Textual Construction of the Female Body
Subtitle: A Critical Discourse Approach
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: December 23, 2008
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 240
ISBN-13: 9780333914526
Subjects: Social Science; Textbooks; Sociology; Media Studies - Print Media; Women's Studies - General; Social Science / Gender Studies; Gender Studies
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 naturalize the ideology of the perfect female form."--Jacket.