A Comparison Study of Linguistic Features in English Ads for Men and Women: A Case Study

ABSTRACT


INTRODUCTION
Advertising is a general term for an industry. It is generally understood to include commercials on TV and advertisements in print and other media. Since there was great Corresponding Author: Mai Xuan Huy

*Cite this Article: Mai Xuan Huy, Anh Thu (2023). A Comparison Study of Linguistic Features in English Ads for Men and Women: A Case Study. International Journal of Social Science and Education Research Studies, 3(7), 1452-1461
industry and market economy, advertising is used to call the attention of the public to something, typically a product or service. Advertisement (hereinafter abbreviated as ads) is the means of communication in which a product, service or brand is promoted to a viewership in order to attract interest, engagement, and sales. Ads are created by two main components: Arts and Language, among them language always plays an essential, irreplaceable role. Ads use language by making use of appealing catch phrases to try to convince people to buy their product, it is an essential marketing strategy to get their message across. According to Mai Xuan Huy (2005), from the view point of the communication theory, each ad always is a talk between the advertiser -the seller and the audiencethe potential buyer .
Based on the theory of language and gender, this study has been conducted as a case study of typical data (ads) from several printed and online magazines for men and women.
We have carried out this study with the assumption that when advertisers/copywriters prepare messages for the audience of both genders, along with common things, they must consider to choose words and ways differently in order to persuade each side. Therefore, the data for the study are carefully collected from several famous magazines forr both sexes (to be mentioned in item 3. below).

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
This study aims to the better understanding of advertising language related to the quite interesting field of study (language and gender) in linguistics, anthropology, ethnology, etc. that originated in the 1970s to the present. The study has been conducted to point out the similarities and differences of typical linguistic features in English ads for men and women. Then hopefully have some suggestions for advertisers / copywriters. Linguistic features to be identified on the aspects of lexis (nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs) and syntax (phrases and types of sentences) in advertising texts.

Data collection procedure
The data taken from ads for men and ads for women are equal in number and exclusively typical of each gender. The database of the study is collected from 7 magazines (3 printed and 4 electronic), among them 3 for women only and 4 for men only. They are randomly picked from those magazines with the same number for each gender. The magazine's data source are: 1 The corpus of the data consists of 92 texts chosen from the aformentioned magazines, adhering to the principle of balance. Among the chosen ads, the are 46 ads for men and the same number of ads for women. The ads products summary can be seen in table 1 below:

Data analysis procedure
The data collected are classified first into two groups: for men and for women, and then into categories of goods (beauty's care, health care, fashion, accessories, motor/car, etc.) for each of the gender (Thanh et al., 2022). The data is then processed in terms of two aspects: lexis and syntax according to genders (men's ads and women's ads). Later, they are described and contrasted to find out the similarities and differences of typical linguistic features of men's and women's ads in this study.

Methods:
In this paper, the authors use methods of description, analysis, comparison and somewhat discourse analysis to highlight the similarities and differences of advertising for men and women. Statistical method is also used to find quantitative differences for the isue under study.

Language of ads
Language has an enormous influence over people and their behavior through advertising. It in undeniable that nonverbal factors in advertising such as images or sounds make a great impact on the consumer, but without language, people will find it extremely hard to identify a product and remember it. Discussing English ads, Kannan and Tyagi(2013) say, "The English language is known for its extensive vocabulary. Where many other languages have only one or two words, which carry a particular meaning, English may have five or six. Moreover, the meanings of these five or six words may differ very slightly and in a very subtle way" (p. [3][4]. Language in advertising is expressed in the form of advertising texts. According to Goddard (1998), "Advertising texts are seen as potentially involving complex notions of audience, where readers have to work hard to decode messages and understand different address relationships" (p.4). She also writes, "…it is undoubtedly true that adverts are texts that do their best to get our attention, to make us turn towards them…" (p.6). To understand and use advertising language in an effective way, it is important to understand the connotation of a word. an idea or feeling that a word invokes in addition to its literal or primary meaning

Linguistic differences between men and women 4.2.1. Sex and Gender
While classifying types of customers, the word "gender" has to be used rather than the other word "sex"; thus, ads are based on "gender", not on "sex". In general, while "Sex refers to biological differences; chromosomes, hormonal profiles, internal and external sex organs", "Gender describes the characteristics that a society or culture delineates as masculine or feminine" (Nobelius, 2004). The World Health Organization (WHO) describes "gender" as it "refers to the socially constructed characteristics of women and men -such as norms, roles and relationships of and between groups of women and men. It varies from society to society and can be changed." Gender signifies the social and cultural role of each sex within a given society (Nobelius, 2004). In the U.S., strength, aggression, and dominance are features of a masculine individual, while passivity, nurturing, and subordination refer to his feminine counterpart. The difference is believed to be central to the social organisation of gender. Sharing the same point of view, Lorber, J. & Farrell, S.A. (1991). state, "What stays constant is that women and men have to be distinguishable".
To conclude, in general terms, "sex" refers to biological characteristics and "gender" refers to the individual's and society's perceptions of sexuality and the malleable concepts of masculinity and femininity (Newman, 2016).

