People’s perception of Advertisement: The Discussion of the Relationship between Gender, Language and Stereotype in TV commercials

• Main Authors: Chia-hung Tang, 唐嘉鴻
• Other Authors: Li-Jung, Huang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/80625284243219296222

碩士 === 靜宜大學 === 英國語文學系研究所 === 96 === Previous linguistic studies on advertisements of TV commercials focus on analyzing the meaning and structure of language to figure out the possible reasons of the influence of advertisement. However, few studies examine concepts associated with stereotypes and social factors in order to see how these act as enhancers of advertisement influence. Steele (1995) pointed out that the effect of stereotypes may be a significant factor to influence people''s perception in daily life. In addition, stereotypes are particularly prominent in gender conversations. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to find out which stereotypes (in the aspects of language) operate between genders in TV commercials. Fifty-four selected TV commercials are analyzed in four linguistic aspects. These aspects are (1) lexical categories (the occurrence of verb and adjectives/adverbials), (2) semantic meaning (competition and solidarity), (3) language flexibility and (4) silence and volubility. By analyzing the TV commercials against these four linguistic aspects, the study hoped to figure out what language stereotypes between the genders exist in the TV commercials. A questionnaire was used to confirm if the stereotypes in the TV commercials are gender influenced. Participants of the questionnaire included ten males and ten females. The results of the study point that male-oriented TV commercials tend to be more silent, and contain more competitive/comparative meaning than female-orientated TV commercials. Conversely, female-oriented TV commercials tend to be more voluble, more flexible in language, and contain more solidarity meaning and more adjectives or adverbials than male-oriented TV commercials. This study found that these language stereotypes are influenced by gender. These stereotypes can be considered to be the source of influence of TV commercials.