The discursive construction of identity in chinese english bilingual advertising a critical inquiry 7

7.1 The Portrayal of Men The quantitative evidence has already revealed that masculine identities cannot be observed among the beauty advertisements, so the construction of masculinity

By conceptualizing gender in terms of the reciprocally constituted and historically variable, the focus of the chapter on gender in relation to the use of English, then, raises at least three questions: (1) Does gender difference and inequality continue to be repackaged,

or have they been greatly undermined or even transformed with the use of English?; (2) how gender systems in the local community of China are reciprocally related, in multiple and shifting ways, to other modes of cultural and political organization under the circumstances of globalization?; and (3) how gender relations are normalized and legitimized with the aid of English usage and what ideologies are at work in this process? Alternatively phrased, by examining the construction of gender identities, the main task of this chapter is to address the questions of whether, and how, gender relations in contemporary China have been discursively articulated, maintained, undermined, or transformed through or in relation to the use of English

These questions, as outlined in Chapter 5, will be answered by looking closely at the discourses of technology and beauty advertising In linking the construction of gender identities to such products being advertised, the assumption, as noted earlier, is that the gender identification of a product is equated with the construction of gender Thus, the analysis that follows often proceeds from a set of prescriptive norms or gender stereotypes that makes up the “social force” and “social structures” Fairclough (1989) talks about, against which further discussion is made about whether new forms of gender roles have emerged or been emerging

In what follows I begin by presenting the predominant stereotypes of masculinity and gender roles of men I analyze, then, in detail the depictions of traditional, subordinatewomen and new, partially emancipated women, which is followed with a brief discussion

of gender ideologies at work

7.1 The Portrayal of Men

The quantitative evidence has already revealed that masculine identities cannot be observed among the beauty advertisements, so the construction of masculinity is examined

by concentrating exclusively on the technological advertisements

Gender roles of men in contemporary China overall rely on conventional notions

of masculinity One of idiosyncratic features among the advertisements is that many technological products have social attributes typically ascribed to men, including toughness, competition, risk-taking, and violence that are classically associated with meaningful aspects of aggression, a defining feature of masculinity (Connell 1995) In this context, the term “aggression” is defined in a broader sense; not only does it refer to assertion of the self or forcefulness, a way of acting closely related to male stereotypes like active and assertive, but equally to competitive, dangerous, and vigorous practices In addition to the theme of aggressive and violent masculinity, the supremacy of males

continues to be perpetual The social status or prestige of men is implicitly featured higher than women as before

7.1.1 Aggressive and violent men

Males are socially expected to be aggressive and violent because of the link of maleness with the positively sanctioned use of aggression and violence (Connell 1995) The need to differentiate the masculine from the feminine by asserting masculinity in the form of aggression and violence chiefly accounts for the ubiquitous representations of aggression and violence.There area number of technological advertisements shaping and reinforcing this hegemonic discourse of masculinity by consciously connecting certain technological products to this norm and value of masculinity

The masculine identification of a product has much to do with, and is influenced much by, the use of particular English words Butthis way of representing aggressive and violent masculinity is not as common as expected Among the headlines and slogans of the technological advertisements, only a few set “competition”, “toughness”, or “vigour” as the core of their presentation:

Blood of racing (Eneos)

Full-blooded (Oris)

The power of dreams (Honda)

The Power to Surprise (Kia)

Toughness beyond all limits (Casio)

As will be pointed out at the end of this section, aggression and violence are usually connected to the western men Given difference in expressing potential conceptual meaning, the English words are much more appropriate than their possible Chinese equivalents in presenting these masculine values

For an illustration, let us look at the advertisement for Oris watch presented in Figure 7.1 The headline reading “Full-blooded” conveys a number of conceptual meanings, including genuine, purebred, and vigorous and vital, all of which cannot be

covered individually by its possible Chinese equivalents: zhengzhong de “正宗的” (lit genuine), chunzhong de “纯种的” (lit purebred), qiangyouli de “强有力的” (lit vigorous),

or jinglichongpei de “精 力 充 沛 的” (lit vital) When used independently, full-blooded

furthermore often describes behaviour and action that are carried out with great commitment and enthusiasm, thereby promoting an impression of high responsibility and passion

