Textual Construction of the Female Body

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

   PDF

2. Studying the Language of the Female Body: Some Context

   • Lesley Jeffries

   Pages 1-25

3. Genre, Text Type and Rhetorical Strategy

   • Lesley Jeffries

   Pages 26-60

4. Naming and Describing

   • Lesley Jeffries

   Pages 61-101

5. Equating, Contrasting, Enumerating and Exemplifying

   • Lesley Jeffries

   Pages 102-128

6. Assuming and Implying

   • Lesley Jeffries

   Pages 129-151

7. The Body in Time and Space

   • Lesley Jeffries

   Pages 152-166

8. Processes and Opinions

   • Lesley Jeffries

   Pages 167-193

9. Conclusion

   • Lesley Jeffries

   Pages 194-205

10. Back Matter

    Pages 206-212

    PDF

This volume takes a critical discourse approach to the ways women's magazines contribute to the social construction of particular kinds of female body - as ideal, beautiful, ugly, overweight or engineered. Looking at the language used, it provides an insight into the experience of the female reader, and the likely impact upon her self-image.

• discourse
• language
• women
• discourse analysis

'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

Lesley Jeffries is Professor of English and Director of the Stylistics Research Centre at Huddersfield University, UK. She is co-series editor (with Dan Mcintyre) for Palgrave's Perspectives on the English Language , and has published on the style of contemporary poetry and ideology in news reporting and political discourse. She is also co-editor of Babel: The Language Magazine .

Policies and ethics