Representation of Women Empowerment in Arab TV Commercials: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis

Representation of gender has a long history of stereotyped portrayal where the female gender is traditionally confined to a limited set of gender roles and is often excluded from the male world. Meanwhile, as female roles have changed worldwide, women representation is similarly evolving towards a more positive one. As far as the Middle East is concerned, the genderinclusion policies are also applied where Arab women are included as equally powerful members in the society. Hence, it is important to trace this new trend of positive Arab female representation in the media. Since the genre of TV commercials is a significant source of popular culture, this study aims at investigating the features of feminist advertising in Arab television commercials. The researcher applies Kress and van Leeuwen's approach of Multimodality on the visual elements in the selected commercials. The study concludes that women empowerment has become a significant trend in Arab commercials as increasing numbers of females are recently portrayed in powerful positions. Advertisers employ several techniques to depict the phenomenon of women empowerment. The three metafunctions of Kress and van Leeuwen's (2006) model of Visual Grammar reveal the role of each technique and how they all collaborate to deliver a comprehensive message to the viewers.