This article reports on a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the lifestyle magazine
Cosmopolitan. It aims to demonstrate how a CDA framework was used to investigate the linguistic
construction of gender ideology. In order to pursue this goal, an appropriate analytic framework
was derived by combining methodologies from Fairclough (2003) with Kitis and Milapides (1997).
The results draw attention to the manner in which magazines like Cosmo attempt to balance the
interests of readers with the ability to draw advertisers. Consequently, the magazine takes an
ideological stance which allows it to address this challenge.