(Desperate) Housewives, Domestic Angels, or Femmes Fatales

Abstract

Language and linguistic practices, based on androcentric type principles, appear as a privileged vehicle for demanding and reiterating certain values and cultural codes. This chapter aims at analyzing the visual language in the media, with a focus on advertising language, in the attempt to demonstrate how the language used is responsible for the formation and preservation of sexual identity and gender stereotypes. A natural consequence of its reiteration would be the passage from an objectified view of women to physical and psychological violence against them. The images appearing on billboards will be correspondingly analyzed with the intention of reflecting on certain gender-related issues that most often go unnoticed.