摘 要

女性身份建构一直以来都是国内外学者讨论的热点。随着社会经济的发展，广告已成为商业推广的重要媒介。至今国内外广告中都还或多或少的存在一些性别歧视现象，这表明在广告中女性身份的构建也还存在一些问题。为了更好地促进女性身份在英文广告中的构建，本文通过分析女性身份构建在英文广告中的一些问题以及存在原因，有针对性地从话语与身份的关系、权力与身份的关系和自我身份意识三个方面提出构建策略。希望通过本次研究启发人们对当今存在于广告中关于性别歧视问题的思考，更好地促进女性社会地位的提高和两性关系的平等。虽然国内外已有大量关于女性身份及身份建构的研究，但在英文广告领域的相关研究较少，主要集中在文学作品和影视作品中。本文主要聚焦于英文广告的语域中进行案例分析，探析如何构建广告中的女性身份。

关键词：女性身份，建构，英文广告

Abstract

The construction of female identity has been a hot topic among scholars at home and abroad. With the development of social economy, advertisement has become an important medium for commercial promotion. So far, there are more or less gender discrimination phenomena in domestic and foreign advertisements, which shows that there are still some problems in the construction of female identity in advertisements. In order to better promote the construction of female identity in English advertising, this paper analyzes some problems and reasons for the construction of female identity in English advertisements, and puts forward the construction strategies from three aspects of the relationship between discourse and identity, the relationship between power and identity and self-identity consciousness. It is hoped that this study will inspire people to think about the problem of gender discrimination in advertisements today, and better promote the improvement of women’s status in society and equality in gender relations. Although there have been a lot of studies on female identity and identity construction at home and abroad, there are few related studies in the field of English advertisements, mainly in literary works, films and television works. This paper mainly focuses on the register of English advertisements and conducts case studies, and explores how to construct the female identity in the advertisements.

Key Words: Female identity; construction; English advertisements

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Studies of Female Identity 3

2.1 Previous Studies of Identity 3

2.2 Previous Studies of Feminism about Female Identity 4

3 Problems amp; Difficulties in Construction of Female Identity in English Advertisements 6

3.1 Problems 6

3.2 Difficulties 7

4 Construction Strategies of Female Identity in English Advertisements 9

4.1 Construction of Discourse Identity 9

4.2 Construction of Power Identity 11

4.3 Improvement of Self-identity Consciousness 13

5 Conclusion 15

References 17

Acknowledgements 19

Analysis of Female Identity Construction in English Advertisements

1 Introduction

For a long time, women are considered to be the followers in gender relationships, which shows that their gender identities are stereotyped and stereotypically reflects the gender relation between males and females. Unavoidably, this kind of phenomenon has been embodied in language. In linguistic aspect, language is bias-based and women suffer from language sexism. In the advertisement dominated by the patriarchal culture, women are only simple aesthetic objects that exist in order to meet the aesthetic needs of men, and they are unable to express their charm and characteristics freely. In these advertising words full of gender differences, the women lost the independent personality and independent existence value, how to please men has become the embodiment of their value. These advertising words reflect the existing value concept of society to a certain extent and the long-standing sexism in the society. In addition, for the traditional patriarchal culture, these advertising words have also played a role in spreading, accumulating and consolidating. That is not conducive to the realization of equality between men and women.

Valuable advertisements play an important role in shaping people’s ideas. The values embodied and advocated in advertisements can have a positive or negative impact on social members. The construction of female identity in English advertisements is not only practical for women’s status but also for those who don’t have the consciousness of noticing the female identity hidden in advertisements. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to propose construction strategies of female identity in in English advertisements by investigating how the female identity in English advertisements represents ideas about female in English advertisements from various aspects and analyzing the classification and difficulties in constructing female identity. The significance of this paper can be summarized as follows: firstly, it may help to eliminate the opposition and hierarchical order of gender in English advertisements, and makes contribution to the construction of female identity in mass media. Secondly, the paper is conducive to proposing new advertising strategies to uncover the hidden discrimination and to combat suppression of women. Information of hidden social norms behind advertisements can also be obtained to see whether there are improvements of women’s status in modern society.

The paper consists of five parts. The first part serves as the introduction to this study and presents the background, the purpose and significance of the study. The second part states the status quo of female identity in advertisements and relative studies about female identity. The third part describes the classification and presents the difficulties in constructing female identity. The fourth part of this paper proposes some construction strategies of female identity in English advertisements. The fifth part summarizes the main results of this paper, presents the contributions and limitation of this paper, and makes some suggestions for society to construct gender identity in mass media.

2 Studies of Female Identity

The word “Identity” comes from the Latin word “Idem”, and it answers the question of “Who am I”. It is significant for us to understand the relationship between individuals and society. This part introduces some studies on identity and how female identity presents in advertisements.

2.1 Previous Studies of Identity

Identity plays an important role in people’s life, and the process of identity construction has been widely concerned by more and more scholars of humanities and social sciences. The studies of identity involve different disciplines such as philosophy, communication, sociology, social psychology and so on. The study of identity construction is a transdisciplinary issue. There exist different opinions about definitions, study methods and study angels of identity.

From the perspective of sociolinguistics, Jenkins (1996) regards identity as the way in which different individuals and groups are distinguished in social relations, and identity systematically establishes the connections and differences between individuals and individuals, groups and groups, as well as between individuals and groups. However, Eckert (2000) considers identity as a dynamic process, and she insists that an individual’s position in the relationship with others, the individual’s perception to the outside world, and the individual’s understanding of the self-value are essential parts of individual’s experience. They are constructed in the cooperation with others. The activities that a person engages in in society are continuous process of identity construction, and the individual identity is not constructed in a vacuum, but is constructed together with the identity of the group.

The construction of identity has a solid philosophical and sociolinguistic basis. In the 1980s, the rise of Constructivism promotes the formation of Social Constructivism. The theory of Social Constructivism advocates that identity is a different role and image that the individual constructs dynamically and actively in the process of social practice and social communication. In this process, language plays an important role. It can not only reflect the identity of different individuals, but also play a constructive role in the identity of individuals. All in all, the theorists of Social Construction discuss the essence of language and the role of power, promote critical consciousness and self-identity consciousness, and provide philosophical basis for the study of identity construction. From the perspective of sociolinguistics, identity is a kind of sudden construction, and it is the result of the rhetoric context and interpretation process. In that process, the communication is driven by context, and the discourse selection is derived from the whole identity and subsidiary resources of the social composition, and these symbolic resources are transformed into the discourse interpretation of others. Therefore, identity construction is considered as a continuous process that can be formed through daily social communication. Social linguists emphasize identity as the result of language exchange and social communication.

2.2 Previous Studies of Feminism about Female Identity

At first, feminism appears as the women’s liberation movement in France in the late 19th century, and later becomes popular in countries such as Britain and the United States and other countries. Feminism is a complex set of ideologies and theories, and its core seeks to achieve equal social, political, and economic rights for women and men. Feminism refers to the principle that women should have equal rights with men in politics, economy and society. This includes two levels of meaning: first, feminists should recognize the unequal and unjust treatment of women in society and the resulting helplessness and disadvantage, the fundamental purpose of which is to strive to eliminate such inequalities, and women should take actions in politics. Second, feminism affirms women’s own values and perceptions, affirms the dignity of women as human beings and their contribution to culture (Cott, 1987).