A social Semiotic Analysis of Gender Roles in the Representation of Gender in Advertisements: Case Study of Gender Representation in Algerian TV commercials

Abstract

The present work is concerned with the gender representation in still images taken from Algerian Ads. It intended to investigate whether the representation of men and women in Algerian TV commercials reinforces the prevalent gender stereotypes in the society or attempt to alter the reality of gender roles. This research adopted Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (2006) approach to the grammar of visuals and Goffman’s (1978) theory of gender in advertisement. The combination of these two frameworks allowed us to analyze the gender representation in Algerian Ads. This study is a corpus-based study which analyses a corpus consisting of a twelve still images taken from advertisements broadcasted on different Algerian TV channels. To analyze the collected date, this research combines qualitative and quantitative analysis. The findings of the analysis revealed that the representation of gender reflects and reinforces the gender stereotypes which exist in the Algerian society.