A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Gender Differences In English Advertising Language

Language is cultivated in a certain society, so it is inevitably influenced by different social factors, one of which is "gender". This study chooses a specific discourse-English advertising, and analyzes gender differences in the English advertising language mainly from the perspective of critical discourse analysis.At present, the study of gender differences in advertising language mostly stays on the level of analyzing the language itself and mainly adopts the content analysis method, and few studies are done from the perspective of critical discourse analysis. Critical discourse analysis aims to reveal the ideology in language in the service of the power. Thus critical discourse analysis is a very effective method for the study of gender differences in English advertising language. This study adopts the method of critical discourse analysis to analyze gender differences in English advertising language, and helps the readers and audience realize the ideology hidden in English advertising discourse.This study collects188English advertisements from the internet, English newspapers, English magazines and TV, and analyzes gender differences in English advertising language: vocabulary such as the usage of nouns and adjectives, clause types, themes and transitivity of the clause in the advertising with the Halliday’s SFG as the theoretical framework and the combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis method as the research method to study the phenomena of gender differences existing in the English advertising. In addition, this study also analyzes the ideology and schema so as to reveal how the English advertising creates males’and females’ images through gender differences. Through the study and analysis of the data, it is found that advertisers create male’s rational and authoritative images mainly by using such structures as the declarative and imperative clauses, material process, simple themes, but they use more exclamative and interrogative clauses, mental and behavior processes and the multiple theme structure to build women’s sensitive and submissive social gender stereotypes. These research results have obvious social and academic values which deserve more attention and further study.