Addie Sayers China

Language and the Manipulation of Teen Women's Identity Addie Sayers China

Abstract: In this dissertation I analyze the linguistic construction of the imagined teen reader on the multiple levels of discourse in three teen magazines, Teen, Seventeen, and YM. More specifically, I explore how teen women readers are constructed morphologically, syntactically, semantically, and pragmatically throughout all text within magazine editorial control. I ultimately argue that teen magazine discourse in this project presents teen women as fundamentally lacking and undermines their agency; the magazine then uses discourse features to sell teen women solutions to the discursively-constructed problems they created. Dissertation Discovery Company and University of Florida are dedicated to making scholarly works more discoverable and accessible throughout the world. This dissertation, "Language and the Manipulation of Teen Women's Identity" by Addie Leigh Sayers China, was obtained from University of Florida and is being sold with permission from the author. A digital copy of this work may also be found in the university's institutional repository, IR@UF. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation.