Informal Adult Learning: Advertisements in Women’s Magazines in Turkey

Abstract

This study examines the visual and verbal content of advertisements in women’s magazines published between 1980 and 1990 in Turkey. Based on content analysis, we established the categories of products and services, age, body parts, women’s roles, clothes, and locations. We determined the five most frequent words employed in all grammatical or lexical forms: beautiful (güzel), to live (yaşamak), new (yeni), skin (cilt), and young (genç). By examining the data through informal learning, the study looks at how consumer-oriented values were taught informally to women readers during a period when Turkey underwent integration with the neoliberal global economy. We argue that the advertisements in women’s magazines were effective both in terms of disseminating the dominant values of the era and in causing women to informally internalize the consumer-oriented values required for the development of the desired female subjectivities of an emerging neoliberal society.