OUGD501 / FRONT COVER ANALYSIS / LANGUAGE

As my practical work concerns publications, I firstly began researching into the language within a set of magazines which are aimed at a lower class to gain knowledge on how this differs from a magazine of a higher class audience. Generally, these magazines aim to bombard the audience with a large amount of information from the word go. Like any news based publication, the main objective is to sell the product by informing the audience of the content straight away; usually by eye catching taglines which spark the readers interest and need to know more about the article. 

The first magazine analysed was 'that's life!', containing shocking real life news stories. At the top is a large point size text placement which reads "Win Menorca hols", the colloquial term 'hols' is an abbreviation of the word 'holiday', which is commonly used within a lower class, those who adopt an exceptionally informal discourse. Those who are drawn to this calibre of magazine may not have all the luxuries in life, and since it does appeal to a lower class, the financial situtation may not be as stable. The prospect of winning a free holiday is a useful advertising technique, as the reader may not be able to afford this on their own, and by using their informal dialect, this communicates a friendly and relatable tone of voice.

The publication name is itself a colloquial ellided structure, "that's life", and a phrase often related to mishappen events or things out of your control. The magazine prizes itself on it's shocking news stories relating to lifestyle and people's personal stories, which may or may not be relatable for the audience. It takes an informal stance on an accepting outlook to life. It also implements an element of fear upon the reader, which is a technique used by a lot of media platforms, more often news.

The title of this publication is 'best', which could infer to the reader that this magazine is of a top standard. The lexis involved has a strong semantic field of demolition, for example 'deadly' 'desperate' 'tragic', evoking strong feelings within the reader through the use of this emotive language. 

The use of quotes from the celebrities creates a sense of involvement and generates a personal tone. 

In publications such as this, weight and appearance is heavily featured, containing methods in which the reader can improve their own appearance through diets, make up and exercise. They also tend to shame celebrities, predominantly women, for fluctuations in weight, thus transferring this shame onto the consumer and imposing an unrealistic standard for the majority of women to achieve, 'drop 10lb and 10 years on the new food and fitness plan'. 

The large point text usually featured in these publications, alongside the abundance of capitalised type can convey volume, grabbing the reader's attention. 

The abundance of personal pronouns 'my' 'me' create synthetic personalisation and interjects an informal conversational discourse with the reader, allowing them to feel more involved. Illiterations such as 'cracking crime' have a catchy and memorable ring to them. Through analysing, it is apparent that publications of this category also implement colloquial terms for family members to enforce emotion upon the audience through these terms of endearment, for example "mummy". These terms often do not coincide with the audience's language, so this will bring about an emotion linked with their children or those they love.

The publication takes a relatively informal discourse, and concerns itself with the affairs of celebrities, in which this particular audience may be interested in. Due to the nature of having a low paid job, there could be an element of status frustration, in which will manifest in desiring a more luxurious life, and becoming 'involved' with current affairs in reality TV stars and other celebrities; which creates a target audience for this category of magazines.