Multimodal Communication: A social semiotic approach to text and image in print and digital media [1st ed.] 978-3-030-15427-1;978-3-030-15428-8

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xvii
Social Semiotics: Setting the Scene (May Wong)....Pages 1-9
Front Matter ....Pages 11-11
Slim Arms, Waist, Thighs and Hips, but Not the Breasts: Portrayal of Female Body Image in Hong Kong’s Magazine Advertisements (May Wong)....Pages 13-53
Postage Stamps as Windows on Social Changes and Identity in Postcolonial Hong Kong (May Wong)....Pages 55-80
Front Matter ....Pages 81-81
Emotional Branding in Multimodal Personal Loan TV Advertisements: Analysing Voices and Engagement (May Wong)....Pages 83-106
The Discourse of Advertising for Luxury Residences in Hong Kong: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (May Wong)....Pages 107-130
Digital Photography and Identity of Hong Kong Females: A Case Study of Facebook Images (May Wong)....Pages 131-155
Significance of Social Semiotic Research (May Wong)....Pages 157-162
Back Matter ....Pages 163-192

Citation preview

Multimodal Communication

A social semiotic approach to text and image in print and digital media May Wong

Multimodal Communication “Professor May L-Y Wong’s book on multimodal communication is a valuable contribution to the growing literature on multimodal discourse studies. Based on the work of such classical authors as Theo van Leeuwen and Gunther Kress, her studies take an independent and innovative character by focusing on text and image in the Chinese context of Hong Kong. It is especially the variety of her studies that deserve attention, as is the case for magazine ads for women’s body enhancement, postage stamps, personal loan ads on TV, luxury residences, and digital photos of Hong Kong women on Facebook. Besides sophisticated analyses of the social semiotics of discourse, these multimodal studies also offer a unique view of the complex contemporary life styles in Hong Kong, often combining Western and Eastern normas and values.” —Professor Teun A. van Dijk, Department of Translation and Language Sciences, Pompeu Fabra University, Spain, and Editor of Discourse & Society, Discourse & Communication and Discourse Studies “This book makes a striking contribution combining Kress and van Leeuwen’s social semiotic analysis with extensive and fascinating in-depth historical research to bring insights into a range of print and digital media showing how multimodality can be fruitfully adapted with the sensitivity to non Western media.” —Professor David Machin, Department of Media and Communication, Örebro University, Sweden “Multimodal Communication, a semiotic analysis of Hong Kong’s everyday life, includes body images, digital photos, social and cultural phenomena evident on social media, and the branding and advertising of luxurious products. This multilayered view introduces new perspectives to advance understanding of how the personal and cultural identities of the people of Hong Kong are being constructed and mediatised in the postcolonial period.” —Professor Anthony Fung, School of Journalism and Communication, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and School of Arts and Communication, Beijing Normal University

May Wong

Multimodal Communication A social semiotic approach to text and image in print and digital media

May Wong School of English University of Hong Kong Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong

ISBN 978-3-030-15427-1    ISBN 978-3-030-15428-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15428-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Pattern © Melisa Hasan This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Dedicated to my beloved husband, Arthur Lo, who has married me for ten years (and counting) and has been exceptionally patient and supportive during the writing of this book

Acknowledgements

I first dabbled in social semiotics when I was a doctoral student at Lancaster University (UK) and I was completely mesmerised (and I still am) by van Leeuwen’s (2005) Introducing social semiotics (Routledge) that I stumbled upon in the university bookstore back in 2005. I wrote a short paper on analysing a magazine advertisement on Dove’s Campaign on Real Beauty and shamelessly submitted it to my supervisor for perusal! ‘Very interesting paper! Nice try, May,’ said Professor Tony McEnery, a world-­ renowned corpus linguist. I am still very much indebted to him for his kindness and encouragement. Ever since that very first attempt of a visual analysis, I have been sharing my thoughts on semiotics with my husband, Arthur, who, as a senior lecturer in interior design, has explored the semiotics of space in his MA dissertation. I am very thankful to him for many long talks on the topics and I cannot possibly express how grateful I am for his love and care for me. Special thanks go to Dr Lillian Yip, my medical doctor, for making every day of my life so much better. I am grateful for the professionalism of the editorial staff, especially Cathy Scott, at the publisher.

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Contents

1 Social Semiotics: Setting the Scene  1 1.1 Theoretical Background of Social Semiotics  2 1.2 Aims and Scope of This Book  4 References  7

Part I Print Media  11 2 Slim Arms, Waist, Thighs and Hips, but Not the Breasts: Portrayal of Female Body Image in Hong Kong’s Magazine Advertisements 13 2.1 Introduction 14 2.2 Background Literature 14 2.2.1 Cultural Expectations of Female Body Figure in Hong Kong 14 2.2.2 Theory and Method of Analysis 17 2.3 Analysis 19 2.3.1 The Layout of the Print Advertisements 19 2.3.2 The Analytical and Symbolic Representations 26 2.4 Discussion 35 2.4.1 Thin-Idealisation 35 2.4.2 Gender Roles and Stereotypes 37 2.4.3 Influence from Japanese Culture 40 ix

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2.4.4 Intertextuality 45 2.4.5 Final Remarks 48 References 49 3 Postage Stamps as Windows on Social Changes and Identity in Postcolonial Hong Kong 55 3.1 Introduction 56 3.2 The Theoretical Considerations of Social Semiotics and National Identity 57 3.3 An Overview of Hong Kong’s Postage Stamps 59 3.4 The Visual Meanings of Definitive Stamp Issues 61 3.4.1 A Brief Description of the Three Post-handover Definitive Issues 61 3.4.2 The Representational and Compositional Meanings of the Definitive Issues 66 3.5 Discussion: Changing Definitions of National Identity 69 3.5.1 Identity at a Crossroads 69 3.5.2 East-West Hybridity 72 3.5.3 Integration with the Motherland 73 3.6 Final Remarks 76 References 77

Part II Digital Media  81 4 Emotional Branding in Multimodal Personal Loan TV Advertisements: Analysing Voices and Engagement 83 4.1 Introduction: Corporate Branding and Advertising 84 4.1.1 Background Literature on Emotional Branding 85 4.2 Methodology: Data and Analytical Approach 88 4.2.1 Data Selection and Transcription 88 4.2.2 Data Analysis: Voices and Engagement 90 4.3 How Character Voices, Discursive Voices and Viewer Engagement Work with Emotional Branding 91 4.4 Hybridity in Branding Strategies and Its Impact on Viewer Engagement 97 4.5 Conclusion103 References104

 CONTENTS 

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5 The Discourse of Advertising for Luxury Residences in Hong Kong: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis107 5.1 Introduction108 5.2 Theoretical Approaches108 5.3 Data and Methodology110 5.4 Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of Luxury Property TV Commercials111 5.4.1 Social Actors111 5.4.2 Social Actions117 5.4.3 Legitimations121 5.5 Conclusions126 References126 6 Digital Photography and Identity of Hong Kong Females: A Case Study of Facebook Images131 6.1 Introduction131 6.2 The Social-Semiotic Theory of Meaning and Representation134 6.3 Collage135 6.4 Art Filters141 6.5 Borders144 6.6 Discussion: A New Identity for Hong Kong Females146 6.7 Final Remarks: An Uphill Battle150 References152 7 Significance of Social Semiotic Research157 7.1 Contributions of the Visual Analyses Undertaken in This Book158 7.2 Future Research160 References161 References163 Index183

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Generic structure of the slimming advertisement (Oriental Sunday, 13 September 2011, p. 79) 21 Fig. 2.2 Generic structure of the breast-enhancing advertisement (Sudden Weekly, July 2011) 22 Fig. 2.3 Representative of single women (Sudden Weekly, March 2011) 28 Fig. 2.4 Representative of mothers (Oriental Sunday, 18 October 2011) 29 Fig. 2.5 More examples of the models standing with their arms akimbo (Sudden Weekly, 9 September 2011, p. 109) 30 Fig. 2.6 More examples of the models standing with their arms akimbo (TVB Weekly, 31 October 2011, p. 3) 31 Fig. 2.7 The Special K® advert by Kellogg Hong Kong (More Sunday, 13 September 2011, p. 51) 33 Fig. 2.8 The lingerie advert by Embry Form (Cosmopolitan, December 2011, p. 205) 34 Fig. 2.9 Hybrid identity of Hong Kong females (Sudden Weekly, 11 March 2011, p. 15) 39 Fig. 2.10 An advertisement selling new technology imported from Japan for ‘bust-up’ treatment (Sudden Weekly, 13 July 2012, p. 102) 41 Fig. 2.11 Example of female independence and sexuality (1), expressing individuality through typography in ad (Oriental Sunday, 14 February 2012, p. 103) 44 Fig. 2.12 Example of female independence and sexuality (2), famous feminist quotation of Evita Perón in ad (Jessica, July 2012, pp. 144–145)45 Fig. 2.13 Example of advertorial (1), celebrity witness (Ming Pao Weekly, 26 January 2011, p. 171) 47

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List of Figures

Fig. 2.14 Example of advertorial (2), slimming trials of ordinary people (Jessica Magazine, October 2011, pp. 120–121) 48 Fig. 3.1 The Hong Kong Landmarks series 1999 62 Fig. 3.2 The Eastern and Western Cultures series 2002 64 Fig. 3.3 The Hong Kong Birds series 2006 65 Fig. 3.4 The China Birds definitive series 2002 67 Fig. 5.1 Asian vs. Caucasian models: (a) Festival City 2012, (b) The BeauMount 2012, (c) 18 Upper East 2010, (d) Harbour One 2010112 Fig. 5.2 Children models: (a) 18 Upper East 2010, (b) Festival City 2012, (c) The Lily 2010 114 Fig. 5.3 Gender roles and stereotypes: (a) Celestial Heights 2009, (b) Légende Royale 2010, (c) Aria Kowloon Peak 2009, (d) Bel-Air 2008, (e) Billionaire Royale 2010, (f) Légende Royale 2010 115 Fig. 5.4 Generic, homogenised group: (a) Légende Royale 2010, (b) Oceanaire 2010, (c) YOHO Midtown 2010 116 Fig. 5.5 Social actions: indoor vs. outdoor: (a) ‘cocktail reception’ Peak One 2008, (b) ‘celebratory party’ Hill Paramount 2010, (c) ‘music jamming’ YOHO Midtown 2010, (d) ‘gala night’ Légende Royale 2010, (e) ‘excursion’ One Silver Sea 2008, (f) ‘picnicking’ Uptown 2011, (g) ‘sailing a yacht’ Légende Royale 2010, (h) ‘sunbathing’ Larvotto 2010 118 Fig. 5.6 Moral evaluation legitimation: luxury goods as recurring theme: (a) ‘luxury car’ The Cullinan 2009, (b) ‘yacht’ One Silver Sea 2008, (c) ‘diamond’ Oceanaire 2010 122 Fig. 5.7 Rationalisation legitimation: The Cullinan (2009) ad: (a) ‘swimming pool’, (b) ‘shopping arcade’, (c) The W Hotel, (d) The Ritz-Carlton Hotel 124 Fig. 5.8 Mythopoesis legitimation: Hill Paramount (2010) ad 125 Fig. 6.1 Dear sisters 138 Fig. 6.2 Examples of collage: (a) home sweet home, (b) lunch buffet at Harbour Grand Hong Kong 139 Fig. 6.3 Disserts and high tea: (a) 2012 new year day desserts, (b) [no caption]140 Fig. 6.4 More examples of high tea: (a) Sevva @ The Prince Building rooftop afternoon tea, (b) The Lounge & Bar @ The RitzCarlton hotel 141 Fig. 6.5 Three different art filters of Hipstamatic™: (a) Kaimal Mark II Lens, Ina’s 1969, No Flash, (b) Jimmy Lens, Blanko Film, No Flash, (c) John S Lens, Kodot XGrizzled Film, No Flash142 Fig. 6.6 The effects of art filters: (a) nice celebration night, (b) my Stockholm trip 144

  List of Figures 

Fig. 6.7 Fig. 6.8 Fig. 6.9

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Illustrations of framing: (a) [no caption], (b) ‘freezing cold, need some hot drinks’ 145 Olympus™ advertisement in Hong Kong 148 Advertisements for digital cameras 152

List of Tables

Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 4.3 Table 4.4 Table 4.5

Generic structure of print advertisements (Cheong 2004: 165) 20 The announcement in print advertisements (translated by the author)24 Comparison of key characteristics in rational and emotional branding (adapted from Holt 2004: 14) 86 United Asia (UA) Finance Limited advertisement 92 Promise advertisement 94 Hang Seng Bank advertisement 99 Prime Credit advertisement 100

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CHAPTER 1

Social Semiotics: Setting the Scene

Abstract  Social semiotics is a social theory of meaning and communication modelled on Michael Halliday’s theories of language as social semiotic and Systemic Functional Grammar with a particular focus on the agency of social actors and social context. Chapter 1 provides a fully up-­ to-­date introduction to the theory (while peculiar aspects of the theory will be dealt with in subsequent chapters when they become relevant for discussion and application to the data), and argues that social semiotics serves as a useful multidisciplinary framework for analysing text-image relations. With an aim to contributing to the existing monographs of empirical social semiotic analysis in the fields of education and humanities, this chapter argues for focussing the analytical lens on visual analysis in other major areas of impactful social research which could provide a nuanced view of semiotic resources and principles pertaining to visual imagery and text as the most prominent modes of communication in contemporary society before identifying and describing the resources and principles that operate within and across other modes. Keywords  Social semiotics • Theoretical background • Semiotic artefacts • Fields of application • Benefits of visual analysis

© The Author(s) 2019 M. Wong, Multimodal Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15428-8_1

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1.1   Theoretical Background of Social Semiotics Ever since the turn of the millennium, visual imagery has been heralded as a major mode of communication on a par with verbal communicative means such as speech and writing. It is therefore necessary for us to get to know more about visual communication and, specifically, the meaning making processes required to fully comprehend visual structures. Ever since it was first founded in the mid-1980s and fully developed in the early 2000s (see Jewitt et  al. 2016: 28–61 for a full description of the early developments), social semiotics has been a social theory of meaning and communication in which semiotic resources with varying affordances are used as tools by sign makers for serving particular social needs required in a given social context. Social semiotics, whose nuanced tenets will be fully discussed in subsequent chapters, is basically a theoretical framework that develops out of Halliday’s theories of language as social semiotic and Systemic Functional Grammar (Halliday 1978; Halliday and Matthiessen 2004). Language, as Halliday (1978: 21pp) argues, realises three types of social meaning/ metafunctions (i.e. the ideational, interpersonal and textual metafunctions). By extending Halliday’s conceptualisation of language to the visual arena, Kress and van Leeuwen demonstrate how these meaning functions can be realised visually through the semiotic resources of images (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001, 2006). More specifically, they describe semiotic resources as having meaning potentials and can be used to communicate ideologies and discourses. There are four interconnected theoretical assumptions that underpin the social semiotic theory. The first assumption is that meaning-making is always multimodal, drawing on a multiplicity of modes such as image, gesture, posture, gaze, action, music, colour, 3D objects, alongside speech and writing, all of which have the potential to contribute equally to the meaning being expressed (Jewitt 2009a: 14). The role that multimodality plays in meaning-making, as Kress (2015: 62) puts it, lies precisely in the process of exploring “the different potentials for providing means of expressing views, positions, attitudes, facts; and to enable the production of what is best suited to a specific task or need”, which is inextricably related to the second assumption central to the theory of social semiotics, i.e., that semiotic resources are used by people in a given social context. The social context shapes the resources available for meaning-making and how these resources are selected and configured. In

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social semiotics, therefore, sign-making is conceived of as a social process (Hodge and Kress 1988: 1); “[s]igns, modes and meaning-making are treated as relatively fluid, dynamic and open systems intimately connected to the social context of use” (Jewitt 2009b: 30). Closely related to the notion of context is that of the motivated sign, which forms the basis of the third assumption. When making signs, people bring together the available form that is most apt to express the meaning they wish to represent at a given moment in a specific social context. The connection between form (i.e. signifier) and meaning (i.e. signified) within the social semiotic multimodal analysis is, therefore, not arbitrary but motivated and transparent. Finally, social semiotics is built on the assumption that it is the sign-maker’s interest that guides his or her selection of semiotic resources. Kress (1993: 174) defines interest as “the articulation and realisation of an individual’s relation to an object or event, acting out of that social complex at a particular moment, in the context of an interaction with other constitutive factors of the situation which are considered as relevant by the individual”. Recently, Kress (2010: 26–27) has postulated a rhetorical approach to representation and communication in the spirit of the social semiotic theory. In the rhetorical approach, the social world is still regarded as a dominant feature. Thus, there is a great deal of emphasis on the social environment and the social relations which are enacted in it and the resources available for shaping the communicative event, in keeping with the social semiotic tradition. What appears to be a ‘new’ feature in the model, however, is the primary focus on the rhetor and the interpreter. The rhetor is the maker of a message. Prior to sign-making, Kress believes that the rhetor has to make an assessment of all aspects of the communicational situation, i.e. (i) his or her interest; (ii) the characteristics of the audience; (iii) the requirements of the communicative issue at stake; (iv) the resources available for making an apt representation; (v) the best means for dissemination. Kress goes on to suggest that these aspects can fall into two broad categories, namely design and production. Design gives shape to the interests of the rhetor, takes into account the audience and what the matter to be communicated demands as well as accesses the potentials and constraints of the semiotic resources which are available for the most transparent representation tailored towards the goal of the communicative event. On the other hand, production is the implementation of design with the material resources available in the world in which the communication takes place. In production, Kress (2010: 27) notes, “meaning

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is made material and becomes subject to review, comment, engagement and transformation”, which paves the way for the role of the interpreter. As Kress puts it, “the interpreter’s interest produces attention; attention shapes the form of the engagement; this leads to selections being made; the selections are framed; there is the subsequent transformation and transductions of the elements in the frame; and, in that, the (‘inwardly made’) sign is produced” (Kress 2010: 42; original emphasis). This model of communication rests on two central assumptions: “that communication is the response to a prompt; that communication happens only when there is ‘interpretation’” (Kress 2010: 35; original emphasis). Communicational environments are always complex and multimodal. Any aspects of the communicational situation can, potentially, act as prompts; whether they are or not depends on the interest of the interpreter. As can be seen from the ‘communicative sequence’ proposed by Kress, the interpreter’s interest directs his or her attention to a prompt in the communicative event; the interpreter then engages with features of the prompt and forms his or her interpretation. While the meanings of the semiotic processes of ‘selection’ (i.e. the highlighting of the characteristics and the ‘shape’ of the prompt which constitute the ground on which the interpretation proceeds), and of ‘transformation’ (i.e. meaning change through re-ordering of the elements in a text in the same mode within the same culture or across cultures) and ‘transduction’ (i.e. meaning change resulting from a change in mode) can be understood with ease, the notion of framing needs further elaboration. As noted in Kress’s other publications on the social semiotic theory, framing is invariably referred to as the disconnection of elements of a visual composition by frame lines, pictorial framing devices (boundaries formed by the edge of a building, a tree, etc.), empty space, discontinuities of colour, and so on (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001: 2, 2006: 203–204; see also van Leeuwen 2005: 6–14).

1.2   Aims and Scope of This Book The social semiotic approach, as initially envisaged in Kress and van Leeuwen’s (1996) The Grammar of Visual Design, has been applied in a wide range of materials including newspaper articles, websites, journalistic photographs, textbook illustrations, children’s picture books, social media photographs, etc. (e.g. Dreyfus et  al. 2011; Jones and Ventola 2008; O’Halloran 2004; Ventola and Guijarro 2009; Ventola et al. 2004; Unsworth 2008; Zappavigna 2016). The aim of the social semiotic

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approach is to make visible the social dimensions of meaning-making by focussing on the agency of the sign-maker and the social context in which in the sign is produced. More specifically, it aims to account for how ideology and power are mediated through communicative acts (Hodge and Kress 1988; Kress and Hodge 1979) through a systematic study of semiotic artefacts (e.g. women’s magazines, video games, children’s drawings) as sites of ideology. In keeping with this analytical research tradition of the social semiotic framework, this book aims to explore various mundane semiotic artefacts in both print and digital media such as magazine advertisements, postage stamps, TV commercials, and digital photographs on social networking sites from the post-colonial city of Hong Kong with eastern and western cultures so clearly intertwined as a way of focussing on specific social issues (e.g. female body idealisation, consumerist luxury and hedonistic lifestyle, changing social identity) that frame institutional discourse as a form of social practice to constitute and transmit ideology and power. By so doing, the book demonstrates a multidisciplinary perspective for the analysis of image and text (Bateman 2014; Pauwels 2011),1 bringing together insights from social semiotics and multimodal critical discourse analysis as well as insights from various other scholarly fields such as corporate branding studies, sociological studies, art history and design studies. Moreover, the present volume hopes to serve as a valuable contribution to the fields of application of the social semiotic framework which presently is significantly utilised in the field of education, notably in relation to literacy, learning and pedagogy (see, for example, Bezemer and Kress 2016; Jewitt and Kress 2003; Kress et al. 2014; Unsworth 2001). Studies in this area have used social semiotics to explore the situated literacy practices of young learners and their processes of meaning making mediated by the semiotic resources of different written script systems. While there has been a growing body of occasional research publications (journal articles, book chapters with ‘social semiotics’ in their titles or conceptual frameworks) on applications of social semiotics in various fields such as institutional branding, political and national campaigns (e.g. Teo 2004; Thurlow and Aiello 2007; Michelson and Álvarez Valencia 2016; Wignell et al. 2017; Wong 1  A similar approach is presented by Jewitt and Oyama (2001: 138), who contend that “[i]n studies of the use of semiotic resources, visual social semiotics can only ever be one element of an interdisciplinary equation which must also involve relevant theories and histories”. Hence in the present project I integrate visual social semiotics with theoretical categories and propositions that reside in various disciplines in arts and social sciences.

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2016), research monographs on how the social semiotic framework could be applied in diverse and possibly innovative areas to explore meaning making are still emerging (see Böck and Pachler 2013; Bowcher 2012; Djonov and Zhao 2014; Jones and Ventola 2008; Norris 2012; O’Halloran and Smith 2011; Royce and Bowcher 2007; Seizov and Wildfeuer 2017; Ventola and Guijarro 2009; Ventola et al. 2004; Wildfeuer 2015; Zhao et al. 2018). It has to be acknowledged fully the contributions made by these publications to the development of the social semiotic framework and thus this book aims to build on this increasingly popular and valuable research tradition on multimodal analysis and focus particularly on the analysis of visual imagery and text in social research. One of the advantages of (re)focussing the analytical lens on specific semiotic modes is that the analysis could provide a more nuanced view of semiotic resources and principles pertaining to visual imagery and text as the two most prominent modes of communication in contemporary society as a solid foundation before identifying and describing the resources and principles that operate within and across other modes (e.g. gesture, spatial design, fashion, etc.). At the time of writing, there has been only one book—John Bateman’s (2014) Text and image: a critical introduction to the visual/verbal divide—specifically dedicated to a social semiotic study of visual imagery and text. The dearth of focussed scholarly discussion of the visual and verbal modes has been problematised by Pauwels (2012: 250) who argues that “[m]ultimodal research is an ambitious venture given the fact that even most forms of mono-modal or single mode analysis (for example the analysis of static photographs) are still underdeveloped, i.e. not able to tap into the full expressive potential of this medium [mode]”. The approach proposed in this book strives to contribute to this emerging niche area of text-image relations insightfully crafted in Bateman’s (2014) work, with a strong focus on the visual and verbal modes by proposing a refined and elaborate multidisciplinary analytical tool to address the detailed and multifaceted ideological aspects of the visuals.2 2  The difference between Bateman’s (2014) work and the present volume lies in the fact that the former is intended to be a textbook introducing a wide range of perspectives on text-image relations whereas there is a clear research agenda in the latter. This book aims to deal with the study of communicational practices through words and images and the way in which they are connected to the organisation of societies and everyday lives. It sets out to address the central and pivotal research question: ‘how do texts and imagery reflect and conceal specific interests, power relations and communicative strategies in specific institutional or social contexts?’, providing analyses that illuminate the everyday and the sociopolitical significance of representations.

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Another advantage of the proposed approach is that by drawing its visual data from a given geographical region (in this case, Hong Kong), the book could possibly gain deeper insights into the significant social conditions that are shaping the communicational landscape as well as the full range of semiotic artefacts that are salient within the same social context, rather than a few haphazard spatial locations across the globe assembled and encompassed in these prior studies. While there is a distinct local bias to the selection of these visual texts, print and TV advertisements, postage stamps and digital personal photographs are found more or less the world over, and thus, the proposed analytical approach should have wide applicability elsewhere also, as well as applicability to other kinds of visual texts not addressed explicitly in this book. Certainly, specific cultural resources and meanings will need to be taken into account in different places and for different kinds of texts, and the analyses adapted accordingly, but the fundamental framework will still apply. Hopefully, through unpacking the multiplicity of meanings embodied by text-image combinations in various genres across multiple disciplines (semiotics, discourse analysis, sociology, art and design), this book could provide a distinct contribution to the empirical applications of social semiotic theories and concepts to significant semiotic artefacts that are socially shaped within a community.

