A Socio-cognitive Approach To Gender Metaphors In Advertising

The thesis makes a new attempt to study gender metaphors in advertising from a socio-cognitive perspective. Black's Interaction Theory is taken as the basis of the study. The investigation of gender metaphors in advertising is carried out on micro-linguistic level where Black's Interaction Theory of metaphor analysis is integrated with Sperber & Wilson's Relevance Theory to study the possible types of gender metaphors. The social factors related with advertising gender metaphors are studied on macro-linguistic level according to Fairclough's three-dimensional model of Critical Discourse Analysis.The author has collected 33 pieces of advertisement from the magazines of Cosmopolitan, Elle,Marie Claire,《时尚伊人》,《伊人风尚》and so on for the present study. Gender metaphors appear in advertisements in various forms. They can be found verbally, pictorially, or in a hybrid fashion. The study finds three different types of gender metaphors in advertisements, that is, A COMMODITY IS A MAN/WOMAN, A MAN/WOMAN IS A PRIMARY PERSON and A MAN/WOMAN IS A PERSON/AN OBJECT WITH STEREOTYPICAL FEATURES. The concept gender is socio-culturally situated which involves not only the social expectations towards men and women but also how men and women perceive the images and roles of themselves and those of the opposite sex. Though women's equal status as men is strongly advocated, unequal treatment with women does still exist in the society, even in a covert way in advertising. Female images are trivialized and treated playfully. The audience needs to increase their awareness of the advertising gender metaphors that are sexist and to overcome the negative social consequences of the use of gender metaphors in advertising.