Gender Representations in perfume print advertisements, from lifestyle magazines e.g., Vogue, ELLE, GQ, Men’s Health


  • Aim: The paper aims to analyze gender portrayals in contemporary perfume advertisements using Kress and van Leeuwen’s Visual Grammar (2006) framework.
  • Scope: The analysis focuses on print perfume ads from lifestyle magazines (e.g., Vogue, Elle) to explore how visual and textual modes work together to create gendered meanings.
  • Research Questions:
    1. What are the multimodal elements (or modes) that construct gender representations in printed perfume ads?
    2.  What are the recurring themes in the representation of gender (consider both women and men perfume materials separately, then in comparison)?
    3. Do these ads reinforce or challenge traditional gender roles using multimodal elements?
  • Reference list:
    – Multimodal Discourse Analysis
    1. Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. Routledge. 

    2. Machin, D. (2007). Introduction to Multimodal Analysis. Hodder Arnold.

    3. Jewitt, C., & Oyama, R. (2001). Visual Meaning: A Social Semiotic Approach. In Multimodal Discourse Analysis: Systemic Functional Perspectives. Continuum.

    4. O’Halloran, K. (2004).“Multimodal Discourse Analysis: Systemic-Functional Perspectives”

    5. Cheong, Y. Y. (2004).

      “The Construal of Ideational Meaning in Print Advertisements”

    6. Zhang, H. (2013).

      “A Social Semiotic Approach to Multimodal Discourse of the Internet Advertisement”

    7. Ledin, P., & Machin, D. (2020).

      “Introduction to Multimodal Analysis” (2nd Edition)

    8.   Machin and Mayr (2012)  

    9.   Bateman (2014) 

  • – For gender theory part: 
    Goffman 

    “Gender Advertisements” (1979)  
     Rosalind Gill (2007)  

  • As the term paper is case study based, there needs to be analysis section where the framework (built upon previous studies, some mentioned above) with clear parameters is applied to the attached example print perfume advertisements. In the analysis, after breaking down to multimodal elements (visual elements; color, gaze,  etc. linguistic elements: slogans, taglines, typography etc.), the most suitable gender theory or approach (must be mentioned in theoretical background beforehand) should be used to categorize the ads either following this gender theory, if traditional or not, and be noted down for later when recurrent themes will be written as well.
    Conclusion should restate the research questions and answer them clearly, if questions need to be adjusted to make it more coherent, it is allowed to edit them. 

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