which combine to create a sense of trust between reader and producer.
The text within these articles is a major component in the building of this sense of trust and friendship between the reader and the magazine‘ voice’ or fashion team. One of the features employed to achieve this is the use of interrogative sentences, followed by answers, or replies to the reader’ s imaginary answer, for example,“ Bored of your usual black skinnies? Us too.” By using questions, the author is able to produce an imitation of conversation between the reader and producer. Machin & van Leeuwen( 2005) note that
Cosmopolitan often draws on this conversational style, which they use to“ bring a sense of informality to the stylistic mix” and“ can give a flavour of equality to forms of communication which are in fact deeply unequal”( p. 596).
In order to create the impression of a familiar and friendly conversational style, the producer also uses presupposition. There is already an assumption that the items of clothing are pieces that people find difficult to style. Humour is used to joke about how not to style these items, which makes the piece more colloquial.
For example, the article on leather skirts uses the presumption that this piece of clothing carries negative
42 connotations of prostitutes. The producer presumes that this is a common perception of the readers and uses humour that works with this thought process: Figure 3, right, shows several examples. The article finishes with another implicit reference to prostitution:“ And we’ re presuming you got the memo on thigh high boots”. The producer is able to use conventional ways of thinking to give a sense of shared understanding. This can assist the producer’ s efforts to establish an impression of friendship, especially with the use of humour, as Fominaya( 2007) explains:“ humour can play an important part in developing longer lasting, affective ties between group members, fostering a collective identity”( pp. 245-246).
Due to the relationship that the producer has formed with the reader, they sometimes do not need to use direct imperatives when telling the reader what to do or buy, but instead tell them what they( the magazine fashion team) are doing.“ We’ re wearing ours with...”,“ The Cosmopolitan fashion team swear by...”,“ the whole Cosmopolitan fashion team is swooning over...“. By referring to a number of people-‘ the team’, rather than‘ I’- the producer“ succeeds in creating an atmosphere of intimacy and female community”( Ballaster, 1991, p. 60). In this case, the community of women is