References Bateman, John. 2014. Text and image: A critical introduction to the visual/verbal divide. London and New York: Routledge. Bezemer, Jeff, and Gunther Kress. 2016. Multimodality, learning and communication: A social semiotic frame. London and New York: Routledge. Böck, Margit, and Norbert Pachler, eds. 2013. Multimodality and social semiotics: Communication, meaning-making, and learning in the work of Gunther Kress. London and New York: Routledge. Bowcher, Wendy, ed. 2012. Multimodal texts from around the world: Cultural and linguistic insights. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Djonov, Emilia, and Sumin Zhao, eds. 2014. Critical multimodal studies of popular discourse. London and New York: Routledge. Dreyfus, Shoshana, Susan Hood, and Maree Stenglin, eds. 2011. Semiotic margins: Meaning in multimodalities. London and New York: Continuum. Halliday, Michael. 1978. Language as social semiotics. London: Arnold. Halliday, Michael, and Christian Matthiessen. 2004. An introduction to functional grammar. 3rd ed. London: Arnold. Hodge, Robert, and Gunther Kress. 1988. Social semiotics. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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Jewitt, Carey. 2009a. An introduction to multimodality. In The Routledge handbook of multimodal analysis, ed. Carey Jewitt, 14–27. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2009b. Different approaches to multimodality. In The Routledge handbook of multimodal analysis, ed. Carey Jewitt, 28–39. London and New  York: Routledge. Jewitt, Carey, Jeff Bezemer, and Kay O’Halloran. 2016. Introducing multimodality. London and New York: Routledge. Jewitt, Carey, and Gunther Kress. 2003. Multimodal literacy. New  York: Peter Lang. Jewitt, Carey, and Rumiko Oyama. 2001. Visual meaning: A social semiotic approach. In Handbook of visual analysis, ed. Theo van Leeuwen and Carey Jewitt, 134–156. London: Sage. Jones, Carys, and Eija Ventola, eds. 2008. From language to multimodality: New developments in the study of ideational meaning. London: Equinox. Kress, Gunther. 1993. Against arbitrariness: The social production of the sign as a foundational issue in critical discourse analysis. Discourse and Society 4 (2): 169–191. ———. 2010. Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2015. Semiotic work: Applied linguistics and a social semiotic account of multimodality. AILA Review 28 (1): 49–71. Kress, Gunther, and Robert Hodge. 1979. Language as ideology. London and Boston, MA: Routledge/Kegan Paul. Kress, Gunther, Carey Jewitt, Jon Ogborn, and Charalampos Tsatsarelis. 2014. Multimodal teaching and learning: The rhetorics of the science classroom. 2nd ed. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. 1996. Reading images: The grammar of visual design. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2001. Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication. London: Edward Arnold. ———. 2006. Reading images: The grammar of visual design. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge. Michelson, Kristen, and José Aldemar Álvarez Valencia. 2016. Study abroad: Tourism or education? A multimodal social semiotic analysis of institutional discourses of a promotional website. Discourse and Communication 10 (3): 235–256. Norris, Sigrid, ed. 2012. Multimodality in practice: Investigating theory-in-­ practice-­through-methodology. London and New York: Routledge. O’Halloran, Kay, ed. 2004. Multimodal discourse analysis. London: Continuum. O’Halloran, Kay, and Bradley Smith, eds. 2011. Multimodal studies: Exploring issues and domains. London and New York: Routledge.

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Pauwels, Luc. 2011. An integrated conceptual framework for visual social research. In The SAGE handbook of visual research methods, ed. Eric Margolis and Luc Pauwels, 3–23. London: Sage Publications. ———. 2012. A multimodal framework for analysing websites as cultural expressions. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 17 (3): 247–265. Royce, Terry, and Wendy Bowcher, eds. 2007. New directions in the analysis of multimodal discourse. London and New York: Routledge. Seizov, Ognyan, and Janina Wildfeuer, eds. 2017. New studies in multimodality: Conceptual and methodological elaborations. London and New  York: Bloomsbury. Teo, Peter. 2004. Ideological dissonances in Singapore’s National Campaign posters: A semiotic deconstruction. Visual Communication 3 (2): 189–212. Thurlow, Crispin, and Giorgia Aiello. 2007. National pride, global capital: A social semiotic analysis of transnational visual branding in the airline industry. Visual Communication 6 (3): 305–344. Unsworth, Len. 2001. Teaching multiliteracies across the curriculum: Changing contexts of text and image in classroom practice. Buckingham and Philadelphia: Open University Press. ———., ed. 2008. Multimodal semiotics: Functional analysis in contexts of education. London and New York: Continuum. van Leeuwen, Theo. 2005. Introducing social semiotics. London and New York: Routledge. Ventola, Eija, Cassily Charles, and Martin Kaltenbacher, eds. 2004. Perspectives on multimodality. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Ventola, Eija, and Arsenio Jesús Moya Guijarro, eds. 2009. The world told and the world shown: Multisemiotic issues. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wignell, Peter, Sabine Tan, and Kay O’Halloran. 2017. Violent extremism and iconisation: Commanding good and forbidding evil? Critical Discourse Studies 14 (1): 1–22. Wildfeuer, Janina, ed. 2015. Building bridges for multimodal research: International perspectives on theories and practices in multimodal analysis. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Wong, Wayne. 2016. Synthetic personalisation of Barack Obama at the 2008 US Democratic National Convention: A social semiotic multimodal analysis of a staged political context. Visual Communication 15 (4): 509–534. Zappavigna, Michele. 2016. Social media photography: Construing subjectivity in Instagram images. Visual Communication 15 (3): 271–292. Zhao, Sumin, Emilia Djonov, Anders Björkvall, and Morten Boeriis, eds. 2018. Advancing multimodal and critical discourse studies: Interdisciplinary research inspired by Theo van Leeuwen’s social semiotics. London and New  York: Routledge.

PART I

Print Media

CHAPTER 2

Slim Arms, Waist, Thighs and Hips, but Not the Breasts: Portrayal of Female Body Image in Hong Kong’s Magazine Advertisements

Abstract  This chapter examines slimming and breast-enhancing magazine advertisements produced by the burgeoning industry of beauty parlours in Hong Kong. Typically, these advertisements configure the human body as a physical resource amenable to extreme makeovers. By displaying before-and-after pictures of female celebrities who are hailed as their ‘spokespersons’, the beauty centres advertise the potential to modify female bodies to match an idealised mental image. The visual semiotic framework of Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen (Reading images: The grammar of visual design. London and New York: Routledge, 2006) is employed to reveal this act of manipulation of perceived body image. Specifically, this chapter addresses how the choreography of image and text operates in a social and cultural climate that increasingly values thinness and ample breasts, and how this climate concurrently normalises intervention in physical appearance. Keywords  Magazine advertisements • Slimming • Breast augmentation • Beauty • Female body image

© The Author(s) 2019 M. Wong, Multimodal Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15428-8_2

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2.1   Introduction Magazine advertising is a ubiquitous phenomenon in most modern societies, although, admittedly, moving TV commercial images have been more appealing and, consequently, more widespread than print advertisements. (Magazine) advertising works by seeking to structure a cultural context of empathy with consumers (e.g. ‘we understand you’, ‘we’ve been there ourselves’, ‘we are all in this together’). Goldman and Papson (1996: 74) argue that represented participants in advertisements deliberately put themselves in the position of the victimised consumers, and ‘attempt to create an emphatic relationship with the viewer’ by offering themselves as self-reflexive subjects who are able to relate to the quandaries of the consumers. This is particular remarkable for slimming and breast-enhancing advertisements which point directly to women’s fears about weight and body shape (Martínez Lirola and Chovanec 2012). This research focusses on advertisements of this sort that have been collected in Hong Kong in the space of two years, from January 2011 to December 2012, from a wide spectrum of entertainment magazines which are written mainly in Chinese to cater for local readership. The aim of the research is to unravel the interaction between the verbal messages and visual images in order to uncover possible ideological interests and meanings woven into the semiotic fabric of the advertisements. The chapter is divided into three main sections. The first main section (Sect. 2.2) provides a general background on Hong Kong society and its cultural expectations of women’s figure, and describes the theoretical and analytical frameworks that inform and underpin this study. The second main section (Sect. 2.3) focusses on the semiotic analysis of the advertisements under consideration. The third and final section (Sect. 2.4) discusses the ideologies implicit within the adverts to provide a perspective for understanding the complex socio-cultural processes involved in the discursive construction of beauty in Hong Kong.

2.2   Background Literature 2.2.1  Cultural Expectations of Female Body Figure in Hong Kong Generally speaking, body image is conceived of as an individual’s attitudinal disposition towards the physical self. Cash and Pruzinsky (1990, 2002)

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define physical self as encompassing not only an individual’s physical appearance but also the body’s competence or fitness and its biological integrity or health/illness. For years, an idealised body image has emerged in Hong Kong, not so much from the recommendations of the health authorities, but from standards and ideals embodied in super-thin celebrities and models portrayed in the media. Leung et al. (2001) examine data from the Miss Hong Kong Beauty Pageant from 1975 to 2000 and report that winners of the event have always been taller and thinner than an average woman in Hong Kong. In a 2003 survey featuring local girls aged between thirteen and nineteen, almost half of them admitted that they learned a thin standard of bodily attractiveness for women from slimming advertisements and more worryingly, 75 percent said they would more likely judge themselves by appearance under the influence of the idealised images of advertising (Chan 2006). Indeed, the all-embracing super-thin model has been plastered all over every avenue of mass media under the sun, including television channels, cinemas, outdoor billboards, wall posters as well as advertisements in mass transit railway stations, bus shelters, newspapers and fashion magazines. With advances in digital technology, the mass media influence has now extended to social networking sites such as Facebook (Kim and Chock 2015; Mabe et al. 2014; Tiggemann and Slater 2013). It is perhaps a hallmark of any late-capitalist society where the social molding of the body in the consumer culture approximates idealised images of youth and beauty, and legitimises the unshamed display of the body (Featherstone 1982). Now, the maintenance of the outer body of appearance becomes far more important than the inner body of health, as evidenced in the long-­standing health issues such as depression and eating disorders—notably, bulimia and anorexia nervosa—plaguing teenage girls in Hong Kong over the past two decades (Chan and Ma 2002, 2004; Lee et al. 1996; Tam et al. 2007). The obsession with thinness also has an adverse effect on young people’s perception of their body image. A majority of them tend to be dissatisfied with their weight and specific body parts e.g. hips, thighs, arms, waist and breasts (Lee 2010). Ng (2005) reports that young women in the city begin to strive for a sculptured body shape (also known as ‘S-shape’ in common parlance), rather than simply losing fat round the waist. From a sociological perspective, the dissatisfaction of the body stems from one’s inability to emulate the idealised body image in the media. Social comparison theory has informed much of the recent body image research (see, for example, Knobloch-Westerwick and Crane 2012; Lam

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et al. 2009; Vandenbosch and Eggermont 2012), which converge on the fact that prolonged exposure to thin-ideal media images leads to greater body dissatisfaction. The social comparison theory assumes that individuals are naturally inclined to make comparisons with groups and face-toface comparisons, and they also compare themselves to larger social categories like models (Festinger 1957; Heinberg and Thompson 1992; Richins 1991; Somlak 1993). A recent study shows that frequently viewing ‘fitspiration’ images (Tiggemann and Slater 2014; Tiggemann and Zaccardo 2015, 2018) on the social networking site Instagram has led to greater body image concerns amongst young women aged between 18 and 25  in the United States and Australia due to internalisation of the societal beauty ideal and appearance comparisons to celebrities (Fardouly et al. 2018; see also Fardouly et al. 2015a, b). The desire for self-improvement becomes very intense when there is a huge discrepancy between body shapes portrayed as ideal in the media and actual body shapes in the general population. In Hong Kong, a recent survey has suggested that young females go to great lengths—for instance, undergoing plastic surgeries or embarking on radical dieting regimes—in order to live up to the idealised, lean body shapes for women advertised in the media (Lee 2010). In addition, sociologists point out that unrealistic body shape aspirations are closely tied to an undercurrent of social pressures. The social expectancy theory posits that individuals tend to alter their attitudes and behaviour to conform to social expectations and evaluations (Palmgreen 1984). Previous studies have shown that thinness of women is often equated with wealth and leisure (pertaining to the middle class) and changing roles from maternal to professional positions, and that these women are likely to be considered as more confident, more successful and more sexually desirable (Eagly et al. 1991; Langlois et al. 2000). While these studies focus on western societies only, similar sentiments can indeed be found in most Asian countries. In Japan, for instance, the average woman who is engaging in social comparison with a media figure that is most likely much thinner than herself often experiences more negative affect and has lower self-esteem (Kowner 2002). In the light of the thin ideal featured in the media being widely accepted as highly desirable socially and personally, it is not surprising that some advertisers exploit the insecurity of female consumers by presenting them with quick-fix solutions to lessen the gap between soft, round personal body type and media-­ portrayed thin-ideal image. In the case of Hong Kong, it has been found that there is a positive correlation between the demand for slimming

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­ roducts and services and the self-perception of body image (Lam 2006). p Women with low self-esteem brought about by body dissatisfaction are particularly vulnerable and become marketing targets of these advertisers. Advertisements and television commercials in Hong Kong are no doubt saturated with information about weight loss methods (Chan 2006). Analysing from a social semiotic perspective proposed in Kress and van Leeuwen (2006), this chapter attempts to reveal the subtleties of the process of normalising socially ideal body image through the analysis of slimming and breast-enhancing advertisements in popular entertainment magazines printed in Hong Kong. Specifically, it focusses on how the ideal body imagery is represented in these adverts and how written text and image cohere to convey a strong media message. 2.2.2  Theory and Method of Analysis Traditionally, the visual sign has been seen as subordinate to the verbal message. For instance, in his essay, ‘Rhetoric of the image’, Barthes (1977: 38–41) argues that the meaning of images (and other semiotic modes) is always related to and, in a sense, dependent upon verbal text. He states that visual meaning is too indefinite that language has to be used to give a more definite, more precise elaboration of it. Hence, Barthes suggests that “in every society various techniques are developed intended to fix the floating chain of signifieds in such a way as to counter the terror of uncertain signs; the linguistic message is one of these techniques” (1977: 39). Kress and van Leeuwen (2006: 18–19), on the other hand, argue against the superiority of the verbal over the visual and reject claims that the various semiotic modes, including images, are impoverished means of communication and thus are deemed to be “rescued” by the verbal language. In fact, it has been argued that modern texts are becoming not only increasingly multimodal but also increasingly visual, as new techniques make it possible to bring visual forms of communication (photographs, book covers, videos) into contact with traditional print media. Kress and van Leeuwen (2006: 19) thus propose that the fundamental systems of meaning that constitute our cultures can indeed be realised— albeit differently and independently—by both language and visual communicative modes which have their own specific grammar. Specifically, they devise a method for analysing the grammar of visual design in their book, Reading Images.

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As noted earlier (see Sect. 1.1, Chap. 1), drawing on a framework of analysis grounded in Michael Halliday’s (1978 and 1985) theory of language as social semiotic, Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) overlay a linguistic model on visual semiotic systems along three dimensions of meaning-making based directly on Halliday’s metafunctions. To use Halliday’s terms, every semiotic fulfills both an ‘ideational’ function, a function of representing ‘the world around and inside us’ and an ‘interpersonal’ function, a function of enacting social interactions as social relations […] [and a] ‘textual’ function […] in which representations and communicative acts cohere into the kind of meaningful whole we call ‘text’. (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006: 15)

When applied to visual systems, the ideational metafunction (or the representational meaning) organises the way that objects in an image, or represented participants relate to each other. It isolates “patterns of representation” (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006: 15). The interpersonal metafunction (or the interactive meaning) governs the social interaction between the represented participants and the viewer. Finally, the textual metafunction (or the compositional meaning) focusses on the structural organisation and positioning of ideas within a text and manages the image as a whole by organising the way that the pieces fit together as a complete work. Each of the metafunctions can manipulate the viewer in different ways. At the heart of Halliday’s systemic-functional theory of language is his view of language, or any semiotic mode, as a system of choice, which allows users to select one particular way of realising meaning over other potential realisations. In my subsequent analysis of the slimming and breast-enhancing advertisements, I shall be using Kress and van Leeuwen’s model as the basis for my analysis and interpretation of the sorts of choices which have been made to communicate the multi-layered meanings manifest in the advertisements. I shall be focussing primarily on the representational and compositional meanings, putting the interactive meanings aside: the main kinds of interactive meaning embodied in these advertisements might not differ so much from other kinds of advertisement: the female models always look at the viewer, demanding attention (see Chap. 1 for the importance of ‘attention’ (Kress 2010: 42) in the interpretation of visual signs); the angle is invariably frontal and eye level, indicative of direct involvement and equality with the viewer; the models are usually

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kept at a social distance so that the viewer can see the whole figure. All these interactive features can be easily found in any advertisement for clothing, accessories and beauty products targeting female readers. The data of the study are taken from popular lifestyle magazines in Hong Kong.1 Popular lifestyle magazines have great impact in the society because of their vast readership. Thus they serve as mirrors to reflect the mainstream ideology of marketers and advertisers. The sample used in the present study consists of about 80 slimming and breast-enhancing advertisements collected in the space of two years from January 2011 to December 2012.2 Care has been taken to discard any duplicates of the advertisements which appear in various magazines in a certain period of time.

2.3   Analysis 2.3.1  The Layout of the Print Advertisements The investigation of the intricacies, complexities and nuances of multimodal texts has been the focus of Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) social-­ semiotic theory of visual grammar. The analysis of multimodal texts, such as print advertisements, necessitates the formulation of a grammar, one which can handle the analysis of texts in terms of visual image, linguistic text and other semiotic modes that work in partnership for the articulation of meaning. The social-semiotic theory of multimodality proposes that semiotic modes are “socially shaped and culturally given” semiotic resources for making meaning, examples of which include image, writing, layout, music, gesture, speech, moving image, soundtrack and 3D objects (Kress 2010: 79). This chapter will consider image, writing, layout and gesture as they are manifested in any print advertisement. While image, writing and gesture are traditional semiotic modes which have been studied extensively, layout has only recently been proved to be a semiotic mode (Kress 2010: 88–92). It is therefore understandable that Cheong (2004) uses a different, somewhat generalised term—generic structure—to refer to the functioning of layout in her analysis of print advertisements, 1  These lifestyle magazines comprise ten local publications including East Week, Face, Jessica, Ming Pao Weekly, Next Magazine, Oriental Sunday, Sudden Weekly, Sunday More, Three Weekly, and TVB Weekly as well as two localised international publications Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire, all of which are written in Chinese. 2  For copyright reasons the images discussed in this chapter are not reproduced here, only represented as diagrams.

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Table 2.1  Generic structure of print advertisements (Cheong 2004: 165) Visual components

Lead: Locus of Attention (LoA), Complement to the Locus of Attention (Comp.LoA) Display: Explicit, Implicit, Congruent, Incongruent Emblem

      Linguistic components Announcement: Primary, Secondary Enhancer Emblem Tag Call-and-visit information

although she clearly takes layout into consideration and devises a model that details the characteristics and functions of the visual and linguistic components of a print advertisement (Feng 2011: 60). Her model is indeed very useful in explaining the textual structure of the slimming and breast-enhancing adverts under consideration, along with Kress and van Leeuwen (2006)’s compositional meaning in their framework of visual design based on Halliday’s metafunctions of language. Cheong’s proposed generic structure of print advertisements is given in Table 2.1. The generic structure proves to be a useful framework for analysing the layout of the slimming and breast-enhancing advertisements collected for the present study. In the following discussion, an example of each of the two kinds of advertisement will be considered and their layout examined, by way of illustration. Figures  2.1 and 2.2 show the labelled advertisements under consideration. As shown in the table, the Lead is composed of the Locus of Attention (LoA) and Complement(s) to the Locus of Attention (Comp.LoA). In both Figs. 2.1 and 2.2, it is the female model depicted in the adverts that arrests the attention of the viewers. By its very salience, it is the Locus of Attention which embeds the central idea of the advertisement, the ideal form of female body. Ideationally, the LoA construes reality in a way intended by the advertisers, where the viewer’s perception of reality is manipulated. Textually, it is a springboard for further development of the central idea in the linguistic text. The Complements to the LoA, on the other hand, refer to components in the Lead which are comparatively less salient than the LoA. In Cheong’s (2004) model, they play a subordinate role to channel and focus viewers’ attention on particular aspects of the LoA. Figure 2.1 illustrates two components to the LoA in the slimming ad:

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Comp.LoA1 Primary Announcement Enhancer1

LoA

Lead

Secondary Announcement 1

Secondary Announcement 2

Tag2

Comp.LoA2

Display: Implicit: Incongruent Enhancer2

Call-and-Visit Information

Emblem

Tag1

Fig. 2.1  Generic structure of the slimming advertisement (Oriental Sunday, 13 September 2011, p. 79)

1. Comp.LoA1: the background, which takes the form of a tablet computer placed on a wooden desk together with a notebook and a pen. The background, which conjures up images of private moments, provides the context in which the female model is presented as a portrait captured and saved as a visual image stored on the com-

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Emblem

Primary Announcement

Secondary Announcement 2

Secondary Announcement 1 Comp.LoA1

Enhancer1

Comp.LoA2

LoA

Lead Enhancer2 Comp.LoA3

Secondary Announcement 3

Tag

Call-and-Visit Information Display1: Explicit: Congruent

Display2: Implicit: Incongruent

Fig. 2.2  Generic structure of the breast-enhancing advertisement (Sudden Weekly, July 2011)

puter, waiting to be appreciated and admired by the imaginary owner of the computer who is also assumed to be the viewer of the advertisement. Thus the CompLoA1 underscores the prominence of the LoA and thrusts the LoA and the service advertised into viewer’s consciousness.

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2. Comp.LoA2: a small picture of the female model before the slimming treatment. This obviously contrasts with the LoA who looks much thinner and thus provides the context in which LoA is endowed with greater persuasive force to influence viewers to purchase the service. Similar Complements can be found in Fig. 2.2 where Comp.LoA1 is the background which is made up of hardly recognisable letters of the brand name ‘Dr Reborn’ in desaturated colour, whereas Comp.LoA2 and Comp. LoA3 show the ‘before’ pictures of the female model, highlighting the changes in her breasts and the contour of her eyes. Juxtaposing the LoA with the Complements, we can see an interplay of meaning between the visual images; that is, the LoA represents those who have and enjoy the benefits of the beauty services and therefore are happy, while the CompLoA2 represents those excluded from such benefits. The ideology of exclusivity becomes apparent. Without proper body transformations, no woman can hope to be considered acceptably attractive. The Display in a print advertisement refers to the photographic display of the product or service in the advert. In Fig. 2.1, the advertisers find a way of disseminating information about their service through the symbol of the Quick Response Code (or QR Code) which is basically used to store large amounts of information. The icon operates as an incongruent realisation of the information of the service by employing symbolism as an advertising strategy. In Fig. 2.2, there are two elements of Display. On the lower left quadrant of the advertisement lies a picture of the Latisse (bimatoprost ophthalmic) solution for growing eyelashes longer, fuller and darker which is offered as a gift for new members of the beauty salon. As the product is advertised in a tangible form with no symbolism involved, it is construed as Explicit: Congruent Display. However, the quality of service is intangible or difficult to capture in tangible form. As can be seen in Fig. 2.2, the list of trophies, certificates and awards won by the beauty shop is creatively used as a substitute for the quality service advertised. The trophies/certificants/awards symbolising the service can thus be construed as Implicit: Incongruent Display. Cheong (2004: 171) states that the Emblem may be realised visually as the logo of the product/service advertised or realised linguistically in the form of the brand name of the product/service. What appears to be the case in the slimming and breast-enhancing advertisements is that a conflation of both visual and linguistic emblems is possible in these ads.

