“Discovering Talents, Strong Bodies, and Sharp Minds”: The Relationship Between Language and Ideologies in Children's Milk Advertising Discourse

Abstract

Advertising plays a crucial role in shaping social values, transmitting ideologies, and influencing the ways of thinking within society. In particular, advertisements for infant and child formula milk frequently associate the consumption of specific brands with children’s physical strength, intelligence, and special talents. Such representations lead consumers to believe that the quality of their children’s lives depends on choosing these products. This study examines the relationship between language and ideology in the discourse of child formula milk advertisements in the Thai social context, drawing on Fairclough’s framework of Critical Discourse Analysis. The data for this study comprise 30 advertising texts and visual images from commercials of three leading milk brands: Enfagrow, Hi-Q, and S-26—released between 2017 and 2023. The findings reveal that these advertisements employ a variety of linguistic and visual strategies, such as the use of positively connoted vocabulary to highlight nutritional values, the incorporation of scientific terminology, and the deployment of reasoning structures, and the depiction of middle-and upper-class urban lifestyles, to construct and promote desirable maternal and child ideologies. The “ideal mother” is portrayed as one who is dedicated and capable of making the best choices for her child, while the “ideal child” is characterized as physically strong, cognitively advanced, gifted, cheerful, and continuously eager to learn. Sociocultural factors underlying these ideological constructions include the valorization of good motherhood, the cultural emphasis on child development and achievement, the prestige of scientific discourse, as well as consumerist values and class representations. The ideological effects of these advertisements potentially reinforce idealized notions of motherhood, heighten parental pressure and expectations concerning desirable child attributes, and foster competitive child-rearing practices. Furthermore, they perpetuate class inequality by depicting children who consume specialized formula milk as superior, belonging to families that are more privileged than others within society.