CHARACTERISTICS IN PERSONAL ADVERTISEMENTS: WITH REGARD TO APPEARANCE
CHARACTERISTICS IN PERSONAL ADVERTISEMENTS: WITH REGARD TO APPEARANCE

Author(s): Věra Zouharová
Subject(s): Language studies, Applied Linguistics, Marketing / Advertising
Published by: Masarykova univerzita nakladatelství
Keywords: personal advertisements; preference; description of appearance; personal characteristics; partner characteristics;
Summary/Abstract: In the modern world personal advertisements play an important role in finding a potential partner. When compiling an advertisement people want to draw attention to themselves and their personality and they usually put a great emphasis on self-presentation. Nevertheless, they also focus on preferred partner characteristics. Previous studies revealed and confirmed what is generally believed: that men prefer an attractive partner and emphasise this item in their advertisements. Women are probably acquainted with this fact because they do not hesitate to mention their attractiveness. On the other hand, women usually do not put emphasis on partner’s attractiveness, they prefer, for example, success or education. The present paper explores the choice of vocabulary for indicating personal and preferred partner characteristics as far as appearance is concerned; it considers to what extent the age influences the way people present themselves and how they describe their potential partner. The corpus used for this analysis comprises 100 personal advertisements from British newspapers, 50 written by women and 50 by men.

• Details
• Contents