A Comparative Study Of Persuasive Strategies Used In Male And Female Chinese Cosmetic Advertising Texts

With the rapid development of commodity economy,advertising has penetrated into every aspect of people’s life.The ultimate goal of advertising language is to persuade the consumers to take the purchasing action.In order to persuade the consumers more effectively,various persuasive strategies are employed by the advertisers.In recent years,scholars have done many researches on cosmetic advertising texts from the perspectives of rhetoric,pragmatics,systemic-functional linguistics,language feature,etc.However,most of the studies are only limited to either male or female cosmetic advertising texts,but cross-gender comparative studies are rare.This thesis draws upon Aristotle’s three rhetorical modes of persuasion,namely logos,pathos and ethos as its theoretical framework to do a comparative study on the persuasive strategies between male Chinese cosmetic advertising texts and female ones.The present research chooses 200 Chinese cosmetic advertising texts,including 100 for males and 100 for females.The data are collected from various sources,such as fashion magazines,cosmetic manuals,Internet,and even some official websites of cosmetic brands such as NIVEA,OLAY,ESTEE LAUDER,BIOTHERM,VICHY,and LANEIGE,etc.Based on Aristotle’s three-appeals model and the specific characteristics of each appeal,100 male cosmetic advertising texts(mCATs for short)and 100 female cosmetic advertising texts(fCATs for short)will be classified as rational persuasive strategies,emotional persuasive strategies and moral persuasive strategies respectively.The study aims to answer three questions: 1.what persuasive strategies are commonly used in mCATs and fCATs? 2.what are the similarities and differences in using rational,emotional and moral persuasive strategies between mCATs and fCATs? 3.what reasons possibly cause such similarities and differences?Both similarities and differences in using the three persuasive strategies were found between mCATs and fCATs.In both mCATs and fCATs,rational persuasive strategies are used most frequently,followed by emotional persuasive strategies and moral persuasive strategies.However,mCATs use rational persuasive strategies more frequently whereas fCATs prefer to employ emotional persuasive strategies.When they appeal to logos,mCATs often use a problem-solution structure,while fCATs prefer to utilize numbers and figures,technical terms and complicated reasoning.When they appeal to pathos,fCATs often apply rhetorical devices like personification,parallelism,and rhetorical question and so on.When they appeal to ethos,fCATs use the celebrity persuasive strategies more frequently than mCATs.The similarities mentioned above between mCATs and fCATs embody the consumers’ reaction to advertising is a successive process from cognition to affection and from affection to volition.In the beginning,consumers are attracted by the specific information of an advertisement,and then the information stimulates their emotional feelings,which subsequently motivates them to make the final decision.The differences are arguably due to the three reasons: a.different social gender roles,i.e.men are frequently characterized as guided by reason and women by emotion;b.different personality characteristics,i.e.males and females differ in interests,preferences and attitudes;c.different consumption psychology,i.e.compared to male consumers,female consumers are more easily to be influenced by the mass-following psychology in the consuming process.