Genre analysis of personal care product online advertisements: their moves, rhetorical devices, and gender identities constructions

The purpose of this study was to examine moves, rhetorical devices, and identity and gender portrayal of the women and men’s personal care product online advertisements. The data was taken from the brand official websites in the period of 2019. The corpus consisted of 1,611 words in total, 841 words of women advertisements and 770 words of men advertisements. The data was both manually analyzed and automatically extracted with AntConc 3.2.4w program. The modified frameworks used in this study were based on: Bhatia’s (2004, 2005) move structure of promotional discourse in terms of move structures identification, McQuarrie & Mick’s taxonomy (1996) for rhetorical device identification, Kress & Van Leeuwen (2006) grammar of visual design for the visual composition and gender portrayal analysis. The findings from the study are listed as follows. It was found that Link button move, a newly added move, was found in the advertisements. In terms of overall move of online advertisements, there were three obligatory moves: Move 1 Headlines, Move 4 Detailing the product or service, and Move 11 Link button. Concerning move found in the women’s advertisements, there were three obligatory moves: Move 1 Headlines, Move 4 Detailing the product or service, and Move 11 Link button, and six optional moves: Move 2 Targeting the market, Move 3 Justifying the product or service by establishing a niche, Move 5 Establishing credentials, Move 6 Endorsements or Testimonials, Move 7 Offering incentives, and Move 10 Signature line and Logo. Regarding the men’s advertisements, there were three obligatory moves: Move 1 Headlines, Move 4 Detailing the product or service, and Move 11 Link button, and four optional moves: Move 2 Targeting the market, Move 3 Justifying the product or service by establishing a niche, Move 6 Endorsements or Testimonials, and Move 10 Signature line and Logo. Regarding rhetorical devices found in the women and men’s advertisements, it was found that Parallelism, Rhyme, and Alliteration were top three devices used in the women’s advertisements, all of which were in schemes. On the other hand, the top three devices found in the men’s advertisements were Parallelism, Pun, and Metaphor. Two-thirds were in tropes: Pun and Metaphor. The results from verbal texts and visual composition revealed women identities as ‘professional and powerful yet gentle,’ while men were perceived as ‘easygoing and energetic yet gentle.’ The results revealed the equality of women and men and the traditionally perceived stereotypes of women and men were less prevalent.