Changing ideologies and advertising discourses in China

The present study aims to unveil the changing ideologies in contemporary China from a micro discursive perspective, focusing on a case study of the changing advertising discourses in Nanfang Daily, a typical Communist Party newspaper in Guangdong province, P. R. China. Advertising discourse has long been considered as a socio-cultural artifact and most of the previous researches are confined to its socio-cultural functions. By taking a broader ideological perspective, the present study adopts the fundamental principle of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and developed an integrated framework, which links the value appeals and linguistic practice with an investigation of the different power groups having access to the advertising discourses in two different socio-historical settings of China — 1980 versus 2002. It is found that the danwei-dominated advertising discourses in 1980 were characterized by the prevalent use of utilitarian values and by the rare use of interactive lexico-grammatical features. In 2002, in sharp contrast, the individual-consumption dominated advertising discourses manifested itself with an escalated use of hedonistic value appeals and of interactive linguistic features. The changes in value appeals and linguistic practices reflect that different power groups in the advertising discourses have different needs and interests in the specific socio-historical settings. Finally, the study places the research findings within the landscape of the hybridized and competing ideologies in China and in the accelerated globalization.