The discursive construction of identity in chinese english bilingual advertising a critical inquiry 5

CHAPTER DATA AND METHODOLOGHY This chapter mainly addresses two things: the way of data collection and the research methodology adopted. Besides, it presents the sociocultural distinctiveness of English mixing in advertising of China by specifying in a quantitative way the structural domains of advertisements where the occurrence English is observed most frequent and its structural features. 5.1 Data Collection Data of Chinese-English bilingual advertisements are confined to print forms of commercial consumer advertising. During the collection of the data, I intended to gather them from sources as broad and wide as possible. In this matter, my approach owes a lot to the theory of cultural field by Bourdieu (1993). In regards to data collection for empirical research, the basic idea of Bourdieu is that a thorough statistical analysis of art, literature and culture would have to include both great and minor writers, both those who are now consecrated and those who have been relegated to oblivion. Empirical studies among CDA (e.g., Wodak et al. 1999) also suggest that an analysis of identity should be based on different data collected from a diversity of sources so as to minimize the risk of being biased in analysis. This principle is put into practice as faithfully as possible, which means, in general terms, that data were collected from print media covering a diversity of content focus, and from source media with both high and low quality in terms of advertising value. In this study, advertising value is principally judged by two factors---annual circulation and sum of advertising revenue. 118 Table 5.1 Sources of data and orders of their advertising value Types of Publication Sources 1. 北京晚报 Daily newspaper Beijing Evening News Category 2. 时尚伊人 Fashion Lady Monthly magazine 3. 瑞丽服饰美容 Monthly magazine Rayli Fashion Beauty Distribution All Beijing & vicinity Cosmopolitan & fashion Young lady Nationwide Cosmopolitan & fashion Young lady Nationwide News All Guangzhou & vicinity 5. 都市丽人 Monthly magazine Cosmopolitan Beauty Life Young people Nationwide 6. 瑞丽丽人风尚 Monthly magazine Rayli Fashion Lady Fashion Young lady Nationwide 7. 世界时装之苑 World Fashion Monthly magazine Life Young people Nationwide 8. 汽车之友 Auto Fan Semi-monthly magazine Semiprofessional All Nationwide 9. 微型计算机 Micro Computer Semi-monthly magazine Semiprofessional All Nationwide 10. 电脑爱好者 Computer Fan Monthly magazine Semiprofessional All Nationwide 11. 宁波晚报 Daily newspaper Ningbo Evening News News All Ningbo & vicinity Daily newspaper 12. 东南商报 Southeast Business News News All Ningbo & vicinity 4. 广州日报 Guangzhou Daily Daily newspaper News Readership Table 5.1 presents the source media of the data. They are composed of four daily local newspapers and eight monthly or semi-monthly national magazines published and circulated within the context of mainland China over 2007, just one year before the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. The titles of the magazines indicate that content focus of them involves a wide range of topics including auto, computer, cosmetics, life, professional, cosmopolitan, and fashion. Information content of the newspapers is usually concerned 119 more with wide daily topics that common people are intensively engaged with. As such, the magazines make certain assumptions about the target readers, while the newspapers have as many potential readers as possible. Being diverse in topics, the source magazines and newspapers may include a wide variety of different types of advertisements appealing to Chinese people with a multiplicity of needs. Table 5.2 English used in different product types, their percentage and representative examples ______________________________________________________________________________ Product Type No. of Ads Percentage Representative Examples ______________________________________________________________________________ Beauty products 46 12.9% Cosmetics, perfume, skin care products, eye & lip cream Drinks & food 2.6% Alcohol, cake, ice cream, wine Education 0.8% Education exhibition, English training 22 6.2% Bag, bra, shoes, skirt, T-shirt, suit 2.2% Furniture, kitchen & toilet equipment Jewellery 14 3.9% Bracelet, diamond, necklace, ring Real estate 94 26.4% Apartment, office building, villa Shopping mall, decoration service Shopping 1.4% Mall opening, promotion 11 3.0% Bar, sports clothes, sports shoes & equipment 132 37.0% Auto, digital camera, cellular phone, computer & its accessories, home appliance electronics Fashion Household products Sports & Leisure Technology Travelling 13 3.6% Airline, credit card, hotel ________________________________________________________________________________ Total 357 100% In regards to advertising value of the source magazines and newspapers (see Appendix I), two local newspapers out of the four, namely, Beijing Evening News and Guangzhou Daily, were listed among the top ten China’s print media, according to the 120 report of the survey conducted by Successful Marketing in 20041. The two other local newspapers, namely, Ningbo Evening News and Southeast Business Newspaper, both published in the city of Ningbo2, have their advertising value comparatively much lower. A total number of 357 Chinese-English bilingual advertisements were collected from these source media. As given in Table 5.2, a preliminary quantitative survey of the data shows that there are twelve product categories altogether. In addition, the product categories cover a surprisingly wide range of product types, which affirms the richness and diversity of the data appropriate for the present purpose. 