Gender Identities Constructed In Advertisements

This thesis is designed to explore a crucial issue which has been gaining more and more scholars' attention in recent years, i.e., how gender identities are constructed, particularly existing differences in gender identities constructed in gender-oriented advertisements (ads).The construction of gender identities in ads can be interpreted from differentperspectives. This thesis takes both Halliday's systemic-functional linguistic perspective and asociolinguistic perspective. This combined application is justified by the close connectionsbetween the two theories, referring to not only their similar concerns but also theircomplementary advantages. Their greatest similar concern lies in their treatment of therelationship between language and society as the first priority and their recognition oflanguage as an important tool for socialization. As for their complementary strength,systemic-functional grammar is stronger for doing discourse analysis, with its attention paid towhat people actually say and write in real contexts of situation, while sociolinguistics is richerin valuable findings or discoveries about how social variables work in language use.With their respective advantages combined, this thesis is intended as a rare attempt to bring the two theories together in research. Specifically speaking, linguistic features constructing gender identities in ads and sociolinguistic studies about gender performance will be dealt with in turn as this thesis moves from language to society. So two research questions are presented as follows: how different linguistic features in interpersonal and ideational systems implicitly realize different construction of gender identities in ads; and how these gender identities constructed with linguistic devices are explained or supported by sociolinguistic discoveries on gender. In pursuing answers to the two questions, the author of the present thesis aims to produce a better interpretation of gender identities constructed in ads and raise further awareness of the interactive relationship between language and society.To tackle the first research question, the author chooses gender-oriented ads as data for analysis, which can be defined as those ads with their targeted consumers as either women or men, naturally divided into women ads and men ads. These ads are proved to be qualified for the purpose of the present study by some previous findings in marketing and sociolinguistics, and moreover they, after being collected from an influentially recognized source, are furtherselected according to reasonable standards or criteria stated in Chapter 2. Then the analysis of these ads will be carried out in interpersonal and ideational systems within the framework of systemic-functional grammar.With the aid of statistics, it is found out that there exist contrasting differences in the construction of gender identities between men ads and women ads. These differences are summarized as follows: (1) Men consumers are more likely to be treated as the role of agent — active actors or creators characteristic of initiative and creativity. In contrast, women consumers tend more to be assigned the role of sensor, typically capable of passive inner activities and mental experiences and at the same time stand more chance of being objectified, with their attributes and properties focused on. (2) Men consumers are more likely to be put in the foreground and highlight while women consumers, together with their actions, have greater likelihood of being depersonalized for impersonal effect by means of agency suppression. (3) Men consumers are more likely than women consumers to be made to take responsibility for either the validity or the functioning of uttered clauses.In view of the literature and the models of gender studies, the development of this major sociolinguistic topic has given birth to many enlightening discoveries. For the second research question, the three research findings will be discussed by virtue of these relevant sociolinguistic discoveries on gender. To be exact, the discussion, not definitive but illustrative, will be conducted primarily from discoveries in two aspects: gender stereotype and language use in interaction. It turns out that the closely related two aspects, taken together, do explain these findings well and thus contribute to our better understanding of social practice underlying the construction of gender identities in ads.In conclusion, there are strong connections between linguistic construction of gender in ads and expected gender performance in actual social situations, as a result of the process of socialization. This will hopefully strengthen our awareness of the interactive nature between language and society, that is, language shapes and is shaped by society. In all, by a combined application of systemic-functional linguistics and sociolinguistics, the interpretation of gender identities in ads, more solidly founded, has been proved nearer to truth.