Analyse the connotations of gaze, posture and expression in magazine front covers.
For general guidance about what is expected in your essays for this module,
see the
general criteria.
Please remember to avoid footnotes and to include an
alphabetical list of 'References' which have been cited in the text
(not a Bibliography of anything you have read for the essay). This list should include
author's names, date, book titles (in italics), place of publication and publisher.
Within the text always cite author's surname, date and page number. Double-space your
text and number your pages. For more detailed notes on writing essays in this
department, click
here.
Advice for this particular assignment:
Focus on at least 6 magazine front covers for this assignment, comparing and contrasting them.
It might be useful to compare some aimed at women with some aimed at men, or perhaps those targeting
younger vs. older age-groups, or those which are more upmarket with those which are more downmarket.
Displaying images side by side in your assignment can be a very useful strategy to focus attention.
Back up every claim with the strongest evidence you can find.
Verify your own inferences against the reactions of other readers. For basic readership
demographics, the most accessible source for UK publications is the
National Readership Survey (NRS) (see 'Top line readership' section). Remember that the models
on magazine front covers pose: their postures are not those of everyday life which 'give off'
largely unconscious meanings, but are chosen to connote particular relationships with the target readers.
Compare the different implied relationships represented on the covers of magazines with contrasting
readerships.
Note also that this is an assignment for which the
inclusion of relevant pictorial illustrations is essential. These should
be inserted electronically into your Word document rather than cut-and-pasted in.
You can scan such illustrations in from print sources, save them from
disk-based sources, download them from online sources (such as my Powerpoint slides) or even create them from
scratch in a graphics package. Use them to help you to make points more effectively. Label each one,
'Figure 1' etc. and add a caption.
Some suggested reading
- Argyle, Michael (1975)
Bodily Communication (2nd edn.). London: Methuen
- Argyle, Michael (1983)
The Psychology of Interpersonal Behaviour(4th edn.).
Harmondsworth: Penguin
- Anderson Digby C & Michael Mosbacher (Eds) (1997)
The British Woman Today: A Qualitative Survey of the Images in Women's Magazines.
London: Social Affairs Unit [see Redfern below for a critique]
- Beasley, Ron, Marcel Danesi & Paul Perron (2000)
Signs for Sale: An Outline of Semiotic Analysis for Advertisers and Marketers. New York: Legas
- Benwell, Bethan (Ed) (2003)
Masculinity and Men's Lifestyle Magazines.
Oxford: Blackwell
- Berger, John (1972)
Ways of Seeing. London: BBC/Harmondsworth: Penguin
- Beynon, John (2002)
Masculinities and Culture. Buckingham: Open University Press
- Bignell, Jonathan (1997)
Media Semiotics: An Introduction.
Manchester: Manchester University Press
- Chandler, Daniel (1998) 'Codes'. In Semiotics for Beginners.
[WWW document] URL
http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/media/Documents/S4B/sem08.html
- Chandler, Daniel (1998): 'Notes on "the Gaze"'. [WWW document] URL
http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/media/Documents/gaze/gaze.html [essential background reading!]
- Chandler, Daniel (2007)
Semiotics: The Basics (2nd Edn.). London: Routledge
- Cook, Guy (1992)
The Discourse of Advertising. London: Routledge
- Courtney, Alice E & Thomas W Whipple (1983)
Sex Stereotyping in Advertising. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books
- Crewe, Ben (2003)
Representing Men: Cultural Production and Producers in the Men's Magazine Market. Oxford: Berg
- Denzin, Norman K (1995)
The Cinematic Society: The Voyeur's Gaze. London: Sage
- Dyer, Gillian (1982)
Advertising as Communication. London:
Routledge
- Dyer, Richard (1992) 'Don't Look Now: The Male Pin-Up'. In
Only Entertainment. London: Routledge
- Ferguson, Marjorie (1983)
Forever Feminine: Women's Magazines and the Cult of Femininity.
London: Heinemann
- Gamman, Lorraine & Margaret Marshment (Eds.) (1987)
The Female Gaze: Women as Viewers of Popular Culture. London: Women's Press
- Hecker, Sidney & David W Stewart (Eds) (1988)
Nonverbal Communication in Advertising. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books/D C Heath
- Heller, Steven (Ed) (2000)
Sex Appeal: The Art of Allure in Graphic and Advertising Design.
New York: Allworth Press
- Henley, Nancy M (1977)
Body Politics: Power, Sex and Nonverbal Communication. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall
- Hermes, Joke (1995)
Reading Women's Magazines. Cambridge: Polity Press
- Horne, Peter & Reina Lewis (Eds) (1996)
Outlooks: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities and Visual Culture.
London: Routledge
- Jackson, Peter, Nick Stevenson & Kate Brooks (2001)
Making Sense of Men's Magazines. Cambridge: Polity
- Jhally, Sut (1990)
The Codes of Advertising. London:
Routledge
- Jones, Dylan (Ed) (1996)
Sex, Power and Travel: Ten Years of 'Arena'.
London: Virgin
- Kitch, Carolyn (2001)
The Girl on the Magazine Cover.
Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press
- Kress, Gunther & Theo Van Leeuwen (1996)
Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge
- Leiss, William, Stephen Kline & Sut Jhally (1990)
Social Communication in Advertising. London: Routledge
- McCracken, Ellen (1993)
Decoding Women's Magazines: From 'Mademoiselle' to 'Ms'. Basingstoke: Macmillan
- McRobbie, Angela (1991)
Feminism and Youth Culture: From 'Jackie' to 'Just Seventeen'.
London: Macmillan
- McRobbie, Angela (1996) 'More! New Sexualities in Girls' and Women's
Magazines'. In James Curran, David Morley & Valerie Walkerdine (Eds.)
Cultural Studies and Communications. London: Arnold, pp. 172-194
- Messaris, Paul (1997)
Visual Persuasion: The Role of Images in Advertising. Thousand Oaks: Sage
- Millum, Trevor (1975)
Images of Woman: Advertising in Women's Magazines. London: Chatto & Windus
- Mulvey, Laura (1989)
Visual and Other Pleasures. London: Macmillan
- Nelson, Audrey with Susan K Golant (2004)
You Don't Say: Navigating Nonverbal Communication Between the Sexes. New York: Prentice Hall
- Nixon, Sean (1996)
Hard Looks: Masculinities, Spectatorship and Contemporary Consumption.
New York: St Martin's Press
- Pranger, Brian (1990)
The Arena of Masculinity. London: GMP
- Redfern, Catherine (2001) 'The British Woman Today: A Qualitative Survey of the Images in Women's Magazines
[review]' . In The F-Word: Conteporary UK Feminism [WWW document] URL
http://www.thefword.org.uk/reviews/2001/06/the_british_woman_today_a_qualitative_survey_of_the_images_in_womens_magazines
- Reichert, Tom & Jacqueline Lambiase (Eds) (2003)
Sex in Advertising: Perspectives on the Erotic Appeal. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
- Sturken, Marita & Lisa Cartwright (2001)
Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture.
Oxford: Oxford University Press
Note: Treat with extreme caution sources labelled with this symbol!