Gender differences in language
Gender differences have been observed by many researchers all around the world. In the 1970s and 1980s, gender studies developed differently in North America and were inspired by the many forms of feminism that had developed by that time (Flotow, 2004). As the Women's Movement began, the gender issue and the language issue started to link together as an interdisciplinary academic field. The pioneering female author of this field is an American linguist R. Lakoff with the work Language and Women Place (1975). With the theory of the deficit theory, she made a remark on the use of English by middle-class women in the environment she lived and worked with, concluding that their language was different from that of men in four aspects: Phonetics (accentation at the end of sentences); Vocabulary (use reduced words like sort of, or enhanced emphasis like so, etc.); Syntax (using tag questions, or very polite sentences like Would you mind closing the door, etc.) and lack of humor in their communication.The ways each gender uses his/her language are proved to differ in many fields such as forms, topics, contents, and use. Many analysists show this with empirical evidence. Haas (1979) puts forth an idea that men are more loquacious, directive and use more non-standard forms while women are often more supportive, polite, expressive, and inclined to talk more about homes and families. Men spend time talking about sports, money, and business, whereas women tend to use words that imply feeling, evaluation, interpretation, and psychological state.
In the study "Gender Differences in Language Use: An Analysis of 14,000 Text Samples" by Newman, M.L. et al.
(2008), many differences between men and women in using language are proved. Women use more words related to thoughts, emotions, senses, other peoples, negations, and verbs in present and past tenses than men. Meanwhile, men care more about external events, objects, and processes, along with some discussions of topics such as occupation, money, and sports with many words grouped as numbers, articles, prepositions, and long words. Swear words also add emphasis to male language (Thu et al., 2022).
Results from gender and language research are inconsistent as exemplified by the research on gender and interruptions. Evidence suggests that men are more likely to interrupt women (Aries, 1987;Zimmerman & West, 1975;West & Zimmerman, 1983) and overlap women's speech (Rosenblum, 1986) during conversations. In the research, 1009 samples show that male and female speechs are different in content and purposes. "Males use language primarily to assert their position of dominance, attract and maintain an audience, and to assert themselves when other speakers have the floor. In contrast, female speech is characterized as collaboration oriented or affiliative" (Bell Courtney M. et al, 2006).
Women are often more cooperative than men in using language, responsible in what they have said and made more supportive comments. According to Sheldon (1990), women use language to create and maintain relationships of closeness and equality, to criticize others in acceptable ways, and to accurately interpret other female's speech. Meanwhile, it is believed that during conflicts, men use language to command respect while they assume a separation between themselves and others and use logics as well as rationality to resolve conflicts through rules or reason.
In a research on Gender and Language, there are two competing theories that have been dicussed to explain language differences between men and women: the biological theory and the sociological theory. The biological theory defines gender in terms of biological sex, assuming that men outsize and outpower women (Bergvall, 1999;Tannen, 1990), and that gender polarities exist in language use. On the other hand, the social constructionist theory of gender brings an idea that gender differences in language use depend on the context in which the interaction occurs. After studying on 54 texts, 1009 samples, 27 by males and 27 by females, the results provide evidence to support for the biological theory and fail to prove the sociological theory . However, Lakoff (1975) and Fishman (1983) claimthat the difference in language between men and women is a consequence of male dominance and female subordination. On the other hand, Coates (1986) and Tannen (1990) show that any linguistic differences are resulted from cultural differences.
In short, gender differences in language have been shown and many predictions and theories have been supported by reliable data. In the next part, we will discuss how gender differences affect language in ads for men and women.

Gender differences in terms of Lexis and Syntax
The effective use of language in advertisement is a powerful tool for companies to communicate with and introduce their products to customers. Therefore, linguistic features that convey specific messages with the intention of influencing all groups of people are vitally important.
The types of text in ads that affect genders are the issues of interest. Many marketing researchers are interested in gender-related research since gender is one of the largest segmentation and the linguistic differences existing in ads for men and women and how these differences affect its targeted gender are one of many topics.

