Identity Construction of Female Consumers in Chinese and American Cosmetics Advertisements: A Critical Pragmatic Study

At present, women are still the main force among cosmetics consumers. In order to stimulate female consumers’ desire to buy cosmetics, cosmetics advertisers strive to build identities for female consumers that they are deeply yearning for, so as to guide and entice female consumers to buy their products. From the perspective of critical pragmatics, this study focuses on the types, distribution, means, and purposes of identity construction in Chinese and American advertisements, and conducts qualitative and quantitative analysis on cosmetic advertisements. Through contrastive analysis, it reveals the types and frequency of identity, and pragmatic strategies, motivation of advertisers in China and America. These identities are used to attract consumers to purchase behavior. When constructing these identities, cosmetics advertisers adopt explicit and implicit means to make psychological hints to female consumers. This study criticizes and analyzes the marketing motives of advertisers from the perspective of pragmatic identity theory, thereby revealing consumption traps for female consumers, and providing new thinking for identity construction and marketing strategies.


Introduction
Cosmetic plays an important role in women's daily life. Cosmetics are industrial chemicals that can be applied to any part of the human body to make it look better. As a communication medium, advertisements can effectively play the role of information transmission and persuasion (Yang, 2020). The purpose of cosmetics advertisement is to persuade consumers to spend a large amount of money to buy cosmetics. Since women are still the main force in cosmetics consumption, this paper focuses on the identity construction of female consumers. Therefore, cosmetics advertisements full of persuasion techniques are worth studying.
Cosmetics advertising attracts the attention of language researchers because of its linguistic features and pragmatic strategies. At present, the study of cosmetics advertising includes translation (Cai, 2020;Pan &Hu, 2020), corpus linguistics (Yang, 2020), systemic functional linguistics  and pragmatics (Zhong, 2016;Xiong, 2019). At present, some researchers have found that cosmetics advertisers tend to cater to consumers' demands for particular identities (Zhong, 2016), but there is no literature to analyze it further from the perspective of identity construction. Some scholars have studied female image in cosmetics advertising (Zhong, 2016;Ji, 2019), but they seldom do research from the perspective of critical pragmatics. To fill the research gap, the study focuses on critical pragmatic analysis of the identity construction of female consumers in Chinese and American cosmetics advertisements. Studying the identity construction of cosmetics advertisements can strengthen female consumers' understanding of advertising language and reveal their persuasion strategies and ideologies so as to remind consumers of rational consumption. Therefore, from the perspective of critical pragmatic analysis, this study finds out the similarities and differences between Chinese and American cosmetics advertisements and the identities constructed to persuade females to buy cosmetics. This study is structured as follows: the following section will review previous researches on cosmetics advertising and point out research gaps. The methodology adopted in the research and results will be introduced in the third and fourth sections. After analysis, the reasons why advertisers adopt such pragmatic means will be discussed in detail.

Pragmatic Identity
Identity research is the center stage of the social sciences (Bamberg, De Fina & Schiffrin, 2007;Kroskrity, 1999), and it is also a current hot topic in the humanities and social sciences (Chen, 2013). Pragmatic identity refers to the fact that a person, especially the speaker and the listener, presents true or untrue in a specific context with a specific social identity. It is the result of the communicator's choice when he or she gives or understands a specific speech or text. The other identities of social individuals or groups mentioned in discourse are collectively called pragmatic identities (Chen, 2013;. The view of identity from the perspective of pragmatics believes that various identities do not play roles in communication at the same time, and only the identities that are activated in the current context are the identities that affect the current discourse (Chen, 2004).
In addition, pragmatic identity is a pragmatic content that focuses on the relationship between the speaker and the symbol. Pragmatic theories, such as politeness theory and adaptation theory, can provide a starting point for the systematic study of pragmatic identity. Different from the study of identity from the perspectives of sociology, psychology and communication, the study of identity from the perspective of pragmatics focuses on the communicative or pragmatic attributes of identity. To develop identity research from a pragmatic perspective, the following five aspects need to be explored (Chen, 2018b): 1) the influence of specific identity construction on the generation and understanding of language meaning; 2) the influence of specific identity construction on communication needs; 3) the influence of specific identity construction on the understanding and expression of interpersonal meaning; 4) the influence of specific identity construction on the choice of a particular language style; 5) the influence of specific identity construction on the appropriateness of particular language use. It should be emphasized that studying identity from the perspective of pragmatics is not only to study the identity types constructed by cosmetics advertisers for female consumers. In other words, the choice and construction of identity is only a research means rather than a research objective. To study identity from the perspective of pragmatics, we should not only focus on the types and frequency of identity construction, but also pay more attention to figuring out why cosmetics advertisers construct these identities and how they achieve marketing goals by constructing specific identities for female consumers. Therefore, this study aims to figure out identities constructed through cosmetics advertisements in China and the United States, compare and analyze the differences in ideology and value orientation between these two countries. Moreover, the study attempts to discuss motivation why Chinese and American advertisers construct these identities to improve female consumers' awareness to judge cosmetics advertisements.

