SPECIAL FEATURES OF THE DISCOURSE OF MAGAZINES FOR WOMEN AND MEN

Abstract

Glossy magazines typically cater to one gender or the other, conveying specific information about the roles of men and women in society. Our interest lies in uncovering insights about modern Russian society through the study of these magazines. While the discourse of women's and men's magazines has been previously analyzed in Russian scholarship, our study offers a unique perspective. First, we equally focused on both women's and men's magazines. Second, we employed a cognitive linguistics methodology to explore the cognitive structures underlying text generation. The purpose of this study was to identify the linguistic features that represent gender stereotypes. We analyzed 150 headlines from Russian men's and women's online magazines published in 2023. Our research procedure involved determining the relevance of specific topics, followed by a lexical-grammatical analysis of each headline. Finally, we conducted a contextual analysis to examine the sociocultural context in which these texts were generated. Our findings reveal that publications aimed at women are more focused on themes of appearance and beauty, while men's publications emphasize self-development and acquiring new knowledge. Men's magazines tend to use more technical vocabulary and professional terms, with headlines that are straightforward and informative. In contrast, women's headlines are often more descriptive and emotionally charged. Notably, we observed both the reinforcement of existing gender stereotypes and their deconstruction; for instance, men are no longer expected to be cold-blooded and restrained, while articles about careers and the latest technologies appear more frequently in women's publications.