Language of television commercials: a cross-cultural investigation through critical discourse analysis

Abstract

While surfing the television, the researcher noticed that the commercials’ language, though seemingly decent, explores a wide variety of cultural themes, worthy of discussion, but

hardly made it to an official dissertation. Therefore, this qualitative paper performed a cross- cultural analysis of the commercials’ language and showed how their language and content

impacts society and vice versa. Data was collected from YouTube across five different countries – Bangladesh, India, America, South Africa and Singapore. Data is analysed using three layers of Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) – textual, discursive and social practice analysis. Thematic discussion revealed, the commercials addressed the target audience by tweaking the qualities of their products to match social issues such as COVID-19, encouraged variety of professions among women – subsequently empowering them; discouraging racism by including dark-skinned models in Western commercials; and creating voiceless commercials to show solidarity to the public during difficult times. Implications include doing an intersectional reading (cultural), eradicating housewife syndrome (social) and including such commercials in an EFL classroom (educational).