Discursive Construction Of Female Identity In Women's Magazine

This study is aimed to explore how the conflicting ideologies are encoded in the way women's magazines construct gender identity. More specifically, it deals with the discursive construction of gender identity in relation to the power structure in women's magazines, with special reference to Cosmopolitan. The power structure here refers to the relationship constructed by Cosmopolitan among the social actors, namely, the female reader, the star, the male, Cosmo and the experts, and it can be illustrated by analyzing the ideational and interpersonal meanings, or by analyzing how they are realized through specific linguistic choices. Comparisons are made among the different social actions attributed to different social actors, and the different ways to represent social actors. Since the identity constructed here is associated with both feminism and consumerism, the comparisons can not be confined to the ones between the female and the male, and they have to be extended to the other relevant social actors such as the experts and Cosmo.The previous research of the discursive construction of female identity is mainly done by comparing different speech behaviours between the female and the male. Against the background of the lack of systematic and comprehensive linguistic studies of the construction of gender identity in the discourse of women's magazines, the present study is intended to explore this issue, primarily on the basis of systemic functional linguistics (SFL). SFL is chosen for its dedication to expounding the relationship between culture, society and language use. However, SFL for the study of gender identity remains inadequate. Feminist stylistics is included for it takes feminism as its stance in studying language. An integrated theoretical framework is established on the basis of SFL and feminist stylistics with representation of social actions and representation of social actors as its analytical tools. In addition, the study adopts UAM, a linguistic corpus tool, with the assistance of Concapp for corpus analysis. UAM is employed to code the texts and present descriptive statistics, serving as the basis for qualitative analysis. Meanwhile, Concapp is used to locate the concordance and calculate the frequency of key words.The corpus for this study is made up of 48 texts from 12 issues of Cosmopolitan which span from the April 2009 to the April 2010. The texts are chosen from the regular sections, namely, Interview, Cross-sex relationship, Fashion and Contents, and thus are supposed to be indicative of the'aboutness'of the magazine.The social action analysis shows that the female reader in Cosmopolitan, on the one hand, is least powerful, and the stars, on the other hand, being female as well, are much more powerful. Acting different roles, the stars and the reader are constructed in different ways. The stars are attributed almost equally to the material processes, the mental processes and the verbal processes, and the least in the relational processes. This suggests as role models, the stars are represented more by the external features than by the internal features. Acting as role models for the reader, the stars are constructed by multi-dimensions, and what they do, what they say, and how they react are hired to legitimize the ideology of Cosmopolitan. Moreover, the stars are constructed as powerful in the verbal, and the relational processes while as less powerful in the material and the mental processes. The reason for the seemingly conflicting construction is that the stars are not only role models, but also females, and they tend to show some connection with the reader. Hence, the stars are constructed both as powerful and intimate. By contrast, the female is attributed dominantly to the material processes. She is overwhelmingly active, but what is under her control in most of the cases is the trivial things such as the dresses and her own body which make up the most part of her world. Moreover, she is represented as affective in the mental processes, and as mute in the verbal processes. In the section of Cross-sex relationship, the reporting verbs such as'say'or'explain'are used in the material processes. Although the female is more active compared with other actors, she is least powerful.The male is mainly attributed to the mental processes and the verbal processes. In the mental processes, he is constructed as overwhelmingly affective, and his affections are directed to the female. In the verbal processes, the resources associated with him are related to the female. Both his verbal processes and mental processes work as recommendation of the realis in the texts. As far as the experts are concerned, in most of the cases, they are attributed to the verbal processes, namely in the form of quote. They are constructed with absolute authority. Cosmo is involved dominantly in the material processes and in the mental processes. She is constructed both with authority and intimacy by the two processes. As a women's magazine, she has to construct connection with the reader and, as a consumer magazine, she has to construct authority over the reader.As regards the representation of social actors, Cosmopolitan uses different personal pronouns to indicate the distance among the social actors. Thus, the actors are divided into two groups:US-and THEM groups. The power is constructed on the basis of distance. The comparisons of the distances among the social actors demonstrate that the male is farthest from the female. With regards to this respect, the male is most powerful actor for the female, and Cosmo, the experts and the stars are the'tools'to help the female win the man over. The actor analysis is supportive of the action analysis, and further clarifies the power structure among all the social actors.The results of the present study attest the validity of the theoretical framework and analytical tools established in revealing the discursive construction of female identity in women's magazines. The results can provide theoretical and methodological support for other related studies of female identity construction in media discourse.