Do women's magazines present us with the perfect female form as an ideal? Are they squeamish in the face of the more intimate of body parts? Do they treat 'real' women's bodies differently from celebrities' bodies? These questions, among others, are addressed in this book, which claims that women's magazines help to put readers under enormous pressure to conform to the ideology of the perfect body. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, Lesley Jeffries considers the different ways in which ideologies of the body are played out in the language of the magazine . This approach utilizes concepts such as naming, describing, contrasting and equating to access the hinterland between structure and meaning, and to map out the subtle ways in which texts can naturalise the ideology of the perfect female form.
'A valuable contribution to the fields of feminist linguistics, gender studies, critical discourse approach, text analysis, and discourse studies in general.' - Winnie W. F. Or, University of Texas at Arlington, USA
Acknowledgements
Preface: Code and Body - an intervention
Studying the Language of the Female Body: Some Context
Genre, Text-Type and Rhetorical Strategy
Naming and Describing
Equating, Contrasting, Enumerating and Exemplifying
Assuming and Implying
The Body in Time and Space
Processes and Opinions
Conclusions
Bibliography
Index
LESLEY JEFFRIES is Principal Lecturer in English Language and Director of the Stylistics Research Centre at the University of Huddersfield, UK. She is author of Meaning in English, Discovering Language: The Structure of Modern English, and The Language of Twentieth-Century Poetry. She is the series editor for Palgrave Macmillan's series Perspectives on English Language and is the current Chair of the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA).
Description
Do women's magazines present us with the perfect female form as an ideal? Are they squeamish in the face of the more intimate of body parts? Do they treat 'real' women's bodies differently from celebrities' bodies? These questions, among others, are addressed in this book, which claims that women's magazines help to put readers under enormous pressure to conform to the ideology of the perfect body. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, Lesley Jeffries considers the different ways in which ideologies of the body are played out in the language of the magazine . This approach utilizes concepts such as naming, describing, contrasting and equating to access the hinterland between structure and meaning, and to map out the subtle ways in which texts can naturalise the ideology of the perfect female form.
Reviews
'A valuable contribution to the fields of feminist linguistics, gender studies, critical discourse approach, text analysis, and discourse studies in general.' - Winnie W. F. Or, University of Texas at Arlington, USA
Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface: Code and Body - an intervention
Studying the Language of the Female Body: Some Context
Genre, Text-Type and Rhetorical Strategy
Naming and Describing
Equating, Contrasting, Enumerating and Exemplifying
Assuming and Implying
The Body in Time and Space
Processes and Opinions
Conclusions
Bibliography
Index
Authors
LESLEY JEFFRIES is Principal Lecturer in English Language and Director of the Stylistics Research Centre at the University of Huddersfield, UK. She is author of Meaning in English, Discovering Language: The Structure of Modern English, and The Language of Twentieth-Century Poetry. She is the series editor for Palgrave Macmillan's series Perspectives on English Language and is the current Chair of the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA).
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