The discursive construction of identity in chinese english bilingual advertising a critical inquiry 4

CHAPTER TOWARDS A CRITICAL, COGNITIVE APPROACH TO BILINGUALISM AND IDENTITY The overall objective of this chapter is to argue the significance to look at bilingualism and the textual (re)presentation of identity in advertising both as social practice and cognitive processing It further discusses the integration of socio-critical and cognitive aspects of identity into a single, analytically coherent framework These are designed to develop an integrative approach to bilingualism and identity in the site of bilingual advertising In connection to social attributes of advertising, Section 3.1 starts off the proposal to treat the use of English in question as both reflective and constitutive of social practice By this it intends to direct our attention to social ideologies and the relations of power embedded in and reflected through this language practice Another inexorable aspect to be developed and elaborated in Section 3.2 is theoretically concerned with the intersection between bilingualism, identity, and persuasion in advertising communication Section 3.3 continues to develop the argument that the process of meaning construction primarily through or at least in relation to the use of English is synonymous with that of conceptual manipulation in nature, thereby the desire for a cognitive inquiry of bilingualism and identity being augmented and emphasized A brief discussion about the compatibility between CDA and cognitive linguistics is offered in the final section (Section 3.4) 3.1 Bilingualism in Advertising as Social Practice In the preceding review, it has been briefly noted that the formation of identity in the site of bilingual advertising is probably the result of advertiser agency with the aid of English mixing (within a range of meaning-making elements) featured with local practice Then 65 the aim of this section is to develop and elucidate the argument why the use of English under discussion should never be treated as a matter of random but as a social phenomenon It further proposes a socio-critical perspective to investigate the discursive construction of identity in bilingual advertising And CDA is proposed as the appropriate framework for analyzing identity (re)presented in the textual form of bilingual advertising In the following I start with the perception of advertising as a social practice 3.1.1 Advertising as a social phenomenon The language practice of English usage in non-English-language advertising may well be taken as part of social practice, which is above all bound up with the universal observation of advertising as a social practice Advertisements of all kinds are usually supposed to be social, cultural and ideological products, functioning as mirror image of what is going on in a society (e.g., Cook 1992; Goldman 1992; Vestergaard & Schroder 1985; Wernick 1991) In addition to this, it is the universal knowledge that fundamental values of advertising are never static but, instead, in constant change along with changes in social practices and attitudes (Vestergaard & Schroder 1985: 146) As a major force in the ongoing societal reproduction, naturalization and reinforcement, advertising inherently reflects and constitutes the current trends, and value and belief systems of a society Because advertisements both shape and are shaped by the institutional and social contexts in which they are produced, circulated and interpreted, textual practices and (re)presentations of advertising are inevitably interconnected with all aspects of wider cultural practices and with the social and political systems It is broadly against this understanding that an examination of bilingualism in advertising should never be simply constrained by the textual description of English usage, but goes beyond it at the higher level of social institution and social (re)presentation 66 The immediate perception of bilingualism in advertising as a social phenomenon is still discussed in general terms No study has ever made a specific attempt at explaining the ways in which the linguistic device of English mixing can be fully exploited to construct and encapsulate the value and belief systems of a society Nor is any study critically discussing the transcultural reproduction and reinterpretation of English in advertising discourse (cf Piller 2006) Regardless of this fact, it is inspiring to notice that code-switching (the alternating use of more than one language or variety) in conversational interaction is being increasingly looked at from a more social perspective This tendency is instructive to work toward building up a theory of the socio-critical inquiry of English usage in question 3.1.2 Critical studies of code-switching in conversational interaction John Gumperz (1982; with Blom 1972), more than any other analyst, stimulated interest in social functions of code-switching, and many aspects of his formulations have continued to shape research The classification by Blom and Gumperz (1972) of situational codeswitching versus metaphorical code-switching represents what has been the most widely discussed and influential categorization of switches based on social function Recently, in the literature of code-switching and its social meanings have been some calls for the merging of the micro studies of code-switching with the macro context of sociolinguistic studies Sociolinguistic studies of code-switching in bilingual conversation are increasingly situated in the broader study of language practices, although theoretical integration of code-switching into critical approaches to discourse, and vice versa, is still quite marginal and often incomplete The works such as of Auer (1995, 1998), Gal (1987, 1988), and Heller (1988, 1992, 1995) are typically associated with this body of research In these studies not only are social meanings of code-switching linked to meanings of identity in a micro-level interpersonal sense, but also to a macro-level 67 perspective on speaker positioning in larger social and political economies Auer’s approach to bilingualism is grounded on the idea that language is a social phenomenon, even though his methodology is distinctly structural With reference to his earlier work (Auer 1985), Auer (1998) identified three structural levels at which orderliness of code-switching in bilingual conversation can be investigated They are the grammatical, conversational, and “larger societal and ideological” structures (Auer 1998: 4) For Auer, conversational structure is not autonomous from but caused by social structure If conversational structure were autonomous from social structure, it would not be subject to an account On the other hand, it is through conversational structure that social construct is validated Auer by relying on specific examples illustrates well how the knowledge of the social and