In the MOTOR RACING frame, motorists is a role for the value male, and the masculine properties count as a value for the role motorists Based on this, the word full-blooded

partially encapsulatesthe fundamental nature of motor racing

With the indication of the country of origin and history, the Oris worldwide slogan, then, evokes the cognitive model of the Oris featuring long history and super quality In

the ORIS frame, the properties of long history and super quality are a value for the role the Oris Given its symbolic meaning, the English presentation for the slogan is more

appropriate for activating the ORIS frame than its Chinese translation By this, it is

reasonable to argue that full-blooded also carries the literal meanings of purebred and genuine describing the Oris The word full-blooded explicitly points to the blend Its effect

is to build the connection between two separate spaces: the MOTOR RACING frame and the ORIS frame, that are selected as two input spaces in the conceptual integration network, as given in Figure 7.2

The Motor Racing space The Full-Blooded space The Oris space

The blended space

Figure 7.2 A simplified network diagram of the Oris blend

Male motorist Dangerous The Oris Competitive Long history Vigorous Super quality Tough

Purebred Genuine Vigorous Exciting

Considering the inner-space Role-Value relation shared by each space and the

connection between them set up by full-blooded, a cross-space mapping allows us to

assign a new value to the Oris by referring to the value of motorists In the blend emerges

one unique version of the Oris having the masculine properties of being dangerous,

competitive, tough, and vigorous What is clear now is that the advertisement sets men as

potential consumers The appropriateness of full-blooded for describing the gender

stereotype of motor racing in terms of vigour is the evidence showing the important role

full-blooded plays in verbally assigning to the Oris the masculine property of vigour Yet

developed from the blend is evenly clear of the construction of aggressive masculinity

being the consequence of full-blooded in collaboration with the illustrations of motor

racing

In much the same way as in the Oris advertisement, the construction of aggressive masculinity in the advertisement for Casio G-Shock watch is closely associated with the use of the English word “toughness” alongside the images of racing cars Reproduced in Figure 7.3, English occurs mainly in the headline “TOUGHNESS beyond all LIMITS” that speaks favourably of the masculine norm of being tough in terms of its overcoming all limits, producing a sense of success A new structure of the Cause-Effect relation between

toughness and success yields in the HEADLINE blend At the same time, TOUGHNESS

has much correspondence with the gender stereotype of motorists in the MOTOR

RACING frame evoked by the images of racing cars That is to say, TOUGHNESS alone

is enough to activate all the conceptual meanings of determination, strength, violence, and

so on, while its possible Chinese translations: julie “剧烈” (lit violent; fierce), cubao “粗

暴” (lit brutal), or qiangying “强硬” (lit strong) have to work together for the same result This explains the significance of the use of TOUGHNESS for meaning construction

The HEADLINE blend and the MOTOR RACING frame are selected as two input spaces to the blend and toughness, the identical element building the connection between them (See Figure 7.4) Based on the inner-space Cause-Effect relation derivable from the HEADLINE input space, toughness is singled out as one valuable element necessary for motorists to overcome all limits in race

After having exemplified the important role the use of English has in representing the masculine values of aggression and violence, attention now turns to the commonest way that simply connects the technological products to sport Sport features heavily in the technological advertisements -11 out of 26 watch advertisements, 24 among 40 auto advertisements, 5 out of 15 computer advertisements, and 4 out of 13 TV advertisements are all designed with at least one visual image related to sports activities The link of a product with sport according to Whitson (1990) is one of prominent ways in constructing aggressive and violent masculinity As a highly potent site for constructing masculine

identity, sporting practices are overwhelmingly associated with tough, competitive often violent and sometimes dangerous practices combined with the rejection of that which is associated with femininity (Wright & Clarke 1999: 229) Types of sports predominant include bicycling, football, motor racing, rock climbing, skiing, surfing, and wrestling, which, unlike figure skating and gymnastics defined by aesthetic factors, stereotypically belong to men Besides this, it is male rather than female that is overwhelmingly shown in large size Clearly, dominant narratives still continue to privilege heterosexuality as the unquestioned norm, a framing long associated with sporting representations and the homophobic world of sport.

