Deconstruction of the Capitalist Discourse - Creating an Advertising Narrative On the Example of Lush Cosmetics

The aim of this thesis is to offer a Critical Discourse Analysis of the crucial elements that come into play in the creation of a brand and managing its advertising. The thesis is done in a form of multimodal analysis with language and its various forms as the main focus. The crucial terms for analysing these concepts are manipulation and persuasion which both imply a certain form of discursive power. The paper gives an analysis of how this power is used in the creation of a global advertising discourse and the creation of desired mental models. The paper also mentions the terms sustainability, CSR, and greenwashing, as either participants or variants of the manipulative discourse. After a short overview of the relevant theoretical background, an analysis of various layers of company advertising and means of communicating with its customers is presented. The paper presents an analysis of the global communication or the macro level of discourse, and then an analysis of the individual level of communication, the micro level of discourse. The analysis ends with a conclusion that summarises the main implication of the paper and encourages further reading and investigation of the field of effect of the Critical Discourse Analysis