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Specifically, the logos of the beauty centres are inextricably intertwined with the linguistic text of their brand names: the right wing of the ‘butterfly’ logo of the slimming centre in Fig. 2.1 resembles the letter ‘R’ that appears three times in its brand name, whereas for the breast-enhancing advert in Fig. 2.2, the company logo of the curved female body forms part of the Chinese character literally meaning ‘shape’ in the brand name of the beauty salon. Ideationally and ideologically, the Emblem is the stamp of authority validating the authenticity of the service advertised. It also functions to bestow an identity as well as to confer status to a service; the butterfly signifies liberty and beauty while the slender and sylphlike body figure signifies the ideal female body image. In a print advertisement, the Announcement is the most salient linguistic item in terms of colour, font and size, as opposed to the Lead being the most salient visual item. Ideationally, the Announcement captures and conveys the essence of an intended message the advertisers wish to foreground to the consumers. Table  2.2 outlines some examples of Announcement taken from the slimming and breast-enhancing advertisements under scrutiny. The Enhancer comprises linguistic items only, usually in paragraph from, as exemplified by the labeled advertisements above. The Enhancer builds on or modifies the meaning emanating from the interaction between the Lead and the Announcement. For example, the first enhancer in the Table 2.2  The announcement in print advertisements (translated by the author) ‘Royal Bodyperfect’ slimming ad Primary ‘Bound to be slim’ (the most salient linguistic item) announcement: Secondary (i)  ‘The two-week slimming treatment course costs only HKD688’ announcements: (ii) ‘The slimming treatment course [includes]:’ ‘Dr Reborn’ breast-enhancing ad Primary ‘Confident and natural’ (the catch-phrase of the ad) announcement: Secondary (i)  ‘The fifth generation of waterdrop-shaped breasts and sharp announcements: eye contours; Jacquelin Chong is reborn!’ (ii)  ‘The first ten customers every day who subscribe to the service by phone will have a medical consultation for free’ (iii)  ‘The must-buy Latisse solution is now sold at Dr Reborn. The first ten customers who subscribe to the service by phone will be given a free eye treatment with the solution’

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two advertisements points to the personal experience of the female model receiving the beauty service, with particular reference to the objective assessment of weight loss (in Fig. 2.1) as well as the emotional response to the body transformation (in Fig. 2.2). The second enhancer, on the other hand, provides further information about on the treatment course, including the new technologies involved and the desirable effects. The main function of the Enhancer is to persuade and influence viewers to subscribe to the service. Ideationally, it details the advertisers’ reasoning/argument as to why the product is worth the customer’s attention and money. Certain elements of information about the beauty service that are not included in the Enhancer are captured in the Tag. The Tag is usually in the form of one-liners in small print and is typically non-salient as illustrated in preceding labelled advertisements. For instance, in the slimming advert shown in Fig. 2.1, Tag1 contains just one line saying ‘The first one hundred people who sign up for the service and become members of the beauty salon will be given a HKD400 supermarket voucher’, which is repeated in Tag2 encouraging image-viewers to encode the information stored in the QR code right away, register as a member online and the voucher is up for grabs. The tag in the breast-enhancing ad in Fig. 2.2 has two lines, giving brief information about the minimum cost of facial modification and the need for arranging a consultation before the treatment. As can be seen in the preceding labelled advertisements, the Call-and-­ Visit Information is usually in small print and non-salient, comprising contact information as to where and how the service is available to the consumer. For example, from the slimming advertisement, any potential customer can either phone the beauty salon or visit the company’s web site. The full addresses of the stores of the beauty chain are also provided in the breast-enhancing advertisement. By analysing these two advertisements in terms of their layout, we can see that beauty salons sell beauty as a commodity that consumers can acquire by participating in their treatment programs or courses. Certain body styles are predetermined by the salons to be represented in advertising materials for admiration. A crucial attribute in contemporary beauty ideology prevalent in Hong Kong advertisements is a sleek and bosomy physique. One of the salons’ common tactics is to illustrate with full-­colour shots of the whole body shape of female models who have supposedly benefited from their treatments. Moreover, they also detail and celebrate changes in weight loss and body transformation by displaying before-andafter measurements (as given in Enhancer 1 in Fig. 2.1) and photographs

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(as shown in Comp.LoA2-3 in Fig. 2.2). Miller (2006: 47) refers to this strategy as ‘scientific management’ in that beauty becomes specific and measurable rather than a subjective idea. Our conception of beauty now hinges on weight and body shape that have to be confirmed by quantifiable data. 2.3.2   The Analytical and Symbolic Representations We turn now to the representational meanings created by the slimming and breast-enhancing advertisements by examining the visual system of choices, which, like its grammatical counterpart elaborated in Halliday (1985), focusses on the representation of participants and processes. To start with the process type, one can easily observe that the visual image in those advertisements can be classified as a ‘portrait’ rather than a ‘snapshot’. Portraits are ‘conceptual’ and ‘timeless’ while snapshots are ‘narrative’ and ‘presentational’. The former is about ‘being’ and attempts to capture some stable essence, whereas the latter is about ‘doing’ and ‘happening’ and attempts to capture transient moments in time (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006: 79). For example, the ‘bust-up’ advertisement in Fig. 2.2 exemplifies a conceptual analytical process in which the represented participant (Carrier) is to be seen in terms of her specific body parts (Possessive Attributes), namely her breasts and her eyes. In other words, only some attributes or characteristics of the Carrier are singled out as criterial in the given context or, generally, while others are ignored, treated as non-­ essential and irrelevant. Background is only sketched in lightly so as not to distract viewers from the analytical purpose. By the same token, Fig. 2.1 is an analytical picture; it serves to identify a Carrier and to allow viewers to scrutinise the Carrier’s Possessive Attributes. The plain background of the tablet screen—in contrast to the detailed setting outside of the tablet— accentuates the timelessness and stability of this ‘portrait’ of a happy, slim woman. The fact that the picture is posed adds further artificiality. Yet, although it is analytical, its purpose is more interactional and emotive than representational. The gaze of the represented participant directly addresses the viewers and thus establishes an imaginary relation with them, while the smile on her face creates a sense of friendliness, empathy and solidarity with the viewers. It appears, then, that a culturally constructed and sanctioned form of female beauty is presented in two ways: first, the media images homogenise, or single out just a handful of attributes as ideal and smooth out any deviation from this ideal; second, the media images nor-

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malise by portraying the generalised, timeless essence of female models against which individuals must continually evaluate themselves. Besides Possessive Attributes, one of the first things we notice about the represented participants depicted in the slimming and breast-­enhancing advertisements is that they are not randomly selected; they are representative of women in different gender roles. The more readily identifiable ones are famous female artistes who epitomise successful career women. The others represent gender roles such as single/married women and women with children. For instance, the represented subject shown in Fig. 2.3 is wearing a low-cut lacy vest top showing off her cleavage. She is portrayed as being under the physical care and protection of a man; the female model is portrayed holding onto a man’s arm, having one of her hands held by the man and being protectively held by the shoulder. The man functions here as symbolic attribute that establishes the identity of the female model as a single/married woman, flaunting her seductive prowess and sexual conquests. On the other hand, Fig. 2.4 displays another advertisement of Royal Bodyperfect featuring the same female model with three babies crawling across the floor beside her. She is depicted as smiling broadly and showing offing her sexy body and svelte figure with target markers falling on some of her body parts such as arms, waist, thighs and lower legs. Again, the other participants (in this case, the babies) are symbolic attributes in that they serve to establish her identity as a mother. Selling a slimming treatment program with the motto ‘it is not impossible to be a pretty mummy’, she reassures married women of keeping her beauty and offers the suggestion that they too can be part of the beauty community. The message behind these two advertisements is that slimness and other forms of body transformation might very well be regarded by consumers as something that may be accomplished through consumption. It has become a woman’s responsibility to create or keep the idealised waistline or bustline, and the media culture that has created and spread a uniform female ideal is exempt from responsibility for creating unrealistic expectations. Accountability for a slender, tip-top body figure is deflected onto the individual, since it is an obtainable commodity she may acquire. In the linguistic text (in the form of a primary announcement) provided in the right lower section of the bust-up advertisement in Fig. 2.3, a question is raised as to whether one can truly stay young. The result is a generalised sense of worry about whether or not one is doing the right things to create or keep a youthful look. Women’s anxiety about what they should or ought to do is exploited by advertising. The beauty salon advertised comes

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Fig. 2.3  Representative of single women (Sudden Weekly, March 2011)

to their rescue, stating that by having a younger-looking face and creating a sylphlike figure through its breast augmentation treatment, they should be able to attain ‘perfect’ youthfulness. A woman with aging face and plump body shape thereby becomes a failure who evidences a lack of effort and taste.

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Fig. 2.4  Representative of mothers (Oriental Sunday, 18 October 2011)

Another noticeable characteristic of the represented participants is that in over two-thirds of the advertisements in my archive, they are shown standing with their arms akimbo (see Figs.  2.1, 2.2, 2.5 and 2.6). The gesture speaks to the issue of gender and is often used in posters, films paintings and photographs to highlight a new feminine figure of indepen-

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Fig. 2.5  More examples of the models standing with their arms akimbo (Sudden Weekly, 9 September 2011, p. 109)

dence, assertiveness, forcefulness and sexuality; “[w]omen standing with their arms akimbo are perceived as masculine, aggressive, and sexually available: placing hands on hips is a gesture reserved for ‘Parisians, femmes fatales, workers, and prostitutes.’” (Kaganovsky 2012: 169). In our everyday conversation, gestures are not just movements and can never be fully

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Fig. 2.6  More examples of the models standing with their arms akimbo (TVB Weekly, 31 October 2011, p. 3)

understood in purely kinetic terms. Rather, they are “symbols that exhibit meanings in their own right. They have a meaning that is freely designated by the speaker.” (McNeill 1992: 105; original emphasis). In other words, gestures are capable of expressing the full range of meanings that arise from the sign-maker. This is true for slimming and breast-enhancing

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advertisements where the female model serves no purpose but displays herself and reveals the efficacy of the beauty treatment. The ‘arms akimbo’ gesture is a sign of a new, confident self and is shared equally by the single woman, the stay-at-home mum, or anybody who can afford the service. This artificial pose tends further credence to our construal of such kind of advertisements as resembling portraits. Traditionally, the task of the portrait is to portray human participants in a lifelike manner; they stress being over doing. These advertisements exude symbolic representation. The female model is a generic representation of any underweight and busty woman who looks young, exuberant, sexually attractive and assertive. She is not a specific person. She does not highlight the clothes that she is wearing, or does she adorn her surroundings. She resembles any one of the fashion models in the magazine that she appears in and this is her symbolic value. According to Kress and van Leeuwen (2006: 105–106), these are ‘symbolic suggestive’ processes. One comes away from such images recognising the generalised essence of the underweight and busty model. However, the link to the other models she symbolises also introduces the notion of the ideal body. Williamson writes about the effect of advertising on women and she claims that the process of advertising “offers us an image of ourselves that we may aspire to but never achieve” (1978: 64). By adopting the genre of a fashion photograph and a traditional demand picture, the producers of the advertisement reproduce the existence of the ideal body image. However, the gestural sign sends the coded message that women are in the position of control: beauty has now been retooled as an obtainable commodity, contrary to what Williamson says about advertising norms over four decades ago. The advertisers offer a solution to the attainment of the ideal body image; inability to achieve the ideal becomes the individual’s fault. As noted above, the represented participants in the slimming and breast-enhancing advertisements are like the glamorous models appearing in the same magazine where these adverts are located. For example, Kellogg’s Special K® print advertisements usually portray a strong message that any woman can become slim and beautiful by eating its cereal, although it debunks, in one popular advertising campaign, what is wrong with the fashion industry these days that dictates women should be slim to look appealing (Pedersen 2002). As Pedersen (2002: 180) points out, the Kellogg advertisements are not so much about cereal but about how women have lost control of body image to advertisers who reaffirm stereotypical views of what makes someone beautiful. Figure 2.7 illustrates the

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Special K® advertisement by Kellogg Hong Kong. The female model ­selling the product embodies a symbolic representation of the ideal female body, showing the idealised curvature of waist and hips. Her entire body appears in the image, which puts her at ‘far social distance’ (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006: 125) from the viewer, sending a clear visual message: ‘this

Fig. 2.7  The Special K® advert by Kellogg Hong Kong (More Sunday, 13 September 2011, p. 51)

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Fig. 2.8  The lingerie advert by Embry Form (Cosmopolitan, December 2011, p. 205)

is the image of the idealised and objectified female body to which you will conform’. This is true for advertisements selling lingerie in which the viewers are empowered to display good aesthetic sense and willpower to empathise with the ideal female form of the media image. In Fig. 2.8, the

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female is placed at eye level. The viewer and viewed interact at the same level; the advertiser wants the viewer to feel equal to this participant. This angle sends the message that ‘she is one of us’, which involves the viewer in a much more personal way. The female participant presents a frontal angle, further suggesting affinity with the viewer. Overall, the female participant in the slimming and breast-enhancing advertisements and other advertisements targeting body-conscious viewers possesses all the expected physical attributes of an ideal female body: she is slim but she has bulging breasts. The producers of the advertisements make her look ethereal rather than realistic; yet, they present her in the way that she is so accessible to the viewer, sending the double-coded message that the ideal body is desirable and, at the same time, obtainable.

2.4   Discussion 2.4.1  Thin-Idealisation We have seen in the preceding section that a slender, curvaceous body shape is being promoted by Hong Kong media as the cultural ideal of attractiveness for women. Media images of ultra-thin women in Hong Kong, as elsewhere (see e.g. Hesse-Biber 2007), equate thinness with attractiveness, social approval and success. Celebrities frequently endorse slimming products and services, reinforcing the strength of this message in the culture where ‘stars’ are closely followed and emulated by adolescents and young adults. What appears to be perplexing in adolescent girls’ drive for thinness is that thinness is not typically valued by Chinese parents who wish to have children weighing more rather than less; many parents may subscribe to the traditional Chinese belief that body fat is a reflection of health and wealth (Lai 2000). This commonly held belief that Chinese feminine beauty standards value plumpness is only true insofar as children are in the care of their parents who have a say in what goes into their diet; childhood obesity is indeed increasingly prevalent in Hong Kong. Body-focussed anxiety soon kicks in when the children reach their teen years. As noted earlier, teenage girls are so obsessed with thinness that they fall prey to all sorts of eating disorders. Lee (1993) attributes the emphasis on thinness for feminine beauty among Chinese girls to westernisation, since western standards for the ideal woman’s figure also chart a downward trend in weight. In fact, this shift in western beauty standards has been well-­

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documented in previous research examining changes in the body size and shape of beauty pageant contesters, Playboy centerfolds and fashion models (Garner et al. 1980; Morris et al. 1989; Wiseman et al. 1992). Building on these prior studies, Singh (1993) employs rigorous metrics for measuring the waist-to-hip ratio to re-examine similar data, confirms a clear trend towards slenderness and concludes that a narrow waistline set against full hips has been a consistent bodily feature for female attractiveness. Western standards aside, thinness and fragility have long been considered to be defining features of feminine beauty throughout Chinese history and in classical Chinese literature. Leung et  al. (2001) provide a detailed review of thin-idealisation by drawing on a wealth of Chinese historical records, and some of their findings are worth mentioning. They state that Chinese women, particularly among the ruling class, have a long tradition of dieting or fasting as well as waist and feet binding so as to walk in a wiggly-hipped manner that Chinese men find very attractive and sexually arousing. They also point out that classic beauties in Chinese history and literature are renowned for their slim body. The beauty icon of the Han dynasty, Empress Fei-yen, has a very tiny waist and is described as so slim that she could dance on the palm of the hand. The fictional character, Lin Dai-yu, epitomises the Chinese feminine ideal by being depicted as very fragile and in constant need of protection in the classic novel Dream of the Red Chamber. Moreover, Leung and his co-authors argue that the national costume for Chinese women, Chi-pao, “basically reflects the Chinese cultural ideal of female body shape in concrete form” (2001: 346), as the design of the tight, long thin dress remarkably enhances the slim and curvaceous feminine body shape. Given the coincidental convergence of beauty standards in the East and West, it seems true enough that young females, now and then, have always desired to achieve a slender body shape to gain attention and approval from others. This is particularly so in contemporary Hong Kong where there is a strong desire for women to look attractive and sexy in order to find a partner and sustain a marriage. It is indeed the reasoning beyond all those beauty services that are advertised in the data we have looked at in the analysis section. Anecdotal evidence shows that Hong Kong women face growing difficulty in finding suitable partners for life because of rising educational attainment and incomes as well as competition from attractive and accomplished women from mainland China. Just about twenty years ago, the aspiring class of affluent urban women in cosmopolitan Hong Kong helped create a boom market for skimpy push-up bras to flaunt their

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sexuality. In an article published in Newsweek, Elliot (1996) quotes one female customer of the WonderBra as saying, “People want to marry a good husband, and a push-up bra is part of the package to achieve that goal.” The acute problem of single women has recently inspired a late-­ night reality series, Bride Wannabes, produced and broadcast by a local terrestrial television station in 2012. The reality show featured five single women with different backgrounds, educational levels and careers. They were described as Shengnu or ‘leftover’ women, a term used to refer to women well past their marriageable age who are unable to pair off. The goal of the show is to help them find their Mr Right by giving them free makeovers from losing weight to straightening teeth. While the show was an overnight sensation, it sparked citywide debate about distorted and narrow definitions of beauty and success, and women’s rights groups and sociologists condemned it as sexist and discriminatory about women. The issue of whether this local reality TV programme tramples on women’s rights or not is beyond the scope of this study. However, the one thing that is clear from our analysis is that Hong Kong females are relentlessly urged to modify their body shape to meet the societal beauty ideal on the one hand, and to conform to the traditional gender roles and stereotypes on the other. 2.4.2  Gender Roles and Stereotypes Gender stereotyping refers to female and male social roles, personalities and attributes that have been extensively studied by researchers in media and cultural studies (see, for example, Eagly and Steffen 1984; Lee and Fung 2006), on the basis of which people construct their world views and knowledge of gender relations. The social construction of gender is a discursive process in which one has to experience gender in and through, among other things, the media. Liesbet van Zoonen (1994: 41) has argued that the media are “(social) technologies of gender, accommodating, modifying, reconstructing and producing disciplinary and contradictory cultural outlooks”. As noted above, not only do the media provide a platform for disseminating idealised images of super-slender women, they are also able to shape gender ideologies and discourses in television dramas and films that make references to the successes of the weight loss efforts in restoring a woman’s confidence, enhancing her career and appealing to the opposite sex, thereby collectively promoting a culture of slimming (Mishra 2017: 486). In Fung and Ma’s (2000) analysis of Hong

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Kong people’s exposure to television, they suggest that gendered stereotypes and, particularly, cultural perceptions of females, are internalised and strengthened through repeated exposure to media messages. Thus the media serves as a site where body slimming is advertised as an effective strategy “for a woman to compete as a sexual being and a gendered aesthetic object in a patriarchal order” (Lee and Fung 2006: 10). Gender stereotyping may be old hat but it helps us to understand the multiplicity of feminine images found in slimming and breast-enhancing ads. Cross-cultural studies of gender stereotypes in media images have shown that females are more often portrayed in home settings and more likely to appear in advertisements glorifying social approval and self-­ enhancement (Furnham and Mak 1999; Furnham and Paltzer 2010). As a former British colony with the predominant population being ethnic Chinese, Hong Kong has inherited both local and foreign cultural values. Western gender stereotypes prevail in the 1990s, as illustrated in previous research into gender portrayal of print advertisements and television commercials in Hong Kong (Chau 1997; Furnham et  al. 2000; Siu 1996). Specifically, Hong Kong women’s identity is largely constructed and reinforced through magazine consumption. Fung (2002) reports that female readers of women’s magazines such as the Hong Kong edition of Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire and Elle build a close-knit social network by routinely sharing their lifestyle choices, consumption patterns, thoughts, emotions, work pressure and so on. The strong bond between editors and members of the network facilitates reproduction of traditional gender stereotypes and identity formation. Traditional values of womanhood such as fragility, superficiality and submission often go unchallenged and are mostly likely reinforced by the materialistic consumption of skin-care products, beautifying and age-defying cosmetics, slimming products and bust enhancers among women. However, the turn of the millennium sees the formation of a new hybrid identity of the Hong Kong women. While Hong Kong women generally accept western forms of femininity characterised by independence, egalitarianism, self-sufficiency, liberation and over display of sexuality, they retain inner personality traits and collective morality consistent with Chinese socialisation, “stressing softness, chastity, determination, and hard work—a combination of values not characteristic of western consumerist culture” (Hung et  al. 2007: 1048; see also Chan and Cheng 2012; Chan et al. 2011). Thus it appears that women in Hong Kong are trying to infuse foreign modern women images with Chineseness so that

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Fig. 2.9  Hybrid identity of Hong Kong females (Sudden Weekly, 11 March 2011, p. 15)

a ‘modern Chinese woman’ is not necessarily in western character. The hybridity of female identity is deduced from the advertisements from slimming and breast-enhancing services which feature scantily clad female models who are often cast in familial roles such as wives and mothers. In Fig. 2.9, the slimming ad features a female model holding her younger son

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and a picture of hers in heavy pregnancy near the bottom of the page, with a fabricated comment that says ‘With the help of Sunflower Beauty Centre, I cut my weight from 165 lbs to 92 lbs. I am already a mother of two sons in six years’ time but, as you can see, I am slim, thanks to the treatment course!’ The high percentage of portrayals of female figures as sexy kittens in advertisements of this sort tend to communicate to females that they need to be sexy in order to gain admiration from males, but at the same time they are highly valued in terms of their ability of fulfilling maternal duties and maintaining harmonious relationships within the family. 2.4.3  Influence from Japanese Culture Many of the advertisements analysed in the present study mention new methods and technology imported from Japan. Beauty salons are a lucrative industry in Japan. Miller (2006) provides a detailed account of Japanese aesthetic salons (or ‘esute’ salons in her terms), including her personal experience of visiting the premises and undergoing the beauty treatments. She notes that the aesthetic salons have been successful in selling the possibility of change, of correcting body defects mediated by scientific technology; the employees of salons do not pamper their clients; rather, they directly point out a client’s bodily deficiencies and offer treatments and products intended to produce actual beauty on the body of the customer. As Miller (2006: 41) eloquently puts it, “the salon is at the forefront of creating anxieties and fantasies of beauty attainment through consumption available to women of all ages”. Despite differences in the type of women they try to attract as customers, all the salons promote bodies that are ultra-thin and with extraordinarily large breasts. Much like the beauty shops in Hong Kong, Japanese aesthetic salons target women of different age groups and with different needs and tailor their ­advertisements and promotional materials accordingly. For example, these salons provide specialised services such as ‘bridal esute’ as part of a brilliant commercial ploy in which existing services are repackaged and sold as body or face tune-ups for marriage. Of particular relevance to this research is the esute salon’s use of state-­ of-­the-art science and technology for mechanising and commercialising body reform. Salons attempt to rationally maximise beauty gain through scientific management, an approach that appeals to the Japanese regard for empiricism (Miller 2006: 46–49); the body is divided into individual parts or elements that can be minutely scrutinised and traced. In this research,

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Fig. 2.10  An advertisement selling new technology imported from Japan for ‘bust-up’ treatment (Sudden Weekly, 13 July 2012, p. 102)

an advertisement for the beauty salon named Josephine Bust and Slimming sells a ‘bust-up’ treatment program that features the latest technology used in the beauty industry in Japan, as shown in the light blue ‘cloud’ on the top left quadrant carrying a verbal message that reads ‘Japan’s brand new technology’ in Fig.  2.10. Further down that section of the ad is a

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picture of the beauty chain’s owner, Josephine Tse, dubbed as an expert at breast-enhancing who receives special technical training in Japan and is a graduate of special esute training courses in various Japanese research centres. While the fact that there is no national testing of qualifications for aestheticians in Japan proves her claim totally unfounded, the spurious gimmicks do lure in potential customers for beauty worship as well as the feeling of superiority most Hong Kong people imbue with the Japanese culture. The discourse of breast consciousness has been evolved from one that views breasts as an instrument to strategically keep males tied to dependent females and babies (Low 1979) to another that considers breasts as a commodity pertaining to female sexuality in a majority of cultures. In traditional societies, mothers customarily breast-feed infants while fathers control resources and give aid to the family. Women’s breasts are therefore perceived more as having a feeding function than as a sexual role. However, our understanding of the nature of the prevailing knowledge-based economies virtually rules out the possibility of female dependence in modern day society. The signification of ‘breast-as-motherhood’ may well be replaced by that of ‘breast-as-commodity’ in the context of female competition for the attention of males as well as the appreciation and endorsement from the same sex (cf. Goodman and Walsh-Childers 2004). Bust-consciousness does not have a long history in Japan. In the 1970s the media were flooded with images of innocent, prepubescent look of the girl imbued with “the desired traits of docility, naïveté, and powerlessness” (Miller 2006: 75). It was later replaced by the ideal of a voluptuous body from the 1990s onwards. An indication of this change of attitude can be traced in both the representation of female breasts in the manga (comics) world and in the sales metrics of the American fashion doll Barbie. The breasts of female characters were often de-emphasised by comic artists until the mid-1980s (Shiokawa 1999) whereas Barbie had to be redesigned into a less buxom form to cater for the Japanese market (Pollack 1996). The history of female breasts in Japan is noteworthy because it ushers in a burgeoning market for breast enhancement products and treatments not only in its nation but across neighbouring countries of Japan. Hong Kong has been heavily influenced by Japanese culture on various fronts, including food, clothing, showbiz and the like. As with the case in Japan, notions about general dissatisfaction with breast shape are of recent vintage in Hong Kong. The intense breast obsession in both localities illus-

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trates the power of media images, the influence of American culture, and how easily, and quickly, culturally molded behaviours and ideas become naturalised as normal. Having said that, the American images of huge-­ breasted women have been in existence for decades so something else must be contributing to the new trend. Miller (2006: 98) attributes the accomplishment of desired bodies, including idealised breasts, to a certain degree of female agency and empowerment; “[b]y rejecting the ineffectual body style of the unbaked maiden, still desired by many men, women are asserting a degree of adult independence and sexual autonomy”. Marketers of breast products and services exploit the sense of independence and power available to women through body transformation. One company sells a breast augmentation service together with eye bag removal with the slogan ‘be confident and natural’ as well as the celebrity-­ spokesperson’s handwritten message ‘I only trust Dr Reborn, it’s safe, reliable, and equipped with new technologies and a team of medical professionals.’ (see Fig. 2.11). As a semiotic mode in its own right, typography can be used ideationally to represent actions and qualities (van Leeuwen 2006). In this case, the personalised, handwritten font is used to express an ideal of ‘individuality’. The advert also shows before-and-after pictures of the spokesperson being a flat-chested (34A) woman in the past and becoming huge-breasted (34C) after the treatment. Another advertisement—albeit for slimming service—includes a well-known quotation of Evita Perón ‘I am my own woman.’ superimposed on an image of a professional-looking woman wearing a black suit and tie, accompanied by the message on the other side of the double-spread page that reads ‘Women search for real beauty on their own initiative. With twenty-six years of experience of body slimming worldwide, Marie France has helped countless women to achieve stunning body curves … Shaping Timeless Beauty’ (see Fig. 2.12), thereby linking body shape to a self-presentation of female assertiveness and forcefulness. Advertising industries fuel body-consciousness—especially the concentrated breast obsession—as part of a global Euroamerican beauty ideology, but at the same time, bust enhancement practices ironically allow for an aggressive type of individual self-expression that runs counter to social norms of proper female self-presentation. The change in breast symbolism in which female sexuality and self-confidence are indexed through the commodified breast is not only the result of savvy advertising, it also indicates a change in the cultural model of femininity. This is a definite shift away from the distant past in which the thin and fragile girl was first of all

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Fig. 2.11  Example of female independence and sexuality (1), expressing individuality through typography in ad (Oriental Sunday, 14 February 2012, p. 103)

evaluated as a future occupant of the wife social category in Ancient China; the breasts were not considered critical attributes of womanhood, beauty or sexuality. However, the radical change in breast consciousness in the past couple of decades have led to the increased eroticisation of the breasts as a visual code for the independent, sexualised self.

