Analysis of Doublespeak in Beauty Treatment Products Advertisements.

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ii Maranatha Christian University

ABSTRACT

Dalam Tugas Akhir ini, saya mengkaji penggunaan doublespeak dalam iklan produk perawatan muka dan rambut. Doublespeak merupakan suatu kata yang muncul seolah-olah menjanjikan sesuatu, tetapi ketika dianalisis lebih dalam, kata-kata tersebut tidak memiliki makna yang spesifik, dan kadang-kadang kata tersebut tidak memiliki makna apapun. Doublespeak dalam periklanan terdiri atas

puffing word, parity claim, weasel word, unfinished word, dan up to claim.

Salah satu fitur yang saya peroleh dalam kajian doublespeak iklan ini adalah bahwa penggunaan weasel word paling sering digunakan oleh pengiklan karena merupakan suatu cara yang paling mudah dan praktis untuk menarik perhatian para pembeli. Salah satu temuan lainnya adalah penggunaan unfinished

word lebih banyak dibandingkan parity claim, karena jika semua pengiklan

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37 Maranatha Christian University

APPENDICES

DATA 1

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DATA 3

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DATA 5

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DATA 7

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1

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

We cannot deny the fact that human beings are social beings. Therefore, no human beings can live alone in this world without interacting with others. We can see this fact through our daily life; such as if there is no farmers, we will not be able to eat rice or even vegetables. If there is no advertiser, we will not know when a company creates new products. That is why interaction between human beings are very crucial

One form of interaction is exchanging information, which is commonly known as communication. A communication is considered successful if the information is conveyed correctly by whatever means necessary.

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consumers to believe for the advertisers’ own sake. In other words, they try to mislead the public.

Communication is not only used in daily conversation, but also in advertisements, military, business, education, or even politics. However, the language used to communicate in one field might be different from that in other fields. For example, the word “court”. According to Oxford Dictionary, the

meaning of court in the field of law is “the people in a court, especially those

who make decisions, such as the judge and jury.” (“court,” def. 1a) While if a

sportsman says: “Gathered in the court!”, the word court means “a place where

games such as tennis are played”(“court,” def. 1c)

People use language as a tool to achieve their goals. One of the methods is doublespeak. Doublespeak does not occur because of slip of the tongue or done inadvertently, but it is deliberately invented in a very conscious mind. Doublespeak is language that pretends to communicate but in fact not, it is language that is deliberately invented to disguise the actual meaning of a word. The use of doublespeak is to mislead, distort, and corrupt the human mind (Lutz 2).

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sentence “I am sorry for the negative patient care outcome” instead of “ I am sorry that the patient died”, or “you are telling categorical inaccuracy or terminological inexactitude”instead of “you are telling a lie”, we may understand doublespeak as trying to avoid responsibility, making the offensive seem tolerable, the bad appear good, and which seems to communicate with people while in fact it does not (Lutz 20).

In this thesis, I choose beauty treatment products advertisements as my data. The reason why I choose this data source is that nowadays people, especially women use beauty products to look beautiful and attractive. Women will spend money to buy a particular product despite its high price. All they want is a beautiful, young and attractive appearance. Sometimes, those desires make them blind although they are well-educated people.

Since the demand for beauty products is getting higher, the producer starts to produce many kinds of products to gain a lot of financial profits. This issue has caused the competition among companies to become even tighter. In order to exist in the marketing world, the advertisers must make their product more attractive and more unique than other products. One of the ways is using doublespeak in their advertisements.

According to Lutz, there are five kinds of doublespeak used by advertisers to advertise some particular products, namely “puffing”, “the rule of

parity”, “weasel words”, “up to claim”, and “unfinished words.”

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meaning of those particular words, and moreover they should not let themselves be misled. They should not let their eyes blinded by their temporary desires. In other words, they should be aware of those advertisements using doublespeak.

(728 words)

Statement of the Problem

The problems in this study are formulated as follows: 1. What type(s) of doublespeak is/are applied?

2. How does the doublespeak mislead the readers?

Purpose of the Study

Following the statement of the problem, the purposes of this study are: 1. To classify the type(s) of doublespeak found in the data.

2. To find out how doublespeak misleads the readers.

Method of Research

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Organization of the Thesis

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CHAPTER FOUR

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, I would like to state some concluding remarks based on the analysis of doublespeak in beauty treatment products advertisements that I have found on the Internet.

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28 Maranatha Christian University in advertisements are control, tone, soften, enhance, and 100% oil-free. Women can easily be attracted by those words, as they will have to face skin aging problems as they grow older. Since most women are afraid of becoming ugly, they will try anything that they can, so that their skin will always stay good and healthy despite their age. For most women, the most important thing is they can stay young, beautiful and attractive. In fact, as age increases our skin will change because the cells in our skin have started to die due to the ultraviolet light, pollution, and many more. There is not a thing or even a product that can stop the aging process. Those cosmetics that we can see now are only to slow down the aging process, which all women are afraid of. There are some words that seem to make a claim, but in fact the word does not have any meaning, or we can say it as an empty word; for example, the word control. When advertisers claim that their products “control anti aging”, we have to know that

control means “to stop spreading or getting worse” (“control,” def. 2c). Yet, most people would think that their products would control the aging problem, while in fact what the advertisers mean is only to prevent the aging problem from getting worse. That is why, the word control does not claim anything at all. It is just put in the advertisement to attract the consumers.

