Reading Bridal Magazines from a Critical Discursive Perspective

What is it about?

The book combines interest in language, media, society and culture to shed a new light on media production and reception. Presenting a study of bridal magazines in Great Britain, the author advances an innovative approach to media research in which the production and reception of media discourse are examined side by side. The book first provides a thorough discussion of the theory underlying the study. Relevant concepts such as discourse, text, as well as approaches to power, ideology and gender are explained and next combined in a study of wedding magazines. The analysis of the magazines focuses on how they link the conservative representations of gender with the representations of late-modern lifestyle and consumerism. The commodification of bridal femininity and wedding culture is richly illustrated with texts and images from the magazines. The examples demonstrate, among others, how bridal magazines string along with other media in equating the attainment of the ‘perfect’ body with self-empowerment and self-realization, and in presenting this as achieved through informed consumption.

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Why is it important?

Apart from shedding light on the role of language in (media and wedding) culture, the book’s particular value is its combined approach to media production and reception. The analysis of bridal magazines is followed by the presentation of readers’ reactions to one of the magazines examined in the first part of the study. In addition to talking about the magazine, the women discuss their own bridal and feminine experience. Presenting side by side how the same media examples are examined by a language and gender scholar and how they are interpreted by average readers, the book renders a close and comprehensive view of media production and reception. Connecting readers’ responses to the magazine’s content with their accounts of their own bridal experiences and worldviews, the book provides insight into the ways in which media relate (and do not relate) to the lives of their recipients.