A critical discourse analysis of race and gender in advertisements in the South African in-flight magazine Indwe

Abstract

In a critical discourse analysis of two in-flight magazines, Qantas and Air New Zealand, Small et al. (2008, p. 33) found that the advertising texts in these magazines are designed to appeal to an elite minority of air travellers who have the wealth to pursue a life of leisure and luxury. As a consequence, consumers who have the means to pursue this lifestyle are constructed as legitimate air travellers – a status that others must aspire to. A further implication is that the manner in which consumers are depicted in these advertisements may reveal advertisers' assumptions about which demographic is most likely to fall in this elite category. Small et al. (2008, p. 31) found that the majority of the advertisements in their sample depicted white consumers. On the basis of this argument, the current article aims to conduct a critical discourse analysis of a South African in-flight magazine, Indwe, in order to investigate depictions of race and gender in the advertising images in this magazine. The results suggest that Indwe is only marginally more balanced in its portrayal of race, while depictions of gender differ significantly from Small et al.'s (2008) analysis.