institutional structures is able to improve appreciably the understanding of specific instances of language alternation during bilingual conversation A suggestion emerges that it is necessary to consider the macro societal dimensions for a fuller or more relatively comprehensive account of code-switching practice What Gal (1987, 1988) has specifically investigated is the role of code-switching in the intersection, or separation, of a smaller speech community within a larger one Through a comparative study of code-switching practice with enormous differences among three bilingual minorities (i.e., Italians in West Germany, Hungarians in Austria, and Germans in Romania), Gal repeatedly reminds us of connecting these differences not only to local social network, but also to “a systemic context much wider than the local community” that shapes people’s language choices crucially (1987: 638) Code-switching to Gal is a linguistic device employed by speakers for establishing, maintaining, or breaking down boundaries at a macro level as well as a micro level And an analysis of code-switching like this could discover the workings of social and cultural processes at a number of levels tied to the complex historical specificity of conditions In Gal’s own words, such analyses of code-switching would be quite productive in revealing 68 “consciousness developed in unequal power relations, the diverse local responses linguistic groups construct to material and cultural domination” (1988: 260) Heller (1988, 1992, 1995) similarly takes the position that the ways codeswitching is practiced are bound up with the creation, exercise, maintenance, or change of political and social power In discussing the potential of code-switching for political symbolism, Heller has the following statement: In a given setting, at a given historical moment, code-switching may be conventional, or, on the contrary, anti-conventional In other words, it may represent a normal, routine way to use language, or it may violate expectations about how to behave … Conventional language practices represent relatively stable relations of power, while violations can be seen as forms of resistance (Heller 1992: 123) Following this, language choices can be seen as a reflection of social and political power and as a means to negotiate that power relations Differently put, practices of codeswitching and their patterns are a signal associated with the development and exercise of power By inviting to view code-switching as a political matter as well as a linguistic one, Heller offers a good way to look into how “power is maintained or may be successfully resisted or overturned” through this language practice (1995: 171) Under this model, dominant groups decide which code choices will give speakers an advantage in the language “marketplace” (Bourdieu 1991) in the form of access to commodities, such as employment and social prestige, while subordinate groups may accept or resist these conventions Hence, differing patterns of code-switching reflected in and through its very act can well be read not only as forms of interactional management around roles and boundaries of interactants, but also the symbolic practice of sociopolitical position (Hill 1985: 735) While these studies of code-switching are differing in some aspects, they apparently share one important and central aspect regarding code-switching as social practice The agency of bilinguals in the very act of code-switching during social 69 interactions is related to, and largely shaped by, social practice that they may rely on to their advantage It becomes advisable to rethink of code-switching not only as a language contact phenomenon, but rather a social contact phenomenon that is both reflective and constitutive of social processes occurring in bilingual situations and broadly in society Developed from this point of view, code-switching can be taken as the marker of power relations subject to maintenance, challenge, or resistance in interaction The development of this argument lends itself well to support a socio-critical approach to bilingualism, combining practice, power, and politics Because code-switching involves discrete linguistic forms that can be recorded and transcribed, analysis of this language practice can make visible power relations and social negotiation processes that are otherwise veiled Auer, Heller, Gal, and certainly others, have tended to ground their analysis of code-switching ethnographically on actual instances of bilingual conversation, seeing this intimacy from a conversational perspective This is not meant to say that the interrelations between language choice, social practice and power relations on both macro- and micro-levels cannot be expanded to all other practices of code-switching in context At this point, a crucial note of analytical methodology is in order In light of Conversation Approach to code-switching, we already stressed in Section 2.2.2 the interactional significance of English mixing in the site of advertising But due to its methodological procedures, Conversation Approach is surely inappropriate for examining the bilingual phenomenon under discussion Other approaches to bilingualism and identity study like the Markedness Model and Referee Design are also unable to investigate productively the complex interaction involving English, the native language and other constitutive elements of a given advertisement This suggests us to go beyond traditional approaches to bilingualism and identity, but to design or create a new analytically applicable method for the present purpose 70 3.1.3 The mixing of English as social practice Following the foregoing, it is now fruitful to begin by locating concerns with the use of English in non-English-language advertising within a broad theoretical perspective of social practice and power relations Rather than simply viewing this bilingual phenomenon as a linguistic phenomenon, it would be more sense to treat it as a social phenomenon embedded in and represented through the textual form of advertising And English is part of a range of linguistic and cultural resources on which advertisers and social groups they represent draw to develop and exercise their power and sustain or transform existing social relations Yet, attempt at investigating how English is exploited as a new linguistic and cultural resource to (re)produce social reality and social relations within it is still in its infancy To give an illustration of the significant to treat English mixing as social practice, let me offer a tentative example related to Haarmann’s (1986) study concerning the use of English in Japanese TV commercials For Haarmann (1986: 108), what English reflects there is the stable standards of conventional language use among Japanese young people that English is a symbol of fashion While being primarily in agreement with Haarmann, the analytical conclusion