Gender Representation holiday task

 This advert relates to the negative connotations that surround women, that even the most stereotypical women’s job requires somewhat ‘manly’ traits, believing you need to be man enough to be a nurse, the job stereotypically labelled to women. This text also uses a somewhat reverse semantic derogation, as usually women receive bad connotations in the words relating to them, however here it seems that women are ‘strong enough’ to be a nurse; however, authoritative words such as ‘strong’ are usually linked to men, as Mary Beard said that men hold more authority than women due to some characteristics they have such as ‘deep-voiced’, therefore it is implying that nursing should in effect be a job for men.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8gz-jxjCmg

This video also uses semantic derogation but this time showing negative connotations towards women, aiming for people to realise how often women are given negative connotations compared to the powerful connotations men receive, aiming to try and balance how equally genders are treated. For example, there are harsh opposites that men and women receive relating to the same sort of incident, such as washing; men are considered neat compared to the vain woman; when people from the opposite sexes are presumably talking to persuade, the men are persuasive, however the women are pushy; this semantic derogation links to Lakoff’s theory that women’s language is deficient compared to men, as their actions make them come across as ‘deficient’ compared to men, despite the fact their actions are relatively similar.

This very controversial advert links to John Grey’s book “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” and the fact that one statement declared that women care more about language than men, and are more verbally skilled, therefore the opposite relating to men being more direct and straight forward with their language, and mocking women for talking more frequently, saying it is in effect wrong. This again links to Lakoff’s theory that men’s language is the norm, and females being deficient as this advert believes that women sing more words than they should be using is in fact deficient.