The FHM article offers an incentive to writing in – a PlayStation 2. This means that men are more inclined to write in – they win a prize. However, in Cosmopolitan there is no such incentive, meaning that the women write in just to share their story and express their feelings in words. Therefore the data is different – the FHM stories are attempting to win something while the Cosmopolitan stories have no such ‘ulterior motive’. This proves my hypothesis suggestion that the men were more likely to be competing with each other, as this is quite clearly what they are doing.
One of the most striking differences between the two articles is the layout and colour schemes used. FHM uses striking, standout colours, such as the red box in which the title is written. The picture on the page is a cartoon, not a real photo. It depicts a scene from on of the stories, in which two people are laughing at a thermal display of a man farting. This immediately shows the piece to be comical in nature, especially with the two people laughing in the picture. This is in stark contrast to the Cosmopolitan article, which uses gentle pastel colours, and has two photos of the couple in the story, in both of which the lady is sitting on the mans lap in a gesture of love. This also sets the scene for the story. The FHM article also has a picture of a PlayStation 2 – adding to the incentive of potential authors. These are subtle but effective ways of letting you know the type of article you are about to read.
The FHM article also uses sharp-edged fonts, and is very ‘crammed in’, when you look at it there is hardly any space left, whereas in the Cosmopolitan article the fonts are more rounded and less harsh, and it is more spaced out. These are both interesting as they conform to stereotypes in society – soft women who enjoy reading about love stories and gossiping compared to hard men who like to read jokes as light relief. The FHM article and the Cosmopolitan articles very much correspond to these.
Another thing to think about when looking at the layout is the fact that the FHM stories, all four of them, only take up one page. This contrasts with the Cosmopolitan article which takes up two pages of pure storytelling, for only two stories, and even then the one written by the man is very short, a few lines. The woman’s story is far larger and longer than those of the men. There is also a small quote from the text in a larger font in one of the spaces in the woman’s story, saying:
“Every kiss means so much more than it did before and I can feel Sam’s love even more intensely”.
It is giving a little ‘taster’ of what the story is about, and it is clear from the quote that the story is about love. The FHM article doesn’t do this.
Another thing to look at is the way the stories are introduced and presented. The FHM articles have no real introduction, but to give you a taster of what is in the article they have a catchy name and a small sub-title underneath indicating what the story is about, such as:
“Candid Camera: Gaseous Escape Captured” and “Mobile Mistake: Texting Lothario Makes Do”.
This is very clever, with alliteration in the main title with the CC and MM sounds, and then a clever comment. “Gaseous Escape Captured” refers to the fart being captured on thermal imaging as said earlier. However the language is fairly complex. In “Texting Lothario Makes Do”, the word “Lothario” means “A man who seduces women” named after Lothario from ‘The Fair Penitent’ by Nicholas Rowe (information from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition). This is a cliché, but quite a demanding reference, as not many people would know this, so it shows that the FHM language is actually more advanced than expected. The sub-titles are comical one-liners, and do actually tell you quite a lot about the story compared to their short length. They generally consist of a noun phrase and a verb. The Cosmopolitan story’s introduction in contrast goes on for 3 lines about the ages of the people telling the story, the woman’s occupation, and a small description of the story. It uses two whole sentences containing a number of phrases and subordinate clauses. The language here is more simple, with the title being:
“How Love Survived Disaster”.
With “Love Survived” in a different colour to make it stand out more. This is simple and effective, telling you what the story is about – love surviving a disaster – and also encouraging you to keep on reading to find out what it is about. The sub-title goes into a little more depth, and after giving you personal details it gives you a little taster of the story:
“…a near-fatal climbing accident changed everything but their [the man and woman involved’s] feelings for each other”.
The sentence is simple but effective enough at telling you what the story is about. It is easy to read, and purposefully so – the words are short and obvious unlike the longer more complex and obsolete words used in FHM – “Lothario” and “Gaseous Escape”, which is more subtle than “womanizer” and “fart”. This is because it is meant to be funny, and “Gaseous Escape Captured” is much funnier than “Fart Captured”.
Both articles use a lot of personal pronouns to tell the story to the reader – they are all written in first person, describing events that happened to the reader. This is not uncommon, as stories about the author are generally always written in first person. All the stories here are about the author and something which has happened to them, not someone else. The stories are also structured chronologically – and especially in the Cosmopolitan story the woman almost always gives a time adverbial at the beginning of a paragraph, such as:
“Three days after”, “That night”, “The next morning”, and “During the day”.
These are used to set the time period for each scene, and also helps you read it – you never wonder when something is happening in relation to something else. The FHM stories use this, but as they are much shorter they use it to a lesser extent, such as:
“Not long ago”, “A couple of years ago”, and “Early one morning”.
They also set the scene but generally only need to be used once in the story as they are so short and set over a smaller time period than the woman’s story. There is only one exception to this use of time adverbials at the beginning of the stories and this is the short story written by the man in the Cosmopolitan article. He starts with:
“The way Lynda has stood by me is incredible”.
This is because it is set after the main story which describes the events which happened with him and the woman, which she has told. It would be tedious to read it all again, therefore he writes only a small comment at the end of the article. This seems fitting as it tells us in the woman’s story that the man was crippled and unable to speak and move very well in an accident – therefore he isn’t going to be writing multi-page dramas like she is! It is also interesting that all the men, in either magazine, write short stories, as opposed to the one woman who writes an incredibly long one. This almost fits into the theories that I learned about last year when studying language and gender, which is that women talk a lot about certain topics – love, relationships etc whereas men talk less, unless the topic interests them. The stories here follow that pattern. Also, all the stories use the past tense, they have to as they are relating to something that has already happened.
