Abstract:
Based on the critical discourse analysis (CDA), this study aims at examining the relationship between the linguistic strategies in advertisement discourse in family magazines and the presentation of motherhood ideology in Thai society. The research questions are: (1) how advertisement discourse is presented in family magazines and (2) how the linguistic strategies play a role in presenting the ideology of motherhood in Thai society and how they benefit the business? The data consist of 340 advertising texts from the top four popular family magazines including Rakluke, Mother and Child, Mothers' Digest and Mother&Baby, published from January to December 2007. It is found that the advertisement discourse in those family magazines adopt both product advertising and the advertorials. The linguistic strategies adopted in the data can be divided into 2 types: (1) the verbal language, consisting of claims, the use of lexical choices, metaphors, presuppositions and the use of detailed narratives and (2) the nonverbal language, consisting of the use of picture meanings, various sizes of the letters and different colours. The linguistic strategies are adopted in the data to construct of the motherhood ideology, for example, mothers are the best person for child care and take good care of children. Moreover, they have to search for information about child care, look capable, young and attractive in the public eye. According to the data, the construction of the motherhood ideology is used to convince the consumers that using goods in the advertisement discourse can help women to fulfill the role of perfect mothers