Perspectives Of Gender And Language In Cameroonian Contexts

7. Representation of Gender in Billboard and Poster Adverts of Brewery Products in Cameroon

123 7 Representation of Gender in Billboard and Poster Adverts of Brewery Products in Cameroon Canisia Fontem, Lilian Lem Atanga, Jean-%HQRvW7VRIDFN Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, University Of Dschang, Dschang, Cameroon Introduction We are surrounded every day in our lives by adverts. In Cameroon as elsewhere, producers use advertisements to increase their sales and profitability. Gender stereotypes are often linked intentionally or unconsciously with advertising by many manufacturers. Though an extensive literature exist on how gender portrayals in adverts mirror gender roles in society, little of this research has been carried out in Africa especially in Cameroon. The brewery industry is one of such that presents and represents the advertisements of its products using men and women who are the real consumers of these products. The representations and construction of gender on the different products and types is sometimes very binary. As Horsely (2007) observes, these portrayals are a reflection and representation of the societal ideologies or constructs that mirror gender roles in the particular society The brewery industries are the main actors in the agro industries in Cameroon (MINEFI–DGTPE, 2007). Being in a competitive market in Cameroon as well as the Central African Sub Region, these industries usually sell their products through diverse forms of advertisements amongst them billboards and posters. The objective of this study is to assess the gender representations in billboard and poster adverts of brewery products in Cameroon. The paper seeks to answer the following research questions: 1. How is gender discursively represented on billboards in Cameroon? 2. Are males and females are equally represented in the adverts of brewery products (alcoholic and soft drinks); 124 3. How is agency represented in the adverts? 4. Does the representation of gender on billboards reflect societal ideologies and stereotypes? Methodology D Data selection and collection The data constitutes billboard and poster adverts of three brewery companies in Cameroon: Société Anonyme des Brasseries du Cameroun (SABC), Union des Brasseries du Cameroun (UCB), and Guinness Cameroon Société Anonyme (GCSA). Billboards and poster adverts were collected in five of the ten regions of Cameroon (Southwest, Northwest, West, Littoral and Centre). This collection took one month, from the 15 March to 15 April 2009. Although data was collected from only 5 regions of the country, the same adverts reappeared in these regions and are used all over the country. In each region, bill boards were observed along the major highways and streets while wall posters were collected from bars. Each billboard and poster advert was photographed with a digital camera and incorporated into a word file. Printed photos were then assembled and used for numerical analyses of the adverts. Data analysis Quantitative analysis of advertisements was focused on the number of adverts that represented a particular theme in the study on various forms of representation (Smith 1994, and Goffman 1976). The numerical representation of gender in brewery product types, number and percentage of male and female representations in the adverts of alcoholic and soft drinks and the number of male and female portrayal of the adverts per drink type were recorded. A quantitative assessment of the numbers of any of these items would give a relative indication of the social constructions present in the advertising (Frith, 1998). After examining the prevalence of the different gendered discourses, a qualitatively analysis is carried out using critical discourse analysis (Wodak and Meyer). Critical discourse analyses sees language as a social practice (Fairclough 1992). The adverts of the brewery products are designed based on societal stereotypes or ideologies (van Dijk 1998, Thompson 1990, Volosinov 1973). Gendered discourses are 125 identified which present the different representations of males and females in the adverts. Following Goffman (1976) the data was first examined using the following procedure: Each advert was coded or considered to be either male or female dominant or fore-grounded based on the model that played the most active, independent role. Contrarily, an advert was considered to be male or female backgrounded based on the model that played the most passive, dependent or secondary role. Licenced withdrawal was considered when a model was seemed to be drifting off, gazing away from the camera, engaging the viewer with a seductive eye or a sexually seductive look. Moreover, characters were also identified for decorative or sex appeal poses, whereby the presence of a physically attractive and sexy male or female model was unrelated to the advertised product. The focus...