‘Real men score’: masculinity in contemporary advertising discourse

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the strategies employed in the representation of masculinity in a sample of 50 advertising campaigns launched between 1999 and 2020. The chosen posters advertise products targeted at men that fit into five categories: beverages, food, daily care products, male fragrances, and clothing. Among the brands advertised are American Apparel, Clinique, Coca-Cola, Dove, Givenchy, McDonald's, and Nike. The analysis of discursive strategies is complemented by an analysis of the Corpus of Contemporary American English that investigates the most salient collocates of real man/men in US English; this search was conducted due to the frequent mention of the term real men in the slogans under investigation. The corpus analysis supports the key findings of the study by showing that language and advertising operate in a circular structure and mutually impact one another. The five major strategies identified as recurrent in the representation of masculinity include gentleman's look, gender equality and fatherhood, sex appeal, sex and dominance, and strength. The findings reveal the prevalence of stereotypical representations of masculinity that foreground sex appeal, strength, and dominance over women, and to a lesser extent, the image of the classic gentleman. The Dove Men Care Collection promotes the idea of fatherhood and gender equality, which might be considered a slight departure from the usual representations of masculinity in advertising, though it is still embedded within the dominant framework of hegemonic masculinity.

KEYWORDS:

• Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)
• corpus-assisted analysis
• femininity
• masculinity
• gender stereotypes
• print advertisement
• ‘real men’
• visual analysis

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Louise Pain, Igor Tolochin and Hannah Graf, as well as two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments on the previous versions of this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 REAL MAN is two lemmas that were used in the analysis of the COCA, the search thus included the terms real man and real men.

2 A canting posture is a pose in which the head or body is tilted or bent.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anna Islentyeva

Anna Islentyeva is a post-doctoral research associate and lecturer in linguistics in the English Department at the Universität Innsbruck, Austria. Her current research projects include representations of Britain and Europe in political and media discourses, as well as gender stereotypes in contemporary advertising.

Elisabeth Zimmermann

Elisabeth Zimmermann is in the master’s programme for teaching English and German, and in the bachelor’s programme for education sciences at the Universität Innsbruck. Her research interests include visual culture studies and critical gender research.

Nadia Schützinger

Nadia Schützinger is in the bachelor’s programme for teaching English and Art, and English and American Studies at the Universität Innsbruck. Her bachelor’s thesis ‘The Representation of Real Men in American English and Advertising Discourse’ was written under the supervision of Dr. Anna Islentyeva. Her research interests include gender studies, cultural studies and visual art.

Andrea Platzer

Andrea Platzer is in the master’s programme for teaching English and Art, and studies law at the Universität Innsbruck. Her bachelor’s thesis ‘Depictions of Masculinity and Femininity in Coca-Cola Advertisements’ was supervised by Dr. Anna Islentyeva. Her research interests lie in the field of gender and identity, which is also evidenced by her current art projects.