Gender-related Analysis in American Advertisements TV

Abstract

Advertising is “the non-personal communication of information usually paid for and persuasive in nature about product, service or ideas by identified sponsors through the various media” (Buren,1992:7). The ad aims to market products and services, this is according to business and this is an effective marketing tool. Advertising also offers information so that customers are aware of what is available, who makes it, and where they can get it (Durant & Lambron, 2009: 93). Advertisers need to consider gender differences to the best capacity possible to use appropriate advertisement design features. The most significant aspect of gender issues for advertisers can be how males and females react differently to the advertisement. So, “the focus is on how gender in language and society is negotiated and how linguistic forms represent and shape social and cultural conditions in which men and females live”. (Behnam and Zamanian, 2014:4) American advertisements often contain different meta-functions that are worthy of analysis. The present study intends to analyze American advertisements according to the three meta-functions such as ideational, interpersonal, and textual. This study examined 5 American advertisements (each one of them has a different theme) from a verbal and non-verbal perspective, based on the three meta-functions models developed by Halliday (1994). The results of the study revealed that American advertisements are biased to females rather than males to introduce the products because they considered females as powerful signs who use their high attractiveness to promote the products or brands. Concerning the grammatical aspects, the results showed that material process, mental process, declarative mood, and first-person pronouns are the highest used to achieve the goals of this study.