The use of the female image in media: A content analysis of magazine covers with presence in social media

Abstract

In order to determine the use of the female image on the covers of major magazines in Ecuador, I conducted an analysis of psycholinguistic content under two perspectives: exploring the types of sexual information in advertising based on the theory of Courtney, Whipple and Reichert and the relevance according to the Sperber and Wilson Model of the lexical-semantic nexus between the texts and the images implied. Facebook covers were examined (n=392): in 45.7% there was at least one woman, in 18.1% there was at least one man and in 36.2% there was no human at all. In addition, in 23.5% of the covers there was some degree of nudity and 39.5% suggests of eroticism. Regarding the covers in which there was at least one woman, 82.7% were found to contain a suggestion of eroticism and the use of implicatures through ostensive stimuli was evidenced up to 79.5%.