Cognitive Approach to the Stereotypical Placement of Women in Visual Advertising Space

This article conceptualizes the image of women in the sexist advertisements of the 1950s and 60s and in current advertising discourse by combining the research traditions of both cognitive linguistics and semiotic image analysis. The aim of the research is to try to evaluate how canonical positionings of women in the hyperreality of advertisements may slip into everyday discourse (stereotype space) and to present an interpretation of the creators’ visual lexicon. It is presumed that the traditional (formed by feminist linguists) approach to sexist advertising as an expression of an androcentric worldview in culture may be considered too subjectively critical. This study complements an interpretation of women’s social roles in advertising with cognitive linguistic insights on the subject’s (woman’s) visualisation and positioning in ad space. The article briefly overviews the feminist approach to women’s place in public discourse, and discusses the relevance of Goffman’s Gender Studies to an investigation of women’s images in advertising. The scholar’s contribution to adapting cognitive frame theory for an investigation of visuals in advertising is also discussed. The analysed ads were divided into three groups by Goffman’s classification, according to the concrete visuals used to represent women’s bodies or parts thereof: dismemberment, commodification, and subordination ritual. The classified stereotypical images of women’s bodies are discussed as visual metonymy, visual metaphor, and image schemas.

“Stereotype Threat” and Black College Students

This excerpt is taken from an article in the August 1999 Atlantic Monthly in which psychologist Claude M. Steele reports on his research into why capable black college students fail to perform as well as their white counterparts. The explanation, he discovered, has less to do with preparation or ability than with the threat of stereotypes about their capacity to succeed. In the article, “Thin Ice: ‘Stereotype Threat’ and Black College Students,” Steele, the Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences at Stanford University, outlines many phases of the research, as well as specific strategies for helping students overcome the effects of the threat of stereotype. Space permits us to include a discussion of a few phases of the research only. The complete text of the article can be found on the Web at theatlantic.com .