Lexical differences * Nouns, Adjectives, and Adverbs
Hannon (2016) writes that men use more nouns and women use more verbs. Pennebaker (2011) also shows his idea that "men tend to use more numbers, nouns, and words per sentence." In his study he proves that men use articles (a/an, the) more than women do. As we know, articles are used with nouns, especially concrete, highly specific nouns, and this leads to the idea that men use more nouns than women.
According to other researchers such as Jesperson (2013), Kramer (1974a), Lakoff (1975), Pei (1969), etc. and Reik (1954) women's language is more emotional and evaluative than men's. Jesperson (2013) find that women usually use hyperbole and adverbs of intensity. Pei (1969) bring an idea about "extravagant adjectives" such as wonderful, heavenly, divine, and dreamy. The finding does not stop when Lakoff (1975) continues with a list of female adjectives, including adorable, charming, lovely, and divine and male adjectives such as great, terrific and neat. To support Lakoff's hypothesis, Hartman (1976) proves that women use evaluative adjectives more than men. Kramer (1974a) suggests that "words of approval" such as nice, pretty, darling, charming, sweet, lovely, cute, and precious are used more frequently by women. While comparing women with men, she finds that women use much more words. Several other studies have also reported that women refer to emotions more often than men (Mulac et al., 1990; Thomson, R. and Murachver,T., 2001). All these point to a conclusion that women often use more words implying feelings and emotions than men do.
Xia,(2013) in Gender Differences in Using Language give an example related to this topic that women like to use many adjectives. For example, when leaving a restaurant, a woman will say "It's a gorgeous meal" and for men, the sentence will be "It's a good meal." Xia also believes that "women are more sensitive to the environment and more likely to express their emotions with words, which makes women's language more interesting than men's sometimes" (p.1486).

* First person singular pronoun versus first person plural pronoun
It is commonly known that the word "I" possibly means individualism or selfishness related to the male stereotype. Mulac et al. (2000) find that men use first-person singular more often. Xia, (2013, p.1486) also proves that when suggesting something to others, women prefer to use the first person plural pronoun while men choose the first person singular pronoun. It is also true that men directly use the second person pronoun when making suggestions to the other person.
His example proves this idea by the following sentences: Women: We need to be in a hurry. Men: You need to be quick. However, related to the usage of pronouns, psychologist Pennebaker(2011) has a different point of view as a result of his research. His new book -The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us -shows that women use first-person singular pronouns like "I," "me," and "my" more frequently than men. According to his research, the average woman will use about 85,000 more pronouns per year than the average man will. He explains that there is a tendency of women to be more self-aware than men, as has been documented by numerous psychological studies. The research results by Meh and Pennebaker(2003) indicate that women are more likely to use the first person singular pronoun (p.865). These findings are consistent with the repeated findings that depressed people use more of the first person singular pronoun (e.g., Bucci & Freedman, 1981;Rude, S. et al, 2004;Weintraub, 1981).
It seems to be hard to agree or disagree with these opposite ideas, however, we can come to a conclusion that the usage of pronouns in the language of men and women are different.

2.3.2. Syntactic differences * Women's more detailed and long ads versus men's less detailed and short ads
Men and women have different ways to process information. "Women tend to process more extensively, more different pieces of information" while "Men tend to rely more on mental shortcuts …" (Yarborough 2000). a Another example by Wood (1966) shows that females are more interpretative and tend to be more subjective in their descriptions than men. The same result comes from Barron's study of speech by teachers and pupils during a class time. Barron (1971) find that women use more participative and purposive cases and men use more instrumental and objective cases.
In their study on differences in men and women's length of sentences, Vaezi and Vaezi, R. & Afghari, A. (2015) find that women prefer to use more utterances than men, and repeat the same things differently because they express their request with many words.
In addition, a popular science book called "The Female Brain" proved that "women on average utter 20,000 words a day, while men on average utter only 7,000" (Darlington, Cynthia L. 2009, p.29). This means that women are not only the more talkative gender but three times as much. Similar to the result of the above gender differences is Ifezue's finding (2010), which affirms that advertisements should be more detailed for women and less detailed for men to bring the best effect. It is also true that texts used in ads for men should be short and clear, while those for women should be longer with more details.