that English symbolically indexes fashion for Japanese young people is all the same obviously simplistic for any study intending to explore the bilingual phenomenon in Japanese society This conclusion by Haarmann, in my opinion, actually conceals more than it can reveal and make known For a deeper and more thorough understanding, it invites us to examine the ways in which this language practice is influenced and determined by, and contributes to the reproduction of, social structures in Japan In this context, Silverstein’s notion “indexical order” or “n-th order indexical” is especially helpful to show us “how to relate the microsocial to the macro-social frames of analysis of any sociolinguistic phenomenon” (2003: 193) Silverstein refers to the direct correlation as first-order indexicality (i.e., one person 71 uses form X, while another uses form Y), and the dialectic of ideological engagement with indexicality as second-order -a cultural construal of the 1st order usage, “an ethnometapragmatics of such usage” (Silverstein 2003: 194) For Silverstein, indexical effect is usually realized through the reconceptualization (i.e., normative use) of a cultural construal of indexical form, and indexicality works as a linguistic means whereby certain identities are reproduced This surely distinguishes language intellectually as an index of group identity from language as a metalinguistically created symbol of identity, more explicitly ideologized in discourse (cf Gal 1993; Jacquemet 1992; Rampton 1999) Relating indexical order to the work of Haarmann, it thus becomes plausible to argue that English is exploited far less for its symbolic meaning assigned to its appropriation as expected than to evoke, legitimize, or validate this conventional practice in Japan To be precise, the symbolic value of English, the 1st level order, in the nontrivial sense becomes a kind of semiotic resource for advertisers to construct modern identity for Japanese young people by reaffirming essentialist beliefs of English there (i.e., the 2nd level order in ethno-metapragmatic perspective) As far as the conclusive finding of Haarmann is concerned, the 3rd level order, the indexical form of English contextualized in Japanese commercials, is a normative reproduction through intertextual acceptability Only a minority of social functions [of English use] could be labeled as a “fashionable use of English”, whereas most reflect conventional standards of language use which have a tradition of many decades (Haarmann 1986: 108) Haarmann further asserts that this is a special Japanese way of exploiting English instead of reflecting the influence of American culture as it might be at first sight Developed from this, the use of English there can no longer be simply thought of as a symbol indexing fashion, but a universally accepted social practice having long been implanted in the heads of Japanese local people Arguably it is this particular facet of the Japanese society that, in turn, prescribes advertisers’ practice of English insertion into Japanese advertising to replicate and consolidate it To put it another way, the common beliefs of English are part 72 of “knowledge base” (Fairclough 1989: 38) that normally guides the use of English and its evaluation in the Japanese context English is exploited to largely maintain and represent social structures and privileged values that are naturalized in such a way to legitimize social ideologies of Japan and perpetuate social structures there Return to one of the previous arguments for a moment We saw the fallacy to both reify the bilingual phenomenon into stable, top-down causal relations and to preclude the possibility of self-reinvention of English, when appropriated, through ideological transformation, overriding, and resistance by a higher-order indexical form The diversity of ways in which advertisers of local may creatively seek to negotiate the English language in a gesture of defiance and self-assertion deserve another careful consideration, if treating the nation-state as an individual social actor in the world system This makes a move more generally from the position of this language practice as both reflective and constructive of a society’s social structures toward the capacity of the nation-state to structure and shape it for securing or challenging interests at stake in the broader context of the world (cf Blommaert 2005) Then, the research topic of bilingualism in advertising is suggestively situated also on how this language practice appears to naturalize particular ways of defining social relations and realize a political stance between and across nationstates Given the fact that bilingualism in advertising fundamentally is an issue of power relations and ideological functions, identities constructed and (re)presented in the textual form of bilingual advertising become the consequence of cultural practices of bilingualism and socialization Consequently, the central task of identity study in bilingual advertising becomes to consider if linguistic and social norms are reproduced or produced in this process, which, in turn, is motivated to reveal “how these norms are apprehended, accepted, resisted and subverted by individual actors [here also individual nations] and what their relation is to the construction of identity” (Camerson 1997 [1990]: 62) 73 The immediate discussion in terms of indexical order to treat the use of English in non-English-language advertising as a locally distinct social practice in terms of indexical order suggests making a socio-critical study of identity constructed in the site of bilingual advertising Without this socio-critical level of analysis, a piece of research that offers only an understanding of the micro processes of identity construction without reference to broader social, cultural and political patterns will run the risk of remaining theoretically irrelevant and socially insignificant In the field of bilingualism research, Referee Design seems promising to achieve this aspect of analysis But Referee Design, as Coupland points out, “weighted the scales too heavily in favor of recipiency” (2007: 80) -it doesn’t introduce into bilingual practices an element of ideologically governed advertiser agency Given its analytical focus on the “technique” aspects of the sequential organization of turn-taking, Conversation Approach, too, cannot address the wider social, cultural and political contexts and their relations to bilingual practices Clearly mobilizing social indexicality, the Markedness Model neglects the intersection between the active process of marking and “an established socially indexical meaning of a code, exploiting, undercutting or amplifying” (Woolard 2006: 81) In addition, all these traditional approaches, as noted earlier, cannot provide an examination of the complex interactions involving constitutive elements of a given advertisement All