Analysis of Doublespeak in 'Maybelline' Mascara Advertisements.

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Maranatha Christian University

ABSTRACT

Dalam tugas akhir ini saya membahas doublespeak dalam berbagai iklan maskara yang diproduksi oleh Maybelline. Dalam dunia bisnis, iklan mempunyai peran yang sangat penting untuk mengenalkan suatu produk kepada para konsumen. Dalam setiap iklan, kita akan menemukan slogan dan tagline yang mengandung

doublespeak, namun kita tidak akan menyadarinya karena kita tidak mengerti apa sebenarnya doublespeak itu.

Saya mengambil delapan iklan maskara bermerek Maybelline dari Internet untuk saya analisis, dan saya dapat menemukan semua jenis doublespeak dalam dunia periklanan seperti puffing, weasel word, unfinished word, parity claim, dan up to claim.

Para pembuat iklan bersaing membuat iklan yang dapat menarik minat para konsumen untuk membeli barang mereka. Maka dari itu, mereka menggunakan

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APPENDICES

Data 1

Expression Kind of Doublespeak

New

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Bigger

The first

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Data 6

Blackest

Longer

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1Background of the Study

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Maranatha Christian University know their products. According to Doublespeak, “64 percent of teenagers said that they get information about new products from television, while 36 percent said they often buy the products after seeing the commercials for them” (Lutz 75). As I have mentioned before, advertisers use television as one of the media to promote their products, and that 36 percent of the teenagers buy the products after seeing the advertisements. Advertisements obviously have a great impact on the consumers.

Advertisements use Doublespeak to promote, attract, and persuade people to buy their products. Doublespeak is very effective to deceive people because it can make something harsh seem or sound soft; it claims something that is not the same in reality. It really helps the advertisers to show to the consumers that their product is good or is the best among other products. In general, there are four kinds of Doublespeak, namely euphemism, jargon, gobbledygook, and inflated language. Besides, there are four other kinds of Doublespeak which are often used in the world of advertising, namely parity claim, weasel word, unfinished word, and up to claim.

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Maranatha Christian University I have chosen the Internet as the source of my data. In this global era, the Internet is very important, since almost everything can be found in this medium. That is why many companies nowadays use the Internet to introduce and promote their products to the public. Besides, the Internet is the most effective medium of communication. What happened one hour ago can be checked in the Internet. Most people nowadays use the Internet to find anything they need. Small children, teenagers, adults of all ages mostly have the Internet access every day. Thus, many companies use the Internet to promote their products through advertisements in the Internet.

Companies also make official websites for their own brands to make it easier for people to find anything about the brands such as new products, current events, or explanation and information about their products. In this case, Maybelline has its own official web, in which people can find out about its new products and explanation about them.

The general benefit of being able to identify Doublespeak is of course to know the real meaning about the products. Besides, the use of jargon in the advertisements will give us knowledge about special language in the world of cosmetics; thus, for example, we can know the meaning of the acronym SPF 15 and what it is for. Being able to identify Doublespeak will give us a lot of benefit, and the most important thing is that advertisements will not be able to mislead us anymore.

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1.1Statement of the Problem

In the analysis, there are three problems that I would like to solve: 1. Which words or phrases in the advertisements contain Doublespeak? 2. What kind of Doublespeak do those words or phrases belong to? 3. How does Doublespeak mislead the consumers?

1.2Purpose of the Study

By answering the questions above, I would like to accomplish these purposes: 1. To identify which words or phrases in the advertisements contain Doublespeak 2. To identify what kind of Doublespeak those words or phrases belong to

3. To show how Doublespeak misleads the consumers

1.3Method of Research

The first step in conducting the analysis is to understand what Doublespeak is, and the theory that I use is William Lutz’ Doublespeak. The next step is looking for the data; I use Maybelline advertisements as the data and get the data from the Internet. The final step is writing the report of the analysis.