5.2 Methodology Unlike the previous studies (Piller 2001; Gao 2005; Lee 2006) dependent on incidental observation of data for qualitative analysis, the present study, despite being essentially qualitative in design, contains a strong quantitative element in light of the huge data. This design of methodology is consistent with an increasing trend for the qualitative methodology of CDA by drawing on quantitative evidence to make qualitative analysis arguably convincing (e.g., Chouliaraki & Fairclough 1999: 45; Charteris-Black 2004; Jager 2001; cf. Geeraerts 2004). More relevantly, it is so designed primarily motivated by the aim to arrive at generalizable and reliable findings to their greatest extent. While an indepth qualitative analysis will be conducted in the following chapters, a quantitative overview of the data is presented here. The study intends to examine three collective identities, as specified in the introductory chapter. The quantitative discussion is made not to show how many types of Successful Marketing is a monthly business magazine in China with its highest circulation of 160542 per issue in history. Compared with the large cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, Ningbo is a medium-sized coastal city located inside the region of Yangtze Delta with Shanghai being its centre. The city is famous for its dynamics of private business in history since the Tang Dynasty (618-907). 121 identity are constructed or which one is the most pervasive in the particular domain of Chinese-English bilingual advertising (cf. Mullany 2004; Van de Mieroop 2005); rather, it seeks to highlight the most frequently marketed product categories, to which these collective identities are probably attached, as well as to reveal the types of English mixing representative in terms of syntactical structure in the structural domains of advertisements where English occurs most often. The quantitative findings would be used to guide principally the qualitative analysis of the next chapters, so much so that analytical results can be as generalizable and reliable as possible. Table 5.3 Top five products advertised in the category of technology ______________________________________________________________________________ Product No. of ads Percentage Representative Examples ______________________________________________________________________________ Auto 40 30.3% car, MPV, RV, SUV, sports car Watch 26 19.7% classic, golden, sports, pocket, trend Computer 15 11.4% laptop, desktop, software, hard disk, internet service, video card Television 13 9.8 % TV featuring advanced function (e.g., flat screen, large internal storage, recording, full HD) Cellular phone 6.1% cellular phone featuring advanced function (e.g., radio, camera, iPod, GPS navigation) ________________________________________________________________________________ Total 102 77.3% As indicated by Table 5.2, the frequency of English occurrence in each product category is hugely uneven. Listed at the very top is that of technology, approximately 37 percent of the total. Following it are the categories of real estate and beauty products, which roughly amounts to 26.4 percent and 12.9 percent, respectively. Given this quantitative evidence regarding the overwhelming percentage of these three categories, we may take them, rather than every category, as constitutive of target categories for an examination into the construction of identity in the data. Moreover, the advertisements for 122 these three categories are more diverse than those in other categories in the type of product. The technology advertisements surprisingly cover a diversity of more than 16 products, including air conditioner, auto, battery, cellular phone, digital camera, horn, laptop, medicine, microwave oven, printer, projector, refrigerator, software, television, washing machine, watch, and so on. Table 5.3 presents the results of top five products in this category that are most pervasively and predominantly advertised. In the categories of real estate and beauty six products are observed, as shown respectively in Table 5.4 and Table 5.5. Therefore, the advertisements within these three categories probably constitute a set of productive loci for examining how modern identity of Chinese people, gender identity and national identity are constructed in the data. But the decision to consider only these three categories as the source advertisements for qualitative analysis is not just because of the differences in quantity and product diversity. As my discussion develops, this is also motivated by the uneven distribution of English occurrence in different categories and the fact that the collective identities to be examined are more likely to be constructed and conveyed in the advertisements of these three categories. Table 