‘Representation matters’: A research on the linguistic representations of women who love women in Dutch media landscapes

Abstract

This thesis aims to examine how women who love women (WLW) are represented in Dutch media landscapes. In the introduction, I elaborate on the work of Dutch media critic Madeleijn van den Nieuwenhuizen, who openly shared her critique on heteronormative bias in women’s magazine Cosmopolitan in 2019. After discussing the key concepts, representation, stereotyping, heteronormativity, and homonormativity, I carry out a critical discourse analysis in combination with queer linguistic approaches to discourses on the women’s magazine Cosmopolitan and the LGBTI magazine L’HOMO, specifically looking at how these magazines represent WLW in their language use. Extrapolating from these findings, I argue that Van den Nieuwenhuizen failed to examine that heteronormativity can similarly be manifested in non-heterosexual media sources such as the magazine L’HOMO. The dominant discourses that arise from this analysis is that WLW remain underrepresented in Dutch media due to the heteronormative assumption that women are only attracted to the opposite sex. Likewise, the analysis shows that heterosexual as well as non-heterosexual women are expected to conform to certain gender ideals in order to be accepted in society. By drawing on the stereotypical perceptions of dyke and butch identities, I argue that women with ‘feminine’ traits are represented as more accepted in comparison to women with ‘masculine’ traits. I therefore recommend that Dutch media sources need to counter heteronormative and homonormative bias in their texts to increase a non-normative representation of this group.