LEXICAL, STYLISTIC AND SYNTACTIC GENDER ASPECTS OF ARTICLES
IN FASHION MAGAZINES
Egor
DENISOV, an.III, Facultatea de Limbi și Literaturi Străine
The given research was aimed at
identifying lexical, stylistic and syntactic gender aspects in British Fashion
magazines. Vocabulary choices of women focused on common vocabulary layer,
while men choices were neologisms, professionalisms and vulgar words. Most
preferred were declarative, interrogative and imperative sentences. Exclamatory
sentences represented mostly women speech style. Women syntactic choices were complex
sentences, while men mostly used simple sentences. Among stylistic devices were
metaphors, simile, personification and metonymy.
This research is devoted to the linguistic analysis of gender representation by
various lexical, stylistic and syntactic means in fashion magazines articles.
This work is
an attempt to study
subsystems of
male and female speech styles.
The working hypothesis suggests that there are two completely different speech
styles: male and female, which express themselves in different ways.
The research objectives are:
·
to
select British Fashion Magazines for analysis;
·
to
outline similarities and specific features of male and female speech styles;
·
to
determine lexical, stylistic and syntactic aspects of the given articles;
·
to
conclude results obtained during the given study.
The methods applied in the study include:
·
Structural Analysis consists in revealing structural
peculiarities of gender representation in British Fashion Magazines;
·
Linguistic Analysis is aimed at finding general lexical,
stylistic and syntactic characteristics of the articles;
·
Statistical Analysis comprises collected data presented in tables
and figures
The study material is based on
ten fashion articles taken from the following sources:
1. British Fashion Magazine “GQ”
2. British Fashion Magazine
“COSMOPOLITAN”.
The starting point of the research was to select British fashion magazines
whose target audience differs by gender. Nowadays there is a great number of
fashion magazines subdivided according to the perception strata and interests.
In the practical part of the study we paid attention to the structure and
format of the selected article, vocabulary gender features, stylistic devices
and syntactic features used in the articles.
During lexical analysis we looked at the vocabulary representing gender styles
that is used in fashion magazines written for men and women.
The next step of our study was aimed at determining stylistic devices
reflecting men and women speech styles of the English language.
The target audience
of fashion magazines for women is women with a clearly expressed feminine type
of thinking. In such magazines a certain attention is paid to the creation of
the image of its reader. This is a young, ambitious woman who exactly knows
what she wants, leads a healthy way of life and wants to be aware of the recent
trends in fashion. As for the choice of lexis for male magazines it is obvious
that the usage of foul language prevails. [1] Female vocabulary is relatively narrower; the major part of women
use the basic part of the vocabulary, which means that they use the most common
and highly spread words in contrast to men who use a great number of
neologisms, professionalisms and vulgar words in their speech. [3]
It goes without saying that there is a certain
correspondence between language and society. Language
is inherently social and in all of its aspects can neither function nor develop
without interacting with the society. Sociolinguistics is the
study of language use within or among groups of speakers. The group that
sociolinguists have generally attempted to study is called the speech
community. [2]
Summing up research results we can say that women
prefer diminutives and adjectives that describe their personality and inner
world. Men are more laconic and do not use so many descriptive adjectives. On
the contrary, they used a number of vulgar words as a symbol of their
masculinity.
Various stylistic devices such as phonetic, morphological, lexical, syntactic, and
graphic means are often used in fashion articles. They are aimed at achieving a
common task – to represent the consumer’s point of view. Stylistic Devices help to create a visual image of the written
text or just attract the reader’s attention. The most highly spread Lexical Stylistic
Devices in the selected articles are Metaphor, Simile, Personification,
and Metonymy.
Syntactic analysis results proved that the place of the Syntactic Stylistic
Devices in the articles is based on peculiar
syntactical arrangement. They include stylistic inversion, detached
constructions, and repetition. When
people form sentences, they do many things, they ask questions, make requests,
make statements, or explain feelings and emotions, because of that syntactic
devices correlate with five basic communicative sentence types:
Declarative, Interrogatives, Imperatives, Exclamatory and Vocatives. The syntactic
analysis of the selected articles has shown that men are laconic; they prefer
simplicity and use, as a rule, Simple sentences rather than Compound or Complex
ones. As for the sentence functions we may say that in the GQ magazine articles
category “HOW TO DRESS: …” Imperative and Declarative sentences are most commonly
used, as the articles deal with the instructions that help the reader to be
prepared for the job interview, wedding or first date.
The analysis of sentence types in women fashion magazine articles proved that
women prefer Simple and Compound sentences rather than Complex sentences with
subordinate clauses. Women are more laconic and express themselves in easier
ways, but still they are more expressive and emotional. Exclamatory Sentences used
in articles express powerful feelings and emotions triggered by fashion items
in women. Authors of the articles targeted to women use the so-called “woman’s
modals” while structuring the sentences. Usually the
author of the article cares about the target audience she writes to and takes
into consideration the concept of complexity, trying to use sentences in such a
way as to show her attitude towards the subject she writes about. The author
makes statements while giving pieces of advice, so we can say that such type of
sentences is highly spread and common for all selected articles as well as Imperatives
with the help of which the author expresses an order, a request or gives advice.
Conclusions
We compared and identified differences capable to
distinguish between male and female peculiarities of speech
as well as the detailed analyses of differences in the articles on the
stylistic and syntactical levels. From the syntactic point of view we can say
that there are differences in forming the sentences and their functions. The
usage of the lexis and stylistic devices also plays an important role in making
the article more man or woman targeted.
The results obtained during the quantitative research cannot be absolutely
accurate, since it is virtually impossible to keep pace with all new changes
that appear in the fashion world. However, it allows us to gain some insight
into the gender phenomenon.
The results of the given research may be used in the fields of linguistics and
sociolinguistics.
Bibliography
1.
Smith P.M. “Language, the
Sexes and Society” Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985; p. 211
2. Wardgaugh,
R. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. UK: Blackwell, 2002, p.432
3.
Шатова
Ф.О. «Гендерные особенности мужских и женских журналов. Раунд первый» Ярославль
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