ADVERB-ADJECTIVE COLLOCATION PATTERNS IN ENGLISH NATIVE AND NON-NATIVE SKINCARE ADVERTISEMENTS: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Abstract

The role of advertising language in shaping consumers’ perceptions is crucial, especially in the global skin care industry, as it is positioned between the emotional and scientific appeals in promotion. The purpose of this study is to explore the varied use of adverb–adjective collocations in skin care advertisements from both native and non-native English-speaking countries. This study aims to analyze differences in collocation usage and address their cultural and rhetorical significance. This study relies on a corpus of 27 advertisements sourced from the official websites of skin care brands within native English-speaking countries (United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada) and non-native English-speaking countries (France, Germany, South Korea, India, and Pakistan). The study identifies the frequency and compares differences of adverb–adjective collocations in both corpora using AntConc software. The findings of the study reveal that advertisements in the native corpus use collocations with an emphasis on scientific evidence and measurable effects such as "clinically proven," "instantly quenches," and "significantly improves" repeatedly in their advertising language. Conversely, the advertisements in the non-native corpus use forms that provide users with emotional reassurance, such as "deeply hydrating," "gently clarifying," and "naturally enriched." This study unearths that adverb–adjective collocations are culturally strategic forms of advertising language with implications for cross-cultural knowledge and communication, as well as further research in the field of applied linguistics and marketing discourse.