The discursive construction of identity in chinese english bilingual advertising a critical inquiry 1

CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Introduction English is now widely exploited in the communication of advertising, whether in print, television or website that is produced, circulated and consumed in non-Anglophone countries (see Bhatia 1992 for a cross-linguistic study, and Piller 2003 for a review). In the past over ten years, this bilingual (and in some cases multilingual) phenomenon has become one of research topics, attracting increasing attention of scholars from a wide range of disciplines, and continues to be a popular field of inquiry. In spite of the enormous richness of analytical dimensions, much of discussion in the proliferation of literature situated broadly in the domain of linguistics centers round structural patterns of English mixing, symbolic values of English, socio-pragmatic functions of this bilingual practice, and the use of English in the context of globalization (e.g., Bhatia 1987, 1992, 2000, 2001, 2002; Bhatia & Ritchie 2004; Cheshire & Moser 1994; Haarmann 1984, 1989; Martin 2002, 2006, 2007; Morrow 1987; Myers 1994; Ustinova & Bhatia 2005). What has been less widely and deeply examined is identity, even though language choice in advertising is claimed as a “powerful tool[s] in the construction of social identity, be it national, racial, or class identity” (Piller 2003: 173). Available in the literature there are only four studies---namely, Piller (2001), Lee (2006), Gao (2005), and Martin (2006)--that concentrate exclusively on this research topic, a sharp contrast to the pervasiveness of identity study related to code-switching practice in various contexts of interaction such as workplace, home, and classroom (e.g., Fuller 2007; Gumperz 1982; Pakir 1989; Myers- In this study, unless other mentioned, the term “bilingual” refers to the use of English as the foreign or second language alongside the native language. Scotton 1993; Zentella 1997; contributions in Pavlenko et al. 2001). In late modern societies where “[s]ocial and cultural change has engendered identity crisis” (Dunn 1998: 3) and “struggles over the construction of identities are a salient feature of late modern social life” (Chouliaraki & Fairclough 1999: 83), identity might become one of the most lively and popular topics of inquiry among bilingualism research in advertising. In examining the construction of modern identity for potential consumers, the available studies mentioned above customarily assume English as a sign of modernity upon which advertisers (i.e., agents, writers, designers, and editors) rely for socially indexing a pre-discursively defined modern, sophisticated, and cosmopolitan image of products2 and implicitly, “a transnational consumer” who is usually young, cosmopolitan, bilingual (Piller 2001: 180; Lee 2006; cf. Gao 2005). Yet, if viewed as rooted and jointly constructed in particular “communities of practice” (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet 1992), the spread of English as a global language does by no means suggest that social meanings of the English language and the ways in which it is exploited are universally the same without individual variations and differences across the globe. Given the locally-situated distinctive varieties of English usage, bilingual advertising of different places probably offers alternative forms and meanings of modern identity. Clearly what is absent in the available studies is due attention given to the pluricentric nature of English, language ideologies, and the universal perception of identity now being the product of social, cultural and political conditions at a particular point in time and place. Following this, an abstract “English” is insufficient when exploring modern identities constructed and (re)presented in the textual form of bilingual advertising; our attention must be paid to “the actual and densely contextualized forms in which language occurs in society” (Blommaert 2005: 15, italics original). Unless other mentioned, the term “product” in this study includes a product, a service and an idea that are advertised or presented by an advertisement, while “commodity” refers to a concrete product. The static social-indexical perspective of identity is incorrect for another reason, due to its simple assumption that the English language is primarily exploited to index modern identities for young bilinguals. The most relevant reason is that advertisers as meaning producers nowadays commonly rely on semiotic and not just linguistic means for identity construction and validation (Kress & van Leeuwen 1996, 2001). Given the multimodal feature of advertising texts and the possible ways in which the insertion of an English word or expression into different structural domains of an advertisement, it is premature to assume from the very beginning that the use of English always necessarily plays an essential or decisive role in the construction of modern identity. Rather, the extent of contribution English may have to different forms of modern identity is various, an important issue closely connected to social ideologies at work in the constructive process. This study intends to develop and enhance the inquiry of identity in relation to bilingual practice in advertising. Aside from treating identity as the result of overall arrangement of meaning-making elements in bilingual advertisements, it takes as point of departure two developments in the field of sociology and anthropology. The first one is associated with the idea of identity as a social and cultural category. As a social and cultural phenomenon, identity constructed and (re)presented in the textual form of bilingual advertising primarily through or at least related to the use of English is generally seen as a matter of the performative process through social and linguistic interactions (e.g., Butler 1990; Goffman 1981; Blommaert 2005). Attention