The Motor Racing space The Headline blend

The blended space

Figure 7.4 A simplified network diagram of the Casio blend

Toughness (Cause) Success (Effect)

In such technological advertisements strongly featured sports, the use of English

in the domains of headline and slogan only functions in the local framing that does not necessarily play an important role in the final representation of aggressive and violent

masculinity This can be fruitfully demonstrated by taking another look at the Suzuki Jimny advertisement (see Figure 6.1) As discussed in the previous chapter, this

advertisement mainly promotes passion and excitement, an index of modern life, through getting possession of a Jimny Yet, another noteworthy property of the Jimny as a SUV is its allusion to tough, sometimes possibly dangerous practices that are combined with norms and values of masculinity The masculine identification and appeal of the Jimny is reaffirmed and enhanced through its connection to football, a signifier of violent masculinity, by the visual information of football field Thus, despite the absence of a male model, football considerably connects the Jimny with manly needs and pursuits The image presented for the Jimny ends up as previous being stereotypically masculine, targeting men as potential consumers Behind this masculine image, of course, is the sociocultural assumption that a powerful vehicle like SUV is gendered From this point of view, we can say that the advertisement is a typical example shoring up the gender stereotype of SUV Referring back to the previous analysis of the constructive processes of emotional orientation closely related to the framing space of HIGH, it is reasonable to

infer that the word High makes no contribution to the representation of this masculine image; neither is the slogan Way of Life Instead, it is the Chinese word “野” ye (lit wild)

in the headline that has it fulfilled In a word, the portrayal of aggressive masculinity in the data is not always associated with the use of English

Where men are designed as participants of sports, in the blend the construction of them as aggressive and violent is even more discernible and without necessarily being associated with the use of English The Audi A4 Sline advertisement is a case in point Figure 7.5 shows that a Sline speeds forward and to the left of it five black football players

in uniform seem to run and control the ball in the light of their pose The football players evoke an abstract frame of FOOTBALL with roles of actor, masculine value, and emotional reward Passion, as previously noted, is the emotional reward of this sport An inner-space Cause-Effect relation emerges in the FOOTBALL frame -passion is an effect

of aggressive masculinity, the cause The option of black male as athletes in football, notably, sanctions not only the gender stereotype of football, reinforcing the identity of men as aggressive and violent, but also racist stereotypes of black men as violent in western culture (Hooks 2004)

Figure 7.5 The ad for Audi A4 Sline

The bilingual headline reads “激情 · 为奥运而动” jiqing wei ao’yun er dong (lit

passion for the Olympics) and “Passion for movement” “激情” jiqing is the English translation equivalent of “passion” and jiqing wei ao’yun er dong means that passion is

motivated for the Olympics The Sline is associated with the Olympics through the juxtaposition of the Audi emblem in the top right-hand corner with the symbol of

Olympics “the five Olympic rings” and the 2008 Beijing Olympics emblem With this link,

it is inferable for passion to be triggered also by the Sline, and passion is contained as one

of conceptual elements in the SLINE space

The Football space The Sline space

The blended space

Figure 7.6 A simplified network diagram of the Audi blend

Differentiated from jiqing wei ao’yun er dong, Passion for movement indicates

that passion is movement-oriented The word movement points explicitly to the blend; it

works to build the connection over two separate spaces: there are the run of the football players in the FOOTBALL space and the speedy movement of the Sline in the SLINE

space Developed from this, it is clear of the role of movement that its possible Chinese

equivalent “活动” huodong, “运动” yundong, or “移动”yidong lacks The football players

and the Sline are the counterparts in the conceptual integration network diagrammed by

Male players/Sline Running/Whizzing Passion/Passion Violent

Tough Competitive

Figure 7.6 The inner-space Cause-Effect relation yielded within the FOOTBALL space also projects to the blend The cross-space mapping between these spaces allows us to treat the masculine values of football as the probable cause of passion in the SLINE space This, in turn, assigns the masculine properties of competition, violence, and toughness to the Sline In the blend the Sline like the football players becomes the symbol of aggressive masculinity and the advertisement sells aggressive masculinity via it

For the present purpose, one point to be acknowledged is that in these advertisements models of masculinity employed are all foreigners with the exception of

the Lenovo advertisement that chooses Liu Xiang, a Chinese sportsman, as the model (see

Figure 8.5) Truly, an adventuresome spirit and a proclivity to violence often constitute important components of a western or black male’s self-image, not Chinese men’s (Herek 1987) This is certainly much to do with media globalization and the circulation of models

of masculinity And this is probably the reason accounting for the use of English instead of Chinese for the presentation of these masculine values in the headlines and slogans Of equal significance, the invisibility or absence of the Chinese male and the displaying of the Occidental one to signify male sexuality, in the way argued by Lu (2007 [2000]), are probably motivated by and grounded in stereotypes and self-perceptions of inadequate Chinese masculinity and sexuality in racist discourse

