Language and Gender investigation

Women in advertising

The use of female beauty as a sex object or as an ideal in modern advertising is only too well known as a topic of gender studies. The 1990's have seen a flood of market research and academic investigations into the role of women in all kinds of advertising for both men and women. In 1992, the proceedings of the Marketing Education group conference, contained an update of the trends at the end of the 1980's and the beginning of the 1990's. In 1994, a working paper by Wood and Griffiths from University of Salford, concluded their research summary as follows:

'All researches appear to agree that advertisers have not kept [ace with the changing in women, and still portray women in traditional roles such as housewives or as sex objects, looking to their husband/partner for approval and guidence.

Studies of advertisments that did portray women in more progressive roles found that progressive women responded very positively to such advertisments while women with more traditional attitudes had no objection. This has led some advertisers into adopting more progressive strategies in the portrayal of sex roles, since it appears to attract progressive women without alienating traditional women. Despite this however, Woods and Griffins found that in the mid 1990's, women were three times more likely to be portrayed as sex objects than men. They also show that other researches confirm that in the late 1980's and early 1990's, men were more likely to be the central of car advertisements. Their own research into the 1990's car advertisments however discovered a tendency for women to be presented as central characters. In other words, more car advertisments are targeted at independant women.

Representation in gender

This extract is a section out of a romantic novel called; A surgeons care. With a audience who would stereotypical target women or people who enjoy a romantic novel in general. This novel is a made up story and therefore it's purpose is purely to entertain.

The representation of gender in this romantic novel is shown through stereotypes, descriptive language, construction of characters and verb choices in the extract; The seamantic field for this novel would be relationships and emotions, and this is shown through the descriptive language in the first sentence; 'As she approached the operating table her brown eyes encountered eyes of icy blue' both characters male and female's eyes are an enigma for them as a person. Brown eyes belonging to the female and blue eyes belonging to the male, the sentence establishes that their eyes have met and there is an instant connection between them suggesting there will be romance between the two later down the storyline.

The third paragraph in the novel states that the womens name is; Penny. We can see this from the next two sentences; 'The moment the words were out of her mouth Penny regretted them. What made her voice so husky?' The name Penny is a girly name, which shows she is the stereotypical female in the novel, this implies she is the main female character having the romance with the other main character of the opposite sex however. On the other hand the sentence that follows suggests she can also be a subordinate female because it states how her voice is husky.

In terms of lexis there is a use of describing words which represents both genders, they could also tell us as an audience how these two characters feel about each other. For example the sentence; 'Penny blushed beneath her mask' The word blushed suggests she's nervous to be talking to him. This implies that Penny likes Professor Chadwick after hearing his voice. This word blushed tends to be more stereotypically common in females, and unlikely to happen to men as men are meant to take control and not get as nervous as the opposite sex. This is when we realise Penny is steretypically feminine. This could also suggest Professor Chadwick is socially higher up in the hierarchie.

The use of emotions and physical reactions representing the female sterotype is shown when it says; Penny found herself holding her breath. This suggests she's overwhelmed by Professor Chadwick's presence. This