Constructing girlhood in Turkey: astrology in the Turkish HeyGirl magazine

Abstract

This article examines 144 horoscope forecasts in the Turkish girls’ magazine HeyGirl over the period 2019–20 using critical discourse analysis. It argues that although astrology is seemingly playful and harmless it works as the “institutionalization of superstition” by encouraging girls to judge evaluate and classify themselves through their experience by using the idea of a “perfect” future. This study therefore seeks to understand what kinds of tactics and strategies are used by horoscope forecasts in order to work like an ideologically disciplinary instrument. Analysis of the macrostructure of the horoscope forecasts identified four principal linguistic and textual tactics used by HeyGirl’s horoscopes: detect (or invent) a situation, transform the situation into a problem, offer a solution for the invented problem, make a promise. Each horoscope forecast was examined by separating its content into these four tactics. These separations open up the envisaged inter-relations between situation problem solution and promise. These envisaged inter-relations are used to show how astrology transforms ideology and discourses into “knowledge” which comes from the future in order to produce good docile girls in the Turkish context. © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.