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Fig. 2.12  Example of female independence and sexuality (2), famous feminist quotation of Evita Perón in ad (Jessica, July 2012, pp. 144–145)

2.4.4  Intertextuality As noted above, the culture of slimming among young females in Hong Kong has been mediated by texts other than magazine advertisements in the form of beauty advice given to participants in a TV reality show. In fact, intertextuality is an important characteristic of the slimming culture by means of which examples of slimming success are presented in filmic texts and advertorials. The advertisements of body-reshaping go far beyond slimming services, which purely feature innovative technologies of reducing fat and strict regimens of diet and exercise. Inserted ubiquitously in print and the broadcast media are news and facts about herbal tea, diet recipes, health tips and advice for nutrition. Perhaps one of the most effective means of promotion may be through the meaning produced within the filmic text. A classic example is Love on a Diet (2001) which features Sammi Cheng, a leading artist and Canto-pop diva in Hong Kong and the then spokesperson for Modern Beauty Salon. The story of the film portrays a young woman, Mini Mo, who becomes a 300-lb fatty after breaking up with her slim pianist ex-boyfriend. In an attempt to patch up her love affair, Mini enlists the help of her portly pal Fatso to lose weight. The

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duo soon grows affection for each other and become lovers in the end. As Fung (2006: 178) argues, the main thrust of the story appears to equate love/confidence with slimming and betterment with the perfect body shape. In real life, Sammi Cheng is a role model of thinness and is sometimes accused of being anorexic (JayneStars Media 2010). It follows that the culture of slimming is now sustained by the totality of the celebrity icon and constructed representation in filmic text that is intertextually linked to slimming and breast-enhancing advertisements. Lemke (1985) considers intertextuality as providing a powerful means for the maintenance of ideologies that serve wide social functions. The meanings we make through texts, and the ways we make them, always depend on the currency in our communities of other texts we recognise as having certain definite kinds of relationships with them […]. Every text, the discourse of every occasion, makes sense in part through implicit and explicit relationships of particular kinds to other texts, to the discourse of other occasions. (Lemke 1985: 275)

Celebrities’ personal witnesses with their own bodies not only promote the culture of body reform, they also create powerful discourse that sustains significant social ideologies. For instance, when Joyce Tang, a popular soap opera star and a spokesperson for Josephine Bust & Slimming, relates in an advertorial how she has enlarged her breasts through the beauty services being advertised (see Fig. 2.13), she describes this experience as joyous and healthy and an essential attribute for career advancement and sustainable marriage. The narratives of ordinary people who have experienced the vicissitudes of fatness and revitalisation after slimming are also featured. A typical advertorial of this sort usually compares the body size, health conditions and psychological well-being of the women before and after the slimming service. Many of these advertorials target family women, housewives and professionals (e.g. surgeons and entrepreneurs) who are, for various reasons, getting discontented with their plump bodies, and they also appeal to would-be brides who are expected to be close to the ideal of beauty prior to marriage (see Fig. 2.14). These advertorials serve to perpetuate the slimming culture into the everyday life of the people. Thinness is now a symbol of accomplishment which is not so much beauty as a healthy body coupled with a balanced life used as a pretext for advertising body modification services. As stated above, whereas slimming and breast-enhancing advertisements are often regarded as some kind of sociocultural idealisation of thin female body shapes which have serious

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Fig. 2.13  Example of advertorial (1), celebrity witness (Ming Pao Weekly, 26 January 2011, p. 171)

implications for body image distortions in young women, these advertorials counteract the negative impact and do justice to the willful body reform by highlight the physical and psychological benefits of a fit body figure and the constructive social relationships it brings to the married life and the

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Fig. 2.14  Example of advertorial (2), slimming trials of ordinary people (Jessica Magazine, October 2011, pp. 120–121)

workplace. The celebrity icons and intertextual links between the advertisements and other texts “are relevant context for each other’s interpretation, that socially significant meanings are being made by the community through the interrelations of these texts” (Lemke 1985: 276). 2.4.5  Final Remarks No doubt the culture of slimming and breast augmentation is constructed and maintained by media ideologies pertaining to idealisation of thin female body shapes, gender roles and stereotypes and the obsession with Japanese culture. The impact of media exposure on body-reshaping is mediated by women’s participation in the discourse of advertising. Anecdotally, it is not uncommon to overhear casual conversations about concerns over one’s weight and body figure. As Lee and Fung (2006: 15) rightly point out, “body slimming is a mediated discourse that women as social actors produce and consume for the construction of their gendered identities”. Notwithstanding no real sanctions, those who do not conform to the discourse find it hard to mix with others and to get married. This is

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in line with Foucault’s (1980) notion of capillary power in that the slimming and breast-enhancing culture is co-constructed by different agencies in an institution—the beauty salons, celebrities-as-spokespersons and body-conscious females—that make this a dominate culture in Hong Kong.

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———. 2015b. The mediating role of appearance comparisons in the relationship between media usage and self-objectification in young women. Psychology of Women Quarterly 39 (4): 447–457. Fardouly, Jasmine, Brydie Willburger, and Lenny Vartanian. 2018. Instagram use and young women’s body image concerns and self-objectification: Testing mediational pathways. New Media and Society 20 (4): 1380–1395. Featherstone, Mike. 1982. The body in consumer culture. Theory, Culture and Society 1 (2): 18–33. Feng, Dezheng. 2011. Visual space and ideology: A critical cognitive analysis of spatial orientations in advertising. In Multimodal studies: Exploring issues and domains, ed. Kay O’Halloran and Bradley Smith, 55–75. London and New York: Routledge. Festinger, Leon. 1957. A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1980. Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings: 1972–1977. Edited by Colin Gordon and translated by Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mepham, and Kate Soper. New York: Pantheon Books. Fung, Anthony. 2002. Women’s magazines: Construction of identities and cultural consumption in Hong Kong. Consumption, Markets and Culture 5 (4): 321–336. ———. 2006. Gender and advertising: The promotional culture of whitening and slimming. In Advertising and Hong Kong Society, ed. Kara Chan, 171–181. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press. Fung, Anthony, and Eric Ma. 2000. Formal vs. informal use of television and sex-­ role stereotyping in Hong Kong. Sex Roles 42 (1/2): 57–81. Furnham, Adrian, and Twiggy Mak. 1999. Sex-role stereotyping in television commercials: A review and comparison of fourteen studies done on five continents over 25 years. Sex Roles 41 (5–6): 413–437. Furnham, Adrian, Twiggy Mak, and Liza Tanidjojo. 2000. An Asian perspective on the portrayal of men and women in television advertisements: Studies from Hong Kong and Indonesian television. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 30 (11): 2341–2364. Furnham, Adrian, and Stephanie Paltzer. 2010. The portrayal of men and women in television advertisements: An updated review of 30 studies published since 2000. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 51 (3): 216–236. Garner, David, Paul Garfinkel, Donald Schwartz, and Michael Thompson. 1980. Cultural expectations of thinness in women. Psychological Reports 47 (2): 483–491. Goldman, Robert, and Stephen Papson. 1996. Sign wars: The cluttered landscape of advertising. New York: Guilford Press. Goodman, Robyn, and Kim Walsh-Childers. 2004. Sculpting the female breast: How college women negotiate the media’s ideal breast image. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 81 (3): 657–674.

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Halliday, Michael. 1978. Language as social semiotics. London: Arnold. ———. 1985. An introduction to functional grammar. London: Arnold. Heinberg, Leslie, and Kevin Thompson. 1992. Gender, target importance ratings and relation to body image disturbance. Journal of Social Behaviour and Personality 7 (2): 335–344. Hesse-Biber, Sharlene. 2007. The cult of thinness. New York: Oxford University Press. Hung, Kineta, Stella Li, and Russell Belk. 2007. Global understandings: Female readers’ perceptions of the new woman in Chinese advertising. Journal of International Business Studies 38 (6): 1034–1051. JayneStars Media. 2010. Is Sammi Cheng anorexic? JayneStars: Hong Kong celebrity news in English, 6 July. Accessed October 4, 2018. https://www.jaynestars.com/news/is-sammi-cheng-anorexic/. Kaganovsky, Lilya. 2012. The factory of gestures: Body language in film (review). Cinema Journal 51 (3): 168–170. Kim, Ji Won, and Makana Chock. 2015. Body image 2.0: Associations between social grooming on Facebook and body image concerns. Computers in Human Behavior 48 (July): 331–339. Knobloch-Westerwick, Silvia, and Josselyn Crane. 2012. A losing battle: Effects of prolonged exposure to thin-ideal images on dieting and body satisfaction. Communication Research 39 (1): 79–102. Kowner, Rotem. 2002. Japanese body image: Structure and esteem scores in a cross-cultural perspective. International Union of Psychological Science 37 (3): 149–159. Kress, Gunther. 2010. Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. London and New York: Routledge. Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. 2006. Reading images: The grammar of visual design. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge. Lai, Kelly. 2000. Anorexia nervosa in Chinese adolescents: Does culture make a difference? Journal of Adolescence 23 (5): 561–568. Lam, Ka Yin. 2006. How negative advertising works? Moderating and mediating effects on purchase intention of weight loss products and services. Honours degree project, School of Business, Hong Kong Baptist University. Lam, T.H., Stephanie Lee, Samantha Fung, S.Y.  Ho, Peter Lee, and Sunita Stewart. 2009. Sociocultural influences on body dissatisfaction and dieting in Hong Kong girls. European Eating Disorders Review 17 (2): 152–160. Langlois, Judith, Lisa Kalakanis, Adam Rubenstein, Andrea Larson, Monica Hallam, and Monica Smoot. 2000. Maxims or myths of beauty? A meta-­analytic and theoretical review. Psychological Bulletin 126 (3): 390–423. Lee, Annisa. 2010. When distortion is normal: The media and body image disturbance among young people in Hong Kong. In Liberalising, feminising and popularising health communications in Asia, ed. Liew Kai Khiun, 183–195. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate.

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Lee, Micky, and Anthony Fung. 2006. Media ideologies of gender in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Lee, Sing. 1993. How abnormal is the desire for slimness? A survey of eating attitudes and behaviour among Chinese undergraduates in Hong Kong. Psychological Medicines 23 (2): 437–451. Lee, Sing, Tony Leung, Antoinette Lee, Hong Yu, and C.M. Leung. 1996. Body dissatisfaction among Chinese undergraduates and its implications for eating disorders in Hong Kong. International Journal of Eating Disorders 20 (1): 77–84. Lemke, Jay. 1985. Ideology, intertextuality, and the notion of register. In Systemic perspectives on discourse, vol. 1: Selected theoretical papers from the 9th International Systemic Workshop, ed. James Benson and William Greaves, 275–294. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing. Leung, Freedom, Sharon Lam, and Sherrien Sze. 2001. Cultural expectations of thinness in Chinese women. Eating Disorders 9 (4): 339–350. Low, Bobbi. 1979. Sexual selection and human ornamentation. In Evolutionary biology and human social behaviour, ed. Napoleon Chagnon and William Irons, 462–487. North Scituate, MA: Duxbury. Mabe, Annalise, Jean Forney, and Pamela Keel. 2014. Do you “like” my photo? Facebook use maintains eating disorder risk. International Journal of Eating Disorders 47 (5): 516–523. Martínez Lirola, María, and Jan Chovanec. 2012. The dream of a perfect body come true: Multimodality in cosmetic surgery advertising. Discourse & Society 23 (5): 487–507. McNeill, David. 1992. Hand and mind: What gestures reveal about thought. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Miller, Laura. 2006. Beauty up: Exploring contemporary Japanese body aesthetics. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Mishra, Suman. 2017. From self-control to self-improvement: Evolving messages and persuasion techniques in weight loss advertising (1930–1990). Visual Communication 16 (4): 467–494. Morris, Abigail, Troy Cooper, and Peter Copper. 1989. The changing shape of female fashion models. International Journal of Eating Disorders 8 (5): 593–596. Ng, Bo Sze. 2005. Slimming culture in Hong Kong: A sociological study. M.A. thesis, University of Hong Kong. Palmgreen, Philip. 1984. Uses and gratifications: A theoretical perspective. In Communication yearbook 8, ed. Robert Bostrom, 61–72. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. Pedersen, Isabel. 2002. Looking good on whose terms? Ambiguity in two Kellogg’s Special K® print advertisements. Social Semiotics 12 (2): 169–181. Pollack, Andrew. 1996. Barbie’s journey in Japan. New York Times, 22 December.

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CHAPTER 3

Postage Stamps as Windows on Social Changes and Identity in Postcolonial Hong Kong

Abstract  By relating the three definitive stamp series made during the postcolonial period to the changing political environment in Hong Kong, this chapter identifies themes in their designs which involve attempts by government to redefine Hong Kong’s national identity vis-à-vis perceived colonial nostalgia and ever-increasing stake in and tensions with mainland China. The social-semiotic framework of Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen is again employed to analyse the constituent parts of their designs as well as to examine them within their wider social contexts that have evolved over time. Hong Kong is seen to be using its unique heritage in a time of transition and uncertainty to assist in defining a distinct identity that is partly expressed through philately. While the first and second post-­ handover sets of definitive issues make clear references to the Anglo-­ Chinese cultural link in forging a hybrid identity, the third definitive issue stresses the importance of closer integration with mainland China after the transfer of sovereignty. The experience of Hong Kong provides an insight into the dynamics of the relationship between identity, heritage and philately that are especially complex within the context of postcolonial studies. Keywords  Postage stamps • Former British colony • East-meets-West • National identity • Postcolonial studies

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3.1   Introduction Despite being rather small in size, postage stamps are one of the ubiquitous forms of visual communication in any society, as are posters, magazines, films and TV programmes (Finlay 1974) and their designs often receive only a cursory glance. However, as Frewer (2010) argues forcefully, postage stamps can in fact serve as an important medium of communication. Specifically, he points out three important aspects of postage stamps that lead to attention—however little—being paid to them and merit careful scrutiny: (i) not only are stamps purchased for use on mail but are also widely received on mail bearing them; (ii) regular (definitive) issues are produced in vast numbers and remain on sale for a considerable length of time; (iii) stamps are often collected thematically as a hobby and their designs examined closely by collectors (2010: 6). Indeed, one of the most remarkable characteristics of postage stamps is the fact that they offer images, often reproductions of pictures, in miniature. For instance, the vast majority of postage stamps issued in postcolonial Hong Kong are pictures of scenes and objects which are predominantly photographic in their realism. They may be classified as representational art designed to remind local people of particular aspects of their native culture. This chapter is concerned with how the images of postage stamps are intended to act upon and affect their users. As is the case with any image, their meanings are not to be found by analysing only the constituent parts of their designs, but, as social semioticians would propose (see Sect. 3.2), by looking at them as a whole, as pictures within their social contexts, and also by recognising that these contexts change in space and time (Barthes 1985: 40–45). Unlike other visual genres, postage stamps are monopolised by government, which is the sole issuing authority in Hong Kong. Hence, as Frewer remarks, “changes in their design and new issues may reflect changes in government policies” (2010: 6), and “it is not the content of images which should be interpreted (as objects); rather, images must be regarded as part of a social process of interaction between their creator(s), themselves (the images) and their audience(s)” (2010: 7). It is clear from Frewer’s standpoint that rather than viewing postage stamps as historical records of a nation (Reid 1984), we should regard them as, in Frewer’s terminology, ‘social agents’ which are capable of conveying political messages intended to influence their users (see also Altman 1991; Scott 1995). This is because stamps are in themselves places of memory so that a study of them should potentially reveal much about national

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self-image (Scott 2002). In interpreting the social significance of postage stamps, this chapter focusses upon two interlocking questions: (a) What are the visual meanings of postage stamps? (b) What is being communicated, particularly in relation to the definition of national identity? To this end, this chapter concentrates on the postage stamp issues made in the wake of the change of sovereignty in 1997. The present study shows how Hong Kong government during this period used postage stamps as a tool for promoting political ideology to help define national identity for Hong Kong society. It also relates these government initiatives to the wider social issues which increasingly so over time have conflicted with what these stamp issues might have been expected to communicate.

3.2   The Theoretical Considerations of Social Semiotics and National Identity I have situated the current study in relation to social semiotics (e.g. Hodge and Kress 1988; Iedema 2001; Jewitt and Oyama 2001; Kress and van Leeuwen 2001, 2006; van Leeuwen 2002, 2005). As social semioticians point out, visual meaning is best thought of as the manipulation or exploitation of resources rather than the application of codes (Jewitt and Oyama 2001). Rooted in principles of semiotics (e.g. Peirce 1931–1958) and semiology (e.g. Barthes 1972), social semioticians share a primary concern for elements of signification, connotative/cultural meanings and historical contexts. They, however, look to extend these interests by viewing all semiosis as social action embedded in larger economic and cultural practices and power relations. As such, in keeping with its theoretical assumption concerning social context (see Chap. 1), social semiotic analyses typically critique the mechanisms of representation by which visual resources are deployed to achieve ideological ends. Social semiotics therefore looks not only to relate texts to contexts, but also to speculate on related social tendencies and their political implications, recognising that “the signs of articulation” (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001: 41) in any text form the basis for later articulations of the same ideological discourses into other texts. The systematic analysis of texts also allows for the potential renegotiation of meanings that would otherwise be articulated “as fixed, irrevocable and natural” (Iedema 2001: 201). In my analysis of the defini-

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tive stamp issues, I shall be using Kress and van Leeuwen’s model as the basis for my analysis and interpretation of the sorts of choices which have been made to communicate the multi-layered meanings manifest in postage stamps. Closely related to the social-semiotic theory is the notion of national identity. Kress (1989: 15) suggests that identity can be projected onto subjects discursively. He gives the example of the political leader whose role is to give definition to an entirely new group by producing texts which bring together disparate discourses in a unified, coherent manner. Where changes in ideology are rapid, this may be accompanied by a rapid change in the discursive construction of identity. With such a sudden political change as that represented by Hong Kong’s change of sovereignty in 1997, the society needs to radically adapt its conception of national identity. To quote Hall (1996: 6), given the possibility of such change, identities are “points of temporary attachment to the subject positions which discursive practices construct for us”; they are constantly in the process of change and transformation. Nevertheless, the elaboration of national identity is “a gradual process in which histories, traditions and social memories are invented, revised and reproduced” (Ma and Fung 1999: 498). It is against this historical backdrop of the change of sovereignty and its attendant transformation of cultural and political identity that the post-­ 1997 definitive postage stamps are analysed in the present study. In fact, the need for a change of national identity was noted by the outgoing government in the lead-up to the handover and its expressed in the following extract from a government document issued in 1996, hence just before the reversion, on civic education in the schools. […] the civic learner needs to know the cultural and political identity of Hong Kong as a Chinese community, as a British colony for a certain period, and as the HKSAR of China from July 1997. At a time of political transition, we need our citizens to actively adopt a new national identity, and to be participative and contributive to bring about smooth transitions, to sustain prosperity and stability and to further improve the Hong Kong society. (Education Department, 1996, p. 21; cited in Bray 1997: 16)

The call for a “new national identity” suggests that Hong Kong people have to develop a clear(er) sense of national identity in the first place, but the question of identity in Hong Kong has always been problematic (Lowe and Tsang 2017: 146). A century and a half of colonial rule and its policy of minimising contact with mainland China has created a space for the

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enactment of a local Hong Kong identity, which thus can be said to be determined in terms of the cultural differences between Hong Kong and the mainland (Ma and Fung 1999: 500). Hong Kong people have traditionally seen themselves as sophisticated and Westernised, in contrast to the ‘less civilised’ mainlanders. Even now, although the former British colony is a Special Administrative Region of China, Hong Kong people are reluctant to label themselves as ‘Chinese’ when asked to do so in opinion surveys; they prefer to refer to themselves as ‘Hong Kong people’ or (to a lesser degree) as ‘Hong Kong Chinese’. As will be outlined in Sects. 3.4 and 3.5, the identity discussed by Ma and Fung (1999) and other similar studies can be contrasted with the identity projected on to the Hong Kong people by the government through the imagery used in the three series of definitive stamps issued after the handover. But first we need to have a thorough understanding of these three sets of stamps under consideration, to which we now turn.

3.3   An Overview of Hong Kong’s Postage Stamps One year after the world’s first postage stamp, the Penny Black, was issued by Great Britain in May 1840, the Hong Kong government quickly set up its own postal services. However, Hong Kong’s first stamps came into being almost twenty years later on the 8th of December, 1862. Between 1862 and 1935 (except 1891) Hong Kong issued only definitive stamps to meet ordinary postal needs (see A stamp is born 1984; Hong Kong Stamps 1985). During that period of time, they were revised when there was a change in monarch. The stamps were designed by a designated British designer, produced by the photogravure process and printed on unwatermarked paper. The stamps invariably bore the portraits of English monarchs who had ruled over Hong Kong (e.g. King Edward VII (issued in 1903); King George V (in 1912); King George VI (in 1938); Queen Elizabeth II (in 1954); see Sakhrani 2005a). In the run-up to the handover from British to Chinese rule however, a new set of definitive stamps not bearing any British sovereign connotations were issued in January 1997, featuring instead the skylines of various coastal areas in the north of the Hong Kong Island (Yang 2007: 30). Commemorative stamps issued to commemorate an event or a person are available in smaller numbers and for a shorter period of time than definitives. The first commemorative stamp was issued in 1891 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Hong Kong. A limited quantity of 2 cents definitives was overprinted with ‘1841/Hong Kong/JUBILEE/1891’

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and proved to be so popular with collectors that they had to be rationed. It was not until the Sixties that commemoratives and their offshoot— ‘special issues’—came into their own and found a large following; to date over 400 commemoratives and special issues have been released (see History in Miniature: the 150th anniversary of stamp issuance in Hong Kong 2013). Generally around ten sets of special stamps will be issued each year (see Hong Kong: the facts: Hongkong Post 2012). The number of stamps and value of denominations may vary with the requirements of the postal service but there are usually four stamps in each set. In the case of the special and commemorative issues, designs and themes have changed dramatically over the years. In the days when the postal service was run by the government, the designs of the stamps were conservative and were driven purely by functional value. It is only in the past two decades or so after the postal service was turned into an independently run trading fund in 1995 that stamp designs and themes have been diversified (Wong and Ramon-Berjano 2004). Suggestions on stamp themes are sought from the district boards, various government bodies and related institutions such as Hong Kong Tourism Board and universities, etc. The ideas are then submitted to the Stamp Advisory Committee which select not more than ten sets of themes a year and local stamp designers are invited to submit their designs based on these chosen themes (Sakhrani 2005b). With regard to the regular issues,1 major changes in design are usually instigated only by the government and the post office, which decide on a theme and delegate the task of implementing it to a small team of in-house graphic designers,2 although they might at times commission designs from independent artists locally or abroad. Consequently, any social and political directions from the government and the postal institution may well affect the impact that a new design has on the public and on stamp collec1  As far as I know, there is no published material in the public domain on the procedures for the design of the definitive issues, in either Chinese or English, although clear guidelines on the entire vetting process of the special and commemorative issues are available online at Hongkong Post’s web site (http://www.hongkongpoststamps.hk/eng/philatelic_story/ birth/index.htm) (accessed 6 September 2016). I wrote to the post office and had an interview with a senior member of staff in March 2013. The verbal exchange that I had during the interview has become the major source of my information on this matter. 2  For instance, the definitive stamps issued in 2002 of pictorial images of eastern and western cultures (see also Sect. 3.4) were designed by one of their employees, Arde Lam Bing-pui (Lee 2001), who is also behind a range of special and commemorative issues including a set of special stamps on the theme of ‘Royal Hong Kong Regiments (The Volunteers) 1854–1995 released in 1995, the 2000 Singapore-Hong Kong Joint issue, the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games series and the ‘Centenary of HKU’ special stamps in 2011.