Cosmetics Advertising
Linguistic researches on cosmetics advertising have been studied from various perspective including translation, corpus linguistics, systemic functional linguistics (SFL), pragmatic and so on. As for translation, researchers focus on translation strategy (Pan & Hu, 2020), teleology  as well as eco-translatology (Cai, 2020). When it comes to corpus linguistic, studies are mainly about language features (Yang, 2020). For SFL, researchers pay attention to interpersonal meaning , conceptual function, and textual function (Deng, 2019) as well as multimodal discourse analysis (Luo, 2019). From the perspective of pragmatic, studies are related to cooperative principle (Li, 2019;He, 2018), persuasive function and pragmatic presupposition (Xiong, 2019), and politeness principle (Lin, 2014). At present, some researchers have found that cosmetics advertisers deliberately cater to consumers' demands for particular identities (Zhong, 2016), but there is no literature to analyze it further from the perspective of identity construction. Some scholars have studied the female image in cosmetics advertisements (Zhong, 2016;Ji, 2019), but they seldom analyze from the perspective of critical pragmatics. In order to fill the research gap, this paper introduces the pragmatic identity theory and explores the identity types and distribution constructed by cosmetics advertisers for potential consumers by collecting cosmetics advertisements in China and the United States. In addition, this paper also analyzes the motivation of cosmetics advertisers to construct a specific identity from the perspective of critical pragmatic analysis, so as to improve the correct cognition and judgment ability of cosmetics buyers to cosmetics advertisements.

Critical Pragmatic Analysis
Critical pragmatics was formally proposed by Danish scholar Jacob Mey (1993). It aims at the ideology and value orientation behind language use in social contexts, promotes appropriate social pragmatics, and reveals the problems behind language use such as power interference, social prejudice, fraud, and deception. Chinese scholar Chen (2009) systematically clarified the goals, objects, and research methods of critical pragmatics, and pointed out that pragmatics research not only needs to pay attention to the subjectivity and interpersonal meaning brought ilr.ideasspread.org International Linguistics Research Vol. 3, No. 4; by language use in the social and cultural context, but also urgently study the social meaning brought about by the use of discourse in the public domain.
Critical pragmatics scholars pay attention to various topics, mainly involving power manipulation, prejudice, and discrimination in language use as well as fraud in social language. In terms of power manipulation, Han, Liu, and Deng (2020) conduct a comparative analysis of the verbal behavior of Sino-US diplomatic rejection, revealing how China and the US use language to manipulate power on the political stage and the ideology and value orientation behind it. Peng (2016) investigates implicit language power and proposes a pragmatic analysis framework suitable for the construction of the discourse power of disadvantaged speakers. As for discrimination in language use, researchers usually focus on gender (Mao and He, 2017), age (Liu, 2019), and country image (Wang and Shen, 2016). In terms of fraud in social language, scholars pay particular attention to fraud in advertising slogans, such as health care product advertising (Zhu, 2018), real estate advertising (Chen, 2018;Chen and Chen, 2012), tobacco advertising (Xu, 2005) and so on. Mastering consumers' aesthetic appeals and guiding consumers' value orientation are necessary conditions for occupying the consumer market. With the improvement of consumption power and women's socioeconomic status, cosmetics advertising has a large proportion in the field of advertising . Cosmetics advertisements mainly capture the attention of female consumers and highlight their demands through designed advertising slogans to achieve marketing purposes. At present, the analysis of cosmetics advertising identity construction from the perspective of critical pragmatics is still a blank, so this research will fill this gap. The following research questions guide this study: 1) What kinds of identities are constructed by advertisers for female consumers in China and the USA?
2) What means do advertisers use to construct these identities for potential female buyers?
3) What value orientations do these means reflect the advertisers' appeal to potential consumers?

Data Collection
With the development of e-commerce and social media, online shopping has become a major consumption channel for consumers. In 2020, the sales volume of Double 11 shopping event hit a new high. TMALL (a famous online sales platform in China) sales exceeded 490 billion yuan, and Jingdong (a famous online sales platform in China) sales exceeded 270 billion yuan. Thus, online cosmetics advertisements are selected as data of this research. Advertising in Chinese and English from eight high-end cosmetics brands, including Estee Lauder and Dior for Chinese and American consumers are chosen as data. The present study decides to focus on data collected from Weibo and WeChat official account, which are two of the most popular media for computer-mediated communication (CMC) in China. For collecting American advertising, the study focuses on Instagram and official website in English. According to Weibo, WeChat official account, Instagram as well as official website, 282 advertisements are collected from January to December 2019. After analysis, 120 advertisements related to identity construction were selected for further study.
If the advertisement directly or indirectly depicts the identity of the female consumer, the advertisement will be identified as an advertisement related to identity construction, the examples are as follow: (1) Every woman can be beautiful!
(2) 我们才是掌控一切的人。(We are the people who control everything.) (3) 假若女性主宰世界会怎么样？(What if women dominate the world?) If the advertisement only emphasizes the function or quality of the product itself, it is not regarded as an advertisement related to identity construction, the examples are as follow: (4) Whether you're looking for trend products or classics and basics, our makeup selection has it all.

Data Analysis
In this study, the inductive method and statistical method are used to analyze corpus. With regard to the inductive method, this study identifies and summarizes different kinds of identities by advertisers for potential female consumers from the content of cosmetics advertising discourse. In previous studies, woman has been portrayed as a young lady (Zhong, 2016), charming lady , individuality (Ji, 2019) and so on in advertisements. This study classifies the collected advertising corpus by referring to the previous researches. construction types of advertisements from both external and internal aspects. As for appearance, advertisers construct two identities for female consumers, namely charming lady and forever-young lady. As for personality, advertisers construct four identities for female consumers, namely powerful lady, perfectionist, individuality as well as nature-lover. Advertisements that describe that women should achieve their personal value. Nature-lover a. Advertisements that describe/ imply a lady's love of nature. b. Advertisements that describe/imply that lady prefers to use cosmetics that contain natural ingredients.
After completing the statistics of various identity categories, this study will comment on the types, distribution, and construction means of the identity of potential female buyers in the advertisements combined with the mainstream values of the current society and the purpose of cosmetics advertising, and reveal how they achieve the purpose of marketing by catering to the value orientation of potential consumers.

Results
This section analyses identities' types and distributions as well as means to construct identities quantitatively by displaying the frequencies and percentages of different identities in China and America, and qualitatively by examining representative advertisements. The top two identities that American advertisers prefer to construct for female customers are charming lady (49.15%) and perfectionist (27.12%). As a result, American advertisers believe that the most desirable status for American women is a charming lady and perfectionist. On the contrary, forever-young lady, powerful lady, individuality, and nature-lover account for a very low proportion. For the eight cosmetics brands mentioned above, the proportions of identity construction by Chinese advertisers for female consumers are different from America's. Forever-young lady (29.51%) is the top identity constructed in China cosmetics advertising and it is followed by powerful lady (19.67%) and individuality (16.39%).

Categories of Identities and Distributions
The above two tables show all identities embodied in 120 advertisements, which are classified into 6 types from the perspective of appearance and personality. The following section will show specific examples of each type.

Charming Lady
(1) Every woman can be beautiful!
(2) It's your turn to be a beauty star. Cosmetics advertisers construct the identity of charming lady for female customers according to their willingness to be attractive in their life. In example (1), American advertiser directly expresses that every woman has the opportunity to be beautiful, which implies that woman can be a charming lady.
In example (2), beauty star is a charming identity for a lady because beauty is a woman's nature. American advertiser uses this advertisement to suggest that consumers can become beauty stars if they use the product.
In example (3) , Chinese advertiser uses 吸引力 (attraction) and 魅力 (charm) to build identity of charming lady for females.
In example (4), Chinese advertiser uses 女神 (goddess) to describe a woman as a charming lady. In China, women who are called 女神 are usually tall, slim with big eyes and a tall nose, attractive and charming.
(6) Skin looks more lifted, smoother. Feels firmer. In example (5), women can wake up their youthful energy after using the product. It means that if women own the product, they will have an identity of forever-young lady. ilr.ideasspread.org International Linguistics Research Vol. 3, No. 4; Published by IDEAS SPREAD In example (6), women are being implied for younger skin. If they use the product, they will have younger and firmer skin, which means that they look very young.
In example (7), female consumers can be young as they want. It seems that they can control their age by wearing make-up.
In example (8), advertiser makes consumers think that as long as they use the cosmetics, they will not let others know their actual age.

