An analysis of linguistic features of male cosmetics advertisements from FHM (For Him) and GQ (Gentlemen's Quarterly) magazines
The world of cosmetics has predominantly been a woman‟s sphere, but in recent years there seems to be an increase in the number of men who use cosmetic products. Cosmetic companies have responded to this by manufacturing and advertising various products. Advertisers design their advertisements incorporating various persuasive features, such as deviant language, images and colours, to mention just a few, to attract men and persuade them to buy the products being advertised. This qualitative study examines how linguistic and non-linguistic elements were employed in English cosmetic advertisements geared towards men. Another aspect the study analysed is how the AIDA model and the three Aristotelian proofs of persuasion were incorporated in male cosmetic advertisements. Thirty advertisements from the GQ (Gentlemen’s Quarterly) and FHM (For Him Magazine) magazines of 2015 were analysed for persuasive features. These two magazines were chosen because they are typical male magazines focusing on entertainment, travel, sex, sports and fashion. This study employed the masculinity theory to examine traces of masculinity in the advertisements, and the AIDA model of advertising to investigate how the advertisements arrest readers‟ attention, arouse interest, and create a desire that would lead to the action of buying such products. Aristotle‟s three proofs of persuasion: ethos, pathos and logos, as well as linguistic and non-linguistic features were identified and their contribution to the persuasion of male consumers to buy cosmetic products was explained. The study revealed that most advertisers used the ethos of celebrities to endorse their products. Celebrity‟s pictures were mostly paired with the product that was being advertised. The use of male celebrity endorsers fed into the notion of the masculinity theory that men are now openly using cosmetic products, and are even portrayed in magazines advertising the products they use. Most advertisers made use of multimodal aspects, semantics and syntactic, lexical and deviations to persuade potential buyers.
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