Critical Discourse Analysis Of Chinese Advertisement

This book reflects the chronological changes in Chinese cultural values, social relations, economy and politics by critically analyzing the Chinese advertising discourse. The work is based on research into the ideological values portrayed in Chinese household appliance advertisements in the 1980s – 1990s. The analytical framework covers a variety of methods: critical discourse analysis, chronological analysis, visual and verbal analysis, and qualitative and quantitative analysis. The findings suggest that ideological values consciously or unconsciously manifested by the visual and verbal devices in the Chinese advertisements moved in a pattern from simplicity to diversity, from being politically-oriented to being economically and profit-oriented, from conservatism to globalization and westernization, in keeping with the progression of the Chinese economic reform. The findings further indicate that the ideological values in the Chinese household appliance advertisements are embedded in the advertising language and illustrations. Lastly, the work reveals the reality of Chinese politics, economy and society at a time when China experienced the growth of the market economy and evolution of Chinese mainstream ideologies, and demonstrates the impacts of these changes on the ideological meanings in advertisements. This book will help readers discover the more profound meanings behind the superficial content of Chinese advertisements.

This is the first book-length study of identity constructions in relation to English as a contact language in advertising of non-English-speaking countries through a critical and interpretive lens. Instead of simply presuming the role of the English language may have in constructing identities within the multimodal advertisement, this book aims to explore ethnographically the ideological underpinnings of identity constructions in the context of local politics of English. It studies the varying degrees of the contribution of the English language and its possible roles in bilingual advertising, unravels the ideological dimensions of the language as well as identity and explains the sociocultural forms and meanings of identity. To this end, it develops a new critical-cognitive approach, bringing together recent advances in English as a global language, critical sociolinguistics, multilingual studies and multimodal discourse analysis. By delving into the cognitive process of identity constructions, it provides an evidence-based account of the roles of English, and it illustrates the interconnections between identities and local politics of English. This interdisciplinary book will be of interest to scholars and students in bilingualism, multilingualism, discourse analysis, English as a global language, multimodality, advertising and marketing.

Public discourse constitutes the language environment of a town or a city, which forms part of the social environment of a country or a region. Based on extensive first-hand data collected from public places, mass media and the Internet, this monograph attempts critical pragmatic studies of public discourse in the contemporary Chinese context. By applying pragmatic theories and analytical instruments to the analysis of the data, including business names, advertisements, public signs and notices, and news, the book showcases such discursive practices as personalization and subjectivization and reveals such social problems as unhealthy social mentalities, “pragmatic traps”, suspect discrimination, and vulgarity. It exemplifies a way of combining the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach and the pragmatic approach with a clear focus on the pragmatic issues. This book will not only be a necessary addition to the academic discipline of pragmatics in general, and critical pragmatics in particular, but also lay bare the problems existing in the use of public discourse and suggest several ways to improve such use. While it addresses the Chinese data only, the proposed analyses may contribute to international readers’ understanding of public discourse in contemporary China and serve as a reference for similar researches worldwide.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of Chinese advertising as an industry, a discourse and profession in China’s search for modernity and cultural globalization. It compares and contrasts the advertising practices of Chinese advertising agencies and foreign advertising agencies, and Chinese brands and foreign brands, with a particular focus on the newest digital advertising practices in the post WTO era. Based on extensive interviews, participant observation, and a critical analysis of secondary data, Li offers an engaging analysis of the transformation of Chinese advertising in the past three decades in Post-Mao China. Drawing upon theories of political economy, media, and cultural studies, her analysis offers most significant insights in advertising and consumer culture as well as the economic, social, political, and cultural transformations in China. The book is essential for students and scholars of communication, media, cultural studies and international business, and all those interested in cultural globalization and China.

Discourse as Cultural Struggle challenges the cultural imbalance in current research traditions, and argues for a culturalist perspective in facilitating better intercultural exchange amidst accelerated processes of globalization. It is the first engagement with discourses in non-mainstream cultures. Covering a wide range of issues in public, professional, media and intercultural communication, the twelve original essays here tackle culturally pressing issues by aligning viewpoints from various geopolitical contexts. This is a thought-provoking book for scholars and researchers of language and communication studies who seek innovative approaches in their fields of interest. “Here is a book that takes diversity seriously and lifts it to the level of an epistemic paradigm. What we know is culturally constituted and discursively articulated; this relativism is converted into an absolutism due to historical power relations, and we find ourselves a curious situation in which anything that suggests diversity at fundamental levels of thought becomes a serious theoretical problem. This book addresses this absurdity, and in the context of globalization, the exercise is to be welcomed.” — Jan Blommaert, University of London “This volume opens up new and innovative perspectives for all interested in discourse analysis, cross-cultural communication, and social change. It links and relates approaches which originate more in the ‘West’ with those stemming from the ‘East’. Thus, a challenging debate is finally made possible which ultimately could and should lead to more collaborative research and, even more importantly, to better and mutual understanding.”— Ruth Wodak, Lancaster University “This fine volume enters the large field of Discourse Studies by insisting that cultural knowledge of discourses is essential, and thus necessary for our understanding of how discourse shapes human communities and relations among them. It is a rich collection of conceptual and case studies, a fine addition to our literatures, and worthy of our careful study.” — Donal Carbaugh, University of Massachusetts at Amherst

This book analyses the creation and dissemination of discourse in China while examining how its media and the people interact and communicate with the rest of the world. It explores the interplay between language, meanings, social practices, culture and politics in the processes of discourse generation. The book critically studies intercultural communication and Chinese discourse models at the national, institutional and individual levels and the different modes of interaction between China and the world. With the help of several case studies the book analyses reports from the People’s Daily, interpersonal meaning in promotional videos and advertisements in China, rhetoric in the editorials of China Daily and the representation by international media like The Associated Press and The New York Times to explore differences between Chinese and the Western media reporting the same event. It also looks at the complex models through which the Chinese people—both as individuals and as a collective—communicate with and gain an understanding of the rest of the world. Rich in empirical case studies, this book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of Chinese Studies, communication studies, media and cultural studies, international relations and political communication.

This book explores China’s currency wars with its trading partners in four Western newsmagazines: Time, The Economist, L’Express, and Der Spiegel. Based on both quantitative and qualitative approaches, the interdisciplinary approach adopted in the research draws on two analytical frameworks from the realm of critical discourse analysis – van Leeuwen’s socio-semantic inventory of social-actor representation, and van Dijk’s concepts of macro-rules – as the overarching approaches to understand the changing dynamics of international relations and the global economy through Western media. The sample in this study consists of 160 texts, half of which are focused on China and the other half on Japan, across a period of 12 months in 2010 (China) and in 1987 (Japan). Through the comparison of Western representation between China and Japan, the similarities and differences in their coverage have been revealed as even more striking with regards to global politics and the international economy. The findings obtained from the empirical research have revealed that China was not only reported more unfavourably than Japan in terms of depth, but also across a broader range of areas spanning economics, politics, and military affairs. It has also emerged that all the four Western newsmagazines tended to centre their coverage on the US and China in 2010, and the US and Japan in 1987, although they did not speak in one collective voice with regard to their coverage of China and Japan.

Chinese Discourse Studies presents an innovative and systematic approach to discourse and communication in contemporary China. Incorporating Chinese philosophy and theory, it offers not only a distinct cultural paradigm in the field, but also a culturally sensitive and effective tool for studying Chinese discourses.