1 - Introduction

Summary

The Walt Disney corporation and its affiliates wield a huge amount of power in our modern media landscape, especially in regards to children’s media. In turn, a selection of evidence presented in this chapter argues that the linguistic patterning in media has an effect on children, in particular on their ideas about the social world and gender. Thus, Disney is an important area of study for understanding the effect of media on children, specifically in terms of language and gender. This chapter restates the importance of conducting sociolinguistic research on scripted media, and defends this methodological practice. Further, it also explains the methodology of the book, which includes both quantitative and qualitative research in order to assess the role of media representations in the construction of gender and gendered discourses. Finally, this chapter outlines the book in full, which includes a historical context of Disney and Pixar, a quantitative examination of speech amounts broken down by gender, an examination of specific speech acts (compliments, directives, insults, and apologies), and an qualitative examination of queerness in Disney films.