Initial Ideas

My investigation is based on the representation of gender, I think Gender and the differences in male and female speech and language use is one of the more interesting parts of the course.

I have yet to decide an hypothesis but I think it will be something along the lines of the stereotype ideas of how women and men are stereotyped to think or what they are interested in and how the language portrays this. men=strong, powerful, women=health benefits, beauty.

I plan to use magazines to collect my data, either Mens Health and Womens Health (because they are from the same company and have a simalar audience, only difference is gender) or GQ and Cosmopoliton (not quite as narrow in terms of differences but could work if they have the same demographic audience), in the next couple of days I am going to look through these magazines and decide which publications I will use and then find a similar page or articule in both so I can begin colecting my data.

If i chose an article which includes attitudes towards the oppisate gender, perhaps a self-help, or love and sex article, I would be interested in how male/female view the other gender and the attitudes they have.

Gender theorists such as Lakoff, Tannen and Jespersen could apply if I used a comments/letter page etc. If not gender ideas such as gender script or default assumptions could apply in terms of the content of the data I choose.