The second most commonly used of doublespeak is unfinished words. The use of unfinished word in advertisement gives some information, but they do not give any detailed information about the product. This fact can be seen from the cosmetic advertisement tagline, such as “brighter, smoother, and firmer.”

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29 Maranatha Christian University skin or even a young adult’s skin. This interpretation will depend on the personal

judgement; therefore, the advertisers will try to defend themselves if the consumers find out that the claim does not fulfil their hope. Hence, we can conclude that unfinished word is easier to attract consumers to buy their products.

The most rarely use type of doublespeak is parity claims. We know that parity product is just the same product but with different branding, so there is no difference between one product and the others, except for the brand. If all the products use the same claim, such as parity claims, the consumers will not be interested because there is no specialty about the product with different branding. Moreover, in the advertising world, if all the advertisers use the same claim, the consumers will not be attracted to buy the products. If some companies invent new products, they would not gain any profits, because there is nothing special about their products. Therefore, the consumers will keep on using certain products that they have so far used. That is why, the use of parity product has become rare, as it cannot attract the consumers much.

When the advertisers want to highlight the quality of a product, the effective one is using weasel word. It is known that quality is about the content of the product. If the advertisers use parity product in their advertisement, the consumers will not buy their products. On the other hand, if the advertisers use weasel words, such as “the combination of trace elements and minerals”, the

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30 Maranatha Christian University that have been added into the product. Thus, not everyone will think about the trace elements and minerals that the products contain. They just think that the product can give a significant effect because of the content.

If the advertisers want to highlight the durability of their products, the most effective way is to use parity claims. It can be seen from the example of parity claims, such as “the most effective” or “the best one.” If the advertisers

do not use parity claim as I have mentioned earlier, the consumers will not buy their products because the consumers prefer some products which truly promise something. When we analyze the words deeply, “the most” or “the best” actually means “equal to.” Thus, it still makes sense as no company will sell failed

products. If they sell failed products, automatically their company’s image will

be ruined. Therefore, we can conlude that all companies will sell the best products that they have, but the durability of the products is more and less the same as others.

If we analyze other products, such as Vaseline or Olay, they also use doublespeak, as without doublespeak their advertisements will be plain and boring. The most commonly doublespeak is weasel word, as it attracts the consumers. The word seems to claim something, yet if we analyze it deeply it does not claim anything at all. Therefore, weasel word is considered the most eye catching word as the advertisers do not have to give detailed proof in their products. Moreover, the consumers will not bring a dictionary when they go shopping.

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31 Maranatha Christian University different from one person to another, each consumer might make their own interpretation. That is why, before buying certain products, we have to be aware of what the words mean. We cannot impose our interpretation with others, as everyone has their own opinion. The only thing that we can do is by using our language awareness. The more aware we are about the real meaning of a word, the smaller the chance for us to be misled by the word. As a result, we can still tolerate the use of doublespeak in advertisements.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Texts

AMBI. Advertisement. SHOPAMBI.COM. SureSource LLC, 2009. Web. 3 Sept. 2013.

Clear Ultra Shea Butter Conditioner. Advertisement. Clearhaircare,com. Unilevel, 2014. Web. 18 Feb. 2014.

Clinique. Advertisement. The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 30 Aug. 2013. Web. 14 Sept. 2013.

Fairtone Skin Whitening Pills. Advertisement. : Amazon.co.uk: Health & Beauty. N.p., 22 Oct. 2010. Web. 19 May 2013.

Garnier. Advertisement. Chick Advisor. Chick Advisor Inc., 2006-2013. Web. 19 May 2013.

Oil-Free Acne Stress Control. Advertisement. Neutrogena. Neutrogena Corporation, 2 Jan. 2013. Web. 19 May 2013.

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33 Maranatha Christian University Vitamin C Serum. Advertisement. Mario Badescu Skin Care. Mario Badescu

Corporation, 2010. Web. 19 May 2013.

References

“Anti.” Def. 3. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010. Print.

“Attractive.” Def. 1. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010.

Print.

“Deep.” def. 1a. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010. Print.

“Different.” def. 1. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010.

Print.

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“Even.” def. 2a. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010. Print.

“Firm.” Def. 2a. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010. Print.

“Highly.” Def. 2. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010.

Print.

“Hydrate.” def. 1. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010.

Print.

“Ideal.” Def. 1a. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010. Print.

“Instantly.” def. 1. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010.

Print.

“Less,” Def. 1. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010. Print.

“Moisturize.” def. 1. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010.

Print.

“Naturally.” def. 2. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010.

Print.

“New.” Def. 1e. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010. Print.

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“Relax.” Def. 3. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010. Print.

“Relieve,” def. 2. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010.

Print.

“Soft,” def. 3. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010. Print.

“Soften.” def. 1. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010. Print.

“Tone.” Def. 1e. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010.

Print.

“Treat,” def. 1c. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010. Print.

“Ultra.” Def. 2. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010. Print.

"Get the Skinny on Skin Disorders." Healthlines RSS News. Katherine Brind'Amour, 20 Aug. 2012. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.

"Pragmatics." Pragmatics. Andrew Moore, 2001. Web. 13 Sept. 2013.

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36 Maranatha Christian University How Government, Business, Advertiser, and Other Use Language to

Deceive You. New York: Harper Perennial, 1990.

MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 7th Edition. Modern Language

Assosiation. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2009. Print.

Your Guide to Bibliographic Citation: MLA Style. Rev. The Library. Oshawa:

Analysis of Doublespeak in Beauty Treatment Products Advertisements.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT

APPENDICES

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER FOUR

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY