Identify which visual signifiers distinguish an upmarket magazine from a downmarket one, focusing either on magazines for
males or on those for females.
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:
Remember that you are looking either at men's magazines
or at women's magazines - not both.
Compare/contrast several issues of two different magazines for which you can obtain demographic
readership data from the
National Readership Survey ('Latest Topline Readership', under 'General Magazines' or 'Women's Magazines').
If a magazine you had intended to study is not listed in the NRS, don't use it.
The age-groups need to be as similar as possible.
Look for a significant difference between the magazines in the percentage of readers from ABC1 compared to those
from C2DE. For each group you will need to calculate the percentage of the total readership
using the raw figures from the NRS (note that these are in thousands).
Do not limit yourself to the front covers, though these are important.
What differences do you notice between the topics covered (and how they are covered), and the products
advertised (and how they are advertised)? Are there any noticeable differences in the layout and use of
space, or in the typography or use of colour? Are there any differences in the styles of
photography? Are there differences in the ways in which men and women are depicted?
If you (or friends) happen to have a collection of
relevant magazines, you may include some reference to patterns over time. Does this reveal a
'formula' for the form and content of a particular magazine? What embedded assumptions do there seem to be about the
'ideal readers' of each of the magazines? What kinds of cultural tastes are they expected to have? Feel free to discuss your
observations with friends who read the same magazines.
In your analysis of examples you are expected to demonstrate your
understanding of relevant semiotic concepts. These are likely to include codes, markedness and the commutation test.
For instance, you may comment on what effect it might have if a particular element of one magazine's cover were to
appear on the other one (this is a commutation test): where such substitutions feel most strange you have touched on
a key signifier.
Do not waste space explaining concepts with which the reader can be expected to be familiar.
What do the contrasts you have noted reveal about the construction of social class?
Where possible, include reproductions of at least the covers as appendices to your text.
You may also find it helpful to make some of your points by including within the main text
cropped close-ups of different aspects. Remember that contrasting
specific pairs of images can help you to notice features.
Remember to include a list labelled either Figures or Image sources after your
list of References.
Some suggested reading
- Argyle, Michael (1994)
The Psychology of Social Class. London: Routledge
- 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]
- Banks, Marcus (2001)
Visual Methods in Social Research. London: Sage
- 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 [caution - labels photographic media as primarily iconic rather than primarily indexical]
- Chandler, Daniel (1998): 'Notes on "the Gaze"'. [WWW document] URL
http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/media/Documents/gaze/gaze.html
- Chandler, Daniel (2007)
Semiotics: The Basics (2nd Edn.). London: Routledge
- Chandler, Daniel and Rod Munday (2011)
Dictionary of Media and Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press
- Chaplin, Elizabeth (1994)
Sociology and Visual Representation. 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
- Danesi, Marcel (2002)
Understanding Media Semiotics. London: Arnold [caution - labels photographic media as primarily iconic rather than primarily indexical]
- Dines, Gail Jean M. Humez (Eds) (2011)
Gender, Race and Class in Media: A Critical Reader (3rd edn). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
- Dyer, Gillian (1982)
Advertising as Communication. London:
Routledge [caution - labels photographic media as primarily iconic rather than primarily indexical]
- 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
- Fowles, Jib (1996)
Advertising and Popular Culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
- Fox, Kate (2004)
Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour. London: Hodder & Stoughton
- Fussell, Paul (1984)
Caste Marks: Style and Status in the USA. London: Heinemann
- Gamman, Lorraine & Margaret Marshment (Eds.) (1987)
The Female Gaze: Women as Viewers of Popular Culture. London: Women's Press
- Goldman, Robert (1992)
Reading Ads Socially. London: Routledge
- Hadfield, Greg & Mark Skipworth (1994)
Class: Where Do You Stand?. London: Bloomsbury
- Hall, Stuart (Ed) (1997)
Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage.
- 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
- 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
- Lamont, Michèle & Marcel Fournier (Eds) (1992)
Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
- 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
- Moss, Gloria (2009)
Gender, Design and Marketing: How Gender Drives Our Perception of Design and Marketing.
Aldershot: Gower.
- Nixon, Sean (1996)
Hard Looks: Masculinities, Spectatorship and Contemporary Consumption.
New York: St Martin's Press
- O'Barr, William M. (1994)
Culture and the Ad: Exploring Otherness in the World of Advertising. Boulder, CO: Westview Press
- Pronger, Brian (1990)
The Arena of Masculinity. London: GMP
- Prosser, Jon (Ed) (1998)
Image-Based Research: A Sourcebook for Qualitative Researchers. London: Routledge
- 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
- Schmitt, Bernd & Alex Simonson (1997)
Marketing Aesthetics: The Strategic Management of Brands, Identity, and Image. New York: Free Press
- Schroeder, Jonathan E. (2002)
Visual Consumption. London: Routledge
- Spencer, Stephen (2011)
Visual Research Methods in the Social Sciences: Awakening Visions. London: Routledge
- Storry, Mike & Peter Childs (Eds) (1997)
British Cultural Identities. London: Routledge
- Tungate, Mark (2008)
Branded Male: Marketing to Men. London: Kogan Page
- Tungate, Mark (2011)
Branded Beauty: How Marketing Changed the Way We Look. London: Kogan Page
- van Leeuwen, Theo (2004)
Introducing Social Semiotics. London: Routledge
Note: Treat with extreme caution sources labelled with this symbol!