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Enforcing gender via directives in female adolescent magazines: a contrastive view in English and Spanish
MERCEDES DÍEZ PRADOS
Universidad de Alcalá
Abstract
Teenage magazines are discourse manifestations that can be considered sites for the construction of gender roles to naturalize certain behaviours and foster certain values, beliefs and norms of action. Thus, this type of publication can be used as a tool to enforce gender by certain discursive practices. The aim of the present study is to shed some light on how this engendering process is enforced in English and Spanish, to discover similarities or differences between the two. In order to do so, advice columns extracted from American and Spanish publications are analyzed to try to unveil the way magazine writers and young female teenagers interact. After a brief revision of previous research on teenage magazines as socialization devices, the analysis of the extracts selected is tackled. The main line of argument is that gender is enforced via directives in magazines written in both languages, particularly in the form of imperatives and fulfilling different speech acts (command, advice, suggestion, invitation, permission, prohibition and warning); as far as the type of behaviour reinforced is concerned, the values transmitted belong mainly to a traditional ideology in both cultures, although some differences are found regarding treatment of sexual desire in female adolescents, which is more naturalized in Spanish than in American magazines. All in all, magazines for female adolescents cannot be considered a stepping-stone to gender equality, since little progress has been made in the last two decades: the analysis reveals stagnation of topics and gender roles, when compared with previous studies.
Keywords: Gender and language, directive speech acts, female adolescent magazines, advice columns, persuasion.
1 Introduction
Gendered beings perform gendered actions so that new members of society learn how to do gender according to their biological sex, so as to be considered members of the club. This learning to be male or female is a process that starts with birth and goes on for life; no individual escapes from this socialization process, even if we are aware of the asymmetry that this enculturation process may impose on others or on ourselves. Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (2013: 20) claim that three principles govern gender: it is learned, collaborative and performed: “gender is not something we have, but something we do” (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 2013: 20). According to these principles, gender must be taught and is, thus, enforced, which makes engendering a collaborative process (i.e. it is a social practice, Eckert and McDonnell-Ginet 2013).
Language is one of the main instruments to enforce gender and teenage magazines (teenzines, as Currie (1999) calls them) are language manifestations that can be considered sites for the construction of gender roles to naturalize certain behaviours, among others, heterosexuality, concern over physical appearance, a quest for popularity or playing certain gender roles (for this latter issue, see, for instance, López Rodríguez (2007) or Jiménez Calderón and Sánchez Rufat (2011)). Language is both the process and the product of gendering: language reflects pre-exiting categories and, by doing so, constructs and maintains them (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 2013: 22).
Teenage magazines have been the focus of study of numerous academic publications, predominantly those written in English, and, principally the ones published in the U.S. context; there also exists research on teenage Spanish magazines (e.g. Plaza Sánchez (2005) and (2009)), but, to my knowledge, none adopts a contrastive view between the discourse used in magazines written in these two languages and published in these two countries to gain insights into their linguistic and cultural similarities and/or differences. The phenomenon of an ever-growing globalized world and the obvious influence of the American culture on the Western world favours the hypothesis that magazines for American and Spanish female adolescents will have more points in common than discrepancies. Nevertheless, a contrastive study like the present one can provide some empirical evidence on the issue.
Thus, the main purpose of the present paper is to study language as manifested in teenzines to gain access to the set of values, beliefs and norms of action being enforced in these publications; in order to do so, the language used in advice columns will be analyzed to try to unveil the way magazine writers and young female teenagers interact. The final aim of this investigation is to discover the role teenzines may play in “female teenage identity construction” (García Gómez 2010: 136) by means of the discursive devices used in them.
The research questions that guide this study are the following:
1.What issues are raised by girls1 in teenzine advice columns? How do the concerns depicted in these texts contribute to enforcing gender?
2.How is advice phrased (i.e. linguistic realizations) in English and Spanish in order to enforce given attitudes or behaviour? In what way are these linguistic devices persuasive?
In order to answer these questions and thus elaborate a discursive approach to the exploration of how gender is enforced in adolescent magazines, the linguistic realization of the exchanges in advice columns will be examined. The questions posed by the female readership will show their main concerns when facing a period of self-construction and self-identification and the answers provided by teenzine writers will most surely be affected by their perception and interpretation of their readers’ attributed gendered roles. According to Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (2013: 9), studies show that male and female children are interpreted and interacted with differently by adults. Extrapolating this idea to magazine writers, they must be influenced by their perceptions and beliefs when they address a teenage female readership. Thus, by examining the messages addressed to female teenagers and the linguistic strategies used for it, it will become clear the way female gender is interpreted in teenzines for girls and how this interpretation may condition the construction of a gendered identity in a young and easily-influenced female readership (Currie 1999, Saz Marín 2007).
After a brief revision of studies dealing with the role magazines for adolescent girls play in their socialization process, the empirical study carried out to tackle the issue of enforcing gender in teenzines is presented: the theoretical framework used in the analysis, the methods for data collection, the results gathered from the analysis, together with an interpretation of those results. Finally the concluding section recalls the main aims for the present study and the results obtained.
