The Semiotics of Media, The Projection of Women Identities & The Society

Abstract

One fruitful line of research has been to explore the working of print media and for this semiotic images in the magazines and the “Ideologies” that are associated with these semiotic images have always been a vast subject of interest. To date, frequent research in this field has been carried out in Western countries and on English Magazines. In contrast to it, this paper purports to explore the ideology (ies) and femininity (ies) in Pakistani women magazines i.e. a very popular genre among women in Pakistan and hence it looks at it in local context. This paper, in particular looks at distinctive semiotic features that plays a pivotal role in the publicity and popularity of these magazines among its readers. This study employs qualitative approach and uses random sampling for data collection and semiotic analysis for data analysis. The data is collected over a period of three months (Nov 2006-Jan 2007) out of two magazines (Khwateen Digest and Shuaa) that made a total of six magazines. Analysis of the data throws light on the fact that women magazines are more than only semiotic and linguistic constructs. They are constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing the ideologies and identities of its targeted audiences. The results of this study benefits to the people working in the field not only of Sociolinguistics, but also it is of great interest for Inter-disciplinary studies such as; Gender Studies, Culture Studies and Media Studies.