Lingue e Linguaggi Lingue Linguaggi 21 (2017), 189-205 ISSN 2239-0367, e-ISSN 2239-0359 DOI 10.1285/i22390359v21p189 http://siba-ese.unisalento.it, © 2017 Università del Salento This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 THE YOUTUBE MAKEUP TUTORIAL VIDEO A preliminary linguistic analysis of the language of “makeup gurus” GIORGIA RIBONI UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI MILANO Abstract – Due to its video sharing policy which freely allows users to communicate all over the world, YouTube has become one of the preferred Web platforms used by the digital community of makeup lovers. As a matter of fact, YouTube seems particularly suited to host announcements of new makeup collections, products’ reviews as well as video tutorials. Both cosmetic brands and single users have opened channels on the platform, but makeup discourse on YouTube is arguably dominated by the latter. Differentiating between unaffiliated amateurs and YouTubers who more or less openly work for makeup companies as digital influencers is difficult. Recent studies on communicative practices on YouTube, however, stress that in order to understand the complex nature of the famous video sharing website, the professional/non- professional dichotomy is not particularly relevant, whereas other dynamics are more research worthy. One of them is the “guru” phenomenon. “Gurus” are content creators who are particularly authoritative in a specific field, have a considerable follower base thanks to their expertise and are often paid by brands in order to promote their products. The makeup domain too has witnessed the emergence of a group of popular and influential users who are typically referred to as “makeup gurus”. Their ability to stand out from the multiplicity of similar channels arguably depends not only on their knowledge of the field, but also on their communication skills and specifically on their successful use of the makeup video genre. Against this backdrop, this study sets out to codify the relatively new genre of the makeup tutorial providing it with adequate categories which at the moment appear to be lacking. Adopting the analytical framework provided by discourse analysis, it examines the generic, rhetorical and linguistic practices of makeup gurus and sheds light on the ways gurus discursively construct their identity as well as represent the idea of beauty and makeup. Keywords: Web 2.0; makeup discourse; YouTube; makeup tutorials; web genres. 1. Introduction Over the last few years, Web 2.0 genres have contributed to radically revolutionising the ways in which brands market their products online as well as the ways in which consumers discover and purchase them (cf., among others, De Bruyn, Lilien 2008; Kaplan, Haenlein 2011a, 2011b; Kwon, Sung 2011; Mata, Quesada 2013; Watkins, Lewis 2013; Ferrari 2015). One of the new media platforms on which advertising discourse has been flourishing is YouTube. First launched in 2005 and acquired by Google Inc. in 2006, YouTube is currently the second of the world ’s most visited websites 1 and defines itself as a consumer media company which “provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content 1 Data collected in April 2016 from Alexa (alexa.com), an Internet company which provides information about web traffic and ranking.