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Part of
Discourse Studies in Public Communication
Edited by Eliecer Crespo-Fernández
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 92] 2021
► pp. 199–218

Chapter 9
A visual critical discourse analysis of women representation in Dolce & Gabbana advertising

ORCID logo | Universidad de Alicante , Spain | University of South Africa , South Africa

The role of visuals in meaning making is essential to communicate and establish a dialogue with society. The aim of this chapter is to uncover the visual discursive representation of women in a sample of advertisements from a critical discourse analysis perspective. Data was collected via the Internet from the advertisements by Dolce & Gabbana from January 2016 to December 2018. The data was quantitatively analysed following van Leeuwen’s model of social actors and Kress and van Leewen’s visual grammar within the general frame of visual critical discourse analysis. This chapter critically studies the advertisements used by Dolce & Gabbana for their products and examines whether visual choices used by the publicist to portray the woman in the corpus contribute to perpetuating gender stereotypes. The findings indicate that women are represented as stereotyped, following traditional canons of beauty and foregrounding their bodies as objects of desire.

Keywords: visual critical discourse analysis, gender studies, advertising, stereotypes
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical frameworks
  • 3.Literature review
  • 4.Data and methodology
  • 5.Analysis
    • 5.1Quantitative analysis
    • 5.2Qualitative analysis
      • 5.2.1Analysis of Text 1
      • 5.2.2Analysis of Text 2
      • 5.2.3Analysis of Text 3
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 7 April 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.92.09mar
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