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Article published In:
The interpersonal functions of public signs during the Covid-19 pandemic
Edited by Eva Ogiermann
[Pragmatics and Society 14:2] 2023
► pp. 257–280

“Money can buy health”

Risk and protection in Hong Kong’s COVID-19 advertisement-scape

ORCID logo | Monash University | The University of Warwick
| National University of Singapore
| The University of Edinburgh

Drawing on the notion of affect, this paper offers a multimodal critical discourse analysis of health-related product advertising in Hong Kong during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Advertisements were collected in the city’s space of commute. We examine the construal of risk and protection in the advertisements and via their emplacement in three spatial-temporal dimensions observed in the data: the market society, the concrete public space, and the intimate familial space. Our analysis demonstrates that while risk and protection are linguistically and visually depicted to varying degrees across these dimensions, the emplacement of advertisements prompts the viewers to regard their immediate space as full of risks. As individuals encounter the advertisements, they become interpellated to see the purchase of the advertised products as necessary. Illuminating health communication during the pandemic, this study contributes to health commercialisation and responsibilisation research and provides insights into the ideological, interpersonal nature of affect.

Keywords: advertisements, affect, counter-affect, risk, protection, COVID-19 pandemic, Hong Kong
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical basis
    • 2.1Commercialisation and responsibilisation of health
    • 2.2Affect and affective regime
  • 3.Data and methods
    • 3.1Data
    • 3.2Methods
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1The market society
    • 4.2Concrete public space
    • 4.3Intimate familial space
  • 5.Discussion and conclusion
  • References
Published online: 6 July 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.22014.tse
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