Gender in Contemporary Advertising Discourse

This monograph examines the dynamic interplay between visual and verbal elements in gender representation through a multimodal analysis of the dominant discursive strategies used to construct femininity, masculinity and non-heteronormative identities in contemporary Western advertising. Drawing on a corpus of 125 advertising posters from print and digital media published between 2000 and 2025, the study analyses campaigns by 72 internationally recognised brands directed at English-speaking audiences. The author adopts a triangulated methodological framework that combines critical discourse analysis, visual analysis and corpus linguistics to explore the reciprocal relationship between language and advertising. This methodological framework offers a systematic analysis of gender portrayals in advertising, revealing the extent to which contemporary Western advertising discourse either reinforces traditional stereotypes or reflects evolving representations of gender. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in Sociolinguistics, Gender Studies, Corpus Linguistics, Marketing and Advertising Studies, particularly those interested in multimodal analysis and mixed-method research approaches.