LINGUIST List 19.2136
Thu Jul 03 2008
Diss: Disc Analysis/Socioling: Williams: 'The Textual Construction ...'
Editor for this issue: Evelyn Richter
<evelynlinguistlist.org>
1. Tracy Rundstrom
Williams,
The Textual Construction of Femininity in Women's Fitness Magazines
Message 1: The Textual Construction of Femininity in Women's Fitness Magazines
Date: 02-Jul-2008
From: Tracy Rundstrom Williams <t.williamstcu.edu>
Subject: The Textual Construction of Femininity in Women's Fitness Magazines
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Institution: University of Texas at Arlington
Program: Department of Linguistics
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2007
Author: Tracy Rundstrom Williams
Dissertation Title: The Textual Construction of Femininity in Women's Fitness Magazines
Linguistic Field(s):
Discourse Analysis
Sociolinguistics
Dissertation Director:
Winnie Orr
Don Burquest
Laurel Smith Stvan
David Silva
Charla Markham Shaw
Dissertation Abstract:
Women in the first decade of the 21st century encounter competingideologies of traditional femininity and empowered femininity. Language, inparticular Discourse Analysis, provides a means for investigating whatthese ideologies, or discourses, are and how they are perpetuated. Onesource of language which encodes and perpetuates ideologies of femininityis women's magazines. As pervasive, monthly texts directed specifically atwomen, women's magazines provide a rich source of contemporary ideologiesof femininity. Given the rise of health and fitness magazines over the past20 years, it appears that one primary focus of contemporary femininity isthe body. Previous research has found that the idealized female body today- an extremely thin body - encodes traditional femininity in that itrepresents social values of beauty, smallness, and others-orientation, butit also encodes empowered femininity in that it represents will-power,dedication, and strength.
Using one fitness instructional text from eight different women's fitnessmagazines, an analysis of the rhetorical structure, clauses, and lexicondemonstrates how these texts perpetuate a hybrid discourse which actuallyintegrates traditional and empowered femininity. This hybrid discourseappears as a seamless combination of the two 'parent' discourses by placingitself in the middle of a continuum between traditional femininity andempowered femininity: emphasizing achievement but to a limited degree, andcelebrating beautification and objectification. The hybrid discourse alsosupports a sociological trend of many women wanting to balance competingdemands of portraying highly valued but traditionally male traits whilestill being seen as traditionally feminine.
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