COMPARISON AS A CONCEPTUALISATION DEVICE IN GENDER-ORIENTED ADVERTISING (ON THE MATERIAL OF BRITISH, FRENCH AND RUSSIAN WOMEN’S LIFESTYLE MAGAZINES)
This article refers to the comparison as to mode of cognition of the outside world and of the spiritual values in gender-oriented advertising. The research is conducted on the material of glossy magazines for women. The article aims to reveal the role of the comparison as a mental operation in the advertising discourse of editions for women. This paper introduces the notion of concept. The use of comparisons in examining concepts in advertising discourse is conditioned by the strategy of the addressees’ identification with the personalities being idealised. Moreover, a high frequency of mentioning celebrities in advertising discourse, as well as professionals’ testimonial advertising, is the evidence of the well-thought copyrighters’ strategy, the latter foreseeing the reader’s wish to imitate the former. The study also allows identifying the most involved concepts in gender-oriented advertising, as well as the frequency of their use and their localisation in the text. Thus, the concepts “tenderness”, “professionalism”, “brilliance/shining”, “flower” and mention of specific celebrities are used with the highest frequency in three different language communities (the UK, France and Russia). An important thing to be highlighted is the fact that the frequency of appealing to the above-mentioned concepts is approximately equal in the editions of the countries under consideration. The most appealed and diametrically opposed concepts, regardless of the target audience’s country of publications for women in the mentioned countries, are “tenderness” and “professionalism”. The study also notes the prevalence of sensory perception, rather than logical, of concepts in magazines for women.