2.2 Previous studies abroad

Simon (1990) analyzed 328 dating ads in newspaper and found that the traditional gender role stereotypes affect people's concept of mate-selection. Females focus on the work, the economy, education and commitment while males pay more attention to physical appearance. Rajecki (1991) and another two partners also declared that the female advertisers focused on the spouse’s status while the male ones made more requirements on the partner’s appearance. They also pointed out that the advertisers who portrayed themselves to be good-looking tended to set higher criterion for the ideal match. In her famous book Gender, genre, and generative grammar: Deconstructing the matrimonial column, Nair (1992) examined a corpus of dating advertisements collected from the Indian press. She combined the study of form with that of ideology in this medium. By analyzing the data, she found that the study of its language has great human and social implications, and complied with strict linguistic analysis. She also intended to uncover the underlying structure of these texts. Kris and Douglas (2005) also made corresponding study in dating ads. The differences of description between males and females reduced compared with the past dating ads and they tend to use more attractive words to describe themselves.

3 Theoretical Framework

3.1 Hofstede’s cultural dimensions

During the 1980s, Hofstede surveyed over a hundred thousand workers in multi-national organizations in forty countries. Through careful analysis, Hofstede has identified four value dimesions that have a significant impact on behavior in all cultures. These dimensions are: inpidualism-collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, power distance, and masculinity and femininity.