Beyond the playground: the representation of reality in fashion dolls’ advertisements

Resumo

This article analyses the meanings conveyed by the discourse of web advertisements of the Brazilian fashion doll Susi, extracted from www.estrela.com.br. Drawing on Halliday’s (1994) Systemic Functional Grammar for the analysis of the transitivity features and nominal groups, it focuses on the topics that Susi’s ads reflect, the roles they convey and the type of relationship established among its participants. The analyses of the transitivity features of Susi’s virtual advertisements have pointed to the construction of a world textually characterized by activities typical of the upper-middle class, which revolve around material and relational processes. The analysis of the nominal groups further specify the nature of such activities by relating them to affairs such as fashion, beauty, diet, sports, leisure, studies and career, altering, therefore, a traditional view on women’s representation centered on the domestic sphere.