Linguistic representation of women in print advertisements: A critical discourse analysis of hair product advertisements

Sammanfattning: Based on critical discourse analysis, this paper seeks to investigate how women are represented in printed advertisements of hair products taken from the Cosmopolitan UK magazine. Data was chosen from the summer and winter issues of the magazine. The total number of these advertisements in the summer issues is 12, while that within the winter issues is 8. The analysis, which uses specific critical discourse analysis perspectives, such as stance and identity as well as primary theories such as femininity and gender, will reveal specific language features used to represent women in printed advertisements of hair products. In the advertisements of the summer issues, a significant amount of women-targeted language is seen, such as pleasant words like please, and colours such as pink or turquoise, as well as the adjectives gorgeous and beautiful. The anthropomorphic features were apparent and were connected to the actions of eating, training or taking a woman somewhere. The winter issues advertisements also consist of adjectives use such as good and beautiful. Additionally, the winter issue advertisements contain more words related to gifts and time. Advertisements from the summer and winter issues of the magazine have similar visual features which relate to the represented identity of women. The results of the study confirm Kilbourne’s result about representation of women in printed advertisements (1999). However, this paper will reveal more accurate and more detailed findings as it focuses on advertisements from the years of 2017-2018 and analyses only one magazine, while Kilbourne’s study is related to newspapers, magazines, posters and flyers from the 1960s until the 1990s. Keywords: women, advertisement, gender, femininity, critical discourse, linguistics, representation of women, Cosmopolitan UK, hair products