Despite the almost exclusiveness of Chinese males as model, the predominance of western male athletes in these advertisements could be thought of as “offer” (Kress & van Leeuwen 1996), presenting western masculinity for contemplation and consumption (Goldman 1992) The “mixing” of western masculinity into Chinese advertising, to a remarkable extent, implies that the world of Chinese masculinity has been transcended through assimilation and syncretism of elements of western masculinity With this interpretation, it is logical to claim that the resexualization of masculinity for Chinese men might be seen as a significant development for self-definition of Chinese masculinity

7.1.2 Dominant men

The social position of men is still privileged in contemporary China Traditional gender hierarchy of male dominance and the ideology of male superiority are observable I discussed earlier the prevalence of male sport among the technological advertisements Sporting prowess, according to Connell (1995), is symbolic “proof” for men of their socially constructed “natural” superiority over women Whitson argues that “male ‘ways

of being’ help to confirm patterns of male privilege and female subordinate (and indeed structures of domination) that exist outside sport” (1990: 20) Following this point of view, the sport-featured technological advertisements could be taken as proofs of men as socially dominant As the earlier analysis illustrates, in such advertisements the construction of dominant men is rarely dependent upon the use of English but upon the visual information

men Only the Kia Opirus advertisement is evident of conscious attempts at reassuring

men of gender priorities through the use of English Reproduced in Figure 7.7, the copy has as its headline the British greeting “Dear Gentleman” that addresses directly to a male consumer specifically, whereby the gender stereotype about masculinity of powerful cars

is reaffirmed Based on the contextual information of car promotion, the greeting evokes a specific mental space of PURCHASE in which men are addressed as potential buyers of the Opirus

In addition to explicitly presuming men as the intended consumers, the way greeting contributes directly and richly to the advertiser’s outreach to the presentation

British-of his intended message Literally, Dear Gentleman can fairly be replaced with its nearest

Chinese translation “亲爱的先生” qin’ai de xiansheng (lit dear gentleman or sir) As a

polite way of addressing a man, the term “先生” xiansheng (lit sir or gentleman) is now

frequently used especially in urban areas of China Similar to its English counterpart

gentleman or sir, xiansheng according to Liu (2002) has already lost its traditional

association with social class or status and is appropriate to addressing any Chinese men irrespective of occupation, social stratum, income and age Of special importance here, the

addressing form Dear Gentleman has now been fairly old-fashioned; it is rarely used any

more in Britain to address a man in public With its allusion to the social rigidities of the British class system, the obsolete way of addressing a man functions to implicitly build up the association of the addressed man with higher social class as its usage in the past

Alternatively stated, Dear Gentleman marks the greeting as a “respectful” one, which

evokes an abstract frame in which target men are depicted as those being as honourable and socially dominant in old Britain

The cross-space mapping connects men of China today wanting to buy an Opirus

to honourable and socially dominant men lived in old Britain Both are projected to the blend and fused there Diagrammed in Figure 7.8, in the blend Chinese men by owning an

Opirus become as honourable and socially dominant as British men in old Britain From

this it is inferable for the application of Dear Gentleman to addressing men being

principally motivated by the consideration to seek the desirable social effects of characterizing their social position It becomes more sensible to interpret this obsolete addressing way as highlighting the presupposed dominant role of Chinese men in society,

by means of which traditional gender hierarchy is perpetuated

The Purchase space The Old British Man space

The blended space

Figure 7.8 A simplified network diagram of the Kia Opirus blend

Along with the English-mixed line “进口整车Imported” jinkou zhengche Imported (lit fully imported car) situated in the bottom right-hand corner, the slogan “KIA MOTORS The Power to Surprise” tells that the Kia Opirus is an imported car with

surprising power, which like the headline customarily sets men as potential customers Being presented in English, a language stereotypical for high technology, the slogan is

Men

In Britain The past Honorable Dominant

persuasively more powerful than its possible Chinese translation So is the significance of

Imported in highlighting the product’s foreignness and quality Since the Opirus targets

men, the product is designed as the symbol for social division of men at high social status

and women at low social status Conclusively, the Kia Opirusadvertisement is an example perpetuating the conventional idea of hegemonic male dominance in society of contemporary China

