Consuming the Beauty Ideal: A Critical Argumentation Approach to Skin-Care Advertising

Abstract

This chapter introduces critical argumentation theory and analysis to cultural consumer research with a view to affording a cultural understanding of advertising discourse. Although rhetorical figures and rhetorical appeals have been amply scrutinized in the marketing discipline, argumentation schemes remain as yet untapped as regards their potential for offering nuanced insights about advertising claims by attending to the multiple layers of ad texts’ argumentative structuration. In order to illustrate the areas of contribution of critical argumentation, a corpus of print ads from the anti-ageing product category is drawn upon. The analysis unearths layers of argumentation by attending to latent statements, hidden premises and logical fallacies. The implications for critical marketing and for policy-making are highlighted amidst an external marketing environment where anti-ageing claims are attracting heavy criticism.