5.4 Products advertised in the category of real estate _______________________________________________________________________ Product No. of ads Percentage ________________________________________________________________ Apartment 51 54.2% Villa 20 21.2% Office building 9.6% Complex 7.5% Shopping mall 5.4% Decoration service 2.1% ________________________________________________________________________________ Total 94 100% In addition to brand name, English usually appears within and across different 123 Table 5.5 Products advertised in the category of beauty _______________________________________________________________________ Product No. of ads Percentage ________________________________________________________________ Cosmetics 14 30.4% Eye cream 8.6% Hair care product 4.4% Lip cream 8.7% 13 28.3% Perfume Skin care product 19.6% ________________________________________________________________________________ Total 46 100% structural domains of an advertisement. For the representative of domains where English occurs, a quantitative inquiry was carried out to find the frequency of English in each structural domain. In this study, different parts of an advertisement are distinguished as follows: headline, slogan, text body, contact details, emblem, and tag. I classify as headline the words that have relative prominence in scale and colour, font and size (O’Tool 1994). Usually, headline could further be segmented into primary and secondary (or sub-headline) in terms of physical or interpersonal salience (Cheong 2004: 173). A slogan refers to “a short phrase or clause regularly accompanying the name of the product” (Cook 1992: 231). The main part of the advertising message, usually in paragraph form, is then defined as the text body (Leech 1966: 59), and contact details involve the information provided on how to buy the promoted product (e.g., shopping location, telephone or fax number, e-mail address, website). The corporate logo is grouped together as the emblem (Cheong 2004), and tag refers to certain information “in small print and typically nonsalient” (Cheong 2004: 174) missed in the text body and the emblem. Table 5.6 shows the overall distribution of English occurrence in the domains of the data. The use of English occurs in all domains but emblem. The domain where English appears most frequently is headline, followed in sequence by slogan, text body, tag, and contact details, which is the 124 same in the advertisements for technological, real estate, and beauty products, as shown in Table 5.7. Table 5.6 The overall distribution of English occurrence in the domains Total Percent Headline 221 48.3% Slogan 118 25.8% Text body 63 Tag 32 13.7% 7% Contact details 24 5.2% Total 458 100% Table 5.7 The overall distribution of English occurrence in the domains of the advertisements for technology, real estate & beauty Total Percent Headline 195 51.9% Slogan 91 24.2% Text body 52 13.7% Tag 22 5.9% Contact details 16 4.3% Total 376 100% Table 5.8 The distribution of English occurrence in the domains of 219 advertisements for technology, real estate & beauty Total Percent Headline 174 55.9% Slogan 78 25.1% Text body 34 11% Tag 16 5.1% Contact details 2.9% Total 311 100% In what follows I will outline and elaborate the refined selection by providing a further quantitative analysis basically restricted to these three categories. As Table 5.3 presents, there are 102 advertisements for the topic five products in the category of technology amounting to approximately 77.3 percent of this category. Listed at the top is auto over 30 percent, followed by watch, computer, television, and cellular phone. All the technological products are durable and have already been integrated into everyday life of Chinese people. English occurrence distributed within and across the domains of these 102 advertisements together with those for real estate (94) and beauty (46) products overall was found almost the same as that in these three categories. Table 5.8 presents the results 125 of this quantitative analysis. Amidst 311 cases of English occurrence involving all structural domains but emblem, English occurs most often in the structural domain of headline (55.9 percent), which is followed loosely by that of slogan (25.1 percent). The overwhelming occurrence of English in these two domains shows the source of English mixing (together with brand names in English) that can be drawn upon for qualitative analysis. Table 5.9 Structural features of English mixing and their frequency in headline and slogan Domains Headline English-only Parallel 97 44 Intersentential 18 Slogan 57 19 Intrasentential 15 Total 174 78 Since the ways in which English is inserted into the domains of headline and slogan might be various, another quantitative examination was made to determine the structural features of English-mixed headlines and slogans and their frequency. Structurally, four types of English mixing are recognized. In this study, English-only refers to cases of English mixing where a headline (primary and/or sub-headline) or a slogan either in the form of phrase, clause or sentence is expressed in full English. As shown in Table 5.9, 97 headlines and 57 slogans, respectively accounting for 55.7 percent and 73.1 