To sum up this section, the traditional masculine values of aggression, violence, and social dominance are not undermined nor discarded but still persistent and pervasive The depiction of aggressive and violent masculinity is as straightforward as before; the presence of images of “metrosexual” male (Lee 2006: 82) or “new man” (Rutherford 1988)

is completely invisible And the transformation of aggressive and violent masculinity and higher social position of men in society is not observable The use of English brings no challenge to the masculine norm Quite the contrary, English sometimes is deployed for sustaining and reasserting the conventional notions of aggressive and violent masculinity This is not meant to conclude, however, that traditional Chinese masculinity is not

at all being changed or modified In recent years, Chinese masculinity is more and more hybridized as its western counterpart specifically in terms of being aggressive and violent

By assuming difference, drawing Chinese men into stereotypical categories, and then presenting these stereotypical depictions as attractive to them, the advertisers of China perpetuate restrictive roles for Chinese men, offering some reassurance to Chinese men who are probably wondering their identity in late modernity

7.2 The Portrayal of Women

In my data, the portrayals of women are characterized by a combination of sharply distinct new, emancipated women and impliedly traditional, subordinate women There is a complex of discourses, rather than a single discourse, of female gender The stereotypical

subordination of women is visible and never far away; nevertheless, even though some female stereotypes persist, a new paradigm of gender roles for female has identifiably emerged

In the following I start by examining the manner in which Chinese-English bilingual advertising sustains and reinforces the socialized feminine gender role of sexual objects Attention is mainly given to delving into the delicate reproduction and reinforcement of the subordination of women and its dynamics In the follow-up examination of “new” (Rutherford 1988) and in-between women, attention, then, is shifted

to subtle sexism embedded in the constructive processes The term “sexism” is used to suggest that the on-going conflict between men and women is bound up with “larger societal forces, wider institutionalized inequalities of power” (Mills 2008: 1-2) By focusing on the construction of in-between women, it continues to discuss pointedly that traditional ideas of women are not completely undermined but, instead, powerfully supported in a now rather “indirect” (Mills 2008) or “subtle” (Lazar 2005) way, even though social images of women sometimes have been depicted as emancipated at first sight

The very analysis adopts two points of argument related to the female body or body part: one is that the female body or body part is a sign in advertisements (Goldman 1992: 125), and the other, “symbolic control is commonly enacted through images of the body” (Murphy 1994: 72)

of dismembered female body parts as the feminine attributes of beauty, including tone arms and neck, tight close-ups of breast, big eyes, glossy face, and soft lip Women are represented in such ways that suggest heterosexual appeal principally realized through the portrayals of women as objects for others’ viewing pleasure and objects used to beautify and adorn1 This visual practice, as argued by Goffman (1979), is one of subtle

skin-ways advertising reinforces cultural values of subservience of women to men and inequality between them

In the beauty advertisements reproducing this sexist stereotype, the construction of

an acceptable blend, within which develops the meaning of women being subordinate or inferior to men, does not necessarily have a bearing on the use of English Instead, it is often visual information that reproduces the gender role of women as subordinate, regardless of the symbolic meaning of modernity embedded in and through the use of English In such advertisements, English is simply deployed to signal super quality of products being advertised or modern and sophisticated character of consumers As the list headlines as follows show, examples of English words mixed mainly for the decorative purpose are not rare among the beauty advertisements:

Aqualia Thermal (Vichy)

A natural story (Camenae)

Euphoria blossom a new fragrance (Calvin Klein)

Miracle set (Mary Kay)

Olay 第一款Super Cream诞生Olay diyikuan Super Cream dansheng (lit Olay first

super cream is born) (Olay)

Love is a treasure (Lancome)

More rich, more shinning (Slek)

Success future (Guerlain)

Summer animation (Biotherm)

Sweet Classics (Opera)

The new fragrance for women (Lacoste)

The relax time of body skin (Shiseido)

Total solution for your hair problem (Svenson)

1

But Walter (1998) refuses to see beauty advertising as a conspiracy to keep women down

For an illustration, let us first look at the advertisement for face cream reproduced

in Figure 7.9 Besides the chemical formula for water, the English words “Day” and

“Night” are printed largely as part of the headline concerned with the protection of face day and night with the product Instead of their Chinese equivalents “白天”baitian (lit day)

and “夜晚” yewan (lit night) respectively, the highlighting of Day and Night is probably

motivated with the purpose to mark the modernity of potential consumers, or high quality

of the product Differently stated, the contextualization of these two English words has no bearing on the construction of feminine identity, but merely works to denote the modern feature of the advertised product As to the large occupation of a woman’s impeccable face,

it would seem a priori likely that it is so positioned to the left as to reinforce the “given” effect of the product (Kress & van Leeuwen 1996) Through this position of her face, the advertiser reproduces the expectation of women’s face as “glamorous” as possible, so that the subordinate role for women is upheld and reaffirmed without being explicitly stated

