Análisis contrastivo de horóscopos como género discursivo y tipología textual; Roles y estereotipos de género en horóscopos
en catalán y castellano

García Urricelqui, Irati

Análisis contrastivo de horóscopos como género discursivo y tipología textual; Roles y estereotipos de género en horóscopos en catalán y castellano

Citation

García Urricelqui, I. Análisis contrastivo de horóscopos como género discursivo y tipología textual; Roles y estereotipos de género en horóscopos en catalán y castellano. 2022. handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10230/54143

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Abstract

Interest in astrology is growing among young people and yet there is little research about these texts in the field of languages. Some psychologists say that belief in horoscopes may be translated into changes in behavior to adapt to what is said in them, so it is important to study how these discourses are built and what messages they transmit. Based on that, this is an integrated work that has two main goals: first, to compare the structure, the argumentation, the discursive traits and the topics of these texts in Catalan and Spanish; second, to discover whether they transmit or not gender roles and stereotypes. With these aims, a form has been addressed to young people in order to define a corpus with texts in both languages. In the first part of the research, a qualitative descriptive analysis of the data has been carried out. Regarding the results, horoscopes in Spanish and Catalan are built up around two text sequencies: descriptions of the emotional landscape and recommendations. Their discourse is mainly supported by arguments by the weight of things, and they cover general topics by directly appealing the audience. In the second part, two analysis have been made: a semiotic analysis of the images and an inductive content analysis of the topics. While the Spanish source made a simplistic and stereotyped representation of women, the Catalan source was much more open regarding gender and race and presented a wide range of diverse representations. However, gender roles have been spotted in both sources: monogamy understood as the only acceptable relationship type, conflict avoidance by the recommendation of complaisance instead of assertive attitudes, and low importance of the work field sticking the subject to the private sphere. Several conclusions arise from these results: on the one hand, the simple structure of the horoscopes, the difficult to refute argumentation, the direct appellation to the addressee and the expression of general topics make it possible for a large audience to feel identified with this discourse and easily believe it. On the other hand, this belief in horoscopes may be harmful considering that the messages it transmits are simplistic and stereotyped gender wise (although the Catalan ones less than the Spanish ones).