Longitudinal study of matrimonial columns in select newspapers of West Bengal

Matrimonial advertisements serve as unobtrusive sites to observe the construction and perpetuation of normative social psyche through socio-cultural discourses. The present study intends to explore the changing pattern of matrimonial advertisements published in two major newspapers, the English daily, The Times of India and the Bengali daily Ananda Bazaar Patrika over a period of three decades from 1989 till 2014 in West Bengal state in India. The study will employ an approach to analyse the matrimonial advertisements of the prospective brides and grooms through the theoretical framework of societal psychology. To qualitatively supplement the quantitative data, the study will explore the changing patterns of societal value system through the content of the matrimonial advertisements in terms of gender difference. This study will also attempt to probe this aspect of social reality as presumed in the matrimonial ads.