2 Teenzines as socialization devices within a community of practice
Teenzines can be considered a linguistic social practice (i.e. discursive manifestation) of a community of practice (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992) conformed by two hierarchically organized groups of members: magazine writers (constrained themselves by given editorial policies) and female adolescent readers. The relationship between the groups is asymmetrical, because the latter (i.e. female adolescents) resorts to the former (i.e. magazines writers) in order to receive orientation to participate in the world around them (Eckert 2006: 1). The community of practice is a “prime locus” of the process of identity and linguistic construction where certain discursive conventions take place (Eckert 2006: 4), and teenzines represent one of those discourses.
A large body of literature on teenzines has been carried out within the discipline of sociology (Pierce (1990), Currie (1999, 2001), Evans et al. (1991), Jackson (2005), Joshy (2012), among others), since female adolescent magazines are considered socialization devices. Peirce (1990: 492) examines the “socialization messages” teenage girls receive from Seventeen, number one American magazine for female adolescents, from 1961 to 1985, and concludes that, although the feminist movement in 1972 had an effect on the content of issues around that period (e.g. promoting self-development), the magazine mainly reinforces traditional ideologies (Pierce 1990: 498-499). Traditional roles stress “looking good, finding a man, and taking care of home and children [whereas] (…) feminist messages emphasize taking care of oneself, being independent, and not relying on a man for fulfilment or identity” (Pierce 1990: 497). According to Pierce (1990: 499), magazines for female adolescents can be “a powerful reinforcer of the traditional ideology of womanhood”.
In the same line of argument, Currie (1999: 141) claims that “girls give the realities which they identify in texts ontological status: “realistic” messages offered by the text are seen to convey truth about the social world”. If this is so, the messages transmitted in teenzines can wield a significant influence on their readership since young readers construct reality as they read. One vital issue to consider is what types of role models are being displayed in teenage magazines: are the values of education, hard work, perseverance and discipline being promoted? Or, on the contrary, are rapid and easy success and popularity prioritized? Teenzines, like the media in general, present celebrities whose lifestyle is not generally worthy of imitation as idols (García Gómez 2010: 149), which makes our youngsters to try to emulate them (Plaza Sánchez 2009: 133). This absence of constructive role models for women-to-be in teenage magazines is also highlighted in Currie’s (1999: 44) sociological study.
In a survey as early as 1889, Bok observed that magazines have historically fulfilled the traditional mothers’ role of confidante (in Currie 1999: 41); in fact, most teenzines include advice sections, which perform this role. Eckert (2006: 364) points out that, as children approach adolescence, much of the authority exerted on them by adults (mostly parents and teachers) is replaced by “the age cohort”; by extrapolation, magazine writers seem to assume, in part, parents’ advisory role, and, thus, their messages become of utmost importance. But what is true is that adolescent readers seem to willingly accept this kind of authority from magazine writers, while tending to reject parents’ and teachers’ control. What, then, makes adolescents not to feel controlled or bossed around by magazine publishers as they do when parents or teachers try to impose their rules or principles? According to Currie (1999: 41), girls’ magazines, from their inception, adopted a personal form of address, since textual messages targeted the intimacy of readers’ lives. The present study argues that, although power exerted via the directive function is pervasive in teenzines’ discourse, the linguistic realization of the speech acts that fulfil this function is redressed with in-group markers, which can be considered a form of positive politeness strategy; thus, advice writers adopt a friendly tone that helps them gain the reader’s trust, becoming her confidantes.
Teenzines are almost exclusively read by girls, regardless of their cultural background (Currie 1999, Plaza Sánchez 2009). This is demonstrated in the amount of magazines for girls published, as opposed to those directed to boys, as pointed out in a report published in 2004 (Tweens, Teens, and Magazines) by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit American foundation. This study mentions the difference in themes addressed in magazines for girls and for boys: beauty, cosmetics, people, and relationships in female magazines versus electronic gaming, sports, music, cars and other hobbies for boys, assertions which are in line with other studies. For instance, Signorelli (1997: 28) claims that the articles she studied (a total of 378 in four issues of the four leading teen girl magazines, Sassy, Teen, YM and Seventeen) “typically focused on gender-stereotyped topics”. Curiously enough, themes in girls’ magazines do not differ from those found in magazines for female adults and, likewise, perpetuate traditional roles (Cabellos Castilla and Díez Prados 2000).
