The Representation of Women in Sayidaty Magazine Advertisements

Abstract

Studies on gender and advertising have taken a large area of research. The current study focuses to examine the representation of women in media particularly in magazine’s advertisements. The aim behind this examination is to reveal the way in which female characters are representedvisually, and whether it has an impact on the readers. A focus is placed on their representation in 14 advertisements taken from Sayidaty magazine. So, this later is chosen as a corpus of this study.In order to achieve the aims, the investigation is based on two different methods of research. It combines a social semiotic analysis of Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) and a questionnaire addressed to 30women from Tiaret. The results obtained from the present research have shown the ways women are represented, the opinions of readers towards their representation and the effect on the younger generation. The findings of the analysis mostly showed women as being beautiful, elegant, and graceful and having attractive appearances. Moreover, they are more associated with beauty products and fashion. The final result shows that the significance of those pictures is to attract the attention of the readers in order to sell their products. Finally, it has been concluded that women have an important role in advertising.