New Insights into Gendered Discursive Practices: Language, Gender and Identity Construction

Ana Belén Cababrejasas Peñuelasas, Antonia Sánchez Macarro, Ana Belén Cababrejasas Peñuelasas, Antonia Sánchez Macarro

• Publisher: Publicacions de la Universitat de València
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9788437096933
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: English Language
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This volume adopts a discourse and feminist approach to post-feminist media cultures and provides cutting edge knowledge of discourse analysis methods as they apply to the study of language and gender in different contexts. Editors Antonia Sánchez Macarro and Ana Belén Cabrejas Peñuelas bring together key discourse analysts to write about topics such as the construction of gendered identities in the (new) media; young women's online and offline gendered and sexualized self-representations; and the analysis of discursive practices in the context of higher education. This volume will serve as an invaluable tool for researchers and students interested in language, gender and discourse analysis.

PART I
MEDIA DISCOURSE

1

Enforcing gender via directives in female adolescent magazines: a contrastive view in English and Spanish

MERCEDES DÍEZ PRADOS
Universidad de Alcalá

Abstract

Teenage magazines are discourse manifestations that can be considered sites for the construction of gender roles to naturalize certain behaviours and foster certain values, beliefs and norms of action. Thus, this type of publication can be used as a tool to enforce gender by certain discursive practices. The aim of the present study is to shed some light on how this engendering process is enforced in English and Spanish, to discover similarities or differences between the two. In order to do so, advice columns extracted from American and Spanish publications are analyzed to try to unveil the way magazine writers and young female teenagers interact. After a brief revision of previous research on teenage magazines as socialization devices, the analysis of the extracts selected is tackled. The main line of argument is that gender is enforced via directives in magazines written in both languages, particularly in the form of imperatives and fulfilling different speech acts (command, advice, suggestion, invitation, permission, prohibition and warning); as far as the type of behaviour reinforced is concerned, the values transmitted belong mainly to a traditional ideology in both cultures, although some differences are found regarding treatment of sexual desire in female adolescents, which is more naturalized in Spanish than in American magazines. All in all, magazines for female adolescents cannot be considered a stepping-stone to gender equality, since little progress has been made in the last two decades: the analysis reveals stagnation of topics and gender roles, when compared with previous studies.

Keywords: Gender and language, directive speech acts, female adolescent magazines, advice columns, persuasion.

1
Introduction

Gendered beings perform gendered actions so that new members of society learn how to do gender according to their biological sex, so as to be considered members of the club. This learning to be male or female is a process that starts with birth and goes on for life; no individual escapes from this socialization process, even if we are aware of the asymmetry that this enculturation process may impose on others or on ourselves. Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (2013: 20) claim that three principles govern gender: it is learned, collaborative and performed: “gender is not something we have, but something we do” (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 2013: 20). According to these principles, gender must be taught and is, thus, enforced, which makes engendering a collaborative process (i.e. it is a social practice, Eckert and McDonnell-Ginet 2013).

Language is one of the main instruments to enforce gender and teenage magazines (teenzines, as Currie (1999) calls them) are language manifestations that can be considered sites for the construction of gender roles to naturalize certain behaviours, among others, heterosexuality, concern over physical appearance, a quest for popularity or playing certain gender roles (for this latter issue, see, for instance, López Rodríguez (2007) or Jiménez Calderón and Sánchez Rufat (2011)). Language is both the process and the product of gendering: language reflects pre-exiting categories and, by doing so, constructs and maintains them (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 2013: 22).

Teenage magazines have been the focus of study of numerous academic publications, predominantly those written in English, and, principally the ones published in the U.S. context; there also exists research on teenage Spanish magazines (e.g. Plaza Sánchez (2005) and (2009)), but, to my knowledge, none adopts a contrastive view between the discourse used in magazines written in these two languages and published in these two countries to gain insights into their linguistic and cultural similarities and/or differences. The phenomenon of an ever-growing globalized world and the obvious influence of the American culture on the Western world favours the hypothesis that magazines for American and Spanish female adolescents will have more points in common than discrepancies. Nevertheless, a contrastive study like the present one can provide some empirical evidence on the issue.