The themes in teenzines may be chosen by editors according to (presupposed) girls’ and boys’ interests, but, if that dichotomy in topics is cemented, the social distance between the sexes is also encouraged, which, in turn, is an obvious manifestation of gender enforcement. Why couldn’t teenzines for girls include articles on electronic games, or on different sources of entertainment, such as in boys’ magazines? Aren’t girls interested in those free-time activities? And, why not dealing with personal relations and physical appearance in magazines for boys? Wouldn’t that help overcome the stereotype that men don’t cry and are not concerned with their looks? Media would certainly be “the avantgarde of cultural and social change” (Kruse, Weimer and Wagner 1988: 261) if they contributed to the achievement, once and for all, of emancipated women and new men by promoting a reconciliation of topics and, consequently, interests, irrespective of sex. As García Gómez (2006) points out, gender stereotypes still play a crucial role in people’s lives, and being aware of the different roles men and women are assigned can be a stepping-stone to avoid the recurrence of inflexible traditional male or female behavioural patterns. As Eckert and McConell-Ginet (2013: 9) assert: “With differential treatment, boys and girls do learn to be [emphasis in the original] different”.
All in all, the aforementioned studies on the topic seem to obtain the same results: girls’ magazines hold a stagnant ideological stance, since they defend traditional sexist roles. Likewise, García Gómez (2009: 627), in his study on the construction of identity by Spanish and British teenagers in weblog writing, observed that bloggers use discursive strategies that present them as “subservient to or subsumed into the loved one when romance is blossoming”; contrariwise, when romance fails, female bloggers represent the self as powerfully rejecting their ex-boyfriends by the use of discursive strategies that remind stereotypical patterns of male language use (i.e. insults, taboos, obscene metaphors). Therefore, when in love, girls seem to adopt a submissive role towards their lovers, but react with “androgynous behaviour patterns” (García Gómez 2009: 631) when they feel rejected by their couples. However, this masculinization of girls’ reactions does not seem a step in the right direction for gender equality, but an attempt by women to switch roles with men.
3 Theoretical framework
Building upon the sociological studies aforementioned, particularly the work carried out by Currie (1999, 2001) and developing her argument that “the textual format itself facilitates the acceptance of the ‘adolescence’ constructed on magazine pages” (Currie 2001: 265), I argue that gender is enforced via directives in magazines written in English and Spanish. My intention is to develop a discursive approach to the study of how linguistic form may facilitate assimilation and acceptance of advice by female adolescents in a very vulnerable period of their lives in which they are forming their identities and are searching for their self-esteem (Saz Marín 2007: 40).
Since the main function of advice columns is to ask for and provide guidelines for a form of behaviour, these sections in magazines abound in directives, which can be defined as speech acts that speakers use to get something done by someone else: “In using a directive, the speaker attempts to make the world fit the words (via the hearer)” (Yule 1996: 54). According to Tsui (1994: 116), directives are discourse acts that expect a non-verbal action from the addressee, not giving him/her the possibility of non-fulfilment. This function can be verbalized in different ways, depending on the degree of directness: whereas the most linguistically unmarked realization of the directive function is the imperative, they can be expressed via declarative and interrogative structures, which make the realization of the function more indirect (i.e. indirect speech act) and, thus, more polite.
In politeness terms, directives are face threatening acts (Brown and Levinson 1987), since they imply an imposition by the addresser on the addressee, and, consequently, it is more socially acceptable to avoid direct imposition via a direct request (i.e. using the imperative). Choosing a more indirect way to impose something on somebody implies less risk of refusal or causing offence (Yule 1996: 57). On the other hand, the threat of the imposition will vary depending on the relationship among the participants in the interaction (their degree of friendliness) and the range of the imposition itself (whether it implies a great cost for the addressee or not). The more social distance between the speakers and the heavier the imposition, the more politeness devices should be used to utter socially accepted directives. If the degree of friendliness among the participants is high, the use of politeness devices is reduced, and more direct speech acts are acceptable. Furthermore, not all directives are equally threatening for the addressee, since some of them (e.g. suggestion, advice or invitation) are done for his/her own sake.
In fact, Tsui (1994: 119) distinguishes between two types of directives: those which demand the addressee to perform an action for the speaker’s benefit, which she calls mandatives, and those which advocate an action to be performed by the addressee for his/her own benefit, called advisives. Tsui (1994: 127-132) further subdivides mandatives into instructions and threats. Instructions demand an action complied by the addressee for the addresser’s own benefit; besides, the addresser should be a person who has the right or is sure of getting the addressee to comply. Threats, apart from not being beneficial for the speaker, explicitly state that an undesirable consequence will be brought about by the addresser if the addressee does not comply with the requested action. Advisives are also subclassified into two types (Tsui 1994: 120): advice and warnings. The former (i.e. advice) highlights the desirable consequences of complying whereas the latter (i.e. warnings) the undesirable ones of not complying.
4 Data Collection and Methodology
In order to explore how gender is enforced via directives in teenzines, I offer a “close reading” (Currie 2001: 267) of 25 advice texts (13 in Spanish and 12 in English);2 attested examples taken from a corpus of teenzines written in English and Spanish were analysed (see Table 1). The texts for analysis were chosen randomly among a number of issues at my disposal. Firstly, the Spanish publications were selected (both of them published in 2008), which contained 13 enquiries in total (5 in one magazine and 8 in the other). Then, an equivalent number of cases were taken from three American magazines (12 in total, extracted from three magazines which had been accessed on line in 2009), taking also all the enquiries on the advice pages consulted. As for the magazines written in Spanish, the two magazines selected were Bravo and Super Pop (both published in paper format); as for the magazines written in English, texts were extracted from the American magazines Jellybean Magazine, Girls’ Life Magazine and Latinitas (all of them in their on-line version). The reason for choosing paper or on-line format was strictly one of availability and the fact that the Spanish ones were consulted in print whereas the American ones were accessed via Internet did not alter the question-and-answer pattern, typical of these publications (Currie 2001), which was the focus of my study.
