Lexico-syntactic features of beauty-product warnings in the Philippines

Asian Journal of English Language Studies (AJELS)

卷:5

Shielanie Soriano-Dacumos¹  Marilu Rañosa-Madrunio² 

[1] University of Santo Tomas, Manila, the Philippines & University of Rizal System-Binangonan, Rizal, the Philippines;

[2] University of Santo Tomas, Manila, the Philippines;

关键词: beauty products;    consumer safety;    lexis;    product warnings;    syntax;   

DOI  :  

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

In the Philippines, the increasing number of issues about beauty-product hazards has become an involuntary outrage since mass media exposed the tremors brought by chemical contents in cosmetic items. Under certain circumstances, even if business owners designed and manufactured their products as vigilant and watchful as possible, consumers remain susceptible to a certain degree of risks associated with beauty-product use. The practicability and viability of upholding consumer safety were made possible as this paper examined 45 beauty product-warning texts in the Philippines. A range of linguistic features, such as signal words (Shuy, 2008), orders of nouns (Lakoff, 1987; Lyons, 1977), synthetic personalization (Fairclough, 1989), tenor and field continuum (Halliday, 1985), attributive adjectives (Marza, 2011), manner, temporal, and spatial adverbs, were employed to determine the lexical features of warning messages. Using qualitative analysis, the results revealed that cautionary texts may have some lapses on the use of noun abstractness, synthetic personalization, field continuum, adjectives, and adverbs. Such an investigation brought up the transparency of communicative features of safety texts. Moreover, conditional sentences and the use of declarative and imperative sentences were analyzed, which disclosed the manufacturers’ practice on anticipating emergencies. The results display significant implications for the product-liability law in the country, which can further bridge consumers’ vital access to safety, hence bringing to light the real purpose of product-warning texts in the mainstream Philippine market.

【 授权许可】

Unknown