Good afternoon to everyone.

My name is Aida Ilyana and this is Emiliya and together

today we’ll be presenting about the topic Gender-Preferential Language Use. So I’ll
be explaining briefly on some scholars’ point of view about gender-preferential
language use, and then will move on to our chosen study case which is Case Study
Of Gender Differences In Advertisement : A Study Of Adjectives and Nouns in the
Language Of Advertisements. I’ll be covering from the introduction until the aim and
scope of the case study. And then Emiliya will proceed to the discussion and
analysis henceforth wrap up the whole case study.

According to Mary Talbot (2010) in her book Language and Gender, there are two
views of the relationship between language and gender. First, language simply
reflects society.

Examples: i. Women has two honorific titles (Miss, Mrs)

ii. Men has single honorific title (Mr)

Language creates gender divisions. The fact that women in the workplace are
frequently subordinate to men in social status is an example of environmentally
influenced differences in adulthood. She further states that not only is the workplace
an arena for cementing differences between men and women as language not only
projects these inequities, it actually creates them. Talbot takes up an example of how
a shopkeeper addresses an adult man as “sir”, giving him a social status above her
own. The same shopkeeper addresses an adult woman as “dear” or “love”, which
shows a lack of the respect shown for the man.

Whereas Holmes (1998) suggested some testable claims of what she named
“sociolinguistic universal tendencies”. The followings are five of them:

• Women and men develop different patterns of language use

• Women tend to focus on the affective functions of an interaction more than
men do.
• Women tend to use linguistic devices that stress solidarity more than men do.
• Women tend to interact in ways which will maintain and increase solidarity;
yet, men (especially in formal context) tend to interact in ways which will
maintain and increase their power and status.
• Women are stylistically more flexible than men.
 • Gender preferential of language use differs from male to female.

• It varies in all sorts of cultures, situation and environments.

• Morris and Lee (2005) in their study, found that in masculine countries, men
are more often portrayed in traditional image than in feminine countries. Even
in some countries, men speak different language than women.

• Even in politics, advertisements, story telling, both of the genders are found to
use choice of words very much differently from one another.

• However, for today we’ll be focusing on the differences of gender preferential

in advertisement in the sense of how choices of nouns and adjectives in
advertisement influence the genders’ interest. The title of the study case is
Case Study Of Gender Differences In Advertisement : A Study Of Adjectives
and Nouns in the Language Of Advertisements.

• (explains the cover page)

INTRODUCTION

• Language has a powerful influence over people and their behaviour. This is
especially true in the fields of marketing and advertising.

• Willemsen (1998) coins that, many magazines often divide the public into
female readership and male readership. There are magazines for teenage
boys and teenage girls separately, and their content and language are often
gender stereotypic

• The relationship between advertisements and gender may have caught some
researchers’ attention, since advertisements become a part of people’s
everyday life.

• Therefore, studies on gender and advertisements are divided into two

directions –mold and mirror: either gender differences in reality leads to those
portrayed in advertisement, or advertisements are in a way shaping people’s
minds about different genders.
 BACKGROUND STUDY

1. Advertisement and Gender Culture

• Researches on magazine and television advertising conducted in many

countries suggest a high degree of sexism toward women.

For example:

a. Matud, Rodriguez and Espinosa study on Spanish daily newspapers in 2010

b. Arima studies on Japanese television advertisements in 2003

• In both of the studies, the results are similar, that is women tend to be
portrayed either in a degrading or demeaning fashion or in sex-role
stereotypic behaviors.

• Morris and Lee (2005) looked into appearances and portrayals of people in
commercial print messages from 43 countries. In their study, culture is
believed to affect advertising content. In masculine countries, men are more
often portrayed in traditional image than in feminine countries.

• Previous work, like those mentioned above, mainly focuses on television

advertising or pictures, models appearing in magazines or newspapers. Very
few touch upon the language used in advertisements.

2. Language and Gender

• Lakoff’s pioneering work Language and Woman’s Place (1975) revealed the
difference existed in the way women and men use language.

• In response to women’s language, Smith (1985) proposes men’s language, in

which generic nouns and pronouns that are marked for masculinity are used
to refer to people in general terms or individuals with indefinite gender.

• Based on Lakoff’s work, Coates (1993) provides sociolinguistic evidence to

the relation of language and gender and its causes and consequences. The
process of standardization leads to the development of so-called correctness.
The higher status one social group obtained the less they will be confined by
the rule of correctness.
AIM AND SCOPE

• The aim of present investigation is to study the use of nouns and adjectives in
English-speaking advertisements, which aim separately to females and
males, in order to seek possible gender differences.

• The focus is to see if the gender differences existing in the language of

advertisement conform to what is generally expected about women and men.

METHOD

• A total number of 18 advertisements have been taken from female magazines

and male magazines. The first three advertisements from each magazine
have been collected as samples

• All the adjectives and nouns used in the 18 advertisements are collected. As
to which word class a word belongs to is depending on the context.

• Nouns and adjectives are discussed separately to see if there is gender

difference in the usage of nouns and adjectives and what the proportions of
neutral ones and non-neutral ones are.

Here is the list of materials that had been used as samples.