Today's "Modern Family": A Textual Analysis of Gender in the Domestic Sitcom

Abstract

This thesis utilizes a textual analysis with an emphasis on gender to analyze the Emmy award-winning sitcom, Modern Family. The program’s overwhelming popularity among television audiences and media critics alike gives reason for scholarly attention. This study answers the question, in what ways does the sitcom, Modern Family, communicate our culture’s dominant ideology about family. The textual analysis revealed that regardless of the illusion of modernity, each of the families within the domestic sitcom supported the traditional, nuclear family.