‘He Cries’ and ‘She Battles’: A Qualitative Study of Masculinity and Femininity Redefined in Sports Discourse of Newspapers

Abstract

The study attempts to investigate how and in what ways the selected newspapers have represented masculinity and femininity in their sports sections.The media has a major role in shaping our perception of the world and in assisting us in determining what is and is not significant. It is critical to take into account how the media portrays the sports stars, and for this purpose the current study has analyzed twenty news items taken from two Pakistani and two foreign newspapers for a span of three years. The study based on Hall’s theory of representation concludes that sports persons have been depicted in unconventional ways; and traditional notions of gender have been challenged and redefined in the data analyzed. The study indicates the necessity for further investigation into additional linguistic and semiotic dimensions of newspapers to attain a more thorough comprehension of the phenomenon.