Powerful Lady
(9) Captivate the world with your power.
(10) Take control, you've got the power. In example (9) and (10), we can see that American advertisers inspire females directly that women should be powerful to conquer the world. Compared with eastern countries, American women emphasize more on equal rights in society, and they even want to get more opportunities to show their strength. Therefore, these two advertisements are very appealing to women.
In example (11), Chinese advertiser also stimulates women that they are the people who can control everything, which implies that women should have more right to make decision than men in society.
In example (12), the advertisement uses a special question to give female consumers imagination and expectation to be equal to men or even play a leading role in society.

Perfectionist
(13) Put your best face forward with our luxury eye, face, and lip makeup collections.
(14) Perfect your skin with the feel and finish you desire. In example (13) and (14), American advertisers construct a perfectionist identity for female consumer by encouraging them to perfect their eyes, faces, lips and skins. From the advertiser's point of view, in order to be a perfect person, you must have perfect skin and perfect facial features.
Example (15) is an advertisement spoken by Chinese actress Wu Jinyan. She plays a dancer in the advertisement. As a woman, she advocates that women should perfect their skin as seriously as practicing dancing like her. It is obvious that the advertisement makes good use of the effect of star. Star's perfect look can help consumers to understand the function of the product more directly.
In example (16) From the above examples, it is found that individuality both appears in Chinese and American cosmetic advertising. However, the sense of individuality is much stronger in Chinese advertising than in American.
In example (17), the advertiser widely believes that women should have the attitude. Cosmetics companies can offer lipstick in a variety of colors and hope that consumers will reflect their special features after the lipstick on the picture.
In example (18), the Chinese advertiser uses the first person to urge that female consumers should reject oldfashioned images and become what they like. The use of the first person can narrow the distance between advertisers and consumers, and improve consumers' acceptance of the slogan.
In example (19), the Chinese advertiser is calling on women to view their social values in a whole new light. In the past, Chinese society generally believed that the value of women lay in having children and taking good care of the family. But with the improvement of women's education and the shift of social values, the status of women has changed. The value of women should be reflected in the realization of their own dreams instead of only devoting themselves to their family.
In example (20), the advertiser emphasizes that women should be independent, respect their own values and not be influenced by worldly opinions. Through this slogan, advertiser tries to construct an identity of individuality for female consumers.
(23) 走进自然，体会万物正能量，放松舒缓，遇见更好的自己。 (Go into nature, experience the positive energy of all things, relax, and meet a better self.) Both Chinese and American cosmetic advertisers construct female consumer's identity as a nature-lover by describing or implying the lady's love of nature or the lady's preference to use cosmetics that contain natural ingredients.
In example (21), American advertiser has described how women can be inspired by natural power when using cosmetics.
In example (22), American advertiser suggests that loving nature is a wonderful lifestyle. It implies that female consumers can have such a lifestyle and become nature-lovers after using cosmetics containing natural substances.
In example (23), Chinses advertiser gives consumers a picture of nature. When women use products, it seems that they can walk into nature and feel the power of nature. By being close to nature, they can feel relaxed and become better people.  Research Vol. 3, No. 4; Figure 1 above shows the percentage of explicit advertising and implicit advertising in China as well as America.

Means to Construct Identities
In Chinese advertisements, explicit advertising accounts for 9.84% and implicit advertising accounts for 90.16%. In American advertisements, explicit advertising accounts for 10.17% while implicit advertising accounts for 89.83%. It is obvious that both Chinese and American advertisers prefer to use implicit way to construct identities for female consumers.

Explicit Means
Explicit means is an approach that cosmetics advertisers directly construct identity for female consumers by using specific identity, such as 掌控一切的人 (people who control everything), 母亲 (mother) and beauty star. Through corpus analysis, it can be known that the explicit means adopted by advertisers to construct the identity for potential female consumers is mainly to directly point out the roles of women, as shown in example (11) 我们 才是掌控一切的人。(We are the people who control everything) and example (19) 女性在社会上的价值不是 成为一个母亲，而是成为自己。(The value of a woman in society is not to be a mother, but to be herself). In general, there are few cases where explicit methods are used. In explicit advertising, advertisers usually use "You are" and "We are" to construct identities for female consumers directly.