Figure 7.9 The ad for face cream

In addition to sexually explicit subordination of women in a visual way, another common and pervasive way to subconsciously underscore the socially subordinate position

of women relates to sociocultural stereotypes of beauty criteria evaluating women’s physical appearance Among the beauty advertisements, some implicitly set beauty standards to live up to or try to manipulate female into thinking that their body parts are far from being perfect The themes of feminine beauty ideal like light skin colour, glossy face, big breast, slender body, and youth, are frequently stated through the use of English (sometimes alongside the representation of women as sexual objects) The following headlines or slogans taken from the beauty advertisements are illustrative of how English

is mainly employed to connect the products to female beauty ideal directly While we do not deny the referential content the English words intend to convey, their decorative function is equally evident:

Advanced night repair concentrate (Estee Lauder)

Age miracle, life miracle七天, 惊现肌肤的青春奇迹qitian, jinxian jifu de qingchun qiji (lit seven days, surprisingly notice youth miracle of skin) (Guerlain)

Always stay young (Loreal)

Beauty for you (gNPearl)

BOTANICAL FOR HEALTH Accelerate skin cell renewing, enhance elastin complex (SiCiLi)

Exceptional complete care -eye and lip cream (Guerlain)

Everyday new face (Laneige)

Feel your beauty (Kanebo)

天生一对UP UP tiansheng yidui UP UP (lit inborn a couple UP UP), A cup B

C D cup (Shaydeng)

My daily skincare ally (Mininurse)

迎接美肌新生 · 重焕光彩 yingjie meiji xinsheng · zhonghuan guangcai (lit welcome

the rebirth of beautiful skin · rediscover brilliance)Uncover new skin, redis- cover skin’s perfection (Shiseido)

Slim and shape (Marie France)

The beauty ideal set for Chinese women according to Gauntlett (2008: 85) is the consequence of global capitalism and modernity This may explains largely why the subordination of women is pervasive and perpetuated among the beauty advertisements, irrespective of the general expectation of English having a liberating function Just because of its close relation to modernity and its local meaning in China as a language of

high quality, the use of English is far more forceful than Chinese in presenting the aspects

of female beauty ideal as the core of the headlines and slogans

of Lip Treatment, Concentrated Anti-Wrinkle Eye Cream” Although no specific

information suggests overtly potential consumers of the product, it can still be concluded with confidence that the product targets women on the ground of sociocultural norms The English-mixed headline reading as follows is of particular value for the construction of women as subordinate:

“淋漓修护眼唇肌肤, 无惧岁月冲击” linli xiuhu yanchun jifu, wuji suiyue chongji (lit give full care to lips and eyes, no worry about age’s impact)

Intensive Age Defense For Your Lips and Eyes

the normal connection of English to high quality among Chinese people, the use of Age Defense and Anti-Wrinkle are more appropriate than their Chinese equivalents in stressing

the effectiveness of the product

Instead of merely assigning the property of maintaining young to the product,

either Age Defense or Anti-Wrinkle further prompts Chinese people to evoke scenarios of

ageing appropriate to the advertisement Ageing is still primarily a woman’s issue (Hurd

1999, cited in Kjaersgaard 2005); women always worry about whether their lips become

dry and coarse, and eyes, wrinkled with age Moreover, the use of Age Defense and Wrinkle technically evokes the counterpart scenario of OLD, an abstract frame with roles like victim, cause, and negative result In this point, the value of Age Defense and Anti- Wrinkle is particularly visible due to the implication of a disanalogy between the desirable

Anti-effect of the Benefiance in the YOUNG space and the concrete anxiety in the OLD space

A Disanalogy mapping takes place across these two spaces as inputs

In the blend diagrammed by Figure 7.11, an imaginary structure emerges in which the elements of coarse lips and wrinkled-eyes, age, and unattractive are assigned to roles in the OLD space, and the Benefiance becomes the instrument that can effectively protect lips from becoming coarse and eyes, being wrinkled If the Benefiance is a solution, this is simply because in the OLD space youth is treated as one of criteria evaluating feminine beauty Women’s subordinate position is apparent through the upholding of youth as one

of feminine beauty ideal

The Young space The Old space

The blended space

Figure 7.11 A simplified network diagram of the Shiseido Benefiance blend

For another illustration of how English is often used to represent a subordinate

image for women, let us look now at the Time Wise advertisement for a skincare product