Thus, the main purpose of the present paper is to study language as manifested in teenzines to gain access to the set of values, beliefs and norms of action being enforced in these publications; in order to do so, the language used in advice columns will be analyzed to try to unveil the way magazine writers and young female teenagers interact. The final aim of this investigation is to discover the role teenzines may play in “female teenage identity construction” (García Gómez 2010: 136) by means of the discursive devices used in them.

The research questions that guide this study are the following:

1.What issues are raised by girls¹ in teenzine advice columns? How do the concerns depicted in these texts contribute to enforcing gender?

2.How is advice phrased (i.e. linguistic realizations) in English and Spanish in order to enforce given attitudes or behaviour? In what way are these linguistic devices persuasive?

In order to answer these questions and thus elaborate a discursive approach to the exploration of how gender is enforced in adolescent magazines, the linguistic realization of the exchanges in advice columns will be examined. The questions posed by the female readership will show their main concerns when facing a period of self-construction and self-identification and the answers provided by teenzine writers will most surely be affected by their perception and interpretation of their readers’ attributed gendered roles. According to Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (2013: 9), studies show that male and female children are interpreted and interacted with differently by adults. Extrapolating this idea to magazine writers, they must be influenced by their perceptions and beliefs when they address a teenage female readership. Thus, by examining the messages addressed to female teenagers and the linguistic strategies used for it, it will become clear the way female gender is interpreted in teenzines for girls and how this interpretation may condition the construction of a gendered identity in a young and easily-influenced female readership (Currie 1999, Saz Marín 2007).

After a brief revision of studies dealing with the role magazines for adolescent girls play in their socialization process, the empirical study carried out to tackle the issue of enforcing gender in teenzines is presented: the theoretical framework used in the analysis, the methods for data collection, the results gathered from the analysis, together with an interpretation of those results. Finally the concluding section recalls the main aims for the present study and the results obtained.

2
Teenzines as socialization devices within a community of practice

Teenzines can be considered a linguistic social practice (i.e. discursive manifestation) of a community of practice (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992) conformed by two hierarchically organized groups of members: magazine writers (constrained themselves by given editorial policies) and female adolescent readers. The relationship between the groups is asymmetrical, because the latter (i.e. female adolescents) resorts to the former (i.e. magazines writers) in order to receive orientation to participate in the world around them (Eckert 2006: 1). The community of practice is a “prime locus” of the process of identity and linguistic construction where certain discursive conventions take place (Eckert 2006: 4), and teenzines represent one of those discourses.

A large body of literature on teenzines has been carried out within the discipline of sociology (Pierce (1990), Currie (1999, 2001), Evans et al. (1991), Jackson (2005), Joshy (2012), among others), since female adolescent magazines are considered socialization devices. Peirce (1990: 492) examines the “socialization messages” teenage girls receive from Seventeen, number one American magazine for female adolescents, from 1961 to 1985, and concludes that, although the feminist movement in 1972 had an effect on the content of issues around that period (e.g. promoting self-development), the magazine mainly reinforces traditional ideologies (Pierce 1990: 498-499). Traditional roles stress “looking good, finding a man, and taking care of home and children [whereas] (…) feminist messages emphasize taking care of oneself, being independent, and not relying on a man for fulfilment or identity” (Pierce 1990: 497). According to Pierce (1990: 499), magazines for female adolescents can be “a powerful reinforcer of the traditional ideology of womanhood”.

In the same line of argument, Currie (1999: 141) claims that “girls give the realities which they identify in texts ontological status: “realistic” messages offered by the text are seen to convey truth about the social world”. If this is so, the messages transmitted in teenzines can wield a significant influence on their readership since young readers construct reality as they read. One vital issue to consider is what types of role models are being displayed in teenage magazines: are the values of education, hard work, perseverance and discipline being promoted? Or, on the contrary, are rapid and easy success and popularity prioritized? Teenzines, like the media in general, present celebrities whose lifestyle is not generally worthy of imitation as idols (García Gómez 2010: 149), which makes our youngsters to try to emulate them (Plaza Sánchez 2009: 133). This absence of constructive role models for women-to-be in teenage magazines is also highlighted in Currie’s (1999: 44) sociological study.