The sections selected for analysis were, in all of them, advice columns: “Desahógate” [Pour your heart out] (in Bravo), “Pregunta lo que quieras” [Ask whatever you want] (in Super Pop), “Advice” (in Jellybean Magazine), “Dear Carol” (in Girls’ Life), and “Q and A” (in Latinitas).The reasons for choosing advice columns of all sections included in these magazines were two: On the one hand, they are one of the favourite sections among adolescents (Currie 1999: 20), which makes them more prone to be read and, hence, potentially exert a greater influence on the readership. On the other hand, since the main purpose of this section is to give advice, it seemed the most suitable to analyze how gender was enforced in female adolescent magazines.
5 Teenzines under analysis
In what follows, I examine advice-columns within the conversational framework of the adjacency pair (Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson 1974), due to their question-and-answer pattern. In the first place, I take a close look at the issues raised in the first pair-parts of the adjacency pairs (i.e. questions), as a reflex of both female adolescents’ concerns and teenzine writers’ enforcement of a given gendered identity. Secondly, I examine the linguistic manifestations (i.e. form) chosen by magazine writers to construct their advice (i.e. function) in response to the enquiries posed by (real or fictional) female adolescents. Finally, I argue that magazine writers get close to their readers by using features proper of adolescent language, in order to gain their confidence and be trusted, while, at the same time mitigating the face-threatening act of enforcement by redressing directives with positive politeness strategies (Brown and Levinson 1987).
5.1. ADVICE COLUMNS AS ADJACENCY PAIRS
Teenzines are divided into sections that respond to rhetorical conventions associated with this genre. One of these sections is advice columns, which are interactions that can be equated with what Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974) termed question-answer adjacency pairs. According to Currie, “this format invites readers to identify with textual messages through membership in the world of teenage girls” (1999: 203), because the reader is made to believe that her everyday problems are only logical. According to Currie (1999: 203), the solutions provided, which are frequently framed as medical or scientific advice, promote a male point of view, reassuring the readers that editorial solutions will receive male approval in a patriarchal society. Since readers demand from the writer some advice on a form of behaviour, this format is prone to fulfilling the directive function.
5.1.1. Questions (1st pair-parts): female adolescents’ concerns
This section deals with the questions or enquiries posed by adolescents; as such, their utterances constitute the 1st part-part of the adjacency pair and, from an ideological point of view, they are less powerful than their corresponding 2nd pair-parts: enquiring is a recognition of a lack of knowledge from the utterer that requests (wise) advice from an authorial source. Table 1 gathers all enquiries taken from American and Spanish magazines. All magazines, except for Latinitas entitled each enquiry with a question or a statement that raised the issue on which advice was sought; in the case of Latinitas, enquiries were not entitled but it were headed as Q (for “question”) and all enquirers posed their questions with the formulaic convention “Dear Latinitas:”, thus, an extract from the enquiry is included in the table to illustrate what topic was dealt with.
As can be seen in Table 1, all the issues raised in the advice texts examined deal with the personal domain, regardless of the language they are written in. Considering the magazines chosen are illustrations for this type of genre and taking the themes dealt with as a snapshot of female teenage concerns, we can claim that the problem which overwhelmingly worries them is their romantic relationships (3S, 7S, 13S and 2E, 3E, 4E, 9E). Furthermore, the only type of romantic relation tackled in magazines written in both languages is that of heterosexual love. Another topic that is represented in both languages but with different relative weights is family relations (4S and 4E, 6E, 7E), which is more much more prominent in English. “School achievement” (11S and 12E) and “sexual harassment” (S5 and 8E) are equally dealt with in both languages and the rest of the topics are only addressed in one language: relations with friends (10E), disruptive behaviour of an acquaintance (5E) and racism (1E) are only tackled in American magazines, whereas physical appearance (1S), the female body (2S), idols (6S, 9S and 12S) and sex (8S and 10S) are just found in the Spanish publications. Not coincidental topics may be due to their different cultural backgrounds; the Spanish magazines studied address some of the superficial issues found in other studies more than the American ones: the former includes mentions to beauty and the female body, whereas the latter addresses moral-ethical principles like ideology, proper behaviour and empathy.
Despite the discrepancies, themes in general are fairly coincidental with those found in other similar studies aforementioned (e.g. Signorelly 1997, Currie 1999, 2001 or the one by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation 2004, Evans et al. 1991): relationships, people and beauty. According to Currie (2001: 264) the three main topics she found (i.e. “getting boyfriends”, “looking good” and “caring for their female bodies”) constitute “the embodiment” of adolescent femininity. Hence, the Spanish magazines studied fit this traditional pattern more closely.