Implicit Means
Implicit means is an approach that cosmetic advertisers use suggestive words to indirectly tell female consumers that if they use the product, they will have a corresponding identity. The implicit means used by advertisers to construct the identity for female consumers mainly includes presupposition means and indirect means. In example (1), advertisers assume that female consumers can become beautiful after using cosmetics, so as to cater to the ideal image of consumers. In example (7) 不想老就不会老的精华(A serum that can help you keep young if you want to) and example (8) 只显年轻不显龄(Only make you look young instead of showing your age), advertisers imply indirectly that consumers can stay young forever if they use cosmetics.

Discussion
From the perspective of critical pragmatics, the motivation of advertisers to construct these identities for potential female consumers is to meet the psychological needs of consumers. The proportion of different identities by Chinese and American advertisers reflects the value orientation of women in different countries. The proportion of charming lady (49.15%) and perfectionist (16%) constructed by advertisers in the United States is much higher than in China. To some extent, it suggests that American advertisers value the attractiveness of women's physical appearance. On the contrary, the proportion of forever-young lady (18%) constructed by advertisers in China is much higher than in America (5%). It reflects that age is more important than facial features in Chinese women's values. In China, women over 30 years old are very sensitive about their age. This is because, in Chinese society, the value of a woman will decline after the age of 30. If a woman is unmarried and has no children by the age of 30, her parents and friends will be very anxious. Therefore, the woman will be asked to participate in a blind date again and again until she marries her Mr. Right. In order to look younger, women will try their best to maintain their skin so that no one can know their actual age by seeing their appearances. Chinese advertisers have recognized women's needs, so they construct a forever-young identity for Chinese female consumers and make Chinese women more eager to buy the products. When it comes to personality, Chinese advertisers focus more on powerful lady (19.67%) and individuality (16.39%) because of the equality turn in China. According to Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory, China is a country with high power distance and masculinity. However, with the development of society, the status of Chinese women is gradually improved, and they are more eager to get the same power as men in society. Therefore, advertisers emphasize women's power and independence more in their advertisements. In terms of gender equality, the United States developed earlier than China, so the awareness of women's rights in American advertisements is relatively strong enough. By contrast, American advertisers' emphasis on the status of women is less intense than in China. As for nature-lover, the relative lack of references to this identity in Chinese advertisements (6.56%) and American advertisements (3.39%) partly reflects the low level of love for nature among female consumers in both countries. To sum up, cosmetics advertisers have purposes in constructing different identities for their female consumers in their advertisements. These aims are reflected in the following three aspects: firstly, marketing aims are achieved by catering to the identity demands of female consumers; Secondly, the constructed identities cater to some mainstream values of contemporary American and Chinese society respectively; Thirdly, these identities are constructed mainly through implicit means to make potential consumers willing to buy. Female consumers should think twice before buying cosmetics.

Conclusion
This study contrastively analyzes identity construction of female consumers in Chinese and American cosmetics advertisements through critical pragmatic analysis. Critical pragmatic analysis provides a new perspective for ilr.ideasspread.org International Linguistics Research Vol. 3, No. 4; study on identity construction in cosmetics advertising. It is found that Chinese and American cosmetics advertisers do presuppose female consumers' identities in advertisements. Based on 120 cosmetics advertisements collected from Chinese and American social media, 6 types of identities are summarized from the perspective of critical pragmatic analysis. The identities are as follows: charming lady, forever-young lady, powerful lady, perfectionist, individuality as well as nature-lover. American advertisers prefer to construct charming lady and perfectionist for American women while Chinese advertisers tend to construct forever-young lady, powerful lady and individuality for Chinese women. Advertisers in the United States and China tend to use implicit means to construct consumer identities, which can give women the identities they want so as to stimulate consumption desire. From the perspective of motivation, cosmetics advertisers mainly use implicit means to meet the psychological needs of female consumers (such as beautiful appearance, youth and equality between men and women) to achieve the purpose of promoting products. Advertisers control consumers' ideology by responding to their psychological needs. Female consumers should consider the quality and reputation of cosmetics rather than advertisements before consumption. This study makes a critical pragmatic analysis of cosmetic advertisements in China and America, which can provide some references for the future critical research on identity construction.