and social positions, that make great distinctions between men and women. Actually, it is ascertained that men and women use language differently in a gender-appropriate direction (Tannen, 199385) since they are small. In the following part of the paper, that different use of language by different genders will be discussed in three main aspects (1) topic choices, (2) word choices and (3) manner of intercommunicate Topic choicesIn terms of topic choices, men are believed to talk more about sports or other physical activities when they are small (Poynton, 1989) and about current concerns, about their strength and their ascendence (Coulmas, 2005) when they grow up. Meanwhile, women are believed to spend time public lecture more on home activities, romance and fantasy worlds. Later in their life, they are considered to choose to talk about nonsense and unimportant personal topics (Gyllgard, 2006). Consequently, mens language is often considered as serious and important while womens is seen as trivial and easy to ignore (Coates, 1993). Word choicesIt is believed that women seem to be more careful about choosing words than men. And it is explained that this results from the different roles of the two genders in the society. Women are considered to have their first and foremost roles as caring the families and bringing up children. Consequently, they need to be careful with the words they use or differently they may set bad examples for their children. Also regarding word choices, in their plant (Poyton, 1989 and Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 2003), researchers find that women use more intensifies (such as so and very), words of resemblance (such as about and around), or inessential qualifiers (like really or so) than men. Women are also claimed to use more adjectives (including empty adjectives like cute and evaluative adjectives like wonderful) and adverbs. Furthermore, hedges and tag questions are found more in women language rather than mens in order to require confirmation or channelize uncertainty respectively (Lakoff, 1989). Manner of speakingWith the same reasons of different social roles, in terms of manner of speaking, women seem to be more polite in speaking. Therefore, it seems that taboo language like slang or bedamn words are likely to be created and used by men rather than by women (Poyton, 1989). Lakoff (1989) also agrees with this by giving an example that women choose to use weaker expletives like oh dear or goodn ess instead of words like shit or damn. Meanwhile, Coates (1993) believes that the language used by women is collaboration-oriented with encouraging comments to create and maintain human relationship of closeness and equality while that used by men is competition-oriented in order to assert their positions of potence. There are differences between men and womens language in other aspects, however, due to the confine of this essay, only three preceding(prenominal)-mentioned are chosen to be discussed in this section and to be examined in the later one.3. Methodology and DataThis discipline focuses on the difference between the languages used by men and women in different advertisements for one same product, namely undefendable Shampoo, a very popular shampoo in Vietnam. Secondly, it will test whether the advertisers are successful in utilizing the difference between men and women language in order to target viewers of different genders by checking whether viewers of different genders can recognize which advertisement is for them or not. First of all, English versions of seven Clear Shampoo advertisements are selected to be the data for analyzing and those advertisements are chosen for several reasons. Firstly, shampoo is now an essential cosmetic product that people, regardless of their age, their social or financial status and certainly their gender, have to use in their free-and-easy life. Thus, it is worthwhile to investigate the advertisements of such product. Secondly, it is found that there are several different advertisements of Clear Shampoo on television as strong as on Youtube at the same time and it is presumed by the author that it may result from the advertisers purpose of targeting viewers of different genders. Consequently, with the help of Google search and Youtube website, seven advertisements of Clear Shampoo are collected and canned in the appendices of this essay for being analyzed. Differences among those advertisements will then b e reckon out by checking the above-mentioned theory and later used to group the seven advertisements into 3 groups for men, for women and for both men and women.To make the research more reliable, the seven selected advertisements for Clear Shampoo are shown to 20 viewers of both genders who are non-native speakers of English but gain sufficient proficiency to look the advertisements. Actually, they are Vietnamese teachers of English and students of some M.A. programs for English Linguistics or English Teaching Methodology. The viewers are asked to watch the seven advertisements and answer four following questions Who does each advertisement target, men or women? What features of the advertisement tell you about its target viewers? Does language used in the advertisement one of those features? How does language tell you about the target viewers?4. Data analysis and resultsThe results of the interviews surprise the author when most of interviewees, after respondent the first two questions, claim the features that inform them about the target viewers of the advertisements are mainly the models and images of the ads. Most of them only pay attention to the language of the advertisement after the third question. However, they all realize the difference in the language used in the adverts and agree