of identity study in this way is oriented toward a complex set of processes and practices, rather than “common sense”, that draw on linguistic resources (plus other semiotic resources) belonging to two disparate linguistic systems “under social, cultural and historical conditions which both constrain and make possible the social reproduction of existing conventions and relations as well as the production of new ones” (Heller 2007: 15). The second concern of this study is related to the increasing malaise among anthropologists and sociologists with the tacit equation of modernity with homogeneity and uniform. Modernity is the condition of experience coupled with capitalism, industrialism, consumption, and other characteristics of life in the West3. Modernity has now been developed into having multiple forms and meanings in anthropology and social sciences. With demystification of universalism and celebration of difference and plurality, Giddens (1990), for instance, makes space for the assertion of cultural distinctiveness and the imagination of locally specific articulations of modernity. It becomes reasonable to reject the simplistic binary opposition of the West and the non-West in accounting for emerging multiple forms of modernity. Concerning the modernity of China in particular, similar arguments appear that modernity there may differ in certain striking respects from what many regard as the “standard model” (e.g., Dirlik & Zhang 2000; King 2002)4. The discourse of bilingual advertising logically marks a space of (re)construction and re-vision where local historical and cultural specificities can be mapped and interpreted to offer a different ground for imagining the meaning of modernity under global capitalism. With this perspective, forms of modern identity constructed and (re)presented in bilingual The terms “western” or “the West” are often used interchangeably with “European” and include also, from the mid-19th century, America. This somewhat crude simplification is intended not to cause confusion but to provide antithesis to the terms “the East”, “eastern” or “China”. To this study, it might be useful to point out that there are some heated debates about China’s qualifications to be a modern society. Here I have no intention of undertaking another debate on this issue but just follow Dirlik and Zhang (2000). Quoting the work of Berman (1988), Dirlik and Zhang propose to inquire into Chinese (post)modernism from three conceptually distinct perspectives: socioeconomic transformation, historical experience, and “cultural vision” based on that historical experience. They claim, “a more constructive response to the accusations brought against Chinese postmodernism” (Dirlik & Zhang 2000: 9) is that “all three (conceptual) levels of the process of post-modernity could, and in fact did, function relatively autonomously and claim their own empirical, ideological, and historical authenticities”(ibid.: 10). They go on to argue that China today celebrates a mass-consumer culture, which is much as postmodernism in the United States. From this point of view, China may well be qualified as a modern society at least in terms of the cultural vision of postmodernism. It is this realization that empowers me in the following to link consumption to the construction of modern identity in the Chinese context. More supporting information can be found at the end of Chapter discussing consumption practices in contemporary China. advertisements cannot be understood as taken-for-granted as alluded to the inevitable diffusion of the western model of modernity across the world. Specific historical and political resonances relating to a country’s modernity may, instead, manifest themselves in constructing different forms and meanings of modern identity through the locally characterized practice of English usage. What is important for the present purpose is that to reject modernity as an absolute universal is to acknowledge the fact of power relations and cultural hegemony underlying this appropriation on the part of the nation-state. The immediate discussions at least suggest strongly the need to take the position of this bilingual phenomenon as not random but rather social and cultural practices. It generally gives rise to the need to develop an even more critical version of bilingualism and hence of identity in the domain of advertising. And it becomes essential to provide a nuanced description paying close attention to the local complexities and probably contested ideologies of the English language. The notion of ideology is central in much of the argument in this study. A language ideology approach to identity construction associated with the transnational English usage is useful to allow insight into locally constructed categories which, that are often to be discovered, not assumed, may be differentiated from the globe-shared categories of, for example, gender, nation, and class. The ideological dimension of identity, it must be noted, remains principally underexplored, regardless of the common knowledge about the ideological work of advertising as well as language ideologies mediating the use of English. Any study of identity in bilingual advertising will have limited value, if focusing merely on the different forms and meanings of social identity and without paying close attention to how they are constructed, legitimized, and transformed through the mediation of language ideologies involving (re)production, resistance, and counter-resistance throughout the language practice of English mixing. This study attempts to examine critically the discursive construction of identity situated particularly in Chinese-English bilingual advertising. Data for analysis were collected from local print commercial advertisements produced and circulated in mainland China over the year 2007. The occurrence of English in Chinese advertising is quite high; however, it remains largely ignored, not to mention the research