1.4Organization of the Thesis

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CHAPTER FOUR

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, I would like to present the concluding remarks and comments from the discussion on Doublespeak in the advertising world. From the analysis, it is evident that the advertisements use all types of Doublespeak in the advertising world, which are puffing, weasel word, unfinished word, and up to claim. The most common type of Doublespeak which is used in the data is weasel word. We can find that type of Doublespeak in every data.

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Maranatha Christian University Besides the word new, there are other words which are considered weasel words that can make the product seem magnificent. In data 4, for example, the advertiser uses the words 24 hour that make people amazed because if they use this mascara, they think they need not re-apply the mascara more than once in 24 hours. In data 6, the word colossal is used. The readers will be interested in knowing more about the product because they want to have that type of lashes. Those words can attract the readers to see the advertisement and buy the product because they think that the product is amazing.

In the advertisements, the advertiser also uses subjective words, such as thick, bold, instant, and warm. Different people have different interpretations about those adjectives because each person has different standards. Thus, the product will sound amazing, but in reality it is not like that.

Unfinished word is the next commonly used Doublespeak in the Maybelline mascara advertisements. The words such as bigger, flirtier, blacker, longer, and

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Maranatha Christian University Parity claim is the most rarely used Doublespeak in the advertisements. There is only one data which contains parity claim, namely data 6 and the word is blackest. In my opinion, parity claim is rarely used because the advertiser only wants to emphasize that the product is better than other brands. The producer lets the readers compare the greatness of Maybelline’s mascara with mascaras of other brands by themselves. The advertiser does not claim that Maybelline mascara is the best among other brands because it is too risky to do so. Parity claim is actually rarely used in Maybelline mascara advertisements.

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Maranatha Christian University In my opinion, studying Doublespeak gives us many advantages, especially if we are shopaholics and always tend to believe anything that the advertiser states in advertisements. Doublespeak tells and shows us that something may not be as good as what it seems. The advertiser of Maybelline uses advertisements to promote and sell their products to the public and increase their sales. Thus, they will try to create an advertisement which can minimize the weakness of their products to make people buy them. We are blinded by the words in the advertisements. However, if we know about Doublespeak, we will be more careful whenever we read an advertisement and will think twice before we buy the product. As a consumer, we will be more aware of the real meaning of the words in the advertisements.

Since I use the Internet as the source of my data, I find some difficulties during the process of writing this thesis. Sometimes it is very hard to read the words because the picture is not clear and the resolution of the picture is too small. If other researchers want to use the Internet as the source, they have to make sure that they get clear pictures with high resolution so that they will be able to read all the words. Another difficulty lies in the language which is not the English language, so that I have to look for other advertisements for my data. I believe that it is safer to use magazines or newspapers as the sources because the pictures are usually clearer than those downloaded from the Internet.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Data Source

Maybelline The Rocket Volum’ Express Advertisement. p, n.d. Web. 20 May 2013.

Maybelline Volum’ Express The Colossal Cat Eyes. p, n.d. Web. 20 May 2013.

Maybelline Volum’ Express One by One. p, n.d. Web. 28 September 2013.

Maybelline Volum’ Express The Magnum Super Film. p, n.d. Web. 28 September 2013.

Maybelline Volum’ Express XXL Curl Power. p, n.d. Web. 28 September 2013.

Maybelline the Colossal 100% Black Volum’ Express. p, n.d. Web 13 February 2014.

Maybelline Lash Expansion Mascara. p, n.d. Web. 11 March 2014.

Maybelline Define a Lash. p, n.d. Web. 11 March 2014.

References

Lutz, William. Doublespeak: From “Revenue Enhancement” to “Terminal Living”: How Government, Business, Advertisers, and Other Use Language to Deceive You.

New York: Harper & Row, 1989. Print.

“Explosive”. Def 1. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010. Print. “Colossal”. Def 1. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010. Print.

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Maranatha Christian University “Thick”. Def 1. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 8th ed. 2010. Print.