Representation of gender in advertisement through voice and speech characteristics

• Applicant: Dr. Melanie Weirich
• Subject Area: Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics ; General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 529274597

Advertising often resorts to simplified and easily perceived representations - stereotypes. The question is to what extent stereotypes really represent the actual state of reality or only use and reproduce outdated assumptions. This project focuses on changing gender roles and takes the current discussion of gender diversity into account. Despite social change, dichotomous and often stereotypical gender constructions prove to be relatively constant: masculinity is associated with concepts of competence and instrumentality and characteristics such as strength, assertiveness, and achievement striving; femininity is related to warmth, expressivity, and community orientation. Inherent in these concepts is a dominance of one group over the other, which is increasingly subject to criticism. In this research project we examine to what extent stereotypes about gender roles are served in today's advertising by means of the voices used and, if so, whether these stereotypes evoked or supported by the voice types actually still reflect the values and attitudes of today's society - with special consideration of the diversity of the recipients. The first objective of this project is to provide a systematic description of gender stereotypes regarding voice and speech characteristics in advertising, specifically in purely auditory radio advertising. A content and phonetic analysis and clustering of female and male voice-overs in radio commercials will be conducted. Spectral parameters include mean fundamental frequency and its variation, vowel space, and voice quality. The content analysis deals with aspects such as advertising context and gender-specific connotation. The second objective is to analyze the perception and reception of the identified voice types, taking into account various listener aspects such as age, gender, sexual orientation, traditional gender role concept, gender conformity. Stimuli from advertising will be used together with speech material specially created for this, based on the results of the previously conducted cluster analysis. Different explicit and implicit perception tests will be used to analyze the activation of stereotypical concepts by the advertisement and the approval of the presented advertisement with the different voice types.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Adrian Paul Simpson