percent of the total, are expressed in monolingual English. In the case of bilingual parallel, both Chinese and its English translation, or vice versa, co-present either entirely or partially. This type of English mixing accounts for 25.3 percent of English occurrence in the headlines, and 24.4 percent in the slogans. Defined in terms of Poplack (1980), intersentential being the third type of English mixing refers to cases of English mixing occurring at clause or sentence boundary, one clause being in one language, the other clause in the other. They are few in the domain of headline but only one in that of slogan. In contrast to intersentential mixing, intrasentential one refers to the occurrence of English 126 word(s) within a clause or a word boundary (Poplack 1980). While eighteen cases of intrasentential mixing are found in the headlines, there is only one of such identified in the latter. The findings of structural features of English-mixed headlines and slogans and their frequency are equally significant to guide qualitative analysis. Since technology is an integral part of modern culture, the construction of modern identity may be examined by focusing exclusively on the advertisements for technological products. This is not meant to conclude, however, that the discourse of technology advertising alone is a site sufficiently rich for an investigation into modern identity constructed for Chinese people. This category is paired off with that of real estate, in which residential property, namely, apartment houses and villas3, surprisingly occupies the largest percentage up to 75.3 in total, as given in Table 5.4. Apartment blocks and villa estates, it is worth noting, are all local in contrast to the technological products. An equal, or perhaps even more, relevant and important observation is that the house for most Chinese people represents “the material symbol of having a family and has always been viewed as the source of safety and happiness in Chinese life” (Tong & Hays 1996: 625), as suggested by the classic Chinese proverb “金窝银窝, 不如自家草窝” jinwo yinwo, buru zijia caowo (lit. House is home, be it ever so humble)4. In other words, housing advertising is another prime site where Chinese people find their modern identity in the society. In exploring the construction of national identity, the study takes again the categories of technology and real estate as the source of the advertisements for qualitative analysis. According to Kraf and Vig (1988), technology is no longer morally “neutral” but socially shaped and politically charged. The designing of a technology either upholds a particular hegemonic structure or restructures the social and political order (Winner 1988). The term “villa” is adopted here to include garden house, union house, and townhouse broadly, the last also known as “terraced villa” or “economic villas” in China (Wu 2004). This claim is applicable to other places, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore, where Chinese culture is also predominant. 127 Given the connection of technology to politics, the predominance of technology advertising opens up plenty of opportunities for studying national identity of contemporary China through an exploration into social and political ideologies embedded in and through the image of technological products. As to the choice of real estate advertisements for examining national identity, there are a few visible, compelling reasons. To begin with, national identity that is reproducible in the banal realm of the everyday (Billig 1995) is for the most part cultural identity (Hall 1992). For Balibar (1991), the nation-state derives its collective meaning through creation of “fictive ethnicity” based on family and school, in which the home and the residential environment at large are more effective. This is particularly the case in China where family and nation, or private and public, are not two separate realms. From the time of Confucius, the family has been the basic building block of Chinese society, and the family is the anchor for national identity. Since the family means “家” jia (lit. home) and a house, the concreteness of jia, the significance of house in this way can be extended to the nation. Therefore, private property might well be regarded as a place whose prime function becomes to sustain the displacement of the nation onto the family. The fact that the majority of real estate advertisements are designed for private property then suggests the aptness to take them as one of source advertisements for examining national identity. Additionally, real estate is always conditioned by the existing cultural setting and human intentions as conceived in a particular context. The rapid growth of commercial real estate in China today according to Gu (2005) largely results from China’s increasing urbanization process and its advocacy of house personalization. What is more relevant and important is that the land is one of the most fundamental symbols of the nation-state (Smith 1991). Due to the association of the land with national identity and its transformation into real estate, national identity, as First and Avraham (2007) demonstrate, can be investigated as reflected in advertisements for marketing real