Issue Vol. 3, No. 2 / October 2007

Glocalization and Hybridization of Languages in Chinese Web Advertising
Author(s): Doreen WU, FENG Jieyun, & CHAN Chui Yan
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The paper presents a review of the issues and studies on globalization and localization in Chinese advertising and makes a further attempt by systematically investigating the patterns of multilingual mix in Chinese web advertisements and by making sense of the hybridization of the languages from a glocalization point of view. It is argued that the hybridization of English and the vernacular variety of Chinese with Standard Written Chinese in contemporary Chinese web advertising represent another means of glocalization by the trans-national advertisers and furthermore, the phenomena constantly emerging in the multicultural process of globalization in Cultural China.
Comparison and Application in Advertising between Western Countries and China
Author(s): Wang Ning
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Advertising is unprecedentedly flourishing and occupying people’s fields of vision, reechoing around people’s ears and even flooding all around the world. After China’s adoption of the reform and open policy, advertising in China has expanded by leaps and bounds. However, compared with the advertising in western countries, it is still in a passive position in the world. Advertising in China shares the similarities and distinctions in advertising language and advertising creativity with the western countries. This paper is presented in five parts. The focus is laid on the three middle ones which respectively analyze the comparison in TV advertising on the contents, emphasis, creativities and styles between Western countries and China; the reasons including the economic ones, the cultural as well as the historical ones. In the analysis, TV advertisement examples from the reality will be shown; figures and graphs will also be offered to make the paper understandable and persuasive.
Hong Kong Consumers' Evaluation Process In the China Airlines Crash
Author(s): Betty Kaman Lee
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The increasing globalization of business has revived the attention to the issues of 'culture' in the public relations context. As such, public relations research and practice should call for crisis communication that is culture-specific. In view of (1) the prosperous Chinese-based markets anticipated in the near future, and (2) the continuous acceleration in the number of organizational crises in Hong Kong. The present study adopted a qualitative approach to examine Hong Kong consumers' evaluation process in an organizational crisis, namely - the China Airlines crash. Forty face-to-face in-depth interviews were conducted. The present study discovered a twostaged evaluation process in Hong Kong consumers. Stage one was characterized by participants' causal attribution process; whereas stage two centered on the evaluation of the organization's crisis-handling. Participants' evaluation of organizational crisis handling was shown to be equally significant in affecting their causal attribution, perceived wrongfulness of the organization, final conceptualization of the organization, and final judgment. All in all, participants engaged in an active, hierarchical, in-depth evaluation process of an organizational crisis. Several findings suggesting possible unique socio-cultural phenomena were discussed.
Cultural Identity and Globalization: Multimodal Metaphors in a Chinese Educational Advertisement
Author(s): Ning Yu
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This paper intends to analyze, within the cognitive linguistic paradigm, the multimodal metaphors in an educational advertisement screened on China Central Television (CCTV). Specifically, it analyzes the multimodal manifestation of two conceptual metaphors in dynamic visual and aural, as well as verbal, discourse. It shows that these conceptual metaphors are complex ones composed of cultural beliefs and assumptions, other complex and primary metaphors, and metonymies, combined at various levels with various compositions. The various visual, aural and verbal elements are interactive with and interdependent upon each other when they combine into a \"conceptual blend\" with \"input spaces\" in visual, aural and verbal modes. This blend contains conspicuous juxtapositions of various kinds, simultaneous or sequential, which contrast visual, aural or verbal images that are metonymic and metaphoric in nature. These juxtapositions cast in relief the unity and contrast between the Chinese and the Western, between thought and action, between primitivity and modernity, and between tradition and innovation. They all contribute to the central theme of the advertisement that China, thanks to her motivation for change that originates in her \"heart\", has undergone the process of modernization and globalization while retaining her cultural identity.
Struggling Industry, Liberated Audiences, and the 'Cinemagoing' in the Digital Era in Taiwan
Author(s): Vinnie Guo-Chiang Yu
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Thanks to the evolution of modern audiovisual technology, film audiences can nowadays enjoy the flexibility of watching movies in venues ranging from multiplex theatres to bedrooms at home through various filmviewing platforms, including broadcast television networks, cable movie channels, VCR, VCD, and DVD players, to downloads from the internet. The definition of 'cinemagoing' is not limited to the activity of 'going to the theatres' anymore. With the increasing amount of audiovisual products on the market that have arrived from various countries over the years, Taiwanese audiences can consume different types of films from different places, via different viewing platforms in this digital era. In this paper, I will review Hollywood dominance in the Taiwanese local film market and the struggle of the Taiwanese film industry, which has and is facing the inflow of foreign films and the widespread dispersion of audiovisual technologies. Furthermore, contemporary Taiwanese film audiences' film consumption activities, via various viewing platforms, and an appropriate empirical approach to study film audiences will also be introduced in the final section of this paper.