Magazine editors, when choosing the issues to deal with in questions for the advice column, impose on readers what concerns to focus on, and the same time, presuppose those concerns will be, to a certain extent, shared by their readership (if not, why choosing those issues and not others?). Consequently, readers who do not feel identified with the problems dealt with are somehow invited to feel marginalized, alien to that way of feeling. Undoubtedly, editors’ selection of topics should depict what they believe to be the adolescents’ main concerns in order to attract readership and fulfil their commercial goals. This selection is, thus, the result of taken-for-granted gender preferences; as a consequence, when dealing with traditional topics (i.e. heterosexual love, beauty, personal relations), teenzines are enforcing gender by perpetuating traditional female roles. That heterosexual love is the main issue addressed in advice column is not a novelty, since many studies support this result (Currie (1999), (2001), Jackson (2005), among others).
A related topic that seems to receive different treatments depending on the culture is sex. While one the Spanish magazines selected, Super Pop, includes two enquiries dealing with sex (8S and 10S) and provides answers which denote a tolerant attitude towards this issue, some American magazines tend to avoid it: “the social nature of adolescent problems surrounding sexuality is avoided” (Currie 2001: 272). Thus, whereas sex may be a ‘naturalized’ concern for female adolescents in the Spanish culture, it may not be the case in other cultures, adopting a more conservative stance. In fact, one of the cases in Super Pop deals with the correct use of a contraceptive method to avoid unwanted pregnancy (i.e. “Preservativos fiables”), contrary to what seems to happen in American teenzines: “Also conspicuously absent is the reassurance that the problem of unwanted pregnancy is shared by others, and that questions about birth control and contraception are ‘common’” (Currie 2001: 273-274), despite the fact that female adolescents turn to teen magazines for information about sex (Medley-Rath 2007: 25). Can we conclude that sexual desire in female adolescents is naturalized in the Spanish culture? Two isolated examples cannot be extrapolated to make such generalization, but I dare say the open treatment given to the topic of sex in the Spanish magazine Super Pop is an index of equalization of women in a domain that was before exclusively naturalized for men, as Currie (2001: 274) states.
On the other hand, there are certain topics, which may be considered relevant for teenager’s education and general formation, that are absent in these publications, such as discussion of political issues, personal development through intellectual pursuits, sports, or women’s independent professional development. In fact, an advice column in a different section of Girls’ Life called “Best of: Advice” addresses the issue of getting a job (“Snag that job: Dos and Don’ts”), but the sort of advice provided exclusively focuses on superficial, or even frivolous, issues, such as physical appearance (“look cute when you fill your application”), the body language the applicant should use when talking with the potential employer (“Don’t look at the floor when you’re talking”), even if it is on the phone (“Smile big on the phone when you’re talking to your future boss”), or the external support the applicant may have (“Bring phone numbers of people you know who can give you a good reference”). As can be observed, there is no promotion of the intellectual or professional assets needed for a given job. That way of addressing this issue favours a sexist view of the employee, who has to gain a job mainly by her physical appearance, rather than thanks to her professional qualifications.
In the following section, the second part of the adjacency pairs, the writers’ answers to girls’ enquiries, is analysed in order to observe the linguistic devices used together with their pragmatic meaning.
5.1.2. Answers (2nd pair-parts): the use of directives
In what follows the linguistic coding in which magazine writers construct their advice is analyzed (i.e. how they phrase their directives). Table 2 displays the different types of directives found in each of the magazines studied, both in English and in Spanish. The first column displays the linguistic forms and the second one provides a gloss of the message content (i.e. what form of behaviour was suggested). This latter is a gloss of the message being sent, rather than the actual words, in order to reveal generalizations among answers regarding the type of advice provided.
As far as form is concerned, Table 2 shows that imperatives are present in all publications. It is, in fact, the most prevalent form, with no reddressive action, what Brown and Levinson (1987) term bald-on-record. However, taking into consideration that the advice provided has been requested by the reader herself, the degree of imposition of the directive is low. Furthermore, imperatives do not seem to be mandatives (Tsui 1994), since they actually function as advice given for the reader’s own sake; that is, they are, in Tsui’s (1994) terms, advisives. Despite this, directives are phrased at times with other expressions which do contain mitigating devices. In Spanish, a confirming question tag is used at the end of an imperative sentence to soften the degree of imposition of an example of prohibition: “Nada de ponerse a mirar la tele y eso, ¿eh?” [No TV watching and things like that, OK?]. On the other hand, when unsure of the advice provided, some softening devices are used in several examples in English: “The one thing we can probably deduce with some certainty is that this guy did like you, at least for a while” or “Maybe he found a new girl to crash on … or he could even have a girlfriend now”.
