COLA RIVALS' BATTLEGROUND: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF SOFT DRINK ADVERTISEMENT IDEOLOGIES

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a method that aims to investigate how dominance, manipulation, institutional power, and ideology are manifested in a specific discourse. Through this approach and the Social Actor Network theory of Theo van Leeuwen (2008), this study decrypted the ideological representation of Pepsi through its advertisements; specifically the Social Actor Network tools used, and examined the underlying ideologies and how these ideologies are recontextualized to convince consumers to take their beliefs, ideas, or services. The study utilized nonprobability sampling to choose the corpus and qualitative analysis to interpret the results. Pepsi used Nomination, Categorization, Impersonalization and Exclusion. These categories revealed Pepsi's shaping of views based on their ideological positions. Pepsi nominates itself as the key character in its discourse and employs young brand ambassadors to recontextualize norms in order to persuade. It conveys that Pepsi is the drink of young people, implying that Pepsi consumers can enjoy youthfulness, independence, and social engagement. They are also consistent with the notion that every meal is shared with friends rather than with family. Pepsi recontextualized these ideologies by including trends that are popular to young people. Employing CDA in the discourse of advertising would reveal meaning representations that influence and persuade the public.