Gendered voices in Philippine TV commercials

• Main Author: Dequilla, Asuncion Christine V.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2008
• Subjects: Television commercials > Philippines; Voice-overs; Discourse and Text Linguistics; Linguistics
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_doctoral/254; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/etd_doctoral/article/1253/viewcontent/CDTG004602_P.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

This paper aimed to describe how gender is accomplished in Philippine TV commercial discourse through a textual and content analyses of the microstructure and the macro-structure features. From the pool of TV commercials aired and video-recorded, two key coding tasks were done to quantify the data: the identification of the target audience (female, male, and mixed-gender ) for each of the television commercial and the classification of various linguistic features taken from the transcript of the voiceover, speaking lines assigned to women and men, and the background text. These were also categorized and validated according to the obligatory elements (headline, body, and slogan) comprising the macro-structure of Philippine TV commercials. This corpus of data was analyzed vis-Ã -vis gender imaging. Specifically, the study indicated a significant difference in the use of voiceover across TV ad categories. The male voiceover was predominantly used across Philippine TV ad categories while the speaking lines assigned to women or men follow the gender of the intended target audience. As a whole, Philippine TV ads utilize fragments as well as simple sentence structures prefer the use of the active voice regardless of the target gender. However, a considerable presence of complicated structures and verbosity characterize female-directed TV commercials. Furthermore, there is a contrasting use of imperatives. They are evident in maledirected and mixed-gender directed TV ads but not in female directed TV ads. The use of lexical verbs expressing Limited Activity and signifying an activity or state of being that does not involve any explicit physical movement dominate Philippine TV commercials. In spite of this, a significant observation in female directed TV ads vi showed the presence of more Action or Competitive Verbs when compared with male-directed TV ads. However, those verbs were almost as many as the Feeling and Nurturing Verbs. Further, those TV ads that were designed for men contained the most number of Agent/Actor theta role while those that were directed to women had the least number of the Agent/Actor theta role. Through the prevalence of theta roles of verbs, it can be inferred that men have the tendency to be more active and are initiators of action while women have the predisposition to be passive and to wait for things to happen. The trend is similar among Tagalog verbs present in the text of TV ads. In general, the lexical features used in Philippine TV commercials include the use of neologisms and word play. Apparently, codeswitching is prevalent in Philippine TV commercials across the different audience-directed categories, but the female-directed TV ads show the use of English as the dominant language in codeswitching while the male-directed TV ads prefer to use Filipino dominant codeswitching. The commercials directed to a mixed gender audience have a similar pattern with that of the commercials directed to the male audience in terms of the dominant language preferred in codeswitching. Of all the commercials, the most striking format and distinctive macrostructure can be found in male-directed TV commercials. Advertisers of male-directed TV ads displayed more innovative designs and showed aggressiveness in deviating from the style, which were commonly used in the commercials that were female-directed and mixed genderdirected. TV commercials in the Philippines that are directed to men have the propensity to be deviants of conventions as shown especially by the headlines of the macro-structure. The concept or storyboard of a TV ad is not only audio-visually vii projected but also linguistically supported. Philippine TV commercials show the use of linguistic features that realize gendered voices. In general, the present Philippine TV commercials strengthen the fact that despite attempts to revolutionize or challenge societys norms and conventions through innovations in the use of discourse in advertising, the results of the study linguistically support that view that gender stereotyping is still very much a part of the Philippine culture. What men are perceived to be capable of doing, the preferences they have, and the struggle that women in society have to put up with to be perceived as more progressive and modernized remain quaintly stable. How society constructs what is expected to be feminine or masculine can be supported by discourse in media and that the construction of gender in and by media reinforce gender stereotypes.