A Multimodal Discourse Analysis in Pantene Advertisement

Abstract

Advertisement is a persuasive media aimed at persuading and influencing the public. Every day, the advertisement can be found anywhere, such as in a newspaper, television, radio, and also magazine. Pantene is a shampoo product that is very famous especially among women. Its advertisement can be found almost in every media. In this research, the researcher aims to investigate how Pantene Indonesian ads verbally and visually represent the image of women with beautiful strong hair and the ads’ differences by means of Halliday’s transitivity system (2014) and Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) point of view. This research also focuses on what the differences signify. The research analyzes Pantene’s advertisements. The data taken for this research are the Pantene Indonesian ads, focusing on the ads that show their brand ambassadors. The results of this research show that Pantene Indonesian ads describe women with strong hair as something that is coveted by women in Indonesia. Similarly, in Pantene International ads, the figure of a woman with strong and beautiful hair is described as a beautiful woman. In the Pantene Indonesian advertisement, it can be seen that ads makers use the implicit persuasive method, whereas, in the International Pantene, the method is explicit declarative employed which can be seen by viewers directly. These differences verify the stereotypes attached to the Indonesian and International market, namely being communal and individual, respectively.