The Uses of and Gratifications Derived from Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) in Chinese Youth
Author(s): Vera Youling Liu and Daniela Dimitrova
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The Bulletin Board System (BBS) is a popular computer application through which people interact in China. For them, and especially for the young segments of the society, the BBS is both a novel channel to get information and a revolutionary way to express their opinions. This study applies the uses and gratifications approach (U&G) to investigate Chinese youth’s uses of the BBS and their gratifications derived from it. Based on the results of a web-based survey, the study examined what motivates Chinese youth to use the BBS, how they use the BBS, and what gratifications they obtain from the BBS. The researcher found that there is a strong relationship between users’ motivations for BBS use and their gratifications obtained from it; in the meantime, users' motivations and gratifications levels both influence users’ dependency degree on the BBS.
A Postcolonial Discourse Analysis of Wong Kai-Wai's Films
Author(s): Po-Lin Pan
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Hong Kong was one of the last colonies in the twentieth century. Before Hong Kong was returned to the People's Republic of China, some Hong Kong people who held higher socioeconomic positions chose to leave their hometown to pursue their dreamed democratic lives. However, others had no alternative but remained in Hong Kong with the unalleviated fear described by the Western media under the governance of Communism. Through analyzing Wong Kar-Wai’s two films: Days of Being Wilds (1991) and In the Mood for Love (2000), the present study strove to explore the changes in the cultural identity of the people in Hong Kong before and after the handover in 1997. Moreover, this study attempted to examine some Postcolonial phenomena of Hong Kong society and to explore the symbolic meanings of the relationships among Britain, China, and Hong Kong in Wong Kai-Wai's films.
Consequences of 'Cultural Complexity'
Author(s): Nader N. Chokr
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Culture has emerged in recent decades as the subject of intense and divisive controversies in a number of areas --e.g., identity politics, the politics of difference and recognition, multiculturalism, cross-cultural communication or incommensurability, and more specifically, regarding the issue of cultural relativism vs. moral universalism as it is brought to bear on the theoretical debates and political struggles about human rights, democracy, human development and social justice. If we are to get a better handle on all these problems and issues in contemporary cultural politics, it is imperative that we articulate an adequate conception of culture and cultural analysis - from both an empirical and normative point of view. In the present essay, I contend that, as a first step, we are well-advised to draw the consequences of \"cultural complexity\" in a world that is both globalizing and ‘glocalising.’ We would then be a better position to understand not only the complex mechanisms of (individual and group) identity-formation, but to assess and evaluate the complex internal dynamics of cultures as well as the diverse relationships that obtain or not between them at this juncture of our history.
Decivilization: The Compressive Effects of Technology on Culture and Communication
Author(s): Donna R. Miller and David C. Bruenger
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As consumerist societies spread across the globe during the late 20th century, the proliferation of Western products and entertainment appeared to indicate that cultural commercialization and homogenization would be inevitable consequences in the 21st century. However, innovative communications technologies did more than provide new platforms for the consumption of commercial products. Due to the multi-channel and directional capacities of these communications networks, individuals could communicate on a scale similar to commercial information and entertainment industries. The dialogic effects of these emerging technologies appropriated commercial culture, shifted economic influence and focus, established web-based social networks, and blurred the boundaries between public and private spheres. The speed, adaptability, and scalability of these systems work together to diminish the significance of geographic and temporal constraints, globalizing connectivity and dramatically compressing response cycles. As a result, by the end of the 20th century, mass production and distribution of cultural goods were in crisis.
\"A Four-Legged Duck?\" - Chinese Restaurant Culture in the U.S.rom a Cross-Cultural/Inter-Cultural Communication Perspective
Author(s): Vincent (Tzu-Wen) Cheng
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Using dining experiences in New York City Chinese restaurants as a launching point for analysis, the author explores Chinese restaurant culture in the U.S. and its implications for understanding the development of Chinese American identity. Through both close examination of what and how people eat at Chinese restaurants in New York City, and the application of cross-cultural / inter-cultural communication theories such as John Berry's acculturation strategies and Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, this paper demonstrates that, contrary to the general perception of many Americans, Chinese restaurant culture in the U.S is in fact quintessentially American. The author's analytical reading suggests that a parallel of this perceptual inconsistency (i.e., what Americans think Chinese food and foodways are vs. what they actually are) can be drawn with the general misperception of Chinese Americans as \"perpetual foreigners,\" rather than as long-standing American citizens who have in fact been in the U.S. for many generations.
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