In a survey as early as 1889, Bok observed that magazines have historically fulfilled the traditional mothers’ role of confidante (in Currie 1999: 41); in fact, most teenzines include advice sections, which perform this role. Eckert (2006: 364) points out that, as children approach adolescence, much of the authority exerted on them by adults (mostly parents and teachers) is replaced by “the age cohort”; by extrapolation, magazine writers seem to assume, in part, parents’ advisory role, and, thus, their messages become of utmost importance. But what is true is that adolescent readers seem to willingly accept this kind of authority from magazine writers, while tending to reject parents’ and teachers’ control. What, then, makes adolescents not to feel controlled or bossed around by magazine publishers as they do when parents or teachers try to impose their rules or principles? According to Currie (1999: 41), girls’ magazines, from their inception, adopted a personal form of address, since textual messages targeted the intimacy of readers’ lives. The present study argues that, although power exerted via the directive function is pervasive in teenzines’ discourse, the linguistic realization of the speech acts that fulfil this function is redressed with in-group markers, which can be considered a form of positive politeness strategy; thus, advice writers adopt a friendly tone that helps them gain the reader’s trust, becoming her confidantes.

Teenzines are almost exclusively read by girls, regardless of their cultural background (Currie 1999, Plaza Sánchez 2009). This is demonstrated in the amount of magazines for girls published, as opposed to those directed to boys, as pointed out in a report published in 2004 (Tweens, Teens, and Magazines) by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit American foundation. This study mentions the difference in themes addressed in magazines for girls and for boys: beauty, cosmetics, people, and relationships in female magazines versus electronic gaming, sports, music, cars and other hobbies for boys, assertions which are in line with other studies. For instance, Signorelli (1997: 28) claims that the articles she studied (a total of 378 in four issues of the four leading teen girl magazines, Sassy, Teen, YM and Seventeen) “typically focused on gender-stereotyped topics”. Curiously enough, themes in girls’ magazines do not differ from those found in magazines for female adults and, likewise, perpetuate traditional roles (Cabellos Castilla and Díez Prados 2000).

The themes in teenzines may be chosen by editors according to (presupposed) girls’ and boys’ interests, but, if that dichotomy in topics is cemented, the social distance between the sexes is also encouraged, which, in turn, is an obvious manifestation of gender enforcement. Why couldn’t teenzines for girls include articles on electronic games, or on different sources of entertainment, such as in boys’ magazines? Aren’t girls interested in those free-time activities? And, why not dealing with personal relations and physical appearance in magazines for boys? Wouldn’t that help overcome the stereotype that men don’t cry and are not concerned with their looks? Media would certainly be “the avantgarde of cultural and social change” (Kruse, Weimer and Wagner 1988: 261) if they contributed to the achievement, once and for all, of emancipated women and new men by promoting a reconciliation of topics and, consequently, interests, irrespective of sex. As García Gómez (2006) points out, gender stereotypes still play a crucial role in people’s lives, and being aware of the different roles men and women are assigned can be a stepping-stone to avoid the recurrence of inflexible traditional male or female behavioural patterns. As Eckert and McConell-Ginet (2013: 9) assert: “With differential treatment, boys and girls do learn to be [emphasis in the original] different”.

All in all, the aforementioned studies on the topic seem to obtain the same results: girls’ magazines hold a stagnant ideological stance, since they defend traditional sexist roles. Likewise, García Gómez (2009: 627), in his study on the construction of identity by Spanish and British teenagers in weblog writing, observed that bloggers use discursive strategies that present them as “subservient to or subsumed into the loved one when romance is blossoming”; contrariwise, when romance fails, female bloggers represent the self as powerfully rejecting their ex-boyfriends by the use of discursive strategies that remind stereotypical patterns of male language use (i.e. insults, taboos, obscene metaphors). Therefore, when in love, girls seem to adopt a submissive role towards their lovers, but react with “androgynous behaviour patterns” (García Gómez 2009: 631) when they feel rejected by their couples. However, this masculinization of girls’ reactions does not seem a step in the right direction for gender equality, but an attempt by women to switch roles with men.

3
Theoretical framework

Building upon the sociological studies aforementioned, particularly the work carried out by Currie (1999, 2001) and developing her argument that “the textual format itself facilitates the acceptance of the ‘adolescence’ constructed on magazine pages” (Currie 2001: 265), I argue that gender is enforced via directives in magazines written in English and Spanish. My intention is to develop a discursive approach to the study of how linguistic form may facilitate assimilation and acceptance of advice by female adolescents in a very vulnerab...