As reproduced in Figure 7.12, the close-up of a female’s glossy face nearly occupying the

The Benefiance Age

Attractive Unattractive

Women Coarse lips Wrinkled eyes Age Unattractive

whole page may catch our eyes immediately Located in the headline is the use of “instant gratification” Based on the background knowledge of English as a language of high

quality, the use of instant is more powerfully than its Chinese equivalent in assigning a quality property to the product Like Age Defense and Anti-Wrinkle in the previous example, gratification implies a disanalogy between the real situation and a counterfactual

scenario, as well as the quality of the product In the real situation, it refers to the gratification of women with a glossy face after using the product being advertised In the counterfactual scenario, women are ungratified with their facial appearance and try to make it as glossy as possible The blend yields a new meaning that being glossy is the ideal for feminine face

Identified in the domain of technological advertisements, the Samsung Anycall

advertisement also unconsciously disseminates norms of feminine beauty Given in Figure 7.13, this advertisement presents a general preference among Chinese people for women to have a thin body, coincident with the norm of thinness in western societies (Wykes & Gunter 2005) As verbalized by the text body mixed with “SOS”, “MP3” and “miscroSD”, Anycall S209 is one product of Samsung mobile phones that tends to be equipped with the latest high-tech quality Apart from the technical terms for the decorative purpose, “Less is More” appears in the headline and “Samsung Fun Club” in the logo

The tabloid-like headline Less is More is an expression of metaphor in this copy: Less (the target domain) is conceptualized in terms of More (the source domain), such that

in the Less-Is-More blend the target space is structured by the domain of LESS and the

framing space by the domain of MORE To conceptualize Less in reference to More, it

demands us first to clarify what they are referred to individually in respect of concrete

information The abstract concepts of Less and More, however, are not explicitly indicated

by any part of the statement in its own right Further, More in the framing input is not directly identical to Less in the focus input, but opposed to one another Perhaps more

importantly, the meanings producible by “less” and “more” are deliberately ambiguous in comparison with their possible Chinese counterparts, such as “更小” geng xiao (lit smaller

in size) or “更少” geng shao (lit less in amount; fewer in number) for “less” and “更多”

geng duo (lit more in amount or number) or “更大” geng da (lit bigger in size) for “more”,

that articulate the definite meanings either of decreasing or increasing size, number or amount with “更” geng (lit more or less) as the form expressing comparative degree In

short, there is no idea of what exact conceptual elements are contained in the two individual spaces or can be referred to if based merely on the statement itself For its information being useful and integrated into a mental space, the metaphorical expression needs to be associated with contextual information of the copy The Less-Is-More blend,

as the following analysis reveals, actually is the organizing frame of the resultant blend specifying the nature of the Anycall S209 and the female model (i.e., despite being thin in body size, the product bears more function and the model is more attractive)

Figure 7.13 The ad for Samsung Anycall

Visually, the copy features two large photographs of Anycall S209 and the female model in parallel to one another at the upper portion, in addition to two much smaller photographed Anycall S209 insets at the lower portion Seen from different angles, the sample products in black all look simple, thin, and delicate As mentioned earlier, a diversity of sophisticated function is presumed as the particular feature available only to

the Anycall S209 It becomes reasonable to infer that Less refers to the product’s thin body

and More, additional superior functions of the product When the visual and verbal

information of the Anycall S209 is mingled in the ANYCALL S209 space, the space develops emergent content of its own -namely, the Anycall S209 technically functions far more than others, in spite of its thin body and plain appearance The space generates the inner-space interrelation of Figure-Function, another property of the Anycall S209 that also projects to the final blend

The Anycall S209 space The Model space

The Less-Is-More blend The blended space

Figure 7.14 A simplified network diagram of the Samsung Anycall blend

The female model, then, looks young, bony, and tall She is posed in ways that emphasize her body curves A slim figure is her distinction The visual presentation of the

Female model Slim

(in)Black Attractive Confident Elegant

Anycall S209 Thin Black Simple Advanced functions

Anycall S209 Female model Thin/Slim

Black/(in)Black Advanced functions Attractive