A multimodal discourse analysis of women's representation in Vogue magazine cover from 1990 to 2000 and from 2010 to 2018

Abstract

ABSTRACT Being the face of a magazine, the language on its cover could be considered as a resourceful material to analyze the represented subjects. This paper examines the portrayal of women's physical appearance and confidence in Vogue magazine cover employing multimodal analysis throughout the course of 20 years. Forty covers from 1990 to 2000 and from 2010 to 2018 were collected and systematically investigated following an analytical framework, which was mainly adapted from Kress and van Leeuwen’s work (2006). Both quantitative and qualitative methods were combined to discover the pattern in women’s representation. Firstly, the results throughout the two periods point out that while Vogue described women to be youthful and well-built, the magazine presented women of various tones of complexion, showing an impartial attitude towards women of complexion. The female participants appeared to be of great confidence, which was presented most significantly through their hairstyle, posture, gaze and accompaniment. Secondly, the latter stage has witnessed several changes. The magazine seemed to promote the women with a more mature image and more varied tones of complexion comparing to the prior phase. Additionally, since the models had a tendency to adopt more intense gaze and pose individually more often, the level of confidence of women has increased considerably.