Metaphors in feminine beauty product advertisements: empowerment or submission

• Grant number: 16/25373-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: March 01, 2017
• End date: February 28, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Linguistic Theory and Analysis
• Principal Investigator: Edwiges Maria Morato
• Grantee: Fabíola Sanchez Costa
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The present project intends to investigate whether the publicity of beauty products produced recently and oriented to women are accompanying the feminine "empowerment", a social awareness process associated to the achievements obtained by women and an increase of their participation in the public spheres, which has been observed and discussed in the last few years in Brazil. The question is: if advertisements seek to accompany this "wave of empowerment", how do they do it? How do they arbitrate the feminist position that anchors women's empowerment with products offering that traditionally frame, in terms of textual and sociocognitive, an ideal of beauty and an "object woman"?To give visibility to potentially conflicting positions (involving empowerment and submission, release and subordination, real and ideal, etc.), we will focus on metaphorical expressions in advertising texts of beauties from national brands, arranged in institutional profiles on Facebook social network. In order to undertake this survey, we will analyze the metaphors found in those advertising texts in a perspective of assignments supporting the Theory of Conceptual Metaphor, originally postulated by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), who consider the metaphor an integral part of our conceptual system, assuming that we conceptualize the world through metaphors that derive from our psychosocial experiences. Our corpus will be composed of Natura and O Boticário advertising brands, which are the two largest Brazilian cosmetics companies. (AU)