* Interrogative versus imperative sentence
The authors of the study "Gender Differences in Language Use: An Analysis of 14,000 Text Samples" bring the idea that "men and women may also have different semantic goals in mind when they construct sentences" (Newman, M.L. et al. 2008 , p.212). Lakoff (1975) observes that women often use requests while men issue commands. He shows that women are more likely to use an interrogative sentence and they use tag questions to make the tone less tense. Similarly, Fishman (1980) finds that women use three times of tag questions as men do when he works on conversation tapes from many couples.
Some researchers (e.g., Mulac, A. et al, 1988) find that women use more questions like "Does anyone want to get some food?" rather than "Let's go get some food" which are more likely to be found in men's conversations. To explain this trend, Xia,(2013) in his study shows that women use interrogative sentences as a strategy to continue a good conversation. He also observes a group of Philadelphian boys and girls on one street, and finds that the boys use a lot of imperative sentences, but the girls do not do the same (p.1486).

* Directness versus indirectness
When the length of sentences is calculated, women are counted as the wordier gender both in writing (e.g., Mulac & Lundell, 1994;Warshay, 1972) and speaking (Mulac et al., 1988;Poole, 1979). Continuing with a study on "Gender, Indirectness, and Length" of Vaezi, R. & Afghari, A. (2015), they also found the reason for the fact of women's length of sentences being longer than men's is that women use more indirect sentences while men use indirect answers. Another study in a comparison of 36 female and 50 male managers also did confirm that women used longer sentences than men overall (Mulac, Seibold & Farris, 2000). Hennessee and Nicholson (1972) proved that men use almost 90% directness to offer advice or commands when buying a particular product after studying over 1000 television commercials. In his research, Xia (2013, p.1486) also commented that the two genders express their wishes in different ways. While a man will say: "Please give me a hand" when he needs help, a woman will give a tender request such as: "I was wondering if you can help me". It means that men tend to ask something directly while women tend to be politer in the way they use directness.
Based on those differences in the way men and women use sentences, to attract women to buy a product, ads should contain a short story or a message behind to raise the curiosity and create a safe and natural atmosphere for women. They will easily buy products when receiving a polite and gentle message rather than a direct and somehow impolite suggestion. On the other hand, men will find it easier when receiving direct messages through products. What they need is short and clear messages which are not complicated to get through.
So ads language need to talk to men and women differently? The results of this study in the next section will give the answers to all.

. Adjectives and adverbs: * Similarities
Through investigation of the total of adjectives and adverbs used in the two groups of ads as shown in Table 2, we can see that the similarities here are mainly in meanings. There are common words mainly used to describe products and services in the both groups: -05 comparative forms: 1st, better, easier, latest, most.
-03 adverbs: exclusively, truly and very * Differences + In quantity: Almost all the numbers of adjectives and adverbs of all kinds for women's is much higher than those in men's ads as shown in the table 2 below ( 236 vs. 178). The numbers of adjectives in women's and men's ads are unequal (206 vs. 170). Especially the numbers of adverbs in the women's ads is three times as much as those in the men's ads (30 vs 8). Their meanings refer to the absoluteness, perfectness, goodness, comfortableness, believeableness, etc. of the products: absolutely, brilliantly, clinically, comfortably, continually, effortlessly, easily, fabulously, ferociously, firmly, gently, hand in hand, immaculately, independently, luxuriously, visibly, well, naturally, quintessentially, really, safely, simply, so, solely, subsequently, successfully, visibly, well. Meanwhile, in the men's ads, there are 5 adverbs only: correctly, directly, electronically, decidedly, artfully. Obviously, they are in a very small number with the meaning of correctness, directness, electronics, decision, arts, etc. mainly related to male characters. + In meaning: The women's ads: Single adjectives refer to products for women's beauty or nutritious products or health's care services, sports like yoga, fitness, etc. such as: -Kinds of products: cosmetics, creame, dental, etc.

. Verbs
After survey of verbs in men's and women's ads, we can point out similarities and differences between the two groups of verbs as follows:

* Similarities
Both groups of verbs in men's and women's ads execute the 3 main functions of requesting (encouraging, calling on) the customers to buy goods and services launching in ads , promising them the quality and benefits of the goods and services and making questions to the audiencecustomers.

* Differences
In women's ads, the numbers of verbs, which execute the 3 functions, are higher than those in the men's ads.

