Appraisal Analysis of Women Representation in Matrimonial Advertisements

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The language employed in matrimonial advertisements has a considerable impact on how people perceive marriage and gender roles. In addition to reflecting and reinforcing societal norms, values, and gender roles, the language used in matrimonial ads may have an impact on how individuals and families view themselves and one another in the setting of marriage. The current study explored linguistic choices in marriage ads to depict women in traditional gender roles and how they contribute to the representation of women. Matrimonial websites and social media platforms were used to compile a corpus of matrimonial ads. The current study utilized Systemic Functional Linguistics' appraisal theory to explore women representation in matrimonial ads. About 43 matrimonial ads were analyzed by using the ATLAS.ti software, for lexico-grammatical choices pertaining to judgment and appreciation. To identify the linguistic features and patterns, the textual content of matrimonial ads was analyzed linguistically. This analysis concentrated on lexical choices, linguistic structures, and presence of evaluative language, all of which align with appraisal theory concepts. The study determined that women are mostly categorized in terms of their physical attributes, such as beauty, height, weight, their age, occupation, education, character, and nature.