Increasing Intake of Fast Food and Its Impact on the Physical Health of Teenagers: An Ecolinguistic Analysis of Fast Food Advertisements in Pakistan

Abstract

: Increasing fast food consumption among teenagers not only causes serious physical and mental problems but also becoming a constant threat to overall physical environment. The present study is focused to analyze the language of fast food advertisements from ecological perspective. However, the main objective of the study is to trace the vocabulary that is being used in fast food advertisements within an aim to boost its consumption up among teenagers. The study is qualitative in nature and Fairclough's (1989) model of critical discourse analysis has been applied as a theoretical framework of the study.  As for as the source of data has been concerned, the researcher went for the hybrid mode in the sense that required data has been obtained from two sources which are respectively Google advertisements and YouTube commercials promoting fast food. Meanwhile, a particular sample of fifteen advertisements and commercials including three fast food items (Pizza, Zinger Burger and Nuggets) five from each has been drawn by applying purposive sampling technique. The findings revealed that such type of advertisements and commercials are determined to use very persuasive language and most of the time they seem to use second person pronoun “You" to develop a direct interaction with its consumers and its an attempt to control their eating behaviors.