topic of identity (with the exception of Gao 2005). Different from the previous studies of this topic, this is a study in discourse analysis, in the very broadest sense of these words. One of its inquiries is about the possible way to bridge micro textual analysis and macro social theories. Considering the implied reflexivity of English usage and its embedment within social structures, this study, first and foremost, builds upon the fundamental principle of Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth CDA) (e.g., Fairclough 1989, 1992, 2003; Chouliaraki & Fairclough 1999; van Dijk 1993, 1998, 2006a) that discourses constitutive of various semiotic resources both reflect and construct macro societal and institutional ideologies. With a central concern for metalinguistic and metapragmatic norms and competencies, CDA is able to provide a fine-grained analysis on the topic of identity and the social ideologies informing the practice of English mixing and its connection to social identity. In this study, the notions of ideology and power conventionally crucial to CDA are deliberately defined in broader sense. In simple terms, not only is ideology construed as a manifestation of hegemonic practices, but also a representation of a set of sociocultural attitudes and beliefs about English. In the same way as ideology defined broadly, the conception of power involves complex relations including dominance, collaboration, negotiation and resistance, simply because of the locally situated application of English as a global language. In addition to taking a social-critical perspective of bilingualism and identity, the study commits itself to a focus on the nature of cognitive structures as regards a mental construct of identity. The reasons are plenty and complex, but I can think of at least three of them here. The first one is concerned with processes of identity construction in the mass communication of commercial advertising that are normally multifaceted, combining discursive, cognitive, and emotional dimensions. Nevertheless, the dynamics of these dimensions and their interconnection, to my knowledge, have hardly been brought together for analysis in the literature. Given the close relationship among them, the only way we analysts can deeply and fruitfully understand and interpret identity is to give equal weight to each dimension of them. Secondly, languages in the global marketplace are now increasingly acquiring their value as a function of economic significance and, therefore, a multiplicity of social identity constructed and (re)presented through them are being commercialized (Heller 2003). What entails is that identities (re)produced or shaped in advertising primarily through or at least related to the use of English are generally motivated by and grounded on the principal concern to ensure commercial profits. It is firmly believed the existence of the triangular interrelations between English, identity, and function (e.g., persuasion), other than multiple voices articulating social ideologies, in constructing social identities particularly within commercial advertisements. But, surprisingly, no attempt has ever been carried out to examine mental processing of persuasion connected to the constructive process of identity, regardless of a body of literature about the socio-psychological motivation underpinning bilingual practices (e.g., Bell 1984; Bhatia 1992; Bhatia & Ritchie 2004; Myers-Scotton 1988; van Meurs et al. 2007). The last but perhaps most significant reason is largely related to and motivated by the enduring endeavor of CDA to make visible and transparent the “hidden agenda” of discourse, its ideological dimension. But analysis by CDA is usually criticized for its not being sufficiently in touch with the complexities inherent in linguistic-semiotic meaning (Blommaert 2005; Slembrouck 1995) and with the politics of CDA practitioners’ interpretation (Schegloff 1997; Slembrouck 2001; Widdowson 1995, 1998). Importance of CDA, as Iedema asserts, should be attached much more to “the hermeneutic dimensions of analysis (Messer, Sass, & Woolfolk 1990) and the complex logics of practice (Schatzki 2002)” than to “technical precision, analytical certainty and political determination” (2004: 414). For providing a well-argued account of how and why the use of English probably has an important (or even central) role in constructing an identity, a deep investigation into mental processing of identity formation seems in order. Interestingly, in the latest development of CDA is observed an increasing tendency for CDA practitioners (e.g., Chilton 2004, 2005a; O’Halloran 2003; contributions in van Dijk 2006a and in Hart & Lukes 2007) to advance critical analysis of language and social phenomena by bringing together contemporary linguistic and cognitive approaches. With the purpose to grapple with the complexity of discourse practice involving two distinct languages and mental processing of identity formation, this study meanwhile proposes to internalize within the analytical framework of CDA some methodological tools originally developed in cognitive linguistics. With the cognitive perspectives, CDA is able to shed new light on the constructive process and its ideological dimension by providing an explanatory, rather than simply descriptive, account of how changes, modifications, or transformations are likely to be shaped, reshaped, and even probably manipulated and controlled, through the strategic practices of English mixing. Modern identity of Chinese people as target audiences of Chinese-English bilingual advertising is the first category of collective identity the present study intends to investigate. Earlier we have come to share the point that western modernity is not an absolute truth applicable to all historical periods or all cultures; nor is it a pure utopia unmediated by social ideologies. In addition to taking the position of multiple modernities, this study firmly follows