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tors. This obviously makes definitive issues a more intriguing and worthwhile object of study than special and commemorative issues which are launched for a specific event only. In the hope of elucidating the changing definitions of national identity after the transfer of sovereignty (see Sect. 3.5), this chapter focusses on the three definitive sets of stamps issued after the handover on 1 July 1997.3

3.4   The Visual Meanings of Definitive Stamp Issues 3.4.1  A Brief Description of the Three Post-handover Definitive Issues The post-handover Hong Kong government issued a new definite series of postage stamps for regular use in October 1999, the first complete redesign bearing the inscription ‘Hong Kong, China’ (see Fig.  3.1).4 They 3  There are altogether four sets of definitive stamps issued by the Hongkong Post in the posthandover period. However, only the first three definitive sets published in the fifteen years after the return of sovereignty to China in 1997 were analysed in this study, given the fact that the 15th anniversary of the handover serves as a watershed in the history of the postcolonial era, as evidenced in the vast amount of news reports, op-ed pieces and scholarly research about the contested and conflicted socio-political landscape of the Hong Kong society, invariably focussing on the length of time as a cut-off point for analysis of the first perceptible sign of social change under Chinese rule (see, for example, Chan 2012; Chugani 2012; Garret 2013; Huang 2017; Kan 2012; So 2012). As Huang (2017: 473) aptly observes, “[s]ince 2003, Hong Kong has gradually transformed into a ‘social movement society’”, characterising the fifteen years that have passed since the handover as providing fertile ground for identity construction in the context of decolonisation. As for the latest set of definitive stamps issued in 2014, see the website of Hongkong Post at http://www.hongkongpoststamps.hk/eng/stamps/definitive_stamps/2014/introduction.htm (accessed 6 September 2016) for a more detailed account of the rationale behind the design and its chosen theme. 4  For copyright reasons the images discussed (see Hongkong post stamps catalogue (vol. II) 2007) in this chapter are not reproduced here, only represented as diagrams. The reader is invited to view them online, either through any major search engine or via the following links (all functional on 6 September 2016):

1999 Hong Kong definitive stamps (Fig.  3.1): http://www.hongkongpoststamps. hk/eng/library/1999/index.htm 2002 Hong Kong definitive stamps (Fig.  3.2): http://www.hongkongpoststamps. hk/eng/library/2002/index.htm 2006 Hong Kong definitive stamps (Fig.  3.3): http://www.hongkongpoststamps. hk/eng/library/2006/index.htm 2002–2006 China definitive stamps (Fig.  3.4): http://www.luckystamps.com/ China-Stamp-2002-2006-R31-Definitive-China-Birds-9v-Full-Set-MNH.html

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Fig. 3.1  The Hong Kong Landmarks series 1999

were images of well-known landmarks in the territory painted in watercolour. Many of them hark back to the colonial times in that they were mainly western-style buildings and infrastructure that lead to the rapid development and modernisation of the city, both socially and economically: for example, St. John Catherdral (20 cents), The Legistative Council (50 cents), Victoria Harbour ($1.3), Hong Kong Railway Museum ($1.4), Tsim Sha Tsui Clock Tower ($1.6), Happy Valley Racehorse ($2), Kowloon-Canton Railway ($2.1), Tsing Ma Bridge ($10), Hong Kong

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Convention and Exhibition Centre ($20), and Hong Kong International Airport ($50). The rest of them contained images that would be instantly recongisable as classical clichés of ‘Chineseness’: for example, The Museum of Tea Ware (10 cents), Tai Fu Tai Mansion ($1), Wong Tai Sin Temple ($1.2), Chi Lin Monastery ($2.5), The Statue of Buddha at Po Lin Monastery ($3.1), and Aw Boon Haw Gardens ($5). Thus, the mix of images referring to the history of the city meant that people were receiving a continuous reminder of their place in a geographically defined space and that they were part of Hong Kong’s colonial past and Buddhist/Taoist religious traditions inherited from mainland China. Possibly, this was an attempt to redefine (or reaffirm) Hong Kong’s role in the world, a tiny place with the cultural heritage of both the British colonisers and the indigenous Chinese. Following on from the Anglo-Chinese cultural tie is the theme of Eastern and Western cultures reflected in the second set of definitive stamps issued in October 2002 (see Fig. 3.2).5 This was the first Hong Kong definitive issue to use realistic images rather than stylised symbols (e.g. the figureheads of Queen Victoria and other monarchs) and paintings as with the first and third series. These East-meets-West images featured in 16 different designs, each demonstrating a contrast of eastern and western traditions vis-à-vis a particular cultural aspect such as food: barbecued pork bun and baguette ($1.4), fork and chopsticks ($1.8), squash and tea ($1.9), and western and Chinese bridal cakes ($2); technology: radar and compass (10 cents), calculator and abacus (20 cents), and mail and the World Wide Web ($2.5); art, music and entertainment: erhu and violin ($2.4), ballet and Cantonese opera ($10), chess and Chinese chess ($13), and Henry Moore sculpture and Ju Ming’s Taichi series ($50); sport: sailing boat and dragon boat ($3); festivals: Christmas lights vs Mid-­ Autumn Festival lanterns ($20); materials and buildings: temple and church (50 cents), metal chair and mahogany chair ($1), and glazed roof tiles and double-glazed windows ($5). In designing this issue, there seems to have been an attempt to suggest that Hong Kong has achieved cultural diversity, based on both Eastern and Western roots. As will be discussed in 5  As an anonymous reviewer points out, the juxtaposition of eastern and western cultural practices was already a feature of Hong Kong stamps from as early as 1938 (George IV definitive series in which a modern liner is juxtaposed with a junk, a traditional clipper with a seaplane), potentially serving as an anticipation of the more systematic juxtaposition of traditions and technologies exemplified in the 2002 HK definitive set. The author would like to thank the reviewer for making this comment.

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Fig. 3.2  The Eastern and Western Cultures series 2002

Sect. 0, Hong Kong’s diverse culture appears to be an important driving force behind hybrid design in fashion, imbuing clothing and accessories with a unique Hong Kong style. The contrast of the third series of definitive stamps with the first and second issues is rather striking as it involved objects of nature—precisely, birds—although this sort of images is not uncommon in special issues.6 The set contained different images of birds (see Fig.  3.3) that were 6  For example, images of rocks found on Hong Kong’s outlying islands such as Peng Chau, Lamma Island, Port Island and Po Pin Chau constituted a special issue in September 2002, whereas Hong Kong’s butterflies were the theme of two special issues in 1979 and 2007.

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Fig. 3.3  The Hong Kong Birds series 2006

s­ eemingly chosen to send the message to the Hong Kong people that the city is blessed with a diversity of natural habitats for hundreds of bird species, despite its longstanding image of a city of skyscrapers. In stark contrast to its predecessors, there was no looking back at a glorious past, no reference to either Eastern or Western cultural heritage, and no element of modernisation. There were, in fact, references to ‘nature’ in terms of bird images that were very unlikely to be familiar to the general public. Perhaps

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for educational purposes, all the birds shown were labelled on the stamps.7 However, the significance of these images of birds was wider than this and can be appreciated better by considering postage stamp issues in China (Fig. 3.4; see also Sect. 0). 3.4.2  The Representational and Compositional Meanings of the Definitive Issues In the social-semiotic theory developed by Kress and van Leeuwen (2006), visual structures of representation can either be “narrative, presenting unfolding actions and events, processes of change, transitory spatial arrangements, or conceptual, representing participants in terms of their more generalised and more or less stable and timeless essence” (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006: 79). Except for some special and commemorative issues that involve human actors in the process of doing something to or for each other, definitive issues are typically conceptual in nature: they offer an exemplar of the human being, animal or object that they are intended to portray through visual imagery. Conceptual representations can be divided into three kinds of processes in terms of class, structure and meaning, namely classificational processes, analytical processes and symbolic processes. Each of the process types tackles one particular relation between the represented participants portrayed in the definitive set of stamps. The first, post-handover definitive issue is characterised by an analytical structure in terms of a part-whole relation. Analytical processes generally involve two kinds of participants: one Carrier (the whole) and any number of Possessive Attributes (the parts). The analytical process shown in the first definitive issue is unstructured; that is, only the Possessive Attributes are shown, but not the Carrier itself. The postage stamps are composed of reproductions of pictures with watercolours representing various colonial and indigenous buildings and sites that are of architectural significance. They can be interpreted as Possessive Attributes of the Carrier, Hong 7  For example, White-bellied Sea Eagle (10 cents), Collared Scops Owl (20 cents), Scarlet Minivet (50 cents), Common Kingfisher ($1), Fork-tailed Sunbird ($1.4), Roseate Tern ($1.8), Black-faced Spoonbill ($1.9), Little Egret ($2), Greater Painted-snipe ($2.4), Barn Swallow ($2.5), Red-whiskered Bulbul ($3), Long-tailed Shrike ($5), White Wagtail ($10), Northern Shoveler ($13), Common Magpie ($20), and Dalmatian Pelican ($50). The information can be found at Hongkong Post’s web site: http://www.hongkongpoststamps.hk/ eng/stamps/definitive_stamps/2006/introduction.htm (accessed 6 September 2016).

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Fig. 3.4  The China Birds definitive series 2002

Kong, the postcolonial city of China, which is absent in the entire visual composition but is being represented verbally in the inscription. As noted earlier, the stamps used in the second definitive issue after the handover have been those with the images of Eastern and Western cultures, with its very strong evocation of a hybrid form of national identity for the territory (see Sect. 0). With regards to conceptual structure, they

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exhibit the characteristics of a symbolic (attributive) process which has two participants, the Carrier and the Symbolic Attribute. The pictures of delicacies and material artefacts of Eastern and Western origins cannot be interpreted as analytical because attention is not drawn to the details or specifications of the objects depicted, but to the generalised essence or the implied meaning. They are Symbolic Attributes that are made salient in the representation through realistic images and are conventionally associated with symbolic values—the East and the West—that are brought to mind for the viewer or user of the postage stamps. The third set of definitive stamps issued in the post-colonial period is characterised by a classificational process which relates participants to each other in terms of a ‘kind of’ relation, a taxonomy: at least one set of participants will play the role of Subordinates with respect to at least one other participant, the Superordinate. Under this process, the sixteen participants are represented as ‘species’ of the ‘genus’, as all belonging to the same overarching category. Since the overarching category is not shown or named, the issue demonstrates a covert taxonomy: the Superordinate (i.e. birds) is inferred from such similarities as the viewer may perceive to exist between the Subordinates (i.e. bird species). To realise the stable, timeless nature of the classification, the native and migratory birds depicted on the postage stamps are shown in a more or less objective, decontextualised way. The background is plain and sketched in lightly. The depth is reduced or absent. The verbal text within the picture space further adds to the classificational dimension of the visual structure: the images are being explicitly labelled as a particular type of birds. After we have examined the representational meanings of the definitive issues, we now explore how the composition is construed and presented via visual elements with reference to Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006: 197) dimensions of visual space. While the three definitive issues have visual imagery as the most salient element in their composition, they differ with respect to both the specific informational values attached to the various zones of the composition and the presence or absence of framing devices. As Kress and van Leeuwen (2006: 195) note, central composition plays an integral role in the visual semiotics of Asian culture, placing in the middle the nucleus of the information and other subservient elements around it. The postage stamps of the first and second definitive issues have strong dominant centres which are visual images, flanked by relatively marginal elements which are very short texts containing the inscription ‘Hong Kong, China’ in both English and Chinese, the denomination, and,

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optionally, the caption of the image shown, as in the third definitive issue. Here picture and image occupy the same space. The central pictorial element are decontextualised and integrated into the white textual space in the stamps of the first definitive issue, whereas the reverse is true for those of the third definitive issue: the text is integrated into the pictorial space. The visual composition of the second definitive issue is slightly more complex. It has a triptych structure, with a ‘Given’ left, a ‘New’ right and a centre that bridges the two and acts as ‘Mediator’. Most of the definitive stamps (barring those with denominations of 50 cents, $1.4, $2.4 and $5) show on the left an image of the Western traditions and on the right an image of the Eastern traditions. The text in the centre connects the two images which would otherwise be presented as two separate units of information demarcated by a white frame line next to the text. This triptych lends further credence to the idea discussed in the preceding section that Hong Kong is the meeting place between East and West and this is very much ingrained in people’s self-perceived national identity and their image of the society (cf. Chan 2002; see also Chan 2007).

3.5   Discussion: Changing Definitions of National Identity 3.5.1  Identity at a Crossroads The 1990s was a decade that witnessed a series of soul-searching and vociferous discussions about the Hong Kong identity (see, among others, Leonard 2010; Lui 1999; Vickers and Kan 2003). While the notion of national identity seems rather straightforward as a matter of political citizenship, it is not well-defined in the case of Hong Kong. Identity is one of the focal points in sociological studies. Sociologists have identified two sources for identities in their theorisation. Firstly, identities are constructed through a process of internalisation (Anderson 1983; Castells 1997; Giddens 1991). Thus, identity is not so much an imposition from the external forces as a perception from within. Secondly, identities are constrained by the social and cultural structures of a locality, taking on both spaces and time, and political and historical contents and contexts (Calhoun 1994; Hall 1990). Based on these two sources for identities, people anchor their identity consciously not only by their imagination about themselves and about others, but also by what the political and socio-cultural contexts the locality gives.

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The historical separation of Hong Kong from China during the colonial era has allowed a local unique Hong Kong identity to emerge. The people of Hong Kong were severed from their cultural roots during the British colonisation, and they also steered in a direction distinctive from mainland Chinese. In the popular media in the 1970s and the 1980s, mainlanders were stigmatised as ‘uncivilised’ and ‘uneducated’ outsiders and intruders, as opposed to modern, cosmopolitan Hongkongers under British rule. The return of Hong Kong to China thus rendered the Hong Kong identity contradictory and ambivalent. In the final years of the transition period, the local media had begun to re-invent and re-conceive Chinese identity in more favourable terms to help smooth the city’s transfer of sovereignty; Hong Kong was placed within the context of Chinese history and tradition and directly under the canopy of nationalism. With the advent of decolonisation and nationalisation in 1997, Hong Kong people might feel strong nostalgia for their accustomed and established ‘Hong Kong identity’ as a legacy of colonial power (Grace 2007; Wong 2011),8 and to a certain extent might harbour resistance to embracing the holistic Chinese identity except for the traditional Chinese mores pertaining to their indigenous culture. The first definitive issue was probably created to reflect both the colonial nostalgia and the traditional Chinese culture through its use of visual imagery. This version of events is generally borne out by an empirical longitudinal study carried out shortly after the handover, which conceptualises Hong Kong identity as the alignment of dual characters of Chinese and local (westernised) culture (Fung 2004). As the data suggested, Hong Kong people proclaimed a more dual identity in 1999 when the study was conducted. Such duality is well reflected in their parallel support of the two authorities. Rather than conceiving identity as the imposition from institutions, Hong Kong’s national identity can be regarded as an internalised perception yet constrained by its own peculiar historical characteristics. As Fung puts it, “while the legitimacy of the authorities increased, Hong Kong people still narrated a distancing feeling from the mainland political icons, although their cultural affect has perceived [to be] increas8  Commenting on an exhibition by Matthew Turner (one of the most eminent graphic design scholars in the city), titled Hong Kong Sixties: Designing Identity at the Hong Kong Arts Centre in 1994, Wong notes that the exhibition “triggered a strong response from the public since Hong Kong was getting closer to July 1997 and the whole society was nostalgic about the good old memories of the colonial era” (2011: 384–385).

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ing gradually” (2004: 413). In another study with Hong Kong adolescents (Lam et al. 1999), over fifty per cent of the respondents reported combined identities (‘Hongkonger and secondarily Chinese’, 24.6%; ‘Chinese and secondarily Hongkonger, 30.5%). The findings of dominant dual identities are consistent with those of a more recent study in 2005 (Kim and Ng 2008) that the majority of participants (62.8%) preferred dual identities over single identities (35.2%). All these studies suggest that in Hong Kong a residential population has become increasingly attached to their city as homeland, although not necessarily to their new country. As one graphic design scholar and long-term resident, Matthew Turner, remarked in 1995: [T]he population of Hong Kong came to identify themselves as ‘Heung Gong Yan’, an ambiguous construction that was more that of a ‘resident’, less that of a ‘people’. [Hong Kong identity] was rather the identity of life-style, a shared recognition of similar self-images, real or desire, of existential choices, from food to education, that had to be made now that Hong Kong people could no longer be guided by Chinese tradition or (since the demise of Shanghai) Chinese modernity. (Turner 1995: 22–23)

The question of Hong Kong identity is not just a matter of self-image. This former colony has become a dynamic outpost for global capitalism, as evidenced by the ubiquitous presence of global enterprises from multinational companies with the ‘glocal’ advertisements. The difficulty of defining Hong Kong’s new global identity after the handover, beyond having a mere economic function, presented a challenge to the Hong Kong government’s long-term vision and creativity. The return of the sovereignty of Hong Kong from Britain to china meant that Hong Kong’s global position was in direct competition with cities of China like Beijing or Shanghai. It seems that the government was aware of the identity problem early enough, as shown by its attempt to redefine a unique, global role for Hong Kong internationally through launching a positioning exercise in 1999. Promoted as the ‘Brand Hong Kong’ campaign, the exercise had two goals: to create a new strategic position for Hong Kong in the international arena, and to regain the confidence of the local population in Hong Kong by asserting that Hong Kong would become ‘Asia’s World City’ and continue to outperform competitors like Shanghai over the next thirty years (Shen 2010: 204). It was against this backdrop of rebranding Hong Kong’s international identity that the first series of definitive stamps

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was issued. The much-glamorised cosmopolitan side of the post-1997 Hong Kong scene was fully captured in the stamps which showcased the city’s world-class transport network as well as vibrant social fabric as a global metropolis. On the other hand, the cosmopolitan vision was balanced by virtue of a handful of stamps drawing upon historical references and cultural signifiers of greater China, as a way to reinforce the roots of Chinese nationalism. The local perspective here is probably essential; as Lee points out, “[a] strong sense of local cultural tradition can provide a cosmopolitan city with a base and character; otherwise it can only become a superficial hotchpotch” (2007: 507). 3.5.2  East-West Hybridity As noted above, the return of Hong Kong to China began a collective quest for an identity in Hong Kong. What the stamps of the second post-­ handover definitive issue embody are a sense of continuity with shared memories and a sense of common destiny. In this regard, Hong Kong identity is embedded in the everyday and the mundane. Images from everyday local life such as barbecued pork buns, chopsticks, herbal tea, temples, Chinese chess, lanterns and Cantonese opera all are taken as sources of inspiration for the postage stamps. However, at the heart of the second definitive stamp issue is not simply at best the embedded Chinese heritage and at worst the colonial ideal of Chinese exoticism, but East-­ West hybrid design as a stylistic feature fusing Hong Kong/Chinese visual elements and those of the West in cultural traditions. Perhaps hybridity is unavoidable in postcolonial discourse when colonial culture comes into contact with indigenous culture, resulting in a hybridised version of the ‘original’ (Bhabha 1994). Likewise, hybridity is unavoidable insomuch as culture is not ‘pure’ in itself: culture borrows elements from other places and incorporates them in the larger system, much like “a leaky mosaic in which cultures run over their edges and flow into one another, channelled, to some extent, by the remaining political and economic hierarchies of the world system” (Friedman 1995: 85). Hong Kong is in particular in hybridity—in multiple identities—as a former British colony, a Chinese territory and a global city. Thus, the complexity of Hong Kong’s design consists in its emerging and simultaneous relationship with at least two cultural contexts—the old cliché of ‘East meets West’, and provides context for giving expression to a new Hong Kong identity in graphic design (the design of postage stamps included).

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Clark (2009: 14–17) notes that the synergy of local/Chinese culture and foreign practice in graphic design goes back to the early twentieth century. This new form of graphic design was instigated by American Henry Steiner, who is generally believed to be the most prominent of the foreign designers who began to arrive in Hong Kong in the 1960s (Wong 2001: 53). The design he produced often employs a biculturalism, where Oriental and Western cultures are clearly represented through stereotypical typologies and signifiers (Steiner and Haas 1995: 2). In this approach, Western forms and images equate with global capitalism, and local/Hong Kong cultural stereotypes equal tradition and China. Metaphorically, Steiner’s cross-cultural design implies the Yin Yang symbol, in which the visual elements of both cultures never fuse together but remain discrete yet complementary (Huppatz 2006: 72). One of his oft-quoted works that perfectly exemplifies the Yin Yang metaphor is an image in the 1980 annual report of the Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation in which two split photographs of equal size form one image: the masked face of a Cantonese opera performer on the left is paired with the head of the Statue of Liberty, a symbolic pairing based on the bank’s acquisition of the New York-based Marine Midland Bank (Sussman 2011: 43). In essence, Steiner transformed the sphere of art through the device of bifurcation, where a symbol or icon from Chinese culture matched or ‘rhymed’ an equivalent from Western culture. The style does, without doubt, pioneer hybridity of the East and the West as a local design genre that is evident in the graphic styles and imagery of some homegrown designers such as Kan Tai-keung and Alan Chan (Huppatz 2003: 113). Reflecting on his unique style, Steiner states that, in Hong Kong, he discovered a “cross-cultural city-state undergoing the transformation from provincial outpost of an empire to international focal-point” (1995: 6). It is not surprising therefore that in the design of the second definitive issue after the change of sovereignty, a complex mix of cultural venues and values reflects a form of appropriation very much akin to Steiner’s declared cross-cultural design and identity pertaining to the multicultural city of Hong Kong. 3.5.3  Integration with the Motherland The third series of definitive stamp issues is characterised by the theme of native and migratory birds. This theme coincides with that of the regular stamps issued in China between 2002 and 2006 (see Fig. 3.4). While birds

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may constitute a recurrent theme in the stamps across the globe (Gibbons 2013), the fact that the authorities on the mainland and in its special administrative region have employed the theme of birds during more or less the same period of time should not be reasonably dismissed as sheer coincidence; the symbolic meaning of ‘integration with the motherland’ becomes all the more apparent. Over fifteen years after the former British colony reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, Hong Kong’s relationship with the mainland remains uneasy at best, and at worst completely combative. Liberalisation of China’s tourism policy resulted in many tens of millions of mainland tourists visiting the small city. Quality of life suffers when an overcrowded city with an overstretched infrastructure is overwhelmed with the visitors. Resentment builds when property tycoons give the visitors priority and when local banks and shops switch to simplified Chinese characters—the official character set of written language used in China—as opposed to traditional Chinese characters used by most of the Hong Kong residents. Given the daily frustrations and anger, Hong Kong backlash against the flood of mainlanders—the mocking of mainlanders as locusts, the waving of British flags at recent protests and the fury over parallel goods traders— may not simply be dismissed as being churlish, and can be understood as a result of “an overdue eruption of fear and frustration that has festered for too long” (Chugani 2012). The influx of mainlanders from day-­ trippers to property speculators as well as what is often seen as the growing political influence of Beijing have sparked fears over the imminent ‘mainlandisation’ of the city. It seems true enough that mainlandisation has begun to take root when the proposed use of a Putonghua term as part of the English name of the new Chinese opera theatre in a multi-billion dollar cultural hub has caused a great furore. One of the high-profile incidents of cultural and identity clashes of international renown between the two communities took place in January 2012 where an episode of a mainland Chinese train passenger who was eating inside a compartment was caught on video and went viral (Chan 2012). The event was later lambasted by a Beijing University professor, Kong Qing-dong, in a television interview in China, criticising Hongkongers for talking in Cantonese instead of the official version of Chinese, i.e. Putonghua (Mandarin). He called Hongkongers ‘bastards’ for refusing to speak the mother tongue and ‘running dogs of the British government’ for rejecting a Chinese identity. Perhaps for Beijing, there may be a grain of truth in the professor’s inflammatory rhetoric and comments. Open protests for greater democracy and against the local and

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mainland governments occur from time to time, providing insights into Hong Kong’s (somewhat resistant) integration and identification with the mainland. As Garrett insightfully remarks, “[s]o vibrant is Hong Kong’s protest culture that in the past it has been referred to as the ‘City of Protests’” (2013: 57), and demonstrations and marches against birth tourism and mainland drivers are “emblematic of these integration tensions” (2013: 63). The perceived rejection of national identity appears to be strongest in the recent national education debate in which students protested against the government’s plans to implement Chinese patriotism classes in Hong Kong, forcing the authorities to back down.9 The proposed introduction of compulsory classes on appreciating the Chinese Communist Party has been widely seen as an attempt to brainwash the city’s children by the Chinese government in Beijing. The row is only the latest example of the cultural, social and identity gap that exists between Hong Kong and its mainland masters. Back in the early days after the transfer of sovereignty, Chun cogently argued that the British colonialism displaces Hong Kong away from the Chinese political mainstream and its cultural sphere, resulting in Hongkongers having “no identity as a people in the sense of sharing common ideologies and values”, while at the same time accelerating the development of “an autonomous cultural identity” (2000: 451; original emphasis). According to a survey10 conducted in June 2012 soon after the incident, the number of Hong Kong people identifying themselves as Chinese hit an all-time low; rather, they identify themselves most strongly as ‘Hongkongers’, then in descending order as ‘members of the Chinese nation’, ‘Asians’ and ‘global citizens’. Identification with the title ‘nationals of the People’s Republic of China’ was found to be the lowest of all. This is particularly so with Hong Kong’s younger, post-80s generation who have become increasingly politically active since at least 2010; the number of youths who view themselves as ‘Hongkongers’ was about 70 per cent higher than those who identify themselves as Chinese. Indeed the survey on ethnic identity is still ongoing and the latest figures have shown an upward trend in the number of people who view themselves as ‘Hongkongers’. As Lowe and Tsang (2017: 141) argue, “performing Hong Kong ethnicity is, by definition, a strategic means of displaying an ethical  See Kan (2012) for a comprehensive analysis of the national education debate.  The survey was conducted by the Public Opinion Program of the University of Hong Kong. See their press release on 26 June 2012 available online at http://hkupop.hku.hk/ english/release/release937.html (accessed 6 September 2016). 9

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code of values irreconcilable with those in Mainland China”. The Chinese leadership in Beijing is getting increasingly nervous about the former colony’s independent-mindedness. When former Chinese President Hu Jintao visited Hong Kong a couple of years ago, he was greeted by some young Hong Kong Chinese who chanted ‘We are Hongkongers’ and brandished the old colonial flag, which had the Union Jack in the top left-­hand corner. In social semiotics, the flag can be interpreted as a ‘myth’ in Barthes’s 1977: 32–51) terminology, or what Kress and van Leeuwen (2001: 72–74) refer to as a sign that signifies through provenance. They argue that ‘mythical’ signifieds are imported from one domain (in this case, the British colonisation) to signify a mélange of ideas and values (i.e. desirable qualities that are part of the colonial legacy ranging from multi-­party democratic elections to liberal freedoms such as freedom of speech and the press and freedom to protest), which are associated with another domain (in this case, the postcolonial Hong Kong). As with other ‘mythical’ signifiers, the colonial flag evokes a complete discourse in that the separateness of Hong Kong is emphasised; the flag serves as a symbol of Hong Kong’s distinctive existence—unlike the rest of China (Choi 2007)—and that of the protection, prosperity and stability which the British authorities used to deliver. In another opinion poll conducted by a prestigious local English-­ speaking newspaper, South China Morning Post, on the eve of the 15th anniversary of handover, a majority of respondents expressed an ambivalent attitude towards the Chinese nation (So 2012). As Professor Lau Siu-­kai, head of Central Policy Unit of the Hong Kong government, puts it, “[a]s a concept, ‘identity’ is nebulous and multi-dimensional’” (1997: 1). As most of the respondents admitted, while they take pride in China’s athletic excellence in the Olympic Games they despise the dark side of mainland society, including rampant corruption among government officials, crackdown on democracy and human activists and, most importantly, the perceived intentionality to remake the territory in China’s own image. The poll is inconclusive; it seems fair to assume that the fundamental issues of national identity remain highly sensitive and largely unresolved.

