Towards a critical cognitive–pragmatic approach to gender metaphors in Advertising English

Abstract

This paper investigates the methodological convenience of a critical cognitive–pragmatic approach to gender metaphors in Advertising English. We begin by reviewing recent research in cognitive linguistics, pragmatics and critical discourse analysis (CDA) with regard to advertising metaphors and gender, then proceed to characterize advertising gender metaphors as indirect cognitive–pragmatic devices used in Advertising English to give rise to often covertly sexist communicated interpretations. Next, we present a description of advertising gender metaphors, subtypes (cases of metaphorical gender, universal gender metaphors and cultural gender metaphors) and cross-categorization in a case study of 1142 advertisements published in British Cosmopolitan (years 1999 and 2000). Finally, we argue that a critical cognitive–pragmatic approach to advertising gender metaphors is of most salience since it permits to (1) help the audience's search for cognitive efficiency, (2) unmask the advertiser's rhetorical intentions to make certain non-neutral assumptions more manifest to the target audience without making public its intention to do so and (3) call for action on the part of the addressee to overcome negative social consequences of its use in Advertising English.