reflective “self-identity” in late modernity extensively discussed The term “audience”, the consumers of symbolic forms, refers to any person at whom bilingual advertisements target irrespective of their intention of buying and consuming the product being advertised. It is sometimes exchangeable with “viewer”. As the following discussion suggests clearly, by this an emphasis is implicitly put on the power and ideology of advertisers and the dominant social group to which they belong. also by Giddens (1991). The notion of reflective self-identity is concerned with how people understand and shape their identity in later modernity, and how media like advertising might feed into this. Language always plays an important role in the formation of a collective identity associated with an “imagined community” (Anderson 1983). It has been claimed that by using language to construct “imagined communities”, advertisements offer a sense of belonging to the audience. By this interpretation, bilingual advertisements become vehicles for target audiences’ socio-cognitive (re)presentation. This study takes a holistic approach defining consumption as an everyday material and social practice in which the acquisition of products fulfils a wide range of personal and social functions. Just as persons choose products so products also play a part in the construction of their social identity. As persons become potential consumers, the meanings and messages attached to products play a large part in defining who they are or wish to be and signal affiliation to a single or range of social categories and cultural values. It is through this lens that this study traces the relationship between English and the construction of modern identity in Chinese-English bilingual advertising. This position, notably, is opposed to the claim by the previous studies (i.e., Piller 2001; Lee 2006) that different aspects of modern identity constructed in bilingual advertising are available only to bilinguals whose linguistic repertoire includes the English language. Categories of collective identity to be examined in the study are not confined to modern identity of target audiences, but include others that have almost entirely been untouched upon in the literature of bilingual advertising. Whilst there is insufficient space to explore every category here (and I in no sense intend to exhaust them), additional categories that are certainly meaningful to develop and enrich the study of identity in the domain of bilingual advertising are expected to include collective identities of gender and nation, although class, and albeit less visibly, race, are also important. In the following, I briefly elaborate the underlying reasons why this study, too, concentrates on these two categories of identity rather than others for an examination. The discourse of bilingual advertising lends itself exceptionally well to an examination of the socioculturally recognisable or desirable values and practices associated with gender. There are a few reasons for this, and perhaps the most compelling one is that in a commodity-driven consumer culture, advertising as a cultural form is an omnipresent and rich source of gender relations (Goffman 1979). In addition to this, bilingualism is proved the realm in which gender has recently been becoming one of the most important fields to be explored (e.g., Gal 1978; Winter & Pauwels 2000; Valentin 2006; Pavlenko et al. 2001). Widespread gender-blindness of bilingualism research in advertising does not mean that we continue to under-explore the portrayal of gender and its relationship to English as a new linguistic and cultural resource. Above we have realized that target audiences may identify themselves through consumption of commodities being advertised, so men and women engage in gendering work in order to pass as a “real” man or woman. As such, it is not a car, a watch, a TV set, eye cream, or perfume that is offered, but masculinity and femininity via these commodities even though a male or female model is not always employed. In making appeals to men and women who align themselves with that depiction, the gender identification of a product is important and necessary. In this study, gender is not interpreted as a set of traits, a variable or a role but, rather, a socioculturally constructed concept articulated through our relationships with others and with our world in different social contexts and historical periods. The basic premise that informs the analysis of gender is that a dynamics of gender and potential conflicts between competing gender identities might be better understood and interpreted as forms of identity that are embedded within other sets of gendered relations in a variety of ways and in a range of temporalities. National identity is the third category worth a careful examination, although some (e.g., Bauman 1992) remark that the nation-state in late modern societies as a source of 10 identity is nowadays being replaced with ethnicity, religion, or lifestyle-based neotribalism. National identity is here taken as an evolving process of imagination and practice in particular historically situated formations. The implicit, everyday and sometimes micro-level creation and recreation of national identity Billig (1995) describes as a “banal nationalism” suggests that the nation-state is now more likely to be formulated and acted out at the discursive level of advertising. Given the fact of the unevenly distributed English as “symbolic capital” (Bourdieu 1991) across the world, bilingual advertising by every reason provides an excellent site for examining the formation, maintenance, reflection, or transformation of national identity. Chinese-English bilingual advertising can be the window to understand and comprehend how English is applied as communicative, symbolic, and material resources for shaping, retaining, and fostering the public image of China to its citizens and the world, while probably also