estate projects, 128 complexes and shopping malls. The relatively new real estate discourse in China presented in the bilingual advertisements provides a fertile field for looking into the construction of national identity. When investigating how gender and its social values are translated into the discourse of bilingual advertising, this study, then, takes as the source both the advertising of technology and beauty. The incorporation of them as the source of the advertisements for studying gender is anticipated to provide a relatively complete picture of gender situation in contemporary China. For the former, this is chiefly grounded on cultural images of technology that have long been assumed to be intimately associated with men and masculinity (e.g., Cockburn & Ormrod 1993). By speaking of gender with special reference to technology, the study accepts one of the important points discussed by Faulkner (2001) that technological artefacts and technical practice are gendered. For instance, when discussing gender discourse of cars, “scripts” are that men are more technically competent than women in control of cars, and that cars are marketed to men as powerful, to women as reliable (Hubak 1996). For the latter, it is chiefly associated with the stereotypical knowledge that beauty products are usually connected to women and femininity (e.g., Barthel 1988; Chapkis 1986). Interestingly enough, the beauty products, with the exception of one hair care advertisement, are all cosmetics, eye and lip cream, perfume, and skin products conspicuously setting young women as the intended consumers. In addition, among 46 beauty advertisements in sum, 30 are designed with one or more female models for promotion. The appearance of a male model is identified only once in the mentioned hair care advertisement where a male model is in pair with a female one. The female-centred characteristic of beauty products suggests strongly this category as an excellent source for studying the (re)presentations of feminine identities. One note is worth making here. Like the beauty products, fashion and jewellery are also traditionally classified as within the 129 female domain of interest, which may suggest the suitability to consider the advertisements marketing fashion and jewellery as the source for examining feminine identities as well. But the occurrence of English within them is found exclusively brand name and/or website, a sharp contrast to the observation of English occurrence within and across structural domains of any beauty advertisement. Summary Drawing upon the integrative approach developed in the previous chapter, the following chapters examining identity construction in the data will be analyzing and discussing individually three categories of collective identity as designed. Prior to qualitative analysis, it is essential to recognize three methodological issues. Firstly, the most straightforward, is that my analysis in the following is non-exhaustive. Analysis of identities and their various aspects is devoted exclusively to one instead of every aspect, despite the fact that “different types of identity are neither exclusive nor singular” (Kroskrity 2001: 107). This is possible thanks to the analytical power of blending approach, noted previously, to account for more than one acceptable blend “out of the same inputs” (Fauconnier & Turner 2002: 26). The ad hoc nature of the comprehension process is necessary, unavoidable and good for the present study, since “one simply does not know in advance how important an influence certain elements from the situation might prove to be” (Coulson & Oakley 2000: 193). Secondly, as a tentative step, either an English-mixed headline or slogan5 is supposed to play an important, or even decisive, role in constructing identities of the Chinese people, while visual information is As pointed out earlier, slogans function to encapsulate the identity or philosophy of a brand. But when recontextualized in advertising of China, even a globally “fixed” English slogan (e.g., “Sheer Driving Pleasure” for its brand name BMW) is given ample opportunity to play an important role in constructing identities of the local. Following this, globally identical slogans (alongside headlines) can be taken as the good source for examining the interrelation between English usage and identity construction in the data. 130 presumed to match with verbal one6. Given the quantitative evidence shown above, my analysis usually starts with the English-mixed headlines and/or slogans in the form of English-only or bilingual parallel. And finally, my analysis mainly concentrates on lexical features of English words appeared in the domains of headline and slogan that create a style of political activism distinguishing the community of China from others. Lexical variation of English is believed in close relation to the identity of Chinese people (cf. Githinji 2006), and according to Bayley and Vicente, “the nuances of particular words may reflect political orientations- or discourse formations- towards a phenomenon that has become socially problematic” (2004: 238). This is not meant to say that visual information is unimportant and trivial in constructing identities in the context of advertising, as have already extensively discussed in Section 2.2.4. In the field of linguistics is observed an increasing interest to conduct multimodal analysis, and theories of multimodality and its approaches are now well developed (e.g., Forceville 1996; Kress & van Leeuwen 1996, 2001; Ventola, Charles & Kaltenbacher 2004). Visual information is separated temporarily and artificially from context only for the purpose of analysis, which is mainly related to the basic goal of this study to examine critically the interrelation between the use of English and identity construction. 