Similarities and differences in syntax
Syntax is the arrangement of words, "the way in which words are put together to form phrases, clauses, or sentences" (Dictionary of Meriam Webster online). Syntax is basically the structure of sentences. Sentences have to follow certain structural rules in order to make sense. In this part of the article, we compare the syntax structures between the two groups of ads for men and women to find out their similarities and differences. For the investigation of syntax, we need to deal with phrase and sentence structures in the ads.
A phrase is a small group of words that forms a meaningful unit within a clause. There are several different types such as: prepositional phrase, noun phrase, verb phrase, adjective phrase, adverbial phrase. According to Cambridge Dictionary online, in terms of structure, there are three types of sentences in English which are simple, compound and complex. Nevertheless, through investigation of ads , we found there are one more type of sentences often used in advertising: it consists of only a verb and an object of compliments and mostly used to make requests. For example: Watch your style. Visit tudorwatch.com and explore more. (Ads of watch TUDO -HMF); Live your passion. (Ads of watch FC Geneve -HMF). This type of sentence may be called a special sentence.
According to the survey data, there are 129 phrases and 177 sentences used in women's ads and those numbers in men's ads are 108 and 100 (can be seen in detail in Tables 3  and 4   The numbers of all kind of phrases and sentences in women's ads are higher than those in men's ads as mentioned above. With the same number of ads for each of sexes, the reason likely is that: in women's ads, the advertiser/copywriter use more words than those in men's ads. + In the length of sentence and text of ads: Through investigation, we found that the average number of words in a women's ads is higher than those in a men's ads (64 vs. 43). By the way, the longest text in the women's ads group has 256 words (Ad of creame Ageless Beauty DIOR -GH) and that number in the men's ads is 126 (Ad of watch RICHARD MILLE-HMF). And the numbers of the short texts of ads (less than 50 words) in the women's and men's ads groups are19 and 28 . These figures are likely to show the fact that: the advertiser often talks to women with more words than to men. This seems to confirm the remark mentioned above.

Linguistic differences between men and women in ads
Nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs are found to have similar functions in ads for men and women. Nouns and proper names in both groups of ads refer to brand names of different products. Adjectives and adverbs are common words mainly used to describe products' and services' characteristics in both groups. Verbs in men's and women's ads execute the 3 main functions of requesting, promising, making questions (of the advertiser) to the audience. However, as can be seen from the study results, men's ads will focus on products or services that the content contains male characteristics such as masculine, strong, hero, leader, winner, adventure etc. while women's will focus on ads containing words and phrases that refer to women's characteristics such as feminine, pretty, fashion, style, make up etc.

Syntactic differences
In terms of syntax, although, in both of groups of ads, there are phrases and 4 types of sentences, namely as simple sentences, compound sentences, complex sentences, special sentences. Through investigating data, we can conclude that men's ads use more direct requests than woman's. In men's ads, there are 11 verbs executing the function of request and among them 6/11(56%) executing the direct request. In the women's ads, there are 37 verbs executing the function of request and among them 13/37(35%) executing the direct request. This is consistent with previous studies that suggested that women use interrogative sentences (indirect) to request while men use imperative sentences(direct) to do so.
Also, in the field of syntax, in women's ads, the number of phrases and sentences are more than those in men's ads. This is also consistent with the average number of words in women's ads compared to men's ads (64 vs. 43). . Therefore, the number of short texts of fewer than 50 words per one in ads for men is more than those for women.

Suggested implications for ads copywriters
Different genders interpret languages in different ways; thus, men and women understand the advertising messages differently. There are some points that advertisers/copywriters should remember when creating a copy of advertisement, which related to customer behavior and psychology.
Men's and women's advertising language should focus on different topics, on the products which are suitable for each gender. There will be two types of products that need to be discussed. The first one is products based on gender such as razor for men or sanitary pad for women. The second one is mutual products such as food, drink, medicine, etc. The first type is the typical for each gender, thus, advertisers should develop a specific stratergy to attract the right customers. Even though the second type of products are mutual products, they still have some gender differences such as food or drinks for men provide energy and build muscles while those for women should be sugar-free to lose weight. 6For each company and products, target customers based on gender and content of ads in terms of linguistics should be focused on.
Ads texts should be related more to customers of the specific gender with particular symbols that each gender cares about.For a long time, whenever the advertiser-seller want to launch a new product, the ads content often focuses on their branding name. However, this way is less effective as nowadays, the trend in creating ads contents is focusing on the audience -buyers and talking more about them rather than the products. Therefore, in terms of linguistics, ads texts should be related to particular symbol which each gender cares about, as men are looking towards to manliness while women are seeking womanliness. The suggestion here is building the ideas of men and women with typical characteristics related to your products through linguistics used in ads. Each time they think about themselves, they will think about your products.
Ads should pay attention to the language that creates gender stimulation.
Based on a psychology phenomenon so-called "gender stimulation", men will be attracted by female characteristics while women will be attracted by the opposite gender. Therefore, to bring the best model of each gender through product ads directly to male and female customers, advertisers should remember to use "gender stimulation", in which men will be attracted by female characteristics and vice versa. This should be applied in the text of ads (Thang & Thanh, 2023). By using another gender's voice and manner by words and sentences used in ads, advertisers can urge customers to buy products in a natural way.