3.6   Final Remarks With the change of sovereignty in 1997, the incoming pro-Beijing administration needed to establish a discursive identity for Hong Kong, the new Special Administrative Region of China. This brief survey of Hong Kong’s definitive stamp issues in the post-handover era has attempted to show

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that the authority used postage stamp design and issues to promote an evolving sense of Hong Kong identity and that they did so within a context which emphasised its links with both former British colonisation and recent reunification with the motherland. This discourse constructed Hong Kong citizens as also citizens of the People’s Republic of China. At the same time, however, it tried to maintain a continuity with the previous regime, in order to ensure local and international confidence. Nevertheless, this chapter has shown, in its analysis of the treatment of philatelic themes, that there remains some ambivalence regarding the concepts of integration and ‘mainlandisation’.

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Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1931–1958. Collected writings (8 vols.). Edited by Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss and Arthur W.  Burks. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Reid, Donald. 1984. The symbolism of postage stamps: A source for the historian. Journal of Contemporary History 19 (2): 223–249. Sakhrani, Kashish. 2005a. Changing face of collections. South China Morning Post, 30 August. ———. 2005b. Public puts its stamp on local collections. South China Morning Post, 30 August. Scott, David. 1995. European stamp design: A semiotic approach to designing messages. London: Academy Editions. ———. 2002. The semiotics of the lieu de mémoire: The postage stamp as a site of cultural memory. Semiotica 142: 107–124. Shen, Simon. 2010. Re-branding without re-developing: Constraints of Hong Kong’s ‘Asia’s World City’ branding (1997–2007). The Pacific Review 23 (2): 203–224. So, Peter. 2012. Enduring identity crisis a challenge to resolve. South China Morning Post, 29 June. Steiner, Henry, and Ken Haas. 1995. Cross-cultural design communicating in the global marketplace. London: Thames & Hudson. Sussman, Nan. 2011. Return migration and identity: A global phenomenon, a Hong Kong case. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Turner, Matthew. 1995. Hong Kong sixties/nineties: Dissolving the people. In Hong Kong sixties: Designing identity, ed. Matthew Turner and Irene Ngan, 13–36. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Arts Centre. van Leeuwen, Theo. 2002 [1993]. Genre and field in critical discourse analysis. In Critical Discourse Analysis: Critical concepts in linguistics, ed. Michael Toolan, 166–199. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2005. Introducing social semiotics. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2006. Towards a semiotics of typography. Information Design Journal 14 (2): 139–155. Vickers, Edward, and Flora Kan. 2003. The reeducation of Hong Kong: Identity, politics, and education in postcolonial Hong Kong. American Asian Review XXI (4): 179–228. Wong, Ka-fu, and Carola Ramon-Berjano. 2004. Liberalising the postal service in Hong Kong Post. Hong Kong: Asia Case Research Centre, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Wong, Wendy Siuyi. 2001. Detachment and unification: A Chinese graphic design history in greater China since 1979. Design Issues 17 (4): 51–71. Wong, Wendy S. 2011. Design history and study in East Asia: Part 2 Greater China: People’s Republic of China/Hong Kong/Taiwan. Journal of Design History 24 (4): 375–395. Yang, Nai-Chiang. 2007. Yang’s postage stamp & postal history catalogue of Hong Kong. 22nd ed. Hong Kong: Yang’s Stamp Service.

PART II

Digital Media

CHAPTER 4

Emotional Branding in Multimodal Personal Loan TV Advertisements: Analysing Voices and Engagement

Abstract  By analysing multimodal TV advertisements for personal loan services, this chapter aims to show how Bakhtin’s (Rabelais and his world. Translated by Helene Iswolsky. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968; Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Translated by Caryl Emerson. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984) notion of voices is exploited in advertising discourse to enhance emotional branding (Travis, Emotional branding: how successful brands gain the irrational edge. Roseville, CA: Prima Venture, 2000). The chapter illustrates the multimodal construction of character and discursive voices and demonstrates that these intertextual voices contribute to emotional branding through multimodal engagement strategies. Four representative examples of personal loans TV commercials are examined and the first two of them are proved to be more successful in terms of their deployment of visual semiotic resources to emotionally engage with viewers and thus more effective in emotional branding. It is hoped that the study sheds light on the understanding of the engaging nature of emotional branding, the intersection between intertextual voices and corporate identity and the multimodal construction of voices and engagement. Keywords  Emotional branding • Intertextual voices • Personal loans • Television advertisements • Engagement

© The Author(s) 2019 M. Wong, Multimodal Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15428-8_4

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4.1   Introduction: Corporate Branding and Advertising With the shift from manufactured-based to service-driven economies, post-industrial economies have become more and more semioticised (Lash and Urry 1994); that is to say, the exchange of economic capital is dependent on the promotion of ideas, images and lifestyles. Often, in fact, there is a tendency towards homogenisation of the communicational landscape as a consequence of the increasing power of communication in everyday life and especially of visual communication; as Kress and van Leeuwen rightly points out, “[i]n the era of multimodality semiotic modes other than language are treated as fully capable of serving for representation and for communication” (2001: 46; original emphasis; see also Chap. 1 for full explanation of the social-semiotic account of processes of representation and communication). The quintessential manifestations of this intensification of the semiotics are undoubtedly the discourses of marketing and advertising, commercial practices which rely almost totally on the generation of images, ideas and lifestyles, giving rise to the recent literature on brand semiotics (see, for example, Manning 2010; Oswald 2012), which recognises the powerful potential of semiotics in corporate branding for growing brand value by means of visual, audio and verbal signs realised through the symbolic representation of brand imagery as seen in commercial advertising and logos. Just as Cook (2001: 39) argues in one of the earliest analyses of commercial advertising that advertisements have become a ‘parasite discourse’ (equivalent to ‘hybridised discourse’ used in Rahm 2006), what makes corporate branding particularly available to critical analysis by communication scholars and discourse analysts is that it is so explicitly designed to generate economic capital through the exploitation and creation of symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1991). This chapter examines the various perspectives or ‘voices’ adopted in advertisements, and investigates how they engage with potential customers symbolically in the context of the multimodal and ideological dimensions of advertisements. In keeping with the original use of the term in Bakhtin (1981), voice is used to refer to a multiplicity of resources of dialogic engagement in narrative texts which involve a complex interplay of distinct perspectives or ideologies instantiated by different characters, sometimes including the narrator and the author (see Sect. 4.2.2 for greater elaboration). As semiotic practices, advertising and corporate branding are complex in terms of their organisation and multimodality; as such, a theoretical understanding of any particular text or genre ideally demands a consider-

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ation of a range of discursive elements: medium, mode, situation, participants, functions, rhetorical techniques, co-texts, intertexts, and other genres altogether (Cook 2001: 4). Kress and van Leeuwen (2001: 24) also note that meaning resides not in any image or visual text itself, but rather in the discourses which contextualise and constitute the image or text. In this chapter, I have chosen to isolate the one key and very noticeable feature of corporate branding in the personal loan industry—the discourse of television advertisements—working on the assumption that they are commercially important, publicly available, and conveniently isolated for analysis. Although we do not engage fully with the complete spectrum of the texts used for advertising purposes nor of corporate branding, our discussion focusses on TV advertisements and on ‘emotional branding’—one commonly used type of corporate branding—which frame them in very specific ways to be outlined in the following sub-section. 4.1.1  Background Literature on Emotional Branding Companies have traditionally used emotional appeals in their advertising and promotion efforts to establish and maintain their brands. A brand is a complex entity that basically serves as a product and/or company identifier; it is defined by West et al. as “a name, symbol, word, sign, design or combination that differentiates one or more offerings of a seller or group of sellers from the competition” (2006: 239). Brands have concrete as well as intangible attributes that must be considered holistically, and the key to managing brands effectively is to understand what goes on inside the heads of customers. Daryl Travis (2000), the author of the seminal treatise on emotional branding, remarks that what the brand is expected to signify in the heads of the customers becomes inextricably linked to their perceptions of the corporation, and thus he argues that brand identity and corporate image are integrally linked. One branding expert, Ted Leonhardt, has described “brand” as “an emotional shortcut between a company and its customer.” (Cited in Schneider 2007: 196). As noted above, the identity of a brand is constituted by both concrete and intangible attributes which holistically provide it with direction, purpose and meaning. David Aaker (1996) explains that at its basic level, the brand has a core identity, which is its essence and remains constant, and an extended identity, which focusses on a series of psychological and physical aspects that give it nuance and texture. He goes on to suggest that brand identity is comprised of a dozen dimensions that are grouped around four distinct brand perspectives (brand as product, brand as organisation, brand as per-

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Table 4.1  Comparison of key characteristics in rational and emotional branding (adapted from Holt 2004: 14) Characteristics

Rational branding

Branding Owning functional benefits definition Company’s role Steward Consumer’s role • Ensuring that benefits become salient through repetition • Perceiving benefits when buying and using product/service

Emotional branding Interacting with and building relationships with customers Good friend •  Interaction with brand values • Building a personal relationship

son, and brand as symbol).1 The first two perspectives are more concerned with ‘rational branding’ that relies on the cognitive appeal of the specific help offered by the brand rather than on a broad emotional appeal that the other two perspectives espouse. Rational branding has long existed since the 1970s while emotional branding is a relatively new branding model for three decades or so (Holt 2004: 13). Effectively, the branding model ‘ladders’ up from basic functional properties of the product/service to those softer values, thoughts, and feelings that consumers link to the brand. Together, these two branding models account for virtually every consumer branding initiative today; when corporations seek to build the identity value for their brands, they draw on either one of them or some combination of these two approaches. Table 4.1 compares the key characteristics of these two models in terms of branding definition, company’s role and consumer’s role. Essentially, at the heart of emotional branding is, simply, emotions sell. Gobé (2001) notes that corporations want everything the brand does to be packed with emotion, personality, and experience that a customer will feel and never forget; a brand must emphasise its personality and forge an intimate connection with customers. Emotional Branding provides the means and methodology for connecting products to the consumer in an emotionally profound way. It focusses on the most compelling aspect of the human character; the desire to transcend material satisfaction, and experience emotional fulfillment. A brand is 1  For the record, the twelve dimensions are (1) product scope, (2) product attributes, (3) quality value, (4) uses, (5) users, (6) country of origin, (7) organisation attributes (e.g. innovation, consumer concern, trustworthiness), (8) local vs. global, (9) personality (e.g. genuine, energetic, rugged), (10) brand-customer relationships (e.g. friend, mentor), (11) visual imagery and metaphors, and (12) brand heritage.

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uniquely situated to achieve this because it can tap into the aspirational drives which underlie human motivation. (Gobé 2001: xv)

Hence, one of the most successful ways to build an emotional brand strategy is to create a personality for your brand. Brands have to reflect personalities that people like or have personalities carefully crafted to suit them and their target customers. Temporal (2002: 47) outlines personality characteristics that have proven to be extremely attractive to most people: caring; modern; innovative; warm; independent; strong; honest; experienced; genuine; sophisticated; successful. Thus, great brands usually have an element of emotion in their brand personality and brand vision and build tremendous emotional capital with their strategies.2 The four case studies of personal loans TV advertising that I have chosen in this chapter are unique and representative in that they are quite different in the way that they use emotion in the branding process. Broadly speaking, the first two case studies have some brand personality characteristics that are emotional in nature (see Sect. 4.3) while the other two case studies derive their emotional associations with the consumer by appealing to their anxiety, desires, dreams and fantasies (see Sect. 4.4). The former is driven by its emotional brand personality, as will be outlined shortly, that appeals very much to the feelings of intimacy and déjà vu; the latter first achieves its emotional appeal by bring the emotional dimension to life via ‘experiential branding’—that is, delivering a highly emotional experience to the consumer, and then its cognitive appeal by capturing distinctive brand attributes at the end of the advertisement. Our analysis in the present study therefore seeks to address the following two specific research questions, one directed towards visual analysis, the other towards ideological critique: (a) What are the visual semiotic resources employed in the advertising discourse for personal loan services, and how they are orchestrated to enhance emotional branding? (b) On this basis, how are personal loan financial institutions seen to be discursively managing their corporate identity created by the voices and viewer engagement strategies used in their TV advertisements? 2  Brands that are successfully built around strong emotions in their brand essence include Campbell (soup), Apple (electronic gadgets), Harley-Davidson (motorcycles), Zippo (cigarette lighters), Jack Daniel’s (whiskey), Chrysler (vehicles), Guinness (stout beer), and CocaCola (soft drinks); see Gregory (2004: 76–90); Haig (2011: 168–183); Holt (2004: 22–27) for a comprehensive description of these brands.

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4.2   Methodology: Data and Analytical Approach 4.2.1  Data Selection and Transcription The dataset comprises the entire collection of 28 personal loan TV advertisements produced and broadcast in Hong Kong sampled from January 2010 to December 2012 for promoting a host of loan services from high-­ street banks and local finance companies. While there is generally a taboo on any sort of public mention of borrowing in a Chinese society, the growing trend that people pursue their happiness through material possessions and valued social roles has spawned hundreds of new small personal loan companies in the city (Lo 2016); in fact, the normalisation of consumer lending and high-interest rate financial loan services are becoming increasingly common, garnering attention from discourse and social science researchers using a critical analysis to study the persuasive legitimising strategies for manipulating discourse, emotions and social issues characteristic of personal loan marketing (Brookes and Harvey 2017; Chan and Cheng 2009; Chan et  al. 2017). According to Hong Kong government statistics in 2013 (the year after the sampling period), total personal loans from authorised financial institutions in Hong Kong amounted to HKD222.7 billion, which rose sharply from HKD164.8 in 2010 through HKD187.3  in 2011 to HKD212.2  in 2012, far greater than the amount due to credit card advances, i.e. HKD96 billion as of 2013.3 This growing social phenomenon warrants a systematic investigation of the range of corporate branding strategies exploited by the loan companies in order to unravel the consumption appeals salient in their TV commercials and how they engage with the viewer through intertextual voices (see Sect. 4.2.2). Unscrupulous advertising tactics aside (Hong Kong Consumer Council 2002), these loan companies tend to create a corporate image that is friendly and easily accessible to lure potential customers. As will be demonstrated, their television ads often adopt the strategies of the most private discourse with the voice of the ad being one of friendship, trust and respect, epitomising the operation of emotional branding. Against this backdrop, this chapter is an attempt to report on our experience with four representative television commercials from the personal loans category comprising four disparate financial enterprises (in 3  Available at: http://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/201305/29/P201305290473.htm (accessed 10 September 2016).

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alphabetical order), namely, Hang Seng Bank, Prime Credit, Promise and United Asia Finance Limited, the last three of which constituted “top three advertisers” and “together accounted for 53% of personal loan advertising expenditure in all media” in 2015 (Chan et  al. 2017: 104). These advertisements were selected with the aim of representing as widely as possible (a) the type of the endorsing company (i.e. a Hong Kong offshoot of an overseas corporation such as Promise and United Asia Finance Limited; vs a locally founded small-scale private firm e.g. Prime Credit; vs an established, reputable financial institution such as Hang Seng Bank); (b) the peculiarities in their patterns of intertextual voices, viewer engagement and branding strategies (see Sects. 4.3 and 4.4). The multimodal transcription of the data was informed by Baldry (2004), Baldry and Thibault (2006), Bateman and Schmidt (2011), Dash et al. (2016), Iedema (2001), Lim and O’Halloran (2012), O’Halloran (2004), O’Halloran and Lim (2009), Tan (2009), and Thibault (2000), all of which address the intersemiosis of linguistic, visual and auditory modalities in film and TV advertising research. Since film analysis involves a phase-wise segmentation of dynamic texts as advocated in these previous studies (see, in particular, Baldry and Thibault 2006; Dash et  al. 2016; Lim and O’Halloran 2012), the basic unit of transcription and analysis used in this research study is a shot (or ‘frame’ in Lim and O’Halloran (2012) and O’Halloran and Lim (2009)’s terminology) for analysing the dynamic filmic narratives realised in the television advertisements by segmenting them into a sequence of static images for close inspection. Shots combine to form scenes, which refer to the shots of different people or objects participating in one and the same interaction (Metz 1974: 103). A scene makes up a complete semantic unit of a single time-space “culturally recognised activity type” (Levinson 1992: 69), such as ‘talking at dinner’, ‘meeting a friend’ and so on. The present study does not give a second-to-­ second transcription because there are normally only three or four scenes in a 30-second advertisement and there is usually little panning, tracking, zooming, and so forth. As Thibault (2000: 337) remarks, “the aim of transcription should be to note down with a fair degree of parsimony only those features which are strictly relevant to the purpose of subsequent analysis”. Similarly, when considering the appropriate layout in a multimodal transcript, Jewitt et  al. suggest that “a sequence of stills can be shown to mark the moment-by-moment shifts in unfolding interaction” (2016: 148; see also Bezemer and Mavers 2011). Hence, in this study, the shots are represented by selected frames and accompanied by visual (i.e.

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images) and aural (i.e. on-screen dialogue and/or music) transcription in two parallel columns. The scenes are numbered in Arabic numerals and the shots in Roman alphabet and they will be called shot 1a, shot 2b, etc. 4.2.2   Data Analysis: Voices and Engagement The data selected and transcribed was then analysed in terms of voice, a central concept in Bakhtin’s (1968, 1984) theory of communication. The voices within a text may be described as those of different people or, alternatively, as those of other genre or discourse types. With particular reference to TV advertisements, Feng and Wignell (2011: 568) term the first type character voice and the second type discursive voice. In their study, character voice refers to the language and visual resources employed by characters created in an advertisement whereas discursive voice refers to the conventional features of certain discourse type, including both the styles/ structures it typically uses and the social practice it typically represents. For the former, each discourse type is associated with a specific “domain of knowledge” or “subject matter” (Fairclough 1992: 128) and thus has its own discursive features; for instance, scientific discourse is characterised by nominalisation and passivisation. For the latter, when a discourse type recontextualises social practices that do not typically belong to its realm, it borrows the ‘voice’ from other situations; for example, the social practice of ‘meeting a friend’ often appears in advertisements. Both character and discursive voices are examples of intertextual voices, i.e. voices external to those uttered directly by the corporation and voice-overs (the seller voice). As a discourse strategy, intertextual voices function to enhance the credibility of advertising claims, reduce the commercial nature of advertisements and increase the desirability of the product/service advertised through the manipulation of viewers’ attitudes and behaviour. Moreover, all of the four advertisements under investigation were also analysed in terms of their engagement strategies and values proposed in Martin and White (2005) and Feng and Wignell (2011). Based on Bakhtin’s (1968, 1984) theory of voice, Martin and White’s (2005: 102ff) engagement system is devised for investigating evaluative devices used in linguistic text. In their model, intertextual voices can be broadly subsumed into ‘expansion’ and ‘contraction’; the distinction revolves around the degree to which alternative voices are allowed or restricted by the author of the text. As will be demonstrated in Sect. 4.3, both expansion and contraction are used to engage with the advertised message, predominantly in the forms of ‘attribution’ and ‘endorsement’ respectively. Feng and

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Wignell (2011: 570) argue that engagement entails a continuum depicting different degrees of engagement which, roughly speaking, can be high, median and low. They suggest that the degree of engagement can be construed as the extent to which the advertisement recontextualises the intertextual voices; the more thoroughly the advertising discourse recontextualises the intertextual voices, the more it engages with them. In other words, the engagement value is high when there is a great deal of recontextualisation between the intertextual relations among different voices/ social practices and the advertised message. It is worth noting that the concept of recontextualisation was originally proposed by Bernstein (1990). He argues that “semantic representations selectively appropriate, relocate, refocus and relate to other discourses to constitute their own order and orderings” (Bernstein 1990: 184). Theo van Leeuwen (2008) broadens this concept and proposes that all discourses are recontextualisations of social practice, in line with Foucault’s sense of discourse as “socially constructed knowledge of (some aspects of) social practice” (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001: 4). In this sense, advertising discourse presents a fictional situation in which different characters come into being, engaging in all sorts of social practices, and diminishes the extent of direct propaganda by “letting characters speak for themselves” (Cook 2001: 190). It also provides a site where various intertextual resources interact with the viewer in the process of recontextualisation (Kress and Threadgold 1988: 216). Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) framework of interactive meaning in multimodal texts was therefore employed to investigate the advertisements’ viewer engagement/alignment. Viewer engagement can be constructed with different semiotic resources, especially with gaze, shot distance and camera angle. According to Kress and van Leeuwen (2006), these three resources construct interactive meanings of contact (offer and demand), social distance and subjectivity (power/solidarity and involvement/detachment). We now turn to the next section in which we will explore the way in which intertextual voices and engagement strategies are used to enhance emotional branding.

4.3   How Character Voices, Discursive Voices and Viewer Engagement Work with Emotional Branding In this section, we discuss two TV commercials at length, both of which feature a brand representative and ordinary people as lead characters.

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Table 4.2  United Asia (UA) Finance Limited advertisement Shot Visual image

Visual depiction

Sound transcription

1a

The brand representative (BR) gets off the mini-bus and bumps into the couple.

BR: Hello, have you moved into your new home yet?

1b

The wife (W) thanks the loan company UA for lending them money to buy a new apartment.

W: The House Owner Special loan offered by UA has helped us to buy our property.

1c

She is worried about not having enough money to pay for the costs of renovating their property.

W: But we still need to pay for the home renovation.

1d

The brand representative is BR: You can take out a advising them what to do. mortgage on an old house owned by your husband’s father.

1e

She gives a worried look and inquires how she can pay off their credit card debts.

W: And, how can we deal with the credit card debts?

1f

Again, the brand representative is advising them what to do.

BR: You can apply for a second mortgage loan after the old house is mortgaged.

The source of voice in the first example (see Table 4.2)4 arises from a combination of brand representative, husband and wife. The identities of the characters are mainly constructed through visual analytical processes. The identity of the brand representative (i.e. carrier) is visually represented by the symbolic attribute of her uniform whereas the identity of the couple is symbolically represented via the visual imagery of the pushchair where their newborn baby is placed (see Kress and van Leeuwen 2006: 105–107). The voices work together to construct a coherent and effective multi4  Due to copyright reasons, the images of the television advertisements are not reproduced here but appear as illustrations only.

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modal discourse, as will be discussed below. All the shots are taken at the same scene where the brand representative stumbles across the couple and strikes up a conversation with them. The conversation revolves around the couple’s financial situation (i.e. their newly bought property and the costs incurred and their credit card debts). The brand representative then gives them some advice. Unlike a formal meeting between experts and clients, the entire atmosphere of the talk is warm and friendly. In the background there is a sentimental musical sound track that opines, “So darlin’, darlin’ stand by me, oh stand by me …,”5 suggesting a tremendous sense of camaraderie. While it is less defined in its denotation, there is no doubt that music is rich in connotations and pragmatic/ social functions (Bauer 2000; Reitan 1991; van Leeuwen 1999). Certain tonalities always express certain feelings and moods—for example, C major stands for common rejoicing, while F minor stands for lamentation or sorrow (Nattiez 1990: 125). Connotations of music may be described in the broadest terms as signifying or creating ‘positive’ (e.g. joyousness) or ‘negative’ (e.g. heartbreak) feelings. While it is fair to say that a certain type of music may evoke a certain mood, more specific reactions will vary not only between social groups, but also between and within individuals. Cook (2001: 50) suggests that music has connotations that “are at once both predictable and also vague and variable”. Since the elicited associations brought about by a given piece of music are so elusive and personal, they are often reinforced by the discourse in which the piece of music is used supposedly to express a particular symbolic meaning. As will be outlined shortly following a brief overview of the second advertisement, the music—along with intertextual voices and viewer alignment—appears to epitomise desirable human character traits as a way of enhancing the emotional appeal of a personal loan service. In the second example (see Table 4.3), the source of voice is less complex since it is monologue rather dialogue that takes place in the advert. The television ad takes the form of a dairy or an anecdote (Labov and Waletzky 1967), in which a man relates what he observes every day in his neighbourhood and somewhere in the vicinity of his office. The man in the midst of jogging brings us to the first scene where a kind act is being performed by a young girl to help an elderly woman to push a trolley load 5  As stated in its Wikipedia entry, Stand by me is a song originally performed by Ben E. King in 1961. Since then it has been covered by other singers the world over. The sound track used in the advert is a cover version.

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Table 4.3  Promise advertisement Shot Visual image

Visual depiction

1a

A young man (M) is jogging.

1b

The man sees a young girl (G) helping an old woman to push her trolley full of cardboard boxes. The young girl is working in the office, wearing company uniform.

2

Sound transcription

G: Let me help you. M: The girl looks so nice.

M: She is always helping people, no matter what. She is caring and thoughtful.

3a

The man is helping a boy M: Her kind-heartedness who has slipped on the is contagious and has ground. influenced all the people around her.

3b

The young girl is cheering up the injured boy with her company mascot.

G: Come on, give me a smile!

3c

She is smiling pleasantly at the boy.