The sentence structure is generally complex in FHM, and more simple in Cosmopolitan. This is because the stories in FHM are trying to fit more into a smaller amount of words, whereas in Cosmopolitan there is a lot of space so things don’t need to be so rushed. In FHM this involves a lot of non-finite clause use, especially at the start of sentences. An example of this is:
“Arriving late for a party after a few drinks in the pub I charged upstairs to the toilet, only to find it engaged”.
This is quite a long sentence, and contains a time adverbial “arriving late … after a few drinks in the pub” setting the time for the story. The sentence fits a lot in, what with the time adverbial, the setting of the scene and already an event that has happened. The theme of non-finite clauses is continued in this story, with:
“After 30 seconds spent fishing unsuccessfully for the string light-pull”.
This describes more activity in less time, and therefore helps fit more story in. it also makes the sentences more complex, with more adjectives to describe the state of the man. The Cosmopolitan story doesn’t do this as much, sticking to simpler subject–verb–object grammar instead, with less descriptive language. However they do use modifiers. An example of this is:
“He was always planning exciting new adventures”.
There is description but it is used very differently to that in the FHM article . The FHM stories tell you what is going on but describe feelings and emotions with modified adjectives and metaphors such as “concrete prison” and “a particularly heavy night on the ale”, whereas the Cosmopolitan story tells you what is going on, in a much more long-winded way, such as:
“…[The mountain] looked stunning – grassy on one side, dramatic with jagged, black rocks on the other”.
There is also the recurring theme of love setting the scene for every part of the story. The woman brings this theme out by constantly mentioning the word “love” and words relating to it, such as:
“Sam’s passion was mountain climbing” and “I felt an overwhelming desire to kiss him”.
The language uses love-related words even when it doesn’t have to, such as “passion” and “desire”. It also uses hospital-specific and climbing-specific words to set the scene for those particular parts of the story, such as “coma” and “abseiled”. This contrasts to the FHM stories where there isn’t enough space to build up a detailed scene, hence the use of complex language such as non-finite clauses.
There are many differences between the two articles. The one which is the most obvious is the subject matter. The mens comedic anecdotes are a long way away from the woman’s serious long narrative. This is influenced by the readers, who expect different things from each magazine. No-one knows this better than the authors, who obviously read the different magazines a lot. Therefore we can see that a reader picking up Cosmopolitan expects stories which make them feel happy, or sad, or both, but a reader picking up a copy of FHM expects funny short stories which they can laugh at. This is proved in FHM by the offer of an incentive prize to the funniest story – the readers know exactly what sort of thing they are going to be reading.
The Cosmopolitan story is written in a very different way to the FHM stories. One thing that stands out is the use of intensifiers. These intensifiers are used very often, in places such as:
“I was in such pain” and “I felt so happy”.
They make the noun or adjective more intense, and this seems to be something only in the Cosmopolitan story. The FHM stories don’t really use this. Interesting however is the fact that the small story from the man in Cosmopolitan uses “so” as an intensifier twice. This shows that maybe it is not so much the gender of the person writing the story but the subject matter that influences the language choices of the author.
The Cosmopolitan story uses more clichés than the FHM stories by a long way. It is like one of those programs on TV where different couples give variations on the same basic topic – love, disaster, but love prevailing. Examples of this are:
“I felt myself falling for him” and “I want to share that with you”.
The FHM stories are more unique, because they are just short personal anecdotes – the type you tell your mates about or tell someone at a party as a topic of conversation.
One thing unique to the Cosmopolitan article is the use of direct speech. This is where the writer has quoted sentences without modification, as if they are the exact words spoken. An example of this is:
““You do realise that 98 per cent of relationships fail under these circumstances”, a social worker told me”.
She quotes the exact words spoken, or at least as close as she remembers them. This use of direct speech enhances the story by making it seem as if the reader is reading about someone’s experiences in a more intimate way, as if it had been recorded word by word. This is typical of the aims of the Cosmopolitan story, it attempts to draw the reader in to its world and let them experience events in the story in their imagination almost first-hand.
The articles also both have very differing levels of formality. The FHM article is very informal, while the Cosmopolitan article is much more formal. This is due to the tone of the two different stories – a formal style of writing would be inappropriate for the FHM article whereas an informal style would likewise not sound right in the serious Cosmopolitan article. The language definitely reflects this. This is related to the basic tenor of the articles. As I stated in my hypothesis I expected this. The FHM article therefore uses phrases like:
“The thermal display from my fart”, and “freezing my arse off”.
These slangy informal descriptions are very suitable for the FHM stories but hardly sensible for the Cosmopolitan story.
Overall the articles conform closely with my hypothesis. The variances in the tenor were often and obvious. The male stories also conformed to my hypothesis in that they were competing as an incentive to win a prize, whereas the woman was not. The subject matters also matched my hypothesis. The male stories use mostly a different style of writing to the female articles, and indeed these contribute to them having very different effects on the reader.
I think that my investigation has been a success. I have proved many of my hypotheses and my aim has been met. There is a large difference in male and female orientated magazine articles, in both style and substance.
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