reshaping, challenging, or even altering it. 1.2 Objectives of the Thesis This study explores critically the discursive construction of identity in the particular site of Chinese-English bilingual advertising, drawing on the theoretical and analytical framework of CDA into which some cognitive tools are integrated. For the analysis, it mainly investigates three categories of collective identity. The primary objectives of the study include: • to elaborate and illustrate the interdisciplinarity of identity study in bilingual advertising as well as the desire to build bridges among disciplines and perspectives; • to design a theoretically well grounded and analytically useful approach to identity construction involving the choice of English and Chinese in multimodal advertising texts; 11 • to articulate and elaborate the interrelations between bilingualism, identity, and social ideologies; • to account for the connection of practical strategies of English mixing to manipulation of identity construction; • to categorize and specify diverse aspects of each identity category; • to examine whether the construction of identity in bilingual advertising is always exclusively or predominantly shaped by, and produced and formed through, the use of English; • to investigate whether the traditional aspects of each identity category are being developed into new ones or transformed just due to the available representational resource of the English language; and finally • to illustrate performative practice of English mixing and its diverse functions during the constructive process. The basic research questions for the study run as follows: 1. What specific aspects does each category of collective identity probably carry? 2. Are these aspects of identity ascribed to the main factor that has impact on the language practice of English mixing, or vice versa? 3. Are the (re)presentations of modern identities for Chinese people globally uniform or locally particular? 4. Which views of China are transmitted and represented on modernity through the mediation of English? 5. Are the forms and meanings of masculinity and femininity in China being reciprocally constituted with the English language as a representative tool? 6. Have gender relations there been transformed or under change nowadays? 7. What are gender relations in contemporary China? 8. Does the use of English in China run contrary to the ideology of cultural authenticity 12 and national identity? Or does English exist there as embedded cultural components thus forming integral parts of the global Chinese culture and as such making them authentic part of this culture? And finally, 9. What a political stance is China trying to define toward the world? 1.2 Organization of the Thesis The thesis is organized into nine chapters. It takes off, following the introductory first chapter, with a preliminary set of reflections on the use of English as a contact language. A series of perspectives on English as a global language are carefully considered, set against the ambivalent meaning of English and its relation to multiple backgrounds of modernity. A critical discussion is first made from the position of various meanings English may bear to the argument about the glocalization of English usage in advertising of different places. The chapter continues to discuss seriously the theoretical and analytical framework adopted by the available studies of identity in the literature of bilingual advertising, pointing to its drawbacks and deficiency. The final point of the critical review attends to the complexity of meaning construction within the particular genre of advertising texts. That leads to the reinterpretation of the notion “code-mixing” and the complexity of identity in the contemporary world. In these and other ways, the scene is set for the themes which follow throughout the study. The chapter concludes with an overall description of local practices of advertising and consumption in contemporary China, as well as of the situation of English there. A key question of the study concerns how, and why, the use of English tends to (or not) play an essential or important role in the constructive process of identity and how this can be fully discovered and explored when identities are (re)presented in the textual form of bilingual advertising. These issues are taken up in Chapter which from theoretical perspectives addresses and elaborates the necessity for an interdisciplinary 13 approach to identity in relation to the use of English. By situating the use of English in broader social, cultural and political contexts, the chapter starts out with the argument to treat the bilingual phenomenon as social practice fraught with tensions within the nationstate and across nation-states. Through discussing the interconnections of language to identity, persuasion and conceptual manipulation, it develops to foreground the significance of looking into mental processes of identity formation. By this, it proposes to design a united approach based on the framework of CDA to which some cognitive approaches are added. The chapter ends up with a brief discussion with regard to the compatibility between CDA and cognitive linguistics. Having socially and cognitively framed identity and bilingualism, Chapter proceeds to elaborate and present a multidimensional, text-multimodal approach, bringing together the intertextual approach within CDA and the cognitive notions of frame, mental space, and conceptual blending. The integrated approach, exploring the dynamics between language choice, text, and identity, is applied to examining the construction of identity and answering the research questions listed above. The subject of Chapter 5, then, is concerned with data and research methodology. It addresses the sources of the data and explains the underlying reasons to conduct quantitative analysis of the data with the qualitative analytical methodology of CDA. The main purpose of quantitative findings