We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected]
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
This chapter presents an overview of the presence of male and female characters and speech, in each film and across the entire set of films, and discusses issues of representation, conversational dominance, and talkativeness. In the Disney Princess films, male characters and male speech are both overrepresented. While Disney’s branding talks a big game about progressive feminist values, the films still consistently under-represent female characters, and reinforces the expectation that women should speak less than men. While Pixar also overrepresents male characters, at times even more drastically than Disney does, analysis of male and female co-leads showed neither gender consistently talking over the other. This suggests that Pixar has an issue of attention: when Pixar focuses on writing women, the result is a diverse set of talkative, well-rounded female characters with varying levels of power and assertion within their relationships. However, the presentation of femininity outside these one or two characters in each film tends to be much lazier, or altogether missing in favor of a host of male background characters. In films from both studios, male characters consistently take up more space, both in aggregate and in individual conversations, but the framing and characterization of talkativeness suggests that it’s women who are emotional, gossipy, and overly talkative.
Disney and Pixar films are beloved by children and adults alike. However, what linguistic messages, both positive and negative, do these films send to children about gender roles? How do characters of different genders talk, and how are they talked about? And do patterns of representation change over time? Using an accessible mix of statistics and in-depth qualitative analysis, the authors bring their expertise to the study of this very popular media behemoth. Looking closely at five different language features – talkativeness, compliments, directives, insults, and apologies – the authors uncover the biases buried in scripted language, and explore how language is used to construct tropes of femininity, masculinity, and queerness. Working with a large body of films reveals wide-scale patterns that might fly under the radar when the films are viewed individually, as well as demonstrating how different linguistic tools and techniques can be used to better understand popular children's media.
Recommend this
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.