FEMINIST CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS TO THE LANGUAGE USE AND DISPLAY IN WHITENING COSMETIC PRODUCT ADVERTISEMENTS

The language used in advertisements can reflect social and cultural perspec - tives. Specific words and sentences used by a cosmetic company can attract consumers to buy and consume a product. The language can also change people’s perspective about life and the way they experience it. Cosmetic products have changed women’s perspective toward the standard of beauty. The beau - ty standard is submitted through the persuasive language and the display of beautiful models in the advertisements. It is a common issue that the concept of being a beautiful woman is to have white and glowing skin. Because of this, women buy and use many whitening products to beautify themselves. The language of advertisement ‘colonizes’ women and kills the concept of a woman’s nature. It subordinates some women who keep their natural looks by not using any whitening products. However, women should be aware of this problem and not be affected by the language of advertisement so that they can accept themselves for who they are. Feminist critical discourse analysis helps this research to analyze and criticize the beauty standard that has been imposed on women through the language. In the end, women’s awareness is needed to resist the beauty standard as a gender stereotype constructed by society.


INTRODUCTION
Language does not only function as the media of information, but it can allow people to do things (Gee, 2011).It persuades people and changes their perspective about something.As it is in whitening cosmetic product advertisements, the persuasive words strongly influence women to change their appearance to look more beautiful.Women have become so occupied beautifying themselves.They become a target for the cosmetic market that 'creates' beautiful women saga, Vol.1(2), Agustus 2020 Melania Priska Mendrofa with a certain standard: to have white and glowing skin.A lot of whitening cosmetic product industries are growing fast around the world.They become bigger and bigger with the help of mass media, especially through advertisements.In Indonesia, the cosmetic advertisements usually show attractive models and words that are persuasive to women.Indonesian women generally want to have white skin like western people.Colonialization has changed the Indonesians' way of thinking.They think that white people are better than Indonesians.Their skin, eyes and hair color are perceived to be much more beautiful than Indonesians.Therefore, today women want to have a perfect look: to have white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes.Feminist critical discourse analysis (CDA), as can be seen from its political perspective on gender, involves the critique of the interrelationship of gender, power, and ideology in discourse (Lazar, 2005).According to Fairclough (2003), discourse is part of social action because it consists of writing and speaking which reflect both acting and interacting.It implies that words can become media of interaction between the actor and the target, that is, between companies and consumers.Words which are presented in writing can inform things and also persuade people.In whitening cosmetic product advertisements, the persuasive language used by the companies marginalizes and puts gender stereotype on women, indoctrinating the idea that women have to be pretty.Thus, feminist CDA seeks to criticize the power of language as the reflection of social oppression toward women's natural looks.In advertisements, there is a problem-solution relation indicated in the sentences (Fairclough, 2003).The text deals with customers' problems first, including their needs and desire, before providing a solution through the products offered.The text is also rich in meaning.It does not only contain letters but also semiotic modalities, such as visual images, layouts, gestures, and sounds (Lazar, 2005).There will be different strategic and communicative actions used by the advertisement companies to attract consumers' attention.The authors have the authority to create stories and to present women as either the subject or the object of oppression.So, the authors, or the cosmetic companies, make use of the female language.It uses some words related to women's beauty to attract their attention.It is as if the language used by those companies is women's voice that speaks to other persons of the same gender, so that they can be influenced through its persuasion.Meanwhile, it is reflected from the language of advertisement that a woman's body is not seen as a natural entity, but as a social construction (Davis et al., 2006).A problem arises when a woman is forced to have a good physical appearance rather than rational thought and skill.Because of social construction, women try to improve their looks to get social approval through medical interventions.Medical treatments, such as the use of whitening cosmetic products, help women to be a perfect figure in society.However, women have different types of body maintenance.Since westernization gained dominance, body maintenance has seemed to be universal.The use of cosmetics, hair removal, and hairstyling, for instance, have become a daily activity for western women, and it becomes unacceptable if they do not do it (Davis et al., 2006).This condition creates a stigma that women must have perfect body appearances.They should keep their physical appearances.Being hairy for women is even seen as being lazy, dirty and unattractive.Through feminist critical discourse analysis, men's privilege can be resisted.Critical discourse analysis then becomes a part of an emancipatory critical social science to achieve social order through a critique of discourse (Lazar, 2005).It is to resist the disempowerment of women in discourse.Lazar (2005) also explains that the focus of feminist CDA is on how gender ideology and gendered relations of power are (re)produced, negotiated and contested in representations of social practices, in social relationships between people, and people's social and personal identities in texts and talk.
So, text analysis can reveal the marginalization of women's natural looks.It presents how the patriarchy or society still dominates women through the role of language.