is to guide generally the following qualitative analysis that is to be made well pointedly grounded on the huge data. These chapters are followed by three thematically organized chapters analyzing the construction of modern identity for target audiences, that of gender identity, and that of national identity, respectively. Regardless of their different focus, these chapters share the same aim of specifying and exemplifying all aspects of each identity. Chapter centers round the first category of collective identity and the underlying ideas, values and beliefs it embodies about society and politics. Chapter takes up the question about whether the use 14 of English has led to the production of new images for Chinese men and women, and the transformation and change of gender relations between these two social groups. In Chapter attention is shifted to national identity, with the focus on the socio-political underpinnings on language choice and identity politics in relation to various conflicting versions of national identity. The final chapter ends up with some reflection upon the limitations of the study and implications and suggestions for future study, in addition to a summary of major findings and significance derivable from the empirical analysis. 15 [...]... What a political stance is China trying to define toward the world? 1. 2 Organization of the Thesis The thesis is organized into nine chapters It takes off, following the introductory first chapter, with a preliminary set of reflections on the use of English as a contact language A series of perspectives on English as a global language are carefully considered, set against the ambivalent meaning of English. .. formulated and acted out at the discursive level of advertising Given the fact of the unevenly distributed English as “symbolic capital” (Bourdieu 19 91) across the world, bilingual advertising by every reason provides an excellent site for examining the formation, maintenance, reflection, or transformation of national identity Chinese- English bilingual advertising can be the window to understand and... English and its relation to multiple backgrounds of modernity A critical discussion is first made from the position of various meanings English may bear to the argument about the glocalization of English usage in advertising of different places The chapter continues to discuss seriously the theoretical and analytical framework adopted by the available studies of identity in the literature of bilingual advertising, ... how English is applied as communicative, symbolic, and material resources for shaping, retaining, and fostering the public image of China to its citizens and the world, while probably also reshaping, challenging, or even altering it 1. 2 Objectives of the Thesis This study explores critically the discursive construction of identity in the particular site of Chinese- English bilingual advertising, drawing... (re)presented in the textual form of bilingual advertising These issues are taken up in Chapter 3 which from theoretical perspectives addresses and elaborates the necessity for an interdisciplinary 13 approach to identity in relation to the use of English By situating the use of English in broader social, cultural and political contexts, the chapter starts out with the argument to treat the bilingual phenomenon... design a theoretically well grounded and analytically useful approach to identity construction involving the choice of English and Chinese in multimodal advertising texts; 11 • to articulate and elaborate the interrelations between bilingualism, identity, and social ideologies; • to account for the connection of practical strategies of English mixing to manipulation of identity construction; • to categorize... blending The integrated approach, exploring the dynamics between language choice, text, and identity, is applied to examining the construction of identity and answering the research questions listed above The subject of Chapter 5, then, is concerned with data and research methodology It addresses the sources of the data and explains the underlying reasons to conduct quantitative analysis of the data with... data with the qualitative analytical methodology of CDA The main purpose of quantitative findings is to guide generally the following qualitative analysis that is to be made well pointedly grounded on the huge data These chapters are followed by three thematically organized chapters analyzing the construction of modern identity for target audiences, that of gender identity, and that of national identity, ... relations there been transformed or under change nowadays? 7 What are gender relations in contemporary China? 8 Does the use of English in China run contrary to the ideology of cultural authenticity 12 and national identity? Or does English exist there as embedded cultural components thus forming integral parts of the global Chinese culture and as such making them authentic part of this culture? And finally,... advertising, pointing to its drawbacks and deficiency The final point of the critical review attends to the complexity of meaning construction within the particular genre of advertising texts That leads to the reinterpretation of the notion “code-mixing” and the complexity of identity in the contemporary world In these and other ways, the scene is set for the themes which follow throughout the study The . sources of the data and explains the underlying reasons to conduct quantitative analysis of the data with the qualitative analytical methodology of CDA. The main purpose of quantitative findings. of bilingual advertising, pointing to its drawbacks and deficiency. The final point of the critical review attends to the complexity of meaning construction within the particular genre of advertising. bilingual advertising, drawing on the theoretical and analytical framework of CDA into which some cognitive tools are integrated. For the analysis, it mainly investigates three categories of