Introduction

Introduction -

 

 

What is the difference between the language of women’s magazines and girl’s magazines?

 The communication accommodation theory by Howard Giles shows that when people speak, they adjust what is said or how it is said depending on who they are addressing and what context and situation they are addressing them in. I am aware that this undeniably happens with adults and very young children, but I would be interested to see if this applies with a much smaller age gap and if the difference is so distinct. This is why I have chosen to investigate difference that magazine editors use in their letters to the audience in the top 3 women’s magazines and the top 3 girls magazines to see if that theory applies in this area. Along with the communication accommodation theory, I will be looking at some particular frameworks – discourse structure, lexis and grammar. My hypothesis, based on the theory, is that the two editors letters will be very divergent, especially the grammar and even though essentially they are both aiming to do the same job of addressing the reader, it will be done in two very different ways simply because of the age of their audience. This investigation interests me because when I was younger I used to really enjoy reading the types of magazines I am using which are aimed at younger girls, and now I really enjoy the magazines aimed at young women, so seeing how distinct the differences are will be interesting. The theory, which states that we tend to imitate not only speech but also behaviour habits of those who we are interacting with, appeals to me because I think that it will be correct in the case of my investigation, so it was easy to come up with an interesting hypothesis.  Although this theory is related to speech, it will be interesting to see if the same applies for written texts too.