M: Why is she always helping others?G: I feel happy every time I help others. It feels so good!

of cardboard boxes up a steep pavement. Scene 2 depicts the built environment of an office in which the girl is shown to be sitting and working in front of her computer and at times talking to her colleagues wearing the same uniform as her. Scene 3 is a playground where the man eats his lunch and sees a young boy fall off his skateboard and injure his leg. He immediately comes to the rescue, as does the same girl in the previous two scenes, coming out of nowhere. The last shot is a close-up of her, smiling cheerfully at the boy. The appeal of these two TV adverts consists in the construal of the brand as a person. The brand is infused with particular personality traits,

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i.e., compassionate, responsible, genuine and kind, and the personal relationships between the brand and the customers are those of a friend, acquaintance, etc. Hence the brand here can be seen as a person with a distinct and identifiable personality that may provide the basis for a more intriguing and lasting relationship than a brand whose identity is based primarily on service attributes (see Sect. 4.4). A brand is much more than just a signifier; as portrayed in these adverts, it is a friend that you can count on. One of the basic tenets of emotional branding, as Gobé (2001: xxx) suggests, is that “[i]dentity is recognition” and “[p]ersonality is about character and charisma”, adding credence to the commonality between these two TV advertisements that brand personalities are special and have a charismatic character that provokes an emotional response from the viewer. In the first case study, the brand representative is shown to greet the young couple as soon as she alights from the public means of transportation and immediately engage them in a personal dialogue about their newly bought apartment, indicative of a sign that the financial institution she represents really seeks to understand and appreciate who their customers are. Emotional branding is a means of creating a personal dialogue with consumers on the issues which are most meaningful to them. The first TV advert therefore demonstrates that the brand knows its customers intimately and individually, with a solid understanding of their needs. From the conversation between the brand representative and the couple, we have learned that the loan service helps (and will help) the couple in a number of ways from buying their first property to supplying funds for extensive renovations to be carried out on their new property and for paying off their credit card debts. Thus the advertisers stress that the brand provides services that are socially sensitive and have presence at all points of contact in people’s lives. Throughout the entire conversation, the female brand representative is placed at eye level. The viewer and viewed interact at the same level. This angle sends the message that ‘she is one of us’, which involves the viewer in a much more personal way. The ad places her at ‘close personal distance’ (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006: 125), zooming in to show her head and shoulders. When one confides in a close friend in an intimate talk, one’s vision captures this much of the other’s body. The female model presents a frontal angle, suggesting affinity with the viewer and the advertiser’s wish to make the viewer feel equal to this character. All this constitutes a clear brand vision which emphasises that understanding people’s emotional needs and desires is of paramount

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importance, and sends out a clear message that the loan company advertised vows to take definite steps towards building strong connections and relationships which recognise their customers as partners—as the tagline goes at the end of the ad, ‘Your great partner, UA!’. Similar engagement strategies can be found in the second case study. The brand representative—again, a pretty young lady—is shown at eye level and at a ‘close personal distance’ in Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006: 125) visual interactive model so that we take in the head and the shoulders of the female model. There are a few camera shots taken at an intimate distance from which we can see the face or head only, forging a very close bond between the viewer and the brand she presents. The fact that she is often shown from an oblique angle may be a deliberate choice by the advertisers who wish to make the viewer engage with her from the same perspective of the lead character voice. There are two points worth noting about the two episodes of lending a hand to people in need: (i) they help to establish that a brand comes to life for people by the personality of the company staff behind it and the staff’s unequivocal commitment to reaching people on an emotional level; (ii) trust needs to be earned—as depicted in this ad, brands are like kind-hearted people who are nice to be with, good to have around, and are consistent in what whey give to other people. When combined with the personal distance from which the female model is viewed, the television ad conveys the message that trust is somewhat engaging and intimate and that it is what you would expect from a friend and therefore represents one of the most important values of a brand that requires real effort from corporations. In both of the TV advertisements for personal loan services, character voices construct two general propositions: (a) the characters believe that the service is good and helpful (attribution); and (b) this belief, based on personal experience or observation, demonstrates to the viewer that the service is worth recommending (endorsement). While it might be easy to understand how characters take a positive stance through the engagement system featured in Martin and White (2005), the mechanism of emotional branding is somewhat subtle and can only be gleaned from the way in which the characters are involved in fabricated lifelike situations with which the viewer may identify. For instance, in the first television ad, the young couple and their lived event of being in dire need of financial aid for their newborn baby invites viewers to enter into a fictional world and identify with their predicament. It is assumed in emotional branding that customers want to deal with corporations that are responsive and sensitive to

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their needs (Gobé 2001: 29); they tend to choose brands that understand them and reflect their needs. Not surprisingly, the ability of keeping an extravagant lifestyle (e.g. going on a shopping spree or a holiday) is a recurring theme in the personal loan advertisements in my data. The success of these two advertisements therefore builds on the fact that consumers often discriminate between the companies that reflect their values and those that do not. It is the kind of understanding and empathy on the part of the financial institution that leads to real emotional contact with its service. The advertisers clearly fine tune their focus on the consumer psyche and understand the importance of the constantly evolving trends in their consumers’ lifestyles. The persuasive power of emotional branding also comes from the discursive voice in these adverts in the form of a private discourse type (an unexpected encounter with a friend and anecdotal evidence) which makes viewers feel that they are in intimate relation with the financial service provider. This aspect of manipulation is reinforced by the naturalistic modality of the moving images which lends further credence to the social practices/narratives represented.

4.4   Hybridity in Branding Strategies and Its Impact on Viewer Engagement As noted above, the engagement strategies deployed in personal loan TV advertisements are quite straightforward: the advertisers attribute their claims to intertextual characters and discourses and the intertextual voices endorse the advertisers’ claims through the engagement system laid down in Martin and White (2005). Under Feng and Wignell’s system of engagement values, the two personal loan TV adverts under scrutiny in the ­preceding section should be considered as highly engaging in the sense that the plot involving both the characters and their lifelike situations entailing a direct, personalised and private dialogue among the intertextual voices becomes an inseparable part of the advertisement. On the other hand, most advertisements in my data, including the two adverts to be considered in this section, are less engaging. The degree of recontextualisation (and thus the engagement value) is median as there is usually a distinct episode of service pledges at the end of the ad. In this sense, the character voices and the appropriated social practices merely provide a ‘context of situation’ for introducing the loan service and appealing to the consumers (rather than the characters in the ads) emotionally,

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and then the seller voice takes over the job to highlight rational factors of using the service. This is unlike the two highly engaging adverts discussed in Sect. 4.3 where the intertextual voices speak for the service itself. Yet, median engagement value of advertising does not mean that intertextual voices are neutralised; they undoubtedly endorse the advertised service, albeit through other means such as rhetorical structure. Two principal kinds of rhetorical structure will be discussed in this section: the first draws on a warrant offered recurrently by most adverts that the product/service is a solution to a problem (Cook 2001: 49; Dyer 1982: 168–169), while the second comes from the fundamental structure of narratives, which is ‘dream come true’—it functions on the level of a day-dream/fantasy that viewers are able to make those desires that remain unsatisfied in their everyday life come true on the condition that they sign up to the loan service (O’Halloran et al. 2013; Vestergaard and Schroder 1985: 117). In the following, a detailed analysis of these two kinds of rhetorical structure will be provided using two additional examples of personal loan advertising. The aim is to prove that emotional branding with either the ‘problem-­ solution’ or ‘dream come true’ rhetorical structure can be combined with rational branding in terms of direct propaganda in the advertising of personal loan services, and to demonstrate that such kind of hybridity may have an impact on the strategies of viewer engagement. The first example (see Table 4.4) recontextualises a familiar social practice (‘shopping in a store’) and uses a problem-solution pattern to endorse the loan service. The narrative structure (orientation^complication^resol ution) is beginning to emerge (see Martin and Plum 1997) as the story unfolds. The story is that the young couple browse in a furniture store (orientation) and suddenly realise that they are short of money to purchase all the household items they need (complication). As a result, the couple look very worried and befuddled, which is the problem. The brand representative appears and tells them about the personal loan service offered by Hang Seng Bank, which is the solution. The brand representative’s identity and the bank she works for are co-­ constructed by the visual resources of analytical process (business attire) and verbal process (selling the loan service). The discursive voice endorses the service because it helps the couple to solve the problem. Understanding the ad from the ‘change in states’ perspective that is commonly used in narrative, we could say that the service causes the situation to change from bad to good. The change is constructed by the multimodal narrative sequence. Linguistically, contrast is formed in the utterance of shot 1c

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Table 4.4  Hang Seng Bank advertisement Shot Visual image

Visual depiction

Sound transcription

1a

A man (M) and a woman (W) walk into a furniture store, holding hands.

W: There are a lot of things we haven’t bought for our new home.M: It’s no big deal.

1b

The woman looks at her W: We haven’t bought tablet computer and starts the sofa, the TV cabinet going through the list of and the wardrobe. household items she has to buy.

1c

The man and woman exchange a worried look.

W: But we are already going over budget.

1d

The brand representative (BR) comes out of nowhere, providing a solution to the couple’s problem.

BR: Hang Seng personal loan can help you. Low interest rates, it’s done by phone, and we promise same day approval.

1e

The woman looks at the man and smiles.

W: Let’s ring up and apply for the loan now!

(‘going over budget’) and shot 1e (‘ring up and apply for the loan now’); visually, in shot 1c, the woman gives a worried look while in shot 1e, she is smiling happily after learning of the service. The second example (see Table 4.5) is made up of various discursive practices such as ‘family discourse’ and ‘business discourse’, constructed by visual resources of participants (e.g. husband and wife), processes (e.g. hearing the heartbeat of their unborn child) and circumstances (e.g. cosy

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home setting, pictures of babies on the wall, teddy bears, etc.). Although the characters are largely muted (except for shot 4), the background music functions to connect the discursive voices under the same theme ‘You’re in my heart’. The narrative stage of the advertisement first tells the story of the couple who are eagerly awaiting the arrival of their baby (scene 1). Next, it moves on to the success story of two young entrepreneurs who launch their own fashion business (scene 2). Then, it portrays the event in Table 4.5  Prime Credit advertisement Shot Visual image

Visual depiction

Sound transcription

1

The husband is putting headphones onto the abdomen of his expectant wife. The two men are looking at pictures telling their business success story. The middle-aged couple are seeing their daughter off at the airport.

Music: You are in my heart, whatever you do I’ll help you to move on.

The wife (W) is looking at her husband (M), asking him a question. The brand representative (BR) is selling the Prime Credit debt consolidation mortgage.

Music: You are in my heart. W: Are you sure you want to remortgage our house? M: It’s well worth it.

2

3

4

5a

5b

The brand representative puts his hand on his heart.

Music: Whatever you choose, for you, I’m more than just a friend, I’ll care for you all the times [sic.]. Music: You are in my heart, I know you, I feel you.

Music: Oh baby, all so amazing, you are in my heart.BR: Whatever your reason for a remortgage, I’ll put my heart and soul into getting the lowest monthly flat rate and the highest loan possible. Music: Forever, you are in my heart.BR: I’ll also guarantee 48-hour approval.

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which two parents are standing in front of the departure gate at the airport, seeing off their daughter going abroad to study (scene 3). At the end of the narrative stage, the same couple appearing in the first scene chime in with their view of endorsing the service. The advertising message is now crystal clear: all those desires are satisfied or dreams realised through the loan service. The last shot of the ‘hand on heart’ gesture is powerful in supporting the advertising claim in the sense that it is symbolic of pledging vows and acting sincerely and wholeheartedly, tallying perfectly with the strong overtones of care and support in the entire TV commercial. Obviously, emotional branding is at work—both cases appeal to potential customers emotionally as they apparently display the needs and expectations of the customer. The two adverts are connecting well with target customers by portraying a view of reality that is full of customer wish fulfillment rather than advertiser wish fulfillment; after all, people have a universal longing to be given attention and to have their wishes fulfilled. When it comes to brand identity however, it appears that these two ads construe the nature of the brand as the embodiment of the services associated with it, rather than the manifestation of personality traits as in the two case studies mentioned in the previous section. The brand is better thought of as a service or a package of services with distinctive attributes that provide the bases for quality/value propositions. Moreover, these television ads entail strong associations between occasions for use and the brand as well as brand associations with particular types or groups of consumers, clearly adopting the ‘brand as product’ perspective in Aaker’s (1996) brand identity model which focusses primarily on uses and users. Overall, the branding strategy in these two examples works in this way: the ­functional and/or emotional benefits of the services advertised form the basis for the development of a positive brand value proposition that results in the building of credibility in the eyes of the customer that, in turn, leads to a meaningful relationship between the brand and the customer. As Travis (2000: 170) puts it, “[c]ommunicating facts with feeling makes the facts live like fire”. Emotional branding strategies move people to want things and look for solutions to achieve what they want. Emotion creates desire as well as anxiety, and can be very powerful indeed. Branding without emotion tends to be less persuasive and lack motivation. The emotional scenes of satisfied customers, the character and discursive voices, shown in the adverts thus serve as good ‘point of departure’ for introducing service scope, attributes and applications as well as quality/value associations with the brand. This is reminiscent of the opposition between

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‘ideal’ and ‘real’ in print advertisements (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006: 186–193): the main body of the TV advert is presented as the ideal, the realm of the consumers’ supposed aspirations and desires whereas at the end of the ad more specific, more ‘down-to-earth’ information about the service advertised is presented, with service attributes placed firmly in the realm of the real, as a solid foundation for the edifice of promise. This emotive kind of idealisation in the bulk of the advertisement is an essential element of emotional branding; the idealised information helps to establish important associations in the minds of target consumers and these associations facilitate the building of their positive feelings and attitudes towards the brands. However, rational branding takes over at the end of the advertisement, spelling out distinctive attributes of the brands. In a word, emotions appeal to the heart in the main body of the ad, rational factors to the head at the end of it. This combined, hybrid approach is based on the assumption that consumers are thinking with both their heart and their head when choosing a service. The two TV adverts illustrate that emotion sells and emotional branding can be used to set the scene for selling desires, dreams and fantasies, followed by rational branding which is tasked with offering a solution-as-promise and helping the customers to live out their dreams. While consumers screen the rational elements of quality and other compelling product attributes as part of the buying process, the real decision to buy is taken at an emotional level. Such hybridity in branding strategies employed in these two TV commercials has an impact on the multimodal construction of viewer engagement. As mentioned earlier in Sect. 4.2.2, viewer engagement is constructed multimodally through gaze, shot distance and camera angle. In the emotional, narrative stage of the two adverts, the absence of gaze serves to convince the viewer that the emotional stories are objective reality that most of us would experience at different points of our lives. In the rational, propaganda stage, on the other hand, the brand representative who gazes pleasantly at the viewer is demanding action form a potential customer. The symbolic contact/interaction between the brand representative and the viewer changes viewer position from observer (third person) to interactant (second person) and hence engages him or her. In terms of social distance, while the narrative stage uses a large variety of camera angles ranging from long and medium shots to close and intimate shots, the propaganda stage mainly uses close shots to construct a close relationship with the viewer. However, in terms of camera angle, eye-level angle is consistently used in both narrative and propaganda stages, constructing character-viewer equality and inviting the viewer to identify with the char-

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acter—be it a couple, business partners, parents or the brand representative. The three visual devices work together to position the viewers and engage them for optimal effect of persuasion.

4.5   Conclusion Branding is an emotional process that strikes a strong emotional chord with consumers. Therefore, brand management is increasingly turning more to the emotional side of strategy in order to win and keep customers. We have examined four case studies of personal loan advertising which demonstrate two ways of managing a brand. The first way focusses on building emotional appeals into the TV commercials, which are used to spur emotionally charged relationships with customers whereas the second way presents emotional appeals of various abstract, subjective associations that consumers attribute to the loan service, supported with the objective reality of the service attributes and rational arguments. Intertextual voices and engagement strategies have been proved to be useful for enhancing these two ways of promoting emotional branding. In the first two case studies, the personal aspect of the loan company is foregrounded by being intrinsically linked to a real individual—a young pretty female brand representative, who is a major character voice in the TV advert, engaging with other character voices that are ordinary people at a close personal distance in private discourse types such as conversations between friends and day-to-day anecdotes interwoven with one’s inner thoughts. The brand is therefore a fully developed personality, with a ­variety of traits such as unpretentiousness, kindness, confidence, genuineness and honesty appealing to consumers. In the other two case studies, different discursive voices that typically represent a range of social practices that consumers can easily identify with are deployed to conjure up emotions (e.g. anxieties, desires) and fantasies. The character voices are shown to interact with themselves and to offer themselves as ‘objects of contemplation’, inspiring strong emotions with the viewer. The seller voice embodied in the brand representative steps in and takes over at the end of the television ad, addressing the viewer directly at a far personal distance and presenting the facts and figures about the personal loan services that appeal to the rational thinking of the consumer. The present study has thus demonstrated that emotional branding, intertextual voices and engagement are true brand alchemists that transform once-taboo personal loan services into something worthy of trust, comfort, desire, even devotion.

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CHAPTER 5

The Discourse of Advertising for Luxury Residences in Hong Kong: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract  This chapter documents the operation of multimodal strategies in the discursive construction of social actors, social actions and legitimations in luxury property advertising discourse, with a focus on the interplay between verbal and visual modes. It describes how advertising discourse exploits the inclusion of Caucasian models and their depiction as a culturally homogeneous group endowed with hedonistic, opulent lifestyle identities through their social actions in order to market a luxury residence. It is argued that legitimations are put in place to enhance the persuasive power of the advertising discourse, with particular reference to the symbolic values of luxury products in general, the rationalisation of knowledges of habitual social actions, and the narratives that target recipients of the ads who are hailed as intellectual buyers. It is hoped that the analysis demonstrates that such ideologies are very effectively studied through their multimodal realisations, where the visual mode, in particular, can draw on and reproduce stereotyped representations. Keywords  Television advertisements • Luxury property • Multimodal critical discourse analysis • Lifestyle identities • Discourse of legitimation

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5.1   Introduction The practice of home purchasing is embedded in extensive social discourse, which both constructs the need for such a practice as well as legitimises it in terms of norms and values imposed from the contemporary society. In the context of Hong Kong, particularly, where the current study is situated, Cheung and Ma (2005) demonstrate how idealised lifestyles are naturalised through property advertisements, where luxurious five-star hotel interior design experience is repeatedly advertised as an essential element of modern living, alluding to the aspiration to the lifestyle of the affluent bourgeoisie (Rooney 2001: 58). Undoubtedly, we live in a vibrant, consumerist, capitalist society in which advertising is viewed as “an agency of socialisation. It promoted more than just a product; it transmitted cultural values of an advertiser’s own design” (Vinikas 1992: 22). An enduring classification of advertising technique is that between reason and tickle (Bernstein 1974: 118). Reason ads motivate purchase by providing objective facts and rational arguments. Tickle ads, on the other hand, appeal to emotion and sensory experience. Not surprisingly, “luxuries lend themselves to soft, tickle selling” (Cook 2001: 16). In the hope of unravelling the discourse of (and about) idealised, luxurious living, in this paper, I analyse a sample of television commercials that are used to communicate both explicit and implicit messages and meanings, reflecting the underlying ideologies that are shaped and promoted in the society. The goal of this paper is to deconstruct the representation of social actors, social actions and legitimations in the discourse of luxury property advertising. The next section provides a brief overview of the theoretical foundations of social semiotics in which the current study is situated. It is followed by a description of the advertising material used as data in this paper and outlines the methodology adopted for analysing these advertising texts (Sect. 5.3). The discussion of the results of the detailed analysis of the television ads appears in Sect. 5.4, where we describe the main visual and linguistic characteristics of the texts under analysis. Finally, Sect. 5.5 considers the main conclusions of the study.

5.2   Theoretical Approaches Situating the current study in the research paradigm of social-semiotic theory (see Chap. 1 for the four fundamental theoretical assumptions of the theory and its application in the representation and communication of

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visual texts), Kress and van Leeuwen’s (e.g. 2001) notion of discourse is at the heart of my analysis of advertising discourse in property marketing materials. They define discourses in Foucault’s (e.g. 1977) sense as “socially constructed knowledges of (some aspect) of reality […] developed in specific social contexts and in ways which are appropriate to the interests of the social actors in these contexts” (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001: 4). This is in stark contrast to the linguistic tradition of construing discourse as an extended stretch of connected speech or writing (see, for example, Harris 1952). Theo van Leeuwen stresses that “knowledge is selective, and what it selects depends on the interests and purposes of their institutions that have fostered the knowledge” (van Leeuwen 2005a: 109). He also underlines that in this situation, “discourses consist of a version of a social practice plus ideas about it and attitudes to it” (van Leeuwen 2005a: 106; original emphasis). Discourses do not represent only the activities or what is going on, but they also evaluate them, ascribe purposes to them and justify them. As Machin and van Leeuwen (2007: 61) put it, “discourses not only constitute (selective and transformed) versions of social practices, they also legitimate (or de-legitimate, critique) the practices which they recontextualise”. As discourses are some aspects of knowledge of social practices, it can be used as resources for representing social practices in text. By the same token, it is possible to reconstruct discourses from the texts that draw on them. According to van Leeuwen (2008: chap. 1), there are four basic types of transformation where elements of a social practice such as social actors (van Leeuwen 1996), social actions (van Leeuwen 1995), times (van Leeuwen 2005b) and locations/spaces are recontextualised into and selectively communicated in texts which realise a particular discourse; reality is re-presented in text through substitutions, inclusions/exclusions, rearrangements and additions (see also van Leeuwen 2005a: 110–112). Furthermore, there are many ways in which these elements of social practices can be represented. For example, social actors can be represented as individuals (individualisation) or as a group (assimilation). Their identity can be defined in terms of what they do (functionalisation) and/or what they are (identification). The social actors’ reactions can be specified as affective or cognitive. On the other hand, social actions can be activated, represented dynamically, or deactivated, represented statistically. Legitimations (van Leeuwen 2007), purposes (van Leeuwen 2000a) and evaluations (van Leeuwen 2000b) can be added to the representation of social actions. In my analysis, I adopt van Leeuwen’s categories and apply

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them multimodally. For reasons of space and in order to avoid repetition and overlapping, these categories will be explained in greater depth when they become relevant to the discussion.

5.3   Data and Methodology The research was carried out by collecting TV commercials about luxury property in Hong Kong during the years 2008 to 2012. Altogether, we collected forty-three TV advertisements. The material was considered from the perspective of multimodal analysis (Baldry 2005; Baldry and Thibault 2006; Jewitt 2009; Kress 2010; Kress and van Leeuwen 2006; O’Halloran 2004; van Leeuwen 2005a, 2011; Thibault 2000) that stems from the tradition of critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 1989, 1992, 2007), particularly with respect to the link between discourses and underlying ideologies (Djonov and Zhao 2014). As will be discussed in Sect. 5.4, the advertising texts affirm and perpetuate ideologies that centre on lifestyle identities which underlie global consumerism. More often than not, the ideologies are imparted by dominant social groups in power and are internalised by the ordinary people as commonsensical knowledge, as ‘the way things are’. Fairclough defines ideology “as a modality of power [that] contrasts with various ‘descriptive’ views of ideology as positions, attitudes, beliefs, perspectives, etc. of social groups without reference to relations of power and domination between such groups” (Fairclough 2003: 9; see also Fairclough 2007; Fairclough et al. 2007). Uncovering the workings of such underlying ideologies is, in fact, the main aim of critical discourse analysis; specifically, it is seen as a tool to show “how social structures determine properties of discourse, and how discourse in turn determines social structures” (Fairclough 1995: 27). The main reason for ‘adopting multimodality’ (Jewitt et al. 2016: 5–6) in this analysis is that it helps to reveal how various semiotic modes are orchestrated systematically in creating meaning as well as how they facilitate the communication of underlying knowledge structures and ideologies. The (inter)disciplinary interest of critical discourse studies in text and talk has, historically, meant that non-linguistic and para-linguistic modes of communication—including, inter alia, gesture and the semiotics of action, visual analysis and music—have tended to be under explored. On the contrary, there is a fundamental assumption in multimodality that “each mode is partial in relation to the whole of meaning” (Kress and Jewitt 2003: 3). A multimodal approach is particularly necessary when it

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comes to analysing advertisements as it explores the interplay between various semiotic modes without privileging either the verbal or the visual aspect of the message; Guy Cook pioneers multimodal advertising research in stating that “advertising, unlike analysis, operates in all modes and media at once, and must be treated accordingly” (Cook 2001: 44). Kress and van Leeuwen (2001: 3) explain that a multimodal approach can show how meaning produced by a certain semiotic mode can be realised differently in other semiotic modes. Therefore, the next section consists of presenting the analysis and results of the sample of multimodal texts collected for luxury residences in Hong Kong used by property developers in order to advertise on prime-time television.

