Promotional Culture: Advertising, Ideology and Symbolic Expression

This bachelor thesis aims to examine language of advertising as a form of communication in contemporary society. It investigates the character of language used in advertising, its deviation from accepted language and breaking accepted linguistics norms. The effort of the thesis is to discover main functions of advertising and to characterize language of advertising. We shall describe and afterwards analyze the verbal features and strategies used in advertising. The thesis is divided into two parts. The first part is theoretical, dealing with theory of language of advertising, focusing on the aspects of language. The second part is practical with the effort to analyze in details commercial advertisements published in tabloid magazines.

Language of Advertising

Politics and knowledge interact in complex and sometimes hidden ways. A recent dramatic instance of this is the way in which the women's movement has compelled a re-examination of some of the most widely held assumptions of social science. In this context, Chodorow's book, The Reproduction of Mothering, stands out as an impressive theoretical initiative. It gives us a new way of understanding women's mothering as fundamental to the sexual division of labor and gender inequality. By exposing the socially constructed nature of what has often been dismissed as a biologically based species universal, this book points toward its social transformation.

The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender

Media’s role in a democracy is to bring mass awareness on political, social and economic issues. However, media channels tend to give preference to political and economic news items over social issues, especially the issue of women. This has lead to the issues on women take a backseat Media can play a significant role in sensitizing the society about gender issues. But, before that, the media itself needs to be sensitized in covering women issues. The distribution of power between the two sexes – both physical and economic- is unequal, leading to discrimination against women. Media exerts immense influential power on the masses; this cannot be undermined. Portrayal of women as equal has not been given the priority it deserves by the media. Women issues should be dealt in a sensitive, responsible way by the media. Declining sex ratio, rape, workplace sexual harassment, dowry-related crimes domestic violence molestation, eve-teasing and honour killings are some of the issues that the media needs to sensitize the society about. Total women empowerment can come about only if it includes political, social, cultural and other dimensions of human life. This happens only if development includes women participation and control over resources of power. The electronic media and particularly TV has become the most influential medium of mass communication. It is a disturbing trend when media negatively portrays women as “the weaker sex” who should remain subservient. Most disturbing, however, is the disproportionate coverage of sensationalized violence. Sexual brutalization of women has remained a highly marketable commodity. “Commodification” of women as “sexual objects” in advertisements should be stopped. Media can either be an accomplice to gender based discrimination or it can challenge the gender bias by providing balanced coverage.

http://www.isca.in/IJSS/Archive/v3/i8/8.ISCA-IRJSS-2014-109.pdf

Media and Gender Stereotyping: The need for Media Literacy

Marxism and literature Marxismo e literatura

This study investigates how television advertisements in India construct gender identity Advertisements that appeared during popular Indian television serials were obtained from a local video rental outlet and recorded on a weekly basis for a period of six months A representative sample was then screened and used for analysis As sign systems are involved in the construction of meaning (Chandler, 2001) - and advertising makes use of signs to convey its message (Bezuidenhout, 1998), this study employed semiotics as a method for analysing the ideological messages of Indian television advertisements - as semiotics is concerned with the study of signs The proposed structure of the semiotic analysis in this study, is guided by Barthes (1977) essay ""The Rhetoric of the image"" All the advertisements involving domesticity emphasised the traditional role of women - as a wife and mother Through the ideologically constructed messages, the advertisements not only valorised and affirmed the traditional role of Indian women but also made the domestic role of the woman appear natural to the viewers (Roy, 1998) This study is one of the first major studies of the nexus between the media, and the construction of gender-identity in India today Therefore, it will not only be significant to policy makers but also to educators who could use it as a basis for developing and implementing a media literacy program, aimed at developing students' critical thinking and media literacy skills to enable their capacity to evaluate the role and power of the media in lives

Deodrin Maria Correa

Papers

The construction of gender identity in India through television advertisements: A semiotic analysis