that the language used in adverts by men and women partly tell us about the target viewers.Thus, firstly, this section presents the gender differences in language used in seven Clear Shampoo advertisements which are grouped in differences in (1) choice of topic, (2) choice of word and (3) manner of speaking. Such differences are resulted from the data analysis which is based on the above-mentioned background and the opinions of the interviewees.4.1 Choice of topicIt is revealed by the advertisement analysis that phallic models talk about their confidence and show their strength as well as their dominance to others by veneering the problems discolor is confident. C onfidence means no dandruff. (Appendix 1) Face it. tail it. I deal with dandruff like man. (Appendix 4)or Rage. Rage against her breath of fear. (Appendix 5)Meanwhile, female person models talk about beautyas in some beauty shampoos(Appendix 3)about their daily activities such as combing in concomitant 3 or about their emotion and their perception as in I issue my blur. Im convinced. (Appendix 2) Convinced. I am. (Appendix 3)They also mention one fact that they often try to avoid the troubles they encounter Hide it Cover it I keep it hugger-mugger as any woman should. (Appendix 4)4.2 Choice of words4.2.1 Verb choiceAs male models choose to talk about their confidence, their strength as well as their dominance, they use words that help to express perfectly what they mean. Actually, they use strong verbs as breath, move and sweat in concomitant 1 or face, solve, and deal with in appendix 4 or verbs that show their activeness as in I trust Clear. (Appendix 1)The verbs spoken by male voiceovers also have the same feature remove and prevent the dandruff (appendix 5), or make the dandruff go forward and stay away (appendix 7) so that its all settled (appendix 4).All those verbs bring to the audience the active position of the speakers, and thus, reveal their dominant positions. On the other hand, the verbs used by female models are quite different when they seem to display the defensive positions of the women Im convinced. (Appendix 2) Convinced. I am. (Appendix 3)or their avoidance solutions for dandruff by cover it, covering it or keeping it secret (appendix 4).4.2.2 Adjective choiceAs their concerns are different, female and male models choose different adjectives when they speak about their pilus. For example, most male models and voiceovers use black to talk about their hair or the hair they fate to have I like black. Black is confident. Black looks good. (Appendix 1) From black into darkness and into the dark, the icy blackness follows. (Append ix 5) the seduction of black, the enticement of black. Its the closeness of black that you can only have Be black. (Appendix 6)At the same time, female models talk about the features of soft, clean and delightful which are just suitable to describe female hair. Clear makes my hair soft and beautiful.Just soft hair. (Appendix 2) Can your shampoo leave your hair soft and clean Clear takes it soft. Just soft hair. (Appendix 3)4.3 Manner of speakingThe last but not least feature that 20 viewers and the author realize as the difference between the two genders is the way they speak. Female models talk with a collaborative orientation. They talk as if they want to share their experience with the audience whereas male models and voiceovers try to assert their positions of dominance by a competitive orientation. They talk about their dealing with dandruff (appendix 4), the concussion of sparks and dandruff (appendix 5), their black seduction and temptation when they are dandruff free (ap pendix 6). The tendency of dominance is also expressed by their short imperative sentences which can be found more frequently in male models or voiceovers pitch Face it Solve it (Appendix 4) Rage, rage against her breath of fear. (Appendix 5) Make the season more seductive. Make it a Clear Black Valentines. Be board. Be Black. track down closer anytime. Have Clear Black Valentines. (Appendix 6)The first advertisement with the male model, Bi Rain, also offers another feature of male speech. That is the logic in thinking and speaking Black is confident. Black looks good. Looking good means no dandruff. Confidence means no dandruff. Clear means no dandruff.With his logical speech, Bi Rain tries to convince the audience the close relationship among Clear, black, confident and looking good. And he seems successful with my interviewees.All in all, from the above analysis of the language used in seven adverts, it comes to a demonstration that advertisement No 1, 5 and 6 are targeted at men (although by what the author and the interviewees get from the adverts, 5 and 6 target at both men and women) advertisement No 2 and 3 are for women and the rest are targeted at both men and women.5. ConclusionIt can be seen from the results that the female language and male language used in seven Clear Shampoo advertisements follow tightly the theory that are presented in other researches on gender differences in language. However, the interviews with Vietnamese viewers who are non-native speakers of English reveal that what lead such viewers to the conclusion of target audience are not the language but the models and the images of the advertisements.The lead also come to another conclusion that the advertisers, who are expected to pay attention to the language of advertising, an effective tool of persuasion, do not rattling do so. And the results are the wrong target of the two advertisements number 5 and 6, which advertisers tend to target at both men and women (which can be understood by the images of white Clear for women and black Clear for men) but actually target only at men if only language of the advertisements is analyzed.