When having a closer look at directives, it can be observed that they actually fulfil different sub-functions depending on their degree of imposition. Here are some examples from English and Spanish, classified according to their sub-function; the structure used to phrase de directive is also mentioned in square brackets:
a) Commanding. When contrasting both languages in the examples below, it can be observed that, in the case of commanding, both English and Spanish use imperatives, but neither of them sounds threatening, since the actions commanded are beneficial for the reader:
(1) “Habla con un adulto y explícale la situación” (Speak with an adult and explain the situation to him/her, Bravo) [Imperatives]. (2) “Take your time, really get to know him well, and push yourself to keep things innocent until you feel that you no longer can” (Jellybean) [Imperatives].
b) Advising. Advising is very similar to commanding (at times, difficult to distinguish). The use of imperatives is seen in both English and Spanish and the action benefits the addressee (it may actually be interpreted as an emergency to help her, as exclamation marks seem to indicate in Spanish):
(3) “¡Rodéate de gente que realmente te quiera!” (Surround yourself with people who truly love you, Bravo) [Imperative]. (4) “So my advice to you is, don’t move past friends with this guy if it feels like rushing” (Jellybean) [Imperative + conditional clause]
Furthermore, there are certain social circumstances where using a direct command is considered appropriate among social equals (Yule 1996: 64). As I will argue in the following section, the discourse that writers use in teenzines establishes a good rapport with their readers, which makes them, apparently, equals. And I say ‘apparently’ because they are not actually so, since the writer, by suggesting the form of action, is actually the one in power, even if not felt as such by the reader. Even in the case of Latinitas, where readers and advisers are of the same age, the adviser exerts (subliminal) power on the advisee controlling the latter’s behaviour.
c) Suggesting. When suggesting, writers use, in both languages, mitigating devices: the modal verb poder (‘can’) in Spanish and the verbal periphrasis try to + verb in English, which presupposes that the reader may not commit the action suggested:
(5) “Puedes empezar con el ‘juego de miradas’” (You can start with the glances game, Bravo) [Declarative with modal verb poder “can”]. (6) “Keep the conversation going, and try to stay calm and maturein other words, argue rationally –try to get your voice across” (Jellybean) [Imperatives].
d) Inviting. Inviting has only been found in Spanish, and the invitation in the imperative (i.e. take the test) is rather implied than explicit:
(7) “¿Has hecho ya el test de falsos amigos? (Mira en la pág. 48)” (Have you already taken the false friends text? (Look at page 48), Bravo) [Imperative]
(e) Permitting. Permission is established quite similarly in Spanish and in English, being rather subliminal in both: the Spanish writer is saying that the reader has permission to declare her love for a boy after fulfilling a condition not mentioned in the example (“Después” (Afterwards)); the English-speaking writer also starts with a conditional and gives permission by implying there is no reason not to act as the writer suggests:
(8) “Después ya puedes lanzarte a decirle algo” (Afterwards, you can make a pass at him/ dare say something to him, Bravo) [Declarative + modal poder “can”] (9) “If you want to try and affect their feelings, I don’t see why you shouldn’t” (Jellybean) [Conditional + modal should in the negative]
f) Prohibiting. Prohibition was only found in Spanish with an expression exclusively used for that (nada de):
(10) “Nada de ponerse a mirar la tele y eso, ¿eh?” (No TV watching at all, OK?, Superpop) [Prohibition expression nada de + Infinitival clause]
g) Warning. The utterances classified as warnings are expressed with imperatives in both languages, maybe due to the emergency of the situation:
(11) “Aléjate de los falsos amigos” (Get away from false friends, Bravo) [Imperative] (12) “… and if he can respect your decision dump him” (Latinitas) [Imperative]
As might be expected, there is not a one-to-one relationship between form and function in directives, neither in English nor Spanish: the same form (e.g. imperative) can be used for different functions (e.g. the imperative fulfils all sub-functions), and the same function can be expressed with different linguistic forms (e.g. commanding in Spanish can be expressed with the imperative or with the modal tener que: “primero tienes que averiguar por qué te dejó”, Super Pop). Overall, Spanish magazines present more sub-functions of directives (i.e. inviting and prohibiting) than English ones.
As can be observed, teenzines use a proliferation of directives with different communicative functions to exert their influence on female readers. Of all directives, the most widely used is the imperative. However, all directives found in magazines can be considered advisives, rather than mandatives (even the command sub-type seen above). It may be the case that young girls seek advice in magazines, instead of resorting to their parents because girls consider their parents’ advice as mandatives (in Tsui’s 1994 terms), particularly, of the instruction type, whereas they interpret the magazine writers’ directives as advisives (Tsui 1994). Hence, the role that magazine writers may fulfil in enforcing gender should not be disregarded, since female youngsters give those messages ontological status (Currie 1999).
