29 - Féminismes
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Aurélie Olivesi
Discourse Analysis of French Women’s magazines : explicit, implicit or non-existent feminism
Le Temps des médias n° 29, Automne 2017, p. 177-192.
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Around 2010 in France, several new media (paper or pure player magazines) have been published with a more or less explicit feminist perspective. I will show that the feminist perspective, in the discourse of those media, is not only performed through thematic choices, but is also built within discourse itself - through its enunciation. I have thus analyzed the discourse used in editorial pieces published in French women’s pure player and paper magazines in 2013, and highlighted several differences between them. First, some magazines refer to their readership as “women” and other as “girls” - with no link with the actual age of their readership. Second, the way they represent feminism and the tone of their discourse delineate a tripartition (and a continuum) between media targeting “girls”, traditional women’s magazines, and explicitly feminist magazines. My conclusion is that the media discourse of Third Wave Feminism is characterized both by a univocal definition of feminism and by the use of irony by journalists. This is a way for them to politicize women’s experiences, and to build at the same time a privileged relationship with their readership.