Emotive and Colloquial Language in Magazines

Grazia magazine - 5th October 2015 

Grazia is a fashion magazine which has a target audience of women 16-45. It attracts women that like fashion, celebrity gossip and real life stories happening in the world.

There is the use of colloquial and emotive language used throughout the magazine which helps create an atmosphere in which the readers feel comfortable and enjoy reading. Some examples of colloquial language would be ‘tweet’, ‘insta’, ‘filters’, ‘snaps’. All these are considered colloquial because they are very often used especially in today’s society as we are surrounded by social media which influences on the way we speak to each other and the creation of many words have been included in our everyday talk. Using these words in the magazine will attract a younger audience and they will feel as if they were talking to a friend as the language used is very laidback.

Other words used are ‘BFF’ which is an abbreviation for ‘best friends forever’, this is something you would use when texting and also to someone you know quite well so it suggests that there is a friendship between the reader and editor. Also the editor uses the word ‘eeww’ to describe a situation. This is more of a sound effect and a very informal way of describing something. This suggests that the editor feels comfortable and can express themselves how they want to the readers.

There are also emotive words which are typically seen in fashion magazines like ‘wow’ and ‘perfect’. The word ‘wow’ will stand out to the readers as they will want to know what is so amazing to be given a ‘wow’. Women also dream of being perfect and flawless so they will want to know how they could improve their body, or what clothes they could buy which are perfect. Fashion magazines do this because they want women to feel good about themselves so they will try persuade women to buy these ‘perfect’ products.