The Image of Men in Advertising as Perceived by Polish Students of English Philology

Images presented in advertisements are very powerful and have huge impact on our perception of the world. The roles of women and men have changed within the last decade and therefore it is worth investigating the way they are perceived in advertising. The purpose of our study was twofold. First, we aimed to find out how Polish students from the English Department at a tertiary level institution in Poland, who are mainly females, perceive the image of a man in advertising. Our second purpose was to analyse their reception of slogans used in the advertisements. In order to find out the answers to our research questions concerning the image of males in advertising as well as language of advertising, we have decided to design a special questionnaire in which the students were asked to comment on advertisements associated with particular image concerning men. The advertisements had been chosen in relation to the categories established by Frith and Müeller (2010). While analysing the data we decided to use these categories, which are to be described in the theoretical part of the article. The obtained data has allowed us to find out what the image of a man is and what kind of language is used to make the advertisements effective.