Representation of Femininity in French Perfume Advertisements: An Analysis of Multimodal Discourse

摘要

An advertisement can be built and represented through multimodal text. Multimodality refers to the use of more than one mode at the same time. This study aims to explain how the verbal and visual modes of French perfume advertisements represent femininity and to express the meaning of the representations built on these advertisements. This study uses a theory of visual ideational metafunction and verbal ideational metafunction, then this research looks for the meaning of femininity representation in these advertisements. The data in this study are advertisements from three French perfume brands (Lancome, Yves Saint Lauren, and Dior). The analysis found that visually French perfume advertisements represent femininity through the use of action process and reaction process, and verbally through the material process, mental process and relational process.