Year 12 homework - Representation. Week 1 after half-term

Due to be handed in Thursday 12th November

The representation of gender in the media

The text on your handout (I can't reproduce it here - if you've lost it you'll have to borrow someone's or find me) is an opinion piece by Barbara Ellen writing in The Observer. It was written in response to a large number of articles in newspapers, magazines and on the internet criticising a well-known film actress for appearing to have used artificial means to rejuvenate her face and skin.

Below the task is a commentary about how this piece represents her. This is an example of how to write about representation, using linguistic knowledge. I do not expect you to write in this amount of detail… yet!

Your Task:

1. Read the article about Nicole Kidman and the analysis of how she is represented.

2. I would like you think about how women and / or men are represented by the media.

Find two pieces of media (advert, article, transcript of a TV ad…) that represent either women or men in either a positive or a negative way. You may find one  about men and the other about women, or both about women but one positive and one negative etc

Bring them to the lesson and be prepared to share some of the ways in which you think the language creates those representations.  I don’t expect you to have done an analysis like the example, but I expect to see copies of the texts, with parts underlined. Try to label those parts with linguistic features. Write a brief comment about how this language is creating a representation.

 * You may wish to have a go at writing up a couple of features into a paragraph, in a similar way to the example