As far as content is concerned, when focusing on the behaviour suggested in magazines for female adolescents (see Table 2), girls are encouraged, both in Spanish and American publications, to behave according to a series of values that can be considered quite ethical: help your friend, be assertive and self-confident, consult/resort to parents or teachers for counsel or help, listen, don’t scream, avoid conflict; in love affairs, they are advised not to rush, demand respect, do not allow sexual harassment or pressure from their partners regarding sexual encounters, make sure about your feelings, take the initiative (if more subtle signs are unfruitful) and, if not corresponded, forget about the beloved. Female adolescents are also advised on what to say when facing certain circumstances. Only are adolescents advised on sexual affairs in Spanish magazines; that female adolescents in Spain are or may be actively sexual is expressed openly and admittedly, with no negative value judgement overloaded. Having sexual desire is even considered healthy in Super Pop (“Sueños picantes”). The only mention to sex in the American magazines consulted is to encourage readers not to feel pressured to do whatever they don’t what to do (Latinitas). Spanish magazines also contain advice on appearance and bodily matters, while this is absent in American ones.
How is then gender enforced in magazines via directives? In general, it seems that some steps in the direction of fomenting selfesteem and control over their relations are being encouraged. However, subliminally, there exists the message that heterosexual love is the only way to happiness (also in Currie (2001), among others), that there is always a ‘Prince Charming’ awaiting for them, and that before taking the initiative in love affairs, it is advisable to send signals first to see if the male reacts. Via these advice pages, magazine editors encourage female adolescents to depend on advice on how to behave regarding daily affairs, particularly in their love life. In principle, there is nothing intrinsically wrong in asking for and giving advice, but it should be taken into account that if no such thing is done in magazines for boys, then publishers are giving different gender treatment to readers. This encouragement to depend on advice serves publishers’ commercial purposes but barely helps female adolescents to be self-reliant and independent. Furthermore, most messages insist on the traditional role of women as mediators in interpersonal relations and concerned mainly about issues in the personal domain. Their professional or intellectual formation is totally absent from these pages, both in enquiries and as part of the advice provided in other sections of the magazines studied.
According to Goleman (1998: 322), in cultures like the United States, women generally have had more practice at some interpersonal skills than men because they have been raised to be “more attuned to feelings and their nuances than are boys”. And I dare say in other cultures as well, like in Spain. In fact, there seems to be scientific evidence that women are actually more attuned to others’ emotions (Goleman 1998: 322) and the fact that women are encouraged to be empathetic is not in itself misguided; what is not that praiseworthy is that men are not equally encouraged to be empathetic, although data show that they are both equally apt for empathy (Goleman 1998: 323). Thus, girls and boys are engendered differently and this type of publication is reinforcing those gendered roles: “To the extent men tend to see themselves in terms of something like machismo (…) they have less motivation to seem sensitive, because that could be seen as a sign of ‘weakness’” (Goleman 1998: 323). This encouragement for girls to be sensitive and for men to be tough may be in the root of gender violence: to consider women the weak sex and men the strong one is the kind of sexism that favours men to abuse women, as Spanish mass media warned on the International Day against Gender Violence (November 25th, 2013). To commemorate that day, one of the leading Spanish newspapers, El País, published an article by Tereixa Constenla (2013) denouncing that the new edition of the RAE (Real Academia Española) to be issued in 2014 has removed part of its sexist bias, but still maintains this contraposition of weak versus strong sex (Constenla 2013: 37).
In the following section, a feature of the language used by magazine writers to answer the girls’ questions is pointed out to show that they adopt –as Currie (1999) claimed- a personal form of address, as if they were peers, to gain their readers’ confidence by making them think they belong to the same group.
5.2. BUILDING RAPPORT
Upon an analysis of the discourse found in these magazines, a characteristic that is prominent in the magazines studied, both in Spanish and in English, is the use of a series of linguistic devices that show empathy with readers, so that writers connect with readers who demand advice on their intimate life. With this aim in mind, the language that teenzine writers use contains many features normally associated with informal spoken language, particularly that of adolescent language, instead of the more formal and distant register that is more frequently used in writing, specifically if addressed by an adult (not to mention if the writer is a professional, e.g. a psychologist).
Linguistic features found in magazines that reinforce the writers’ membership in that community are: a) Colloquialisms (e.g. “Vanessa tiene un curriculum ¡que lo flipas!” [Vanessa has an amazing CV/ a CV you can get mad on], Super Pop; “dump him”, Latinitas); b) abbreviations or clippings (e.g. profe, profa [professor/-a, teacher], BF, for boyfriend); c) interjections (¡Hey!, in Super Pop; shhh, your zzz’s, er, in Girls’ Life); d) language loans (e.g. “pero ¡no problem!”, Super Pop; “some new pals, chica”); e) abundant exclamation marks, even in mid-sentence; these are particularly prominent in Spanish (e.g. “Y si no funciona… lo mejor que puedes hacer es ¡pasar de él!” [And if it doesn’t work … the best think you can do is dump him!]); f) other in-group markers (e.g. “Tranqui, ¡que estas cosas pasan!” [Relax, these things happen], Super Pop; “how can any of us know how someone else feels?”, Girls’ Life).