in all, in the field of bilingualism there is no method available that would be analytically powerful and productive to make a socio-critical inquiry of identity construction in the site of bilingual advertising The notion of indexical order is helpful to capture “the semiotic plenitude” of code-switching behavior and language ideologies at work (Silverstein 1996: 293) However, its analysis focuses on the mediated, instead of interactional, process whereby naturalized associations between an indexical form and a sociocultural style are used to promote specific language ideologies With indexical order, it is still insufficient to 74 when it supplements information from the text during discourse comprehension Background knowledge pertinent to social meanings of English and the use of English per se, realized earlier, is an important factor that advertisers need to consider prior to the use of English In order to bring into effect the anticipated persuasive aim, it is essential to have the information of “knowledge presuppositions” automatically activated and integrated during the process of discourse comprehension Zwaan and Rapp (2006), for instance, share this position by making an appeal to looking into the interplay between background knowledge and textual information that in the same way yields a representation of the described situation Another way for presuppositions to serve persuasive functions is simply narrow the space where competing voices are negotiable (Fairclough 2003) This point of view treating presuppositions as a powerful tool for persuasive aim in effect is the essential statement in the work of Sbisa (1999) Sbisa radically proposes considering presuppositions not as shared assumptions or knowledge, but as assumptions which ought to be shared (1999: 501, italics added) The persuasive power of “informative presuppositions” -the taken-for-granted pieces of information presented in textual content -lies in their helping construe a particular view of events by presenting a desired situation either as already existing or as new and novel Truly, by drawing upon English as a new social and cultural resource, advertisers may consciously bring in certain English words so as to make natural English-conveyed information especially with reference to its semantic nuances and cultural meaning Differentiated from the interactional perspective of presupposition, Chilton (2004) develops presuppositions into being viewed from a cognitive perspective through its connection to the cognitive notion of “mental spaces” (Fauconnier 1994) Chilton in this way plausibly argues in support of the position that presuppositions are a matter of “adding a ‘fact of reality’ to the interpreters’ store of knowledge” (2004: 63), as well as 84 that presuppositions can call up knowledge bases already held in long-term memory of the ongoing speech context (van Dijk 2002) Undoubtedly, this way of looking at presupposition directs our attention to the cognitive side of presupposition and its connection to persuasion Chilton is fairly correct in connecting the construction of knowledge about identities to the minds of interacting individuals, saying “construction can only be taking place in the minds of (interacting) individuals” (2005a: 22, italics added) This development entails at least that social identities in the textual representation of bilingual advertising may well be seen as the consequence of cognitive processing as that of interactive processing It further has the effect of suggesting that by replying on the use of English for persuasion, advertisers usually in the first place manage to get target audiences form a mental representation, and then to perform action (buy the product being advertised) as a consequence, without audiences being aware (or perhaps fully aware) of what is being done to them For a relatively deeper and comprehensive understanding of English mixing and its relationship to persuasion, the immediate discussion definitely gives rise to the desire for a cognitive approach to bilingualism and identity Like conversational approach to code-switching in conversational interactions, a cognitive approach is anticipatively to accomplish a fruitful exploration of “the richness of the interactive work” (Li 2005: 387) involving all meaning-making elements of a given bilingual advertisement throughout the process of identity construction For the moment, it is awfully worth pointing out that as one type of implicitness, presupposition is a property of considerable social importance One characteristic view of presupposition is its concern merely with the very automatic “popping” (to borrow a term from Chilton 2004: 63) of propositional information, but takes no consideration of its truth or falsity (Fairclough 1992b, 2003; Chilton 2004) If so, the production of identity mainly accomplished through either knowledge or informative presuppositions is more a result of influencing or controlling the supply of information for mental representations Viewed in 85 this light, presuppositions contribute to the ideological constitution of identity, and this process is unavoidably a matter of power relations The interpretation of constructive processes as mental manipulation related to the use of English, then, becomes another crucial point worth a detailed discussion below 3.2.4 Code-Mixing and Conceptual Manipulation “Manipulation” is always an ambiguous word in the literature (see for example de Saussure & Schulz 2005 for a discussion) So let me first make it explicit in the present context In accordance with van Dijk (2006c), manipulation as intended here is a communicative and interactional practice Language can be seen as related to power and manipulation in the sense that it is part of processes of social action and interaction, part of the ways in which people things, get things, and ultimately influence others In Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach, van Dijk tentatively characterizes manipulation as a form of mental control “of which recipients are not barely aware, or of which they cannot easily control the consequences” (1998: 275); but van Dijk (2006c) now has taken a definite position for this point The idea that the term manipulation always implies somewhat control of the minds of participants is now widely shared among scholars of diverse fields (e.g., de Saussure 2005) Harris captures this point nicely in noting that manipulation always involves some impacts on “individual cognitive structures”: I not think we can develop an adequate social psychology of persuasion and manipulation, necessary for a properly grounded analysis of persuasive discourse, unless the typical terminus of a persuasive or manipulative influence is properly identified … neither attitudes nor beliefs could be affected since they are both reifications of features of discourse Yet individual cognitive structures are