Research Design
This research applies a descriptive qualitative method to explore and describe the use of persuasive language and display in whitening cosmetic product advertisements.The analysis of this research shows the discussion of the social problem, which is the use of persuasive language in constructing the beauty standard for women.To support the analysis, the writer uses a sociological approach.According to Saukko (2003) the function of the sociological approach is to clarify the empowering and disempowering aspects of discourses both from personal as well as social points of view.It helps the writer analyze the social phenomenon, namely the influence of whitening cosmetic product's language for women's beauty standards.

Data collection
The researcher looked for three famous whitening cosmetic product advertisements from the internet (POND'S, GARNIER, and L'OREAL) that use good persuasive words for beauty and show a flawless-skinned woman as their model.The researcher chose those western brands to show how the companies set the beauty standard based on western standards and hired the flawless-skinned Asian models and actresses to be their brand ambassadors for their products and to prove the effectiveness of the products for Asians' skin type.

Data analysis
Feminist critical discourse analysis (CDA) was utilized to analyze the disempowerment of women through the discourse.In the beginning, the researcher reconstructed the background and impact of language use in whitening cosmetic products.Secondly, the problem was identified, and the research question was formulated.Later, the writer identified the theory that was used for analyzing the data, namely feminist CDA.

Feminist critical discourse analysis to the language use and display in whitening cosmetic product advertisements
This research focused on the analysis of the three whitening cosmetic product advertisements below:  The three advertisements (ads) used language to build a topic.The language defined and produced knowledge to the objects, in this case, the cosmetics products.The language directed the way how the products were discussed meaningfully and rationally.The language influenced how an idea was practiced and used to manage behavior, in this case, the consumers' behavior.The sentences used in the whitening cosmetic product advertisements (POND'S, GARNIER, and L'OREAL) are in the form of active voice.The words used were mostly verbs and adjectives.The verbs were increase, value, switch to, get, celebrate, fade out, and even out.The adjectives were fairer, soft, perfect and glowing.The positive and attractive choice of verbs and adjectives strengthened the quality of the products.They used verbs to describe the benefits of the products, and adjectives to convince women to buy the products for their quality (soft) and the result (they can make women's faces fairer, perfect and glowing).They set the perspective that the products were effective to create the perfect condition of the skin.The actor in the active sentences was not presented directly.Therefore, who is and what is being communicated in the language were not explicitly stated (Gee, 2011).As shown in Figure 1, it was the company that spoke to the consumers through the use of persuasive language in order to attract women's attention to buy and use their product; If you value your face, should you be washing it with soap?Switch to Pond's White Beauty Facewash with 50% white cream actives and get fairer skin right from the first wash.
The company also tried to put attention to women's skin through their advice to use POND'S White Beauty Facewash instead of common soap.The advice was also supported by providing the result of using the whitening product even from the first use; get fairer skin right from the first wash.The sentence, Unlike soap, it's soft on your face too, shows the strong quality of POND'S compared to common soap.Being similar to POND'S advertisement, GARNIER and L'OREAL also presented the same purpose, that was, to invite women to leave their old appearances, to lose the dark spots and celebrate the new skin perfection.The advertisements promised the consumers the skin perfection as what it was expressed by the models of the three ads through their flawless and light skinned faces.
Next, the three advertisements explained the benefits of their products without mentioning the target.However, their representation of a woman's image implicitly showed the target readers the image of an ideal woman.The advertisements placed POND'S, GARNIER and L'OREAL as high-quality cosmetic products.Therefore, they did not directly invite the consumers to buy their products.It was an indirect invitation from the use of persuasive languages.The L'ORE-AL White Perfect used the phrase Dermatologically Tested-Tested on Asian skin in the last line to strengthen the quality of the product which means that it was made using in-depth research and high technological equipment.The result was also listed there: it was tested on Asian skin.Those words gave the impression that L'OREAL was a modern and sophisticated company with reliable dermatologists.GARNIER also presented the Asian model, the Indian woman, to prove the effectiveness of the product.It was aimed at the Asians to show the effectiveness of the product for the Asian skin type, which is a relatively darker one, to be made more glowing.use of 'you' in the POND'S ad showed the interpersonal function of the sentence.It convinced the customers to buy their product by asking them about their old habits and then persuaded them to leave it.The phrases 'dark out, white in', 'Increase your face value', indicated that having a fairer white face will make a woman more beautiful and admirable.The last line, 'Give your face the value it deserves', implied that a non-white face is not valuable and uninteresting.A white face was much better.As Figure 3 shows, the first line phrase, Glowing skin in 5 days could describe that you can get beauty instantly.Beauty was when your skin was free from dark spots.The use of women's images in the ads also indicated that women were the