According to Cornbleet and Carter (2001: 95), adopting an informal spoken style in writing has a purpose which combines three different factors. First of all, the writer adopts a “voice” to set up a dialogue with the reader, and, thus, sounds human instead of distant and impersonal; secondly, the reader is drawn into the textual world, making his/her resistance harder; and, thirdly, the language used addresses the reader as an individual, rather than as part of a crowd, making him/her feel included and less intimidated. Adopting this kind of style makes language a “very powerful tool” (Cornbleet and Carter 2001: 95).
Since an atmosphere of camaraderie is created throughout the magazine, the directive function used for advice is both more effective and less threatening. Aforementioned Bok’s survey (Currie 1999: 41) concluded that young women readers needed a confidante to replace mothers in this role, and, thus, he devised the advice column for female readers under the pseudonym “Ruth Ashmore”. This confidante role seems to be still in vogue nowadays since the advice column is one of the preferred sections in teenzines (Currie 1999, 2001). By adopting the language typically used by youngsters, this confidante sounds like a peer, nor someone in a dominant position, like it is the case of parents or teachers. This peer-like adviser sounds less threatening and, consequently, more likely to be trusted (who would distrust a friend?). All these devices that resemble adolescent language can be considered positive politeness strategies (i.e. solidarity strategies) because they are ingroup markers, which help to build rapport, a very powerful tool for persuasion (Goleman 1998: 170).
6 Conclusions
In order to draw the main conclusions obtained from the analysis of advice columns in female adolescent magazines regarding how gender is enforced in this sort of publications, let us recall the research questions that guided this study:
1. What issues are raised by girls in teenzine advice columns? How do the concerns depicted in these texts contribute to enforce gender?
After the examination of the questions posed by girls in the advice columns selected, it became apparent that their most prevalent concern in both Spanish and American magazines is their love affairs and the only kind of romantic relation dealt with is the heterosexual one. However, there were some cultural preferences regarding the focus of other types of advice: whereas American girls demanded advice on moral and ethical issues (empathy, acquaintances’ disruptive behaviour and racism), Spanish ones seemed somehow concerned by more superficial problems (beauty and the female body). Spanish magazines also seem more open regarding sexual affairs, since they respond to girls’ enquires about sexual desire and avoiding unwanted pregnancy frankly and with no recrimination; this could be a sign of naturalization of female sexual activity in the Spanish society, which may not be the case in the American one (considering magazines for female adolescents are a societal product). The presence of all these issues within the personal domain in advice columns and the absence of others regarding their present or future public life (e.g. personal development through intellectual pursuits, orientation for their future professional life, among others) reinforce traditional gender roles: there is a practical stagnation of topics in this kind of publication practically since their inception.
2. How is advice phrased (i.e. linguistic realizations) in English and Spanish in order to enforce given attitudes or behaviour? In what way are these linguistic devices persuasive?
The very nature of advice columns favours the pervasiveness of the directive function in these discursive acts. This directive function is achieved through different types of speech acts: commanding, advising, suggesting, inviting, permitting, prohibition and warning. Although the imperative structure is widely used for many of these speech acts, the lack of mitigating devices is principally justified because the actions or behaviours demanded from readers are supposedly beneficial for them: they are what Tsui (1994) calls advisives. The type of behaviour encouraged by magazine writers can be considered quite ethical on surface (i.e. be empathic, self-confident, attentive, etc.) but when the meanings implied are taken into account, girls are encouraged to believe there is true love awaiting for them and are advised to persist until they find it (independence is thus not contemplated, nor is homosexual love). Furthermore, boys and girls are engendered differently by the mere fact that this type of discursive practice (i.e. advice columns) is abundant in magazines for girls but (practically) absent in magazines for boys (Tweens, Teens, and Magazines).
That teenzines have the potential power to exert some sort of control on young girls seems a proven fact (Currie 2001), but, do youngsters actually read them and follow the writers’ advice to the letter? According to Currie’s sociological studies (1999, 2001), these magazines are a pervasive force in girls’ lives; they find their reading useful for everyday living and are encouraged to doubt themselves instead of questioning the cultural constructs that surround these publications. Furthermore, writers in these publications use empathy in the form of adolescent language to assure wielding influence on their readership. Their persuasive force should thus not be disregarded since “the first step in influence is building rapport” (Goleman 1998: 170). Consequently, if adolescent magazines have the power to influence on conduct, behaviours, and values, publishers and writers should use that power to promote equal gender treatment.
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Acknowledgements: The present study was financially supported by a grant(ID No:FFI2013-47792-C2-2-P)from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad. This article is part of the long-term research project “EMotion and language ‘at work’: The discursive emotive/evaluative FUNction in different texts and contexts within corporate and institutional work: PROject PERsuasion” (EMO-FUNDETT: PROPER).
1Following García Gómez (2010: 136), gender readership was determined by “explicit gender statements (…) and gender-indexical language”.
2This “close reading” follows the methodology in Currie’s study (2001), whose conclusions are based on the close reading of two texts. The present study, although cannot be considered quantitative, analyzes a larger corpus. For a quantitative study, a much larger sample of texts should have been analysed; notwithstanding, a larger corpus would not have allowed to apply this qualitative methodology.