131 [...]... usage and identity construction in the data 130 presumed to match with verbal one6 Given the quantitative evidence shown above, my analysis usually starts with the English- mixed headlines and/or slogans in the form of English- only or bilingual parallel And finally, my analysis mainly concentrates on lexical features of English words appeared in the domains of headline and slogan that create a style of. .. setting and human intentions as conceived in a particular context The rapid growth of commercial real estate in China today according to Gu (20 05) largely results from China’s increasing urbanization process and its advocacy of house personalization What is more relevant and important is that the land is one of the most fundamental symbols of the nation-state (Smith 1991) Due to the association of the. .. of national identity When investigating how gender and its social values are translated into the discourse of bilingual advertising, this study, then, takes as the source both the advertising of technology and beauty The incorporation of them as the source of the advertisements for studying gender is anticipated to provide a relatively complete picture of gender situation in contemporary China For the. .. fashion and jewellery as the source for examining feminine identities as well But the occurrence of English within them is found exclusively brand name and/or website, a sharp contrast to the observation of English occurrence within and across structural domains of any beauty advertisement Summary Drawing upon the integrative approach developed in the previous chapter, the following chapters examining identity. .. particularly the case in China where family and nation, or private and public, are not two separate realms From the time of Confucius, the family has been the basic building block of Chinese society, and the family is the anchor for national identity Since the family means “家” jia (lit home) and a house, the concreteness of jia, the significance of house in this way can be extended to the nation Therefore,... land with national identity and its transformation into real estate, national identity, as First and Avraham (2007) demonstrate, can be investigated as reflected in advertisements for marketing real estate projects, 128 complexes and shopping malls The relatively new real estate discourse in China presented in the bilingual advertisements provides a fertile field for looking into the construction of. .. private property might well be regarded as a place whose prime function becomes to sustain the displacement of the nation onto the family The fact that the majority of real estate advertisements are designed for private property then suggests the aptness to take them as one of source advertisements for examining national identity Additionally, real estate is always conditioned by the existing cultural... philosophy of a brand But when recontextualized in advertising of China, even a globally “fixed” English slogan (e.g., “Sheer Driving Pleasure” for its brand name BMW) is given ample opportunity to play an important role in constructing identities of the local Following this, globally identical slogans (alongside headlines) can be taken as the good source for examining the interrelation between English usage...Given the connection of technology to politics, the predominance of technology advertising opens up plenty of opportunities for studying national identity of contemporary China through an exploration into social and political ideologies embedded in and through the image of technological products As to the choice of real estate advertisements for examining national identity, there are a few visible,... compelling reasons To begin with, national identity that is reproducible in the banal realm of the everyday (Billig 19 95) is for the most part cultural identity (Hall 1992) For Balibar (1991), the nation-state derives its collective meaning through creation of “fictive ethnicity” based on family and school, in which the home and the residential environment at large are more effective This is particularly . in one language, the other clause in the other. They are few in the domain of headline but only one in that of slogan. In contrast to intersentential mixing, intrasentential one refers to the. parallel. And finally, my analysis mainly concentrates on lexical features of English words appeared in the domains of headline and slogan that create a style of political activism distinguishing. structural features. 5. 1 Data Collection Data of Chinese-English bilingual advertisements are confined to print forms of commercial consumer advertising. During the collection of the data, I intended