Legitimising male grooming through packaging discourse: a linguistic analysis

Abstract

While packaging is a common marketing subject, this illustration paper provides an alternative perspective through the linguistic examination of packaging as discourse, focusing on male grooming, masculinity and metrosexuality. Male grooming is often perceived as trespassing into feminine space and creating ambiguity in gender borders. This study aims to explore how packaging designers negotiate masculinity, in order to persuade men to accept grooming products through social interactions within the packaging of L'Oréal Men Expert. Employing Scollon's mediated discourse analysis and incorporating the Barthesian order of signification, the study analyses how different social actions within the packaging discourse are mediated by multimodal features. The findings reveal five negotiating strategies, i.e. constructing a hegemonic masculine image; negotiating (a masculinised) metrosexuality; empowering men; giving men a logical reason to groom; and a different portrayal of skincare products. The key aim of this paper is to illustrate the differences between marketing and linguistics and propose possible collaboration.

Keywords:

• product packaging discourse
• mediated discourse analysis
• linguistic semiotics
• marketing semiotics
• masculinity/metrosexuality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Huey Fen Cheong is a postgraduate student at the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya. This paper is part of her dissertation entitled, “Mediated discourse analysis: Negotiating metrosexuality within L’Oréal Men Expert’s packaging discourse”. Her research interests are language and gender, semiotics, multimodal discourse analysis, marketing tools (e.g. advertisements, product packaging, celebrity endorsement, etc.) and gender issues (especially metrosexuality).

Dr Surinderpal Kaur is a senior lecturer in the Department of English Language, at the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya. She is the co-author of this paper. Her related areas of expertise are discourse analysis (including critical discourse analysis, semiotics and multimodal discourse analysis) as well as gender and sexuality studies.

Notes

1. This refers to the two dimensions of brand identity, i.e. aesthetic and ethic invariance, which the latter are the intangible signifieds that are “the brand’s vision of the world”, i.e. “its personality and philosophy” (Floch 1995; Roux and Floch 1996, cited in Veg 2007). In this case, the personality refers to masculinity or femininity, whilst the philosophy refers to how a male or a female should behave.

2. Although there are numerous colour interpretations, the study chooses the relevant meanings of beauty/grooming discourse, related to fashion, aesthetics, sophistication, gender, marketing, etc.

3. Kindly note that ultramarine is purely determined through personal perception, based on external sources of information provided in books and websites. Hence further validation may be needed.