<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>Perfume descriptions serve as an important persuasive tool in fragrance advertising. Scents traditionally elude clear verbal description, yet perfumes are nowadays frequently sold online, with no direct olfactory experience on the part of the consumer at the point of purchase. The products are thus often represented by metaphorical means depicting a desirable experience or portraying attractive identities of wearers, including stereotypical images of men and women. This article analyses 80 e-shop fragrance descriptions equally divided among adverts targeted at males and females. The sample texts were collected randomly from British and American e-shops, with the primary research objective to determine how male and female identities are reflected in these descriptions. The method of discourse analysis was applied and the AntConc 3.4.4 toolkit was used to calculate the frequency of words and their collocations. It was found that current female perfume descriptions on e-shops generally suppress gender stereotypes quite successfully, while gender stereotyping is more prominent in male perfume descriptions. The possible causes as well as ramifications of this disparity are also discussed.</p>
</abstract>

Perfume descriptions serve as an important persuasive tool in fragrance advertising. Scents traditionally elude clear verbal description, yet perfumes are nowadays frequently sold online, with no direct olfactory experience on the part of the consumer at the point of purchase. The products are thus often represented by metaphorical means depicting a desirable experience or portraying attractive identities of wearers, including stereotypical images of men and women. This article analyses 80 e-shop fragrance descriptions equally divided among adverts targeted at males and females. The sample texts were collected randomly from British and American e-shops, with the primary research objective to determine how male and female identities are reflected in these descriptions. The method of discourse analysis was applied and the AntConc 3.4.4 toolkit was used to calculate the frequency of words and their collocations. It was found that current female perfume descriptions on e-shops generally suppress gender stereotypes quite successfully, while gender stereotyping is more prominent in male perfume descriptions. The possible causes as well as ramifications of this disparity are also discussed.

Gender identities in e-shop perfume descriptions

Katarína Nemčoková Katarína Nemčoková Tomas Bata University in Zlín

Topics in Linguistics

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

{"article-title":"Gender identities in e-shop perfume descriptions"}

Perfume descriptions serve as an important persuasive tool in fragrance advertising. Scents traditionally elude clear verbal description, yet perfumes are...

Gender identities in e-shop perfume descriptions

Published Online: Jun 17, 2021

Page range: 63 - 77

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/topling-2021-0005

Keywords
perfume description, perfume advertising, e-shop product description, perfume, fragrance, identity, gender stereotyping

© 2021 Katarína Nemčoková et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Gender identities in e-shop perfume descriptions

Published Online: Jun 17, 2021

Page range: 63 - 77

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/topling-2021-0005

Keywordsperfume description, perfume advertising, e-shop product description, perfume, fragrance, identity, gender stereotyping

© 2021 Katarína Nemčoková et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Keywords
perfume description, perfume advertising, e-shop product description, perfume, fragrance, identity, gender stereotyping