Gender, sexual and racial stereotypes in beer advertisements: a critical discourse analysis

Nowadays we live in a world where advertising is an integral part of our lives: indeed, it has become the main communication tool with the public for every company. Using advertising, it is possible to reach people all over the world and be able to turn them into costumers. As a consequence of this strength, the aim of my dissertation is to analyse the language of advertising related to a specific product, the beer. I will investigate different communication registers, namely written and spoken; a variety of semiotic resources, i.e. verbal, non-verbal; and different supports, such as the Internet, newspapers and posters. In particular, I will try to concentrate on how advertisements can disseminate discriminatory discourses related to issues of gender, race and sexuality. To this goal, I will examine the features of language in order to foreground the importance of words in social issues. The reason for analysing the language of advertising is also related to media education: people should become aware of the hidden contents and intentions that corporations use in their campaigns. In first chapter, I will introduce the concept of discourse analysis: in particular, I will focus on those practices which are useful to have a point of view on social issues. In addition, I will focus on critical discourse analysis, its origins, strategies and strengths, in order to identify useful analytical tools for the analysis of a selection of advertisements. The second chapter will provide an overview of the world of advertising, arguing that it can represent complex relations between texts and the people who make and experience it. Subsequently, I will provide some statistical data about the beer market and its consumption in the English-speaking world. Then, I will provide a description of those concepts of gender, race and sexual stereotypes I will encounter through my analysis. In the third chapter, I will focus on a small corpus of advertisements composed of 15 commercials within the brewery industry, particularly ads of beers in the English-speaking world. The reason for this topic choice is mostly due to the fact that beer represents one of the biggest global consumption in the world.