indeed affected If human thought and action are essentially forms of discourse then the cognitive structures relevant to them are the rules and conventions of proper discourse My argument is directed to showing how research into this field must be focused on the nature of those rule-systems and how changes might occur (Harris 1985: 134) 86 Van Dijk further describes the effect of manipulation as the situation where “people will act as desired out of their own free will” (1998: 274) Recall the definition of persuasion given above, to follow van Dijk and others, manipulation without its negative associations of coercion and power abuse can, in effect, be roughly equivalent to the process of persuasion In this study, these two terms remain individually, being treated separately for the analytical convenience Earlier a brief discussion has been provided about the impact of “manipulative presuppositions” (Fairclough 1992: 121) upon persuasive effects caused by the use of English either by means of activating stored background knowledge or adding new propositional information to knowledge base (and simultaneously changing store of knowledge) Now a question naturally comes to mind in respect of how the use of English may accomplish such a manipulative function in the process of meaning construction, or how this process of conceptual manipulation can be fruitfully revealed Before providing an answer to this question, it seems quite necessary to make known some relevant information about discourse comprehension The process of discourse comprehension is inherently dynamic Dynamics of discourse comprehension usually leads to the expectation that while an audience proceeds through the text, the activation of concepts, facts and events as parts of a discourse representation fluctuates constantly This is, of course, not to deny that some part of the discourse representation may be more powerful, playing a relatively predominant role in this activating process On the contrary, this process is often influenced, or even to a large extent determined, by the linguistic characteristics of the text In this study, the cognitive hypothesis regarding translinguistic code-mixing as a manipulative practice is roughly stated in this way advertisers with the aid of English are most likely to be empowered to act on the process of information supply, evaluation and transformation, leading target audiences to block their own natural process, as perceived by van Dijk (2006c) as the on-line manipulation of 87 information processing in short-term memory For instance, a general advantage of the use of English in German advertising, to Piller’s words, is that “it impedes automatic processing and thereby arrests the attention of recipients for a longer time span” (2001: 163) For the present purpose, this subject matter is briefly sketched out in the following with reference to Clyne (1967, 1972 1980, 2003) and Green (1998, 2003) Clyne mainly addresses dynamics of translinguistic code-mixing under the term “transversion” that refers specifically to “a crossing over from one language to another rather than a transference of an item, feature or construction” (2003: 80).6 Transversion is defined as the language processing of code-mixed messages simultaneously involving the happening of activation of one language and deactivation (or inhibition) of the other Based on Clyne, there are four types of facilitation triggering transversion -lexical triggers, tonal facilitation, syntactic convergence, and phonological and prosodic compromise forms The first labeled also “trigger-words”, which is most relevant to the present study, are specified as referring to phonologically unintegrated lexical transfers, bilingual homophones (i.e., cognates between the two languages), proper nouns, and comprise forms Trigger-words could affect on-line the management of strategic understanding in short-term memory, so much so that readers have to pay more attention to some pieces of information embodied in trigger-words than others Green’s (1998, 2000) notions of control and activation are also helpful to account for how the use of English causes impact on information processing and meaning construction Control is seen as the way of handling multi-tasking, involving selection from and competition between the lexical entries of the two languages In Green’s model, control finds expression during both the conceptualization and formulation stages of Akin to Myers-Scotton (e.g., 1993), Clyne (2003) labels a strong role for articulatory planning and attitudes on this subject, claiming that language users “plan ahead” when they use language, and subconsciously might anticipate the trigger-words when they transverse 88 processing For conceptualization, control is described in terms of intentions to activate one or more language During formulation, both activation and suppression (of lemmas and lexemes) are said to be involved In this concurrent process of activating and deactivating, the cognitive structures of audiences are considerably affected and as a consequence, the anticipated communicative effect to be achieved If taking the position of Green’s model, the very choice of what a specific English word used is indeed prescribed by the dual intent to trigger or activate the meaning and functions pertaining to it, and to suppress its counterpart of the local language Since the use of English is conventionally assumed as intentional and strategic in almost all cases of bilingual advertisements, the practical act involves the interference with processes of advertising discourse comprehension, and afterward, the formation of biased conceptual models and social representations such as of identity, embedded knowledge, and ideologies To examine exactly how this activation fluctuates and how this process is influenced, to a greater or lesser extent, by the very act of English mixing becomes one of the central research topics at stake The process of choosing an English word or expression for its occurrence and simultaneously of erasing its counterpart of the local language is certainly the result of power abuse on the part of advertisers Green (1998) remarks acutely that such practices are a typical case of symbolic violence (cf Bourdieu 1991) In addition to giving partial information when more is required in the context, another common way to achieve manipulation according to Chilton (2005b) is to control the channel of communication Following the idea that words of a language are the access to its meanings (Langacker 1990), language alternative or choice meanwhile becomes one way to control the channel of communication for there is no strict equivalence of meaning between even closest words of two different languages The existence of language-specific cognitive structures is the topic having long been extensively discussed and empirically demonstrated By relying upon the Conceptual