5.4   Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of Luxury Property TV Commercials In the following, I will describe the discursive construction of social actors, social actions and legitimations in luxury property TV commercials. The multimodal analysis of these categories is structured on the basis of van Leeuwen’s (2008) Visual Social Actor Network, Social Action Network and Legitimation Theory. 5.4.1  Social Actors In van Leeuwen’s (2008) Visual Social Actor Network and its central question ‘How are people depicted?’ (van Leeuwen 2008: 137), this network starts with Inclusion/Exclusion: who is represented and who is not. In any discourse, there is always the possibility of exclusion, the possibility of not including specific people or kinds of people in recontextualistions of social practices. Such kind of social exclusion carries a symbolic meaning in which the existence of certain people or kinds of people is deemed unimportant or irrelevant to the discourse of advertising where the representation of reality is selectively and deliberately controlled to serve the interests of advertisers. In this study, nearly all of the models featuring in luxury property advertising are non-Asian and most likely from European countries (see Fig. 5.1a and b). Hong Kong society tends to regard westerners and western culture and lifestyle as elitist, and show an interest in embracing globalisation. This is perhaps inevitable as a result of the global phenomenon that consumerist practices and privileges of the elite are ­strategically and systematically normalised in media discourse (Jaworski

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a

b

c

d

Caucasian models

Asian models

Fig. 5.1  Asian vs. Caucasian models: (a) Festival City 2012, (b) The BeauMount 2012, (c) 18 Upper East 2010, (d) Harbour One 2010

and Thurlow 2017). Although expressed in different ways, many scholars and critics see globalised forms of practice and consumption as a type of cultural imperialism (Tomlinson 1991) in which consumers are induced to buy products that have no meaning or role in their native culture. Yet there is also acknowledgement that, instead of passive adoption, individuals in the local setting proactively select and adapt what they want (Howers 1996). Caucasian models are thus employed to associate with modernity lifestyle, western taste and high living. Clearly, the preponderance of western models is an example of cultural imperialism which is defined as essentially about “the exalting and spreading of values and habits of a foreign culture at the expense of a native culture” (Tomlinson 1991: 3). This can be most conspicuously seen in the names of some luxury residences that are of foreign origin (Jaworski and Yeung 2010): France (e.g. La Splendeur, Le Prime, Le Prestige, Légende Royale); Italy (e.g. Amalfi, Larvotto, The Palazzo); Switzerland (e.g. Valais); Canada (e.g. Providence Bay); The United States (e.g. Bel Air, The Beverly Hill, Oceanaire). Found in compacted urban spaces, these luxury residences bearing evocative or fanciful names typically exude an aura of unabashed luxury; as a general rule, ‘Frenchness’ has symbolic associations with beauty and elegance. If western models are in the majority, then the TV adverts that involve Chinese models clearly stand out. There are four television ads in my data

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that use Chinese models, of which three of them feature local celebrities such as Charlene Choi and Derek Tung-Sing Yee (see Fig. 5.1c and d), and only one features unknown local models. While it is understandable that household names often appear in advertisements to provoke the desire to use the advertised product as well as trust in the product owing to the so-called ‘celebrity effect’ (Basil 1996), the use of anonymous local models is worthy of greater elaboration. The name of the luxury residence, Lions Rise, advertised in that exceptional ad is quite telling: it is reminiscent of Lion Rock, a famous mountain in Hong Kong for its resemblance to a crouching lion. There was a hugely popular TV series called Below the Lion Rock between 1974 and 1994 produced by a local broadcaster which depicted the life stories of people from different social strata and the perceptions people had on the society back in those times. The name of the series and its eponymous theme song have since been used to symbolise the spirit of the Hong Kong people. In the advertisement for the luxury residence, a male protagonist as a young boy is running through a trail wending its way up the forested hillside to the top. He takes a snapshot of the scenery atop the lions’ head. In a split second he has metamorphosed into a tall, confident man, holding a professional camera to capture the same panoramic view. The subsequent images show him in the company of his lover (who later on becomes his wife) and his young son, walking up the mountain and, again, standing at its top to admire the scenery. While it is fair to say that ascending the steep path up the mountain signifies the hard battle of climbing up the property ladder, this is also intrinsically a symbolic form of ‘social inclusion’. The shots of ordinary-looking Chinese models are imbued with a touch of unique Hong Kong identity, which probably strikes a responsive chord with most of the Hong Kong people amidst the backlash against the flood of mainlanders from China after the city returned to Chinese rule two decades or so ago.1 1  Owing to the influx of mainlanders from China after the handover from British rule, ordinary citizens in Hong Kong have reportedly been suffering when mainlanders buy up almost a quarter of Hong Kong homes (Chugani 2012; Zhang 2012), and their ‘anti-mainland’ sentiments hit one peak after another, with the massive protests against the introduction of national education classes being one of the latest examples of the cultural, social and political gap that exists between Hong Kong and its mainland masters (Liu 2012; see also Lowe and Tsang 2017). Considering the complex political factors and the population mix of mainland and Hong Kong Chinese, there has been a growing awareness of ‘Hong Kong Man’ (cf. Baker 1983); those locally-born, locally-educated young professionals in Hong Kong increasingly consider themselves Heunggongyan or Hongkongese.

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Fig. 5.2  Children models: (a) 18 Upper East 2010, (b) Festival City 2012, (c) The Lily 2010

In addition to excluding Chinese models, luxury property TV commercials also exclude children in their images, except when the location of the residence has a great deal to do with the likelihood of enrolling at an elite school, or when the ad is targeted specifically at families with young children. In Fig. 5.2a and b, the residences are hailed as being situated in the catchment areas of elite schools, whereas in Fig.  5.2c, the luxury residence, The Lily, which is located near the Repulse Bay, is advertised as a perfect abode for young kids playing along on the beach. The voice-over hints at such a possibility for young families: “Where life emcompasses all but joyous living, elegant family living at the beach on Repulse Bay, The Lily”. Apart from Inclusion/Exclusion, van Leeuwen’s (2008) Visual Social Actor Network also considers whether the characters included are (a) involved in action (or not) and if they are, as Agent (the ‘actor’) or Patient (the ‘acted on’); (b) as represented Generically (e.g. as a group stereotype) or Specifically; (c) as Individuals or Group members (e.g. as all the same). While social actions will be discussed in the next subsection, the notion of ‘roles’ (as Agent or Patient) is extended in this study to encompass gender roles.2 In my sample of luxury property TV advertisements, male models are found to be more likely to be pictured in spatially higher positions (see Fig. 5.3a). On the contrary, there is a strong tendency for women to be presented in inferior positions and poses in these adverts; as in Fig. 5.3c, women are found to be more often pictured performing submissive or 2  Gender roles have been the focus of Goffman’s (1979) monograph on display advertisements. He found that men and women were repeatedly depicted as participants in ‘hyperritualisations’ of social scenes. That is, commercial advertisements distilled everyday social rituals into scenes, the common denominator of which was ‘female subordination’. Kang (2008) is arguably the first study which takes up the issue of gender stereotypes in TV commercials about luxury residences in Hong Kong.

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Male models

Female models

Fig. 5.3  Gender roles and stereotypes: (a) Celestial Heights 2009, (b) Légende Royale 2010, (c) Aria Kowloon Peak 2009, (d) Bel-Air 2008, (e) Billionaire Royale 2010, (f) Légende Royale 2010

appeasement gestures such as head canting. They are also more likely to be portrayed as the recipient of a male gaze (see Fig. 5.3d). Berger (1973) argues that women are not only aware of the male gaze, they define themselves and are constituted by this gaze; like any fashion model, the female participant in Fig. 5.3d displays herself and does nothing else. There is also a tendency for women to be portrayed as being under the physical care and protection of a man and enjoying the empowerment that flows from attracting the attention of men (see Fig. 5.3e). Moreover, female models are more often portrayed at home whereas male models are often depicted as involved in outdoor settings. For instance, both Fig.  5.3b and f are taken from the same advertisement for the luxury residence, Légende Royale, where a male character is pictured as involving in motor racing whereas a female character is shown in domestic settings supervising chil-

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dren’s activities. The female character narrates in the first person. The voiceover script is given as follows. That day, he asked me to marry him. Today, we have our own home. Five years ago, I wished to be the happiest woman. Now, I wish to be the best mother. Four years ago, he was my hero. Today, I have one more. Every day is a celebration of life. Here in Légende Royale.

The voice quality is soft in tone, breathy, and slow. She is shown in typically feminine dresses. Sporadic mages of her son are also shown in the ad; it is clear what she meant by ‘one more’ is her son. This advert and perhaps a few more in my sample (e.g. the adverts for the luxury residences Peak One and The Beverly Hill) perpetuates the deep seated perception that for women, success/privilege is linked to romantic happiness/narratives of love and marriage and having a family centres prominently in the search for ultimate happiness and success (cf. Hiramoto and Teo 2015). As noted above, van Leeuwen (2008) considers the question of whether people are depicted specifically and as individuals, or generically as a homogenised group and as all the same in his model of visual social actors. It is found that nearly all of the luxury property TV ads converge on the fact that the Caucasian models are culturally categorised, generic, and shown as a relatively homogeneous group. It is the posing and attire which homogenise them and diminish individual differences (see Fig. 5.4); the members of such a group are all similar to each other in the way they pose and the attire they are in. The depiction in the TV commercials makes them into a social type: they are portrayed as desirable models of current styles of success and attractiveness, and their individuality can be seen to disappear behind what categorise them culturally—the hairdo, the makeup, the dress, the status accessories. These images clearly make ‘offers’ as they a

b

c

Fig. 5.4  Generic, homogenised group: (a) Légende Royale 2010, (b) Oceanaire 2010, (c) YOHO Midtown 2010

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look away from the viewer. In such cases, the viewer is invited to participate as an ‘invisible onlooker’ and the image participants are offered as “items of information, objects of contemplation, impersonally, as though there were specimens in a display case” (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006: 124). Judith Williamson writes about the effect of advertising and suggests that the process of advertising “offers us an image of ourselves that we may aspire to but never achieve” (Williamson 1978: 64). As the viewers survey themselves in terms of economic and symbolic capital, they seek this ideal to replace their own imagined inadequacies. Hence, these luxury property advertisements work through connotation; they connote the positive values and associations attached to a particular sociocultural group (in this case, people who can afford a luxury flat) by the sociocultural group (i.e. people who cannot) for which the representation is in the first place produced. Jaworski and Thurlow (2009: 195) discuss the discursive construction of ‘elitist identities’ and associate elitism with a sense of higher social distinction. Luxury residence ads in Hong Kong provide the perfect site for the construction of an elitist identity. Few material possessions can surpass residential property ownership as a source of cachet, especially in a society where property investment is such a potentially lucrative enterprise. In these adverts, elitist identities are so rightly established through the deployment of foreign models on whom high social status and huge privileges are usually conferred due to Hong Kong’s colonial past. Their superiority is confirmed in the ads by an ostentatious display of wealth signified by the possession of a luxury residence and a life of leisure that it purportedly brings about. 5.4.2  Social Actions Social action can be interpreted as material or semiotic, i.e. as ‘doing’, as action which has a material purpose or effect, or as ‘meaning’, as action which does not (van Leeuwen 2008: 59–63). All social actions that can be found in my sample of luxury property TV commercials are of the material kind. Van Leeuwen suggests that “discourses are never only about what we do, but always also about why we do it” (2005a: 104). In order to reveal the ‘why’, the visual representation of social actions has been found to exhibit three kinds of transformation, namely Generalisation, Distillation and Overdetermination (see van Leeuwen 2008: chap. 3). Figure  5.5 illustrates different representations of social actions—outdoor and ­ indoor—that may be generalised to different degrees.

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a

b

Indoor social actions c

d

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g

h

Outdoor social actions

Fig. 5.5  Social actions: indoor vs. outdoor: (a) ‘cocktail reception’ Peak One 2008, (b) ‘celebratory party’ Hill Paramount 2010, (c) ‘music jamming’ YOHO Midtown 2010, (d) ‘gala night’ Légende Royale 2010, (e) ‘excursion’ One Silver Sea 2008, (f) ‘picnicking’ Uptown 2011, (g) ‘sailing a yacht’ Légende Royale 2010, (h) ‘sunbathing’ Larvotto 2010

Generalisation is an important aspect in the discourse of luxury property advertising as advertising texts of this sort are mainly concerned with legitimations (see Sect. 5.4.3), including only the verbal description of episodes or visual imagery of whole social practices as in Fig. 5.5. Taking the two examples shown in Fig. 5.5b and g,3 one could bring out how  What in Fig. 5.5b is generalised (‘partying’), for instance, can be broken down into several more specific actions (‘sending out invitations’, ‘receiving replies’, ‘arranging catering’). 3

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actions constitute action sequences or episodes and how sequences of episodes constitute social practices (cf. Barthes 1977). Generalisation can also be seen as a form of abstraction; the images in Fig.  5.5 all abstract from the more specific micro-actions that make up social actions. They also abstract qualities from social actions by abstracting away from the ‘substance’ of what the represented participants actually do when they interact with one another, suggesting perhaps that it is not important what they do, so long as they are seen to ‘interact with’, ‘relate to’, ‘be involved’ with the luxury residence. This kind of abstraction is what van Leeuwen (2008: 69–70) refers to as Distillation, which highlights some aspect of a social action at the expense of others. This is a visual form of distillation: the distillation of either the signifier, different kinds of leisure activity, or the signified, the luxury residence that leads to the advertisers’ claim that home ownership opens up new opportunities for mingling with different people and forging new social relationships and, ultimately, achieving a new lifestyle. This discourse of leisure activities has been closely associated with western consumerist lifestyle ideology, placing it within a fictional lifestyle space with an emphasis on self-presentation, self-empowerment and hedonism (Machin and Thornborrow 2003; Machin and van Leeuwen 2003, 2005); such leisure activities are constitutive of self-presentation and thus always signify identity. In this way, discourses that represent people as engaging in material actions and actively pursuing them represent a kind of agency that can be signified through consumer choices. This is typical of the lifestyle society in which we now live. In this society, we define ourselves not on the basis of who we are (i.e. Identification, in van Leeuwen’s (2008) terms), but in terms of what we do and the values we hold (i.e. Functionalisation, in van Leeuwen’s (2008) terms). The way we communicate these values is often through our use of consumer products, which allows us to align ourselves with the core values and meaning with which the advertised products have been loaded. ‘Lifestyle identities’ of this kind emerge as corporations look for new ways of creating market demand. As Machin and Thornborrow put it, “while lifestyle itself may be a matter of choice, the choices available to us are often created to serve the interests and needs of large corporations, of consumerism” (2006: 173). Sociologists Similarly, what in Fig. 5.5g is generalised (‘sailing’), for example, can be broken down into several more specific actions (‘buying a yacht’, ‘hiring a captain’, ‘checking weather before setting out with friends’).

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such as Chaney (1996: 12) have described such lifestyles as forms of identity that are less fixed than traditional identities and can be more freely chosen because of their link with consumer goods. People now use consumer choices to convey lifestyle identities rather than traditional, given, social identities based on class, gender, age and other stable social characteristics as well as creating a group stereotype as more people follow suit. Machin and van Leeuwen (2007: 50) have rightly pointed out that lifestyle combines individual and social style. On the one hand, it is an individual style, a style through which people express who they are as unique individuals rather than as social types. On the other hand, it is a social type, because the lifestyle choices of individuals inevitably align them with others who share their taste, their preferred leisure activities and interests, and their outlook on life. (Machin and van Leeuwen 2007: 50).

To hold out the promise of a hedonistic lifestyle, such advertisements are always set in a fantasy world or an imagined future and are openly fictional precisely to allow a multiplicity of cultural references: wealth, social status, elitism, hedonism, unique identity. This is what van Leeuwen (2008: 70–73) calls Overdetermination; it works through symbolisation (i.e. the representation of social actions is endowed with symbolic meanings), or through inversion (i.e. actual social practices are inverted in the representation of social actions). The latter is worthy of greater elaboration. It does not take a genius to figure out the natural order of events in real life: if you can afford to buy a luxury car or a luxury yacht, you can afford to buy a luxury flat for yourself. Yet this natural order is ‘turned upside down’ in the advertising discourse of luxury property in that the advertising message is that only the purchase of a luxury residence can lead to a life of leisure. The reason for inversion of this kind lies in the legitimising function of myths: according to Lévi Strauss, myths “do not give accurate picture[s] of the reality of native life, but a sort of counterpoint which seems sometimes to be in harmony with the reality, and sometimes to part from it” (1967: 11). The “myth of home ownership” (Chan 2000: 29) seeks to legitimise a form of ‘ontological security’ which leads to wealth accumulation that cuts across class boundaries (Saunders 1990). This is reminiscent of Foucault’s study of power (Dreyfus and Rabinow 1982; Foucault 1986). The most effective domination is not direct oppression from top down. Power is like a capillary action that works from below.

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It is embedded in all social interactions and continues to reproduce itself throughout these interactions. The success of promoting home ownership is not only a result of the imposition of property developers or the advertisers they employ, but also hinges on desire and aspiration from the consumers and the lifestyle identities established in advertising discourse of this kind. The same holds true for another closely related genre which is concerned with real estate showroom settings, in which Fleming and Harrison (2018: 10; emphasis added) argue that “[a]s one transitions from the urban environment into the sales room, evermore affective shi-­ nematic arrangements begin to nudge the visitors’ associations towards a fantasy context of luxurious lifestyles, beautiful people, glamorous possessions (handbags, diamonds, etc.) that gravitate around the virtual target (a lifestyle apartment)”, concurring that the cultivation of the desire for possession and the aspiration for consumption can be a form of domination (Leonard 1997: 36–38). Such advertising texts are almost entirely about legitimations, and make only rudimentary reference to the purposes of social practices that are inserted into the advertising discourse. Purposes play a minor role, or are absent altogether. The relative paucity of purposes in the advertising discourse perhaps shows that the ‘purpose’ of residing in a luxury flat is regarded here as essentially common sense and in little need of exposition. That is why it is important to deconstruct what seems ‘natural’ and ‘common sense’—that is, the legitimising discourse—in luxury property advertising, which is the topic for the next section. 5.4.3  Legitimations This section investigates how legitimations are added to the advertising discourse of luxury property within the framework of Legitimation Theory proposed in van Leeuwen (2008: chap. 6). Recontextualisation involves not only the transformation of social practices into discourses, but also the addition of contextually specific legitimations of these social practices. There are four major categories of Legitimation in van Leeuwen’s (2008: 105–106) model: (i) Authorisation, i.e., legitimation by reference to the authority of tradition, custom, law, and/or influential individuals such as celebrities, experts, etc.; (ii) Moral evaluation, i.e., legitimation by (implicit) reference to value systems; (iii) Rationalisation, i.e., legitimation by reference to the goals/uses of recontextualised social practices and/or to the conventional knowledges of a society; (iv) Mythopoesis, i.e., legitimation conveyed through narratives with positive rewards for legitimate

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actions. Given that people in a democracy are free to buy a property within the limit of their financial means, and that the represented participants, as noted earlier, are mostly anonymous models with no institutionalised authority of any kind, Authorisation legitimation does not seem to be a right form of legitimation for us to pursue further. Our attention is therefore to be focussed on the other three kinds of legitimation. As has just been mentioned, Moral evaluation legitimation is based on symbolic values. As a result, it is almost impossible to find an explicit way of identifying moral evaluations of this kind without attempting to recognise them on the basis of our cultural knowledge. It is clear that the possession of luxury goods such as cars, yachts, diamonds is a recurring theme among the luxury property television ads under consideration (see Fig. 5.6). Luxury, as a concept and a material good itself, is an obsession of today’s consumer society. Not surprisingly, luxury cars, yachts, diamonds and, especially, apartments flood the media and marketplace. Luxury is a social marker, which is its symbolic value. The DNA of luxury, therefore, is the symbolic desire (albeit often repressed) to belong to a superior class (Kapferer and Bastien 2009: 314), and the concomitant elite status is marked by “the usual iconic spectacles of Super-Rich lifestyle (e.g. private jets, yachts, luxury cars, mansions, jewellery, luxury brand stores)” (Jaworski and Thurlow 2017: 283). With luxury creating some degree of social stratification, people are urged to use any of its components to define themselves socially as they wish. Just as a car, a yacht or a diamond can be a social signifier, an apartment can become a luxury that converts wealth into a culturally sophisticated product that is social stratification, social distinction. Bourdieu (1984) argues that issues of social stratification and distinction allow the culture and aesthetic values of the dominant classes to be valued as superior. From a social semiotic perspective, the ‘sign’ of luxa

b

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Fig. 5.6  Moral evaluation legitimation: luxury goods as recurring theme: (a) ‘luxury car’ The Cullinan 2009, (b) ‘yacht’ One Silver Sea 2008, (c) ‘diamond’ Oceanaire 2010

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ury works through provenance in which “signifieds are ‘imported’ from some other domain (some other place, time, social group, culture) to signify a complex of ideas and values which are associated with that ‘other’ domain by those who do the importing” (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001: 72). In this way, luxury cars, yachts and diamonds pictured are deliberately selected by the advertisers for their signifieds which hint at the symbolic values of prestige and status to lend meaning to the luxury residence advertised. As with the notion of provenance, these ideas and values are never explicitly formulated; they are only evoked. As Kress and van Leeuwen (2001: 73) point out, moral discourses are “no longer systematically and explicitly known”; they are nevertheless attached to strong feelings that are typically unquestioned and are not usually consciously communicated. In the case of Rationalisation, legitimation is grounded not so much on the social practice of home purchasing (i.e. whether or not it is morally justified), but on the belief that this is the way things should be done. Theo van Leeuwen (2008: 116) notes that “it is not the practice itself which is defined or characterised, but one or more of the social actors involved in the practice. Here the answer to the ‘why’ question is: because doing things this way is appropriate to the nature of these actors”. Homogenisation is again crucial, which hints at general attributes or habitual activities of the categories of social actors involved in the practice. As outlined in Sect. 5.4.1, the Caucasian models are portrayed as leading a hedonistic lifestyle that, in reality, is highly likely to happen to an expatriate working and living in Hong Kong who undoubtedly has superior social status due to historical/political reasons and has privileged access to non-essential luxury items. Hence, in Fig.  5.7 which shows the main frames taken from the television ad for The Cullinan, a swimming pool (‘Jewel of the Crown’) is portrayed as an essential amenity facility in the luxury residence advertised (and in many other adverts in my data), so are a nearby shopping arcade (‘Elements’) and multi-storey world class luxury hotels (‘W Hotel’, ‘The Ritz-Carlton Hotel’) in the immediate vicinity of the property. The main function of rationalisation is to impact a sense of superiority derived from the actors’ social status in addition to providing a feeling of relaxation and indulgence arising from the opulent ­surroundings (i.e. interior design and exterior surroundings are both essential attributes of the ‘luxury’ experience being sold). The final form of legitimation, Mythopoesis, takes the form of storytelling in which the protagonists are often rewarded for compliance with the legitimate social practices. In luxury property ads, the represented partici-

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a

b

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Fig. 5.7  Rationalisation legitimation: The Cullinan (2009) ad: (a) ‘swimming pool’, (b) ‘shopping arcade’, (c) The W Hotel, (d) The Ritz-Carlton Hotel

pants are praised as being an intellectual person—as in Fig. 5.8, ‘a mastermind’—with visionary thinking and good taste. In Fig. 5.8, explicit verbal text via conspicuous typography against vague pictorial spaces is used to assert that a luxury residence is ‘a dream for the wise’, someone who can ‘think big’ and has ‘style’ because ‘wealth is in ideas’ (rather than, say, in ‘money’). The codes of luxury are cultural, in as much as the luxury brand lies at the confluence between culture and social success. In addition to this key social function, luxury should have a very strong personal component, otherwise it is no longer luxury but simple snobbery, a merely reputed sign of recognition (Kapferer and Bastien 2009: 315). Money (high price of products) is not enough to define luxury goods: it only measures the wealth of the buyer. But money is not a measure of wisdom, vision and taste. That is why the luxury property advert must tell a story in which one is making one’s own choice according to one’s own personal tastes and thoughts, instead of allowing others to impose a paradigm for one to follow. The three forms of legitimation correspond to the three well-known dimensions of luxury brands: the symbolic (social), the functional (material), and the experiential (individual) (see, among others, Berthon et al. 2009; Keller 2003; Park et al. 1986; Vickers and Renand 2003). Both the

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Fig. 5.8  Mythopoesis legitimation: Hill Paramount (2010) ad

symbolic dimension and Moral evaluation legitimation lie in the realm of the social collective. Here the symbolic nature of luxury brands comes into play; it signifies a constructed and evolved belief, myth or dream-world. It has two aspects: the value a luxury brand signals to others, and the value of that signalling to the signaller. Thus a luxury apartment may signal wealth, prestige, and status, and it can be used to constitute and reinforce the owner’s self image as well. The functional dimension is where the luxury brand has physical manifestations and accoutrements. Clearly, the Rationalisation legitimation stresses functionality because this is the domain of what the luxury flat does in the material world to ‘support’ a hedonist, opulent lifestyle of its owner, rather than what it represents. Like

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Mythopoesis legitimation, the experiential dimension is the realm of individual subjective value. It describes consumer needs in terms of desires for products that provide sensory pleasure and/or cognitive stimulation and reward. In other words, a person’s subjective sensations, feelings, cognitions and tastes are the arbiters of luxury; it is where personal value is found in a (luxury) brand.

5.5   Conclusions Through a multimodal analysis of the TV commercials of luxury property, I have explored the discursive strategies through which the representation of social actors, social actions and legitimations constitutes the advertising discourse. Chinese models and children are largely excluded from the discourse in favour of Caucasian models who signify western culture and modern lifestyle that are highly valued in Hong Kong as a former British colony. Female foreign models, in particular, are very likely pictured as performing submissive gestures and subordinate roles, as in other types of advertisement. In the main, social actors are represented as a culturally homogenous group stereotype, a social type of elitism that derives a high social distinction from the possession of luxury property. Social actions, on the other hand, are largely ‘material’ and take the form of leisure activities in the television ads that are closely tied to ‘lifestyle identities’ established through people’s consumer choices. This is perhaps an inevitable consequence given an increasingly consumerist society where we are defined not in terms of our traditional, given identities such as class, gender, age, but in terms of what we do and the values we hold. Legitimations are added to enhance the persuasive power of the luxury property ads, with reference to symbolic values, functional amenities and experiential narratives. Hopefully, this paper has proved that such ideologies are very effectively studied through their multimodal realisations, where the visual mode, in particular, can draw on and reproduce stereotyped representations that find their way into the luxury property advertising discourse in Hong Kong.

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Foucault, Michel. 1977. In Language, counter-memory, practice: Selected essays and interviews, ed. Donald Bouