Linguistic and Symbolic Elements in Luxury Fashion Advertising: A Qualitative Analysis

This research investigates the use of English in luxury fashion print advertising, which continues to be the main channel to communicate new luxury fashion collections and products. The research aims to find cultural adaptations from the original Anglo-Saxon country to the target country. Further, this research examines the use of images in fashion magazines and, in particular, their capacity to deliver brand personality and aesthetics by creating a narrative engagement. By analyzing thirty print advertisements from U.S. and Spanish life-style magazines using the semiotic approach, checking for linguistic differences, and employing a robust, cross-cultural qualitative analysis, the authors conclude that each linguistic element in an advertisement may invoke an underlying message that can be comprehended by the majority of consumers, and that language selection itself can have a strong symbolic meaning.