Feature Model (de Groot 1992a, 1992b), a 89 model of bilingual lexical processing that is different for conceptual features, Luna and Peracchio (2002, 2004), for instance, identify specifically differential processing demands exerted on individuals by different languages Their study brings to light the manipulative force of different languages in bilingual advertising to communicate certain connotations not producible by monolingual one The above discussion helps conceptualize more clearly the ways in which the construction of meaning and mental representation are mediated and manipulated by concrete verbal information as well as that of social knowledge through which power relations get sustained and negotiated What is fairly clear is that the manipulative function of English at the utmost lies either in limiting or determining selectively the target audiences’ information supply, or in redirecting a different way for reading and interpreting a message This realization, no doubt, makes it evident one of the most important descriptive challenges at the intersection of linguistic and cognitive studies of discourse comprehension Attention in reading is another important and central concept meriting a thought for an inquiry into manipulation in relation to the practical dynamics of bilingualism The necessary role of attention in the comprehension process has been made universally known in cognitive research on reading7 The importance of attention allocation, and hence of the role that the very act of English mixing as a textual cue has in reading, should also be appreciated, when considering the cognitive processes that occur during reading a given bilingual advertisement Gaddy, van den Broek and Sung (2001) categorize three kinds of textual cues -linguistic, typographical, and text-structure -that are important in guiding a reader’s attention during the process of reading In the case of “intrasentential mixing” (Poplack 1980) where individual English words occur inside a non-English sentence or As has been evidenced in recent theoretical models of reading (e.g., Goldman & Varma 1995), an audience’s allocation of attention to particular elements in an advertisement has a direct and important impact on the way in which this advertisement is to be interpreted 90 phrase, the act of insertion itself may direct the attention of target audiences to specific sentential content, resulting in a larger and stronger memory trace for the information it encodes (Johnston et al 1990; cf Luna & Peracchio 2005) Likewise typographical cues related to English usage, such as boldface, italic, colour variation, script, and even wrong spelling, are subject to exploitation for making certain parts of an advertising copy perceptually salient and attention catching8 But influence of unconscious mind on mental representations of bilingual advertisements caused by and accomplished through bilingual practices is still barely appreciated among linguists Limited studies available are situated almost entirely in the area of marketing or consumer research, exploring socio-psychological effects of this persuasive form of communication on audience behavior (Luna & Peracchio 1999, 2002) In the field of linguistics, Koll-Stobbe (1994) might be the only one having made a tentative attempt to account for this bilingual phenomenon in a cognitive perspective For Koll-Stobbe, the way of mixing English is actually that of controlling concept flow of every meaningful element in the cognitive process of conceptual construction The perception of English mixing as a way of conceptual control is primarily grounded in Goffman’s (1981) term “footing” by linking this bilingual practice to frame-shifting or explicitly marked foregrounding that selectively shifts readers’ attention between cognitive frames activated by signals from various codes and contextual cues But KollStobbe has no intention to investigate the essence of this concern -how conceptual structures are activated and considerably affected, transformed, or sustained for subsequent frame shifting by the information encoded in and through the form of translinguistic code-mixing The discussion of the relationship between manipulation and attention in reading seems also applicable to visual images Messaris posits the power of the photomontage in advertising as stemming from the level of iconicity in the image: “The brain is finely tuned to pay special attention to unfamiliar objects when they are only slightly differently from our expectations” (Messaris 1997: 7) 91 Above I have elaborated specifically how constructive power of the bilingual practice lies in its capability for activation, generation, alteration, or transformation of conceptual structures embedded in an English-mixed line By way of conclusion, I want to stress that the impact of English usage on meaning construction and identity (re)presentation is varying in terms of degree It does not simply follow from the earlier discussions that the use of English always necessarily presents an example of meaning manipulation that has a decisive role for the discursive construction of identity in bilingual advertising Rather, this language practice has certain influence on information processing and meaning construction, running the complete gamut of degrees from one extremity to another, an echo to the more general philosophy of Cognitive Linguistics (henceforth CL) This realization of meaning development and formation naturally invites us to locate analytical focus of bilingualism and identity construction on the subtle and hence more insidious processes of cognitive operations of manipulation in relation to the use of English over the constructive processes Nevertheless, because such processes involve inescapable steps of activation of conceptual elements, development and transformation of conceptual structures, and finally integration of them, it still poses a descriptive and analytical challenge to have a relatively comprehensive and explicit account of bilingual practices and its contribution to the cognitive processes of identity formation and (re)presentation The situation perhaps becomes even more complicated when considering the complexity of meaning construction within multimodal advertising texts as a whole Considering these factors, this study falls back on analytical tools within CL for an inquiry into the mental processing of identity construction and formation CL as a linguistic thought and practice is concerned with investigating the relationship between human language, mind, and socio-physical experience In this study, some notions and theories of CL are integrated into and substantially internalized within the analytical framework of CDA Compared with the traditional approaches to identity in bilingual 92 contexts, CL would be perfectly helpful to make close observation of the language processing of code-mixing and its meaning