Colorism in Four Selected Beauty Product Advertisements: A Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis

Abstract

The aim of this research is to reveal the colorism presented through linguistic and visual elements on the advertisement. The analysis is based on SFMDA theory by O’Halloran (2008), enhanced by Generic Structure Potential (GSP) of printed advertisement proposed by Cheong (2004) that is rooted from Halliday and Hasan (1989) to categorize the linguistic and visual elements. Systemic Functional Linguistics especially transitivity and mood analysis are applied to analyze the linguistic elements. Theory of colour and structure composition by Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) are used to analyze the visual elements. Finally, Intersemiotic Ideation by O’Halloran is used to relate the visual and linguistic elements in order to find the concept of colorism in printed advertisement through interpretation. The Qualitative research is applied because the data are in the form of images and text in printed advertisement. Moreover, the documentary research strategy which focuses on internet data based collection is also used. The data are four selected printed advertisements focusing on face products. These data were taken from official Facebook account of different brands on 2017. To analyze the data, Generic Structure Potential (GSP) theory by Cheong is applied to label the linguistic and visual elements. Then, the linguistic elements are analyzed by using the SFL theory from Halliday especially mood and transitivity analysis. In the end, the analysis is completed by elaborating overall theories. Most clauses use material and declarative mood to show the ability of the products and allows the customers to do certain actions. There are several vocabularies used to enter the concept of colorism such as white, bright, clean, light, radiant, and fair. Visually, several pictures, vizualisation, background and colours are used. White, green, blue, yellow, pink and black are colours which found on the advertisement that have meaning. The picture of star, light, snow, water, lemon are the examples of the use of visual elements that relate to the message of linguistic elements on the advertisement. The employment of female models is supporting the ideation of beauty that the advertising campaigns are trying to introduce.