Language, Ideology, and Consumerism in Advertising Discourse: A Critical Analysis of Brand Slogans Using Fairclough's Three-Dimensional Model

Abstract

The discourse of advertising extends beyond the promotion of products as it is an important means of disseminating consumer identities and ideologies. This study investigates a corpus consisting of fifteen advertising slogans chosen from Pakistani and international brands catering various commercial sectors. The data was obtained from Youtube advertising, and analysed qualitatively using Fairclough’s Three-Dimensional Model of Critical Discourse Analysis. The findings of the study reveals that slogans not only promoted consumption but also associated with various values such as happiness, relationship, and group identities. The research showed that the language of advertisements helps to produce and normalizes consumerism ideologies, by framing cultural and social meanings in commercial messages. Future studies should examine digital marketing discourse in multilingual and culturally diverse contexts across various media platforms. Comparative analyses across different linguistic and cultural settings can provide deeper insights into evolving strategies of persuasion, ideology, and identity construction.