Western society and expectations of women: A Critical Discourse Analysis of two texts from Little Women (2019) and Barbie (2023)

The existing scientific literature that specifically addresses the expectations placed on women in Western society seems scarce except for studies exploring the connection between gender, language and discourse, such as Bucholtz (2003), Eckert and McConnel-Ginet (2003), Livia (2003) and McElhinny (2003). The aim of the present investigation is to discover the presence of possible implications and presuppositions in the texts under analysis, that might highlight some expectations that are present in nowadays Western socio-cultural context. The main tool used to carry out this investigation is the theoretical framework proposed by Fairclough (1995) regarding CDA, which is largely described in the first chapter of the present dissertation. After the presentation of the theoretical tool, the analyses of the two texts are presented, the first from the movie Little Women (2019) and the second taken from Barbie (2023). Findings indicate that several implications and presuppositions can be found in the chosen texts. Some of these also deal with similar topics, highlighting how there is also a certain connection between the past and the present. Moreover, since the present dissertation also aims to discover whether people perceive as possibly true what emerges from the critical analysis of the texts, a questionnaire was administered. The answers collected from the participants to the survey mostly seem to confirm the existence of socially and culturally created expectations on women in Western society This underlines the presence of a connection between the results of the text analyses and the real world. As a consequence, a general connection between discourse and the real context in which this discourse is included might be presumed.