production A cognitive perspective, as the next chapter develops, bears many analytical advantages To state them briefly here, a cognitive approach may empower analysts not to treat seriously as necessary variables the above discussed indexical values of English and possible syntactic patterns of bilingual headline and slogan In addition to helping overcome these aspects of analytical challenge, cognitive tools may be useful to reveal the complexities of interactions between and across English, the native language and other meaningful elements within an advertising copy Perhaps more importantly, by spelling out identifiable cognitive entities, states and processes, a cognitive analysis of identity is predicted to shed more light on the relationship between interactionally grounded social meanings of English usage and ideologically governed identity construction by describing the mental processing of manipulation conducted by this language practice Before embarking on the integrative analytical framework in the following chapter, it is first and foremost necessary to explain briefly the compatibility of CL with CDA due to their distinct analytical perspectives This becomes the main task of the next section 3.3 Compatibilities between CL and CDA CDA focuses on the social or situated aspects of language use or discourse; CL deals with research on the processes of discourse production and comprehension emphasizing the “mental” aspects of discourse The interaction between discourse and cognition, and the compatibility of the social interactional and cognitive approaches actually are the subjects of current debate among discourse analysis in general (e.g., Chilton 2005a, 2005b; Nuyts 2004, 2007; Stockwell 2001, 2002; contributions in van Dijk 2006a, and in Hart & Lukes 2007) In the lines of these arguments, one of the concerns is related to some points shared by the two different programs CDA and CL, to be sure, have much in common 93 In the first place, both CDA and CL hold the same idea of discourse practice with respect to both its cognitive and social properties in nature In Fairclough’s (1989) terms, ideology is linked to the concept of member’s resources (MRs) MRs is both a cognitive and social concept It is social in the simple sense that they are socially generated and transmitted People internalize what is socially produced and made available to them, and use this internalized MRs to engage in their social practice, including discourse It is cognitive, primarily because cognitive entities like “frames, scripts, and schemata” are all “a part of MR constituting interpretative procedures … and share the property of mental representations in general of being ideologically variable” (Fairclough 1989: 158) Fairclough acknowledges the cognitive nature of discourse practice in linking the cognitive field with his social theory: Texts are social spaces in which two fundamental social processes simultaneously occur: cognitive and representation of the world, and social interaction A multifunctional view of text is therefore essential (Fairclough 1995a: 6) He goes on to claim that work on relationship between language and cognition can inform analysis of discourse practice In elsewhere he says, “One could also include here more psychological and cognitivist concerns with how people arrive at interpretations for particular utterances” (Fairclough 1995b: 59)9 Van Dijk (2002; 2006b), like Fairclough, asserts that knowledge is both a social and cognitive notion Nevertheless, in dealing with It seems pertinent to mentioning the recent development of systemic function linguistics which obviously comes out of a different tradition in comparison with cognitive grammar by cognitive scientist Langacker (1987, 1990, 1991) Halliday has now affirmed that his approach is cognitively sympathetic Elaborating on his earlier suspicion of approaches that sought to equate linguistic with mental phenomena (Halliday 1973), Halliday (1992, 1996; see also Hasan 1995, 1999) has become quite explicit on the relationship between neurology and language For instance, meaning for Halliday (1992) is a mode of action engendered at the intersection of the material and the conscious Halliday (1992: 32-33) thus suggests to think of meaning as: the way of consciousness (that is, mental processes), by a type of projection, construes a relationship (that is a token = Value identity, or a nested series of such identities) between two sets of material processes (those of our experience, at one hand, and those of our bodily performance -gestures, articulation -at the other) 94 the cognitive dimension of discourse practice, Fairclough (with Chouliaraki 1999: 68n) takes such a position that cognitive phenomena cannot be studied directly and any fruitful explanatory account would necessarily be mediated through either analysis of social processes or material activity His suggestion is clear about the necessity for cognitive dimension to be integrated with social dimension In a slightly different, but certainly relative vein, cognitive scientist George Lakoff has the following statements in an interview concerning the interrelations between social and cognitive perspectives of language: Given language as means of expression, social considerations of course enter in at every level, since expression always occurs in a social and interpersonal context The reason is that we use our conceptual system to function socially and to comprehend social life Since language reflects our conceptual systems, it will reflect the social aspects of our conceptual systems Thus, seeing language from a cognitive perspective entails seeing language from a social perspective In addition, since language is a tool for expression and communication, it can be used for social ends and as a marker of social status In order to study the use of language for social ends, one must have a conceptual system characterizing what ‘social’ means Here cognition enters the study of social issues once more (Pires de Oliveira 2001: 37) No doubt, CL is also functionalist in spirit in comparison with CDA, although its primary concern among many others is to achieve a descriptively adequate account (Langacker 1990; Nuyts 2004, 2007) Diverse as it may appear, CL as a whole is frequently argued to be more socio-cultural practice in terms of being more critically aware of ideology in language (Koller 2005: 200-201; Stockwell 2002: 170) Functional approaches to language in CDA, as noted explicitly by Evans and Green (2006: 758-761), have heavily influenced the cognitive approach in a number of important ways, although this influence is not always overtly acknowledged If adopting a more critically sophisticated approach like CDA for the analytical framework of CL, we would necessarily set up connections between the micro-structural matters of lexical and grammatical choice and the macrostructural matters of ideology and viewpoint Even though not being a major research focus, such attempts are recently evidenced by a few case studies with their specific 95 concerns with, for instance, deixis (Botha 2001), tense (Grundy & Jiang 2001), and declension (Hawkins 2001) In brief, in the perspective of functionalism one of the most notable differences existing between CDA and CL could be reasonably argued in this way: while the former pays due credit to the communicative dimensions of language but are minimally concerned with its conceptual semantic dimension, the latter pays due attention to the role of purely semantic dimensions of language especially pertaining to the way we conceptualize and categorize the world but deals less extensively with the role of interactive or social dimensions In this context, it is also not trivial to note that CDA is interdisciplinary by its very nature (Wodak & Myers 2001) These particularities set CDA apart from many other contemporary approaches to linguistic theory An incorporative spirit is equally noticed readily in CL, although there are perhaps a few different critics among the field of CL on this point (e.g., Evans & Green 2006) In characterizing his own intellectual commitments, Lakoff notes, “I am always trying to integrate everything within cognitive linguistics” (Pires de Oliveira 2001: 25) Both CDA and CL have been disputed to be able to gain considerably from one another, despite various disagreements on the degree to which each can benefit from the other Stockwell claims, “cognitive linguistics has more to take from CDA than the reverse” (2001: 525) What Stockwell wants to underscore seems that CL, if having been offered analytical tools for a critical assessment of ideologies, could make a great contribution to raising a critical awareness of how discourse domains are conceptualized By contrast, a few CDA practitioners (Chilton 2004, 2005a, 2005b; Koller 2005; Wodak 2006) believe that CDA could benefit a lot from incorporating cognitive theories and analytical tools to unravel ideological implication One of particular strengths of CL lies in its potential for, or aiming at, an analysis of ideology on both conscious and unconscious aspects Differentiated from that of CDA, 96 a cognitive linguistic perspective holds that the broad and narrow understandings of ideology are highly interwoven Lakoff rightly states this link in an interview with Pires de Oliveira as follows: Ideologies have both conscious and unconscious aspects If you ask someone with a political ideology what she believes, she will give a list of beliefs and perhaps some generalizations A cognitive linguist, looking at what she says, will most likely pick out unconscious frames and metaphors (and other conceptual units; my addition) lying behind her conscious beliefs To me, that is the interesting part of ideologies -the hidden, unconscious part It is there that cognitive linguists have a contribution to make (Pires de Oliveira 2001: 37) Because of its commitment to exploring hidden, unconscious ideologies, CL in this way can offer insights significant to CDA practitioners, if it is helpful to elucidate cognitive operations of manipulation (a principle objective of CDA) With the addition of some cognitive tools to the analytical framework of CDA, it is strongly arguable to make the critical approach of CDA relatively robust against possible subjective interpretations or even misinterpretations of linguistic data Yet, this is not to declare that CDA has already developed well certain sophisticated theory regarding how cognitive influence might occur as a result of discourse input to a human brain Although fairly recognizing both the practical and socio-cognitive sides of discourse as noted above, the paucity of appreciation of mental representations is still perceptible in the practical analysis of CDA CDA as a whole, as pointed out by Chilton (2005a), is still widely known having done all the same a fine description job, and mainstream CDA (but except the work of van Dijk) has never energetically addressed a core empirical and theoretical question of how the human mind can be manipulated through the use of language But we cannot deny too that there has been no attempt carried out to fill in the cognitive gap, despite the fact that such an attempt is still in its infancy The recent works, including Chilton (2004, 2005a, 2005b), Koller (2005), O’Halloran (2003), van Dijk (2002, 2006b), Wodak (2006), and so on, clearly indicate an increasing interest among CDA 97 practitioners in the cognitive dimension of discourse production and comprehension It is inspiring to note that with a cognitive perspective derived diversely from contemporary cognitive science, evolutionary psychology and CL, CDA through the adoption of some new analytical tools has been empirically tested to be most revealing in identifying and analyzing linguistic manipulation of ideology in political discourse (Chilton 1987, 2004, 2005a, 2006b; Chilton & Lakoff 1995) It is this trend that this study intends to follow and enrich by formulating a methodological framework, with which the manipulative nature of code-mixing in the process of identity construction may be comparatively elucidated fully in a cognitive perspective Summary This chapter has chiefly argued and elaborated the significance of studying identity and bilingualism in the particular site of advertising from both a social-critical and cognitive perspective It has also discussed the possibility of designing a critical cognitive approach to identity and this bilingual phenomenon CDA is basically apposite and useful to examine critically identity construction and its connection to the use of English But within the methodological approach of CDA it is nevertheless beyond our capability to provide a close, comprehensive examination of how the underlying power relations and ideology reflected within and through the bilingual practice work to produce, reproduce, or even transform identities Simultaneously, some descriptive tools within CL are selected and incorporated as a valuable complementary method for the analytical framework of CDA This approach as an integrated combination of two discrete analytical perspectives of CDA and CL is meant to provide analytically productive and sound results 98 ... (re)presented in the textual form of bilingual advertising In the following I start with the perception of advertising as a social practice 3.1.1 Advertising as a social phenomenon The language practice of. .. taking place in the minds of (interacting) individuals” (200 5a: 22, italics added) This development entails at least that social identities in the textual representation of bilingual advertising. .. example of meaning manipulation that has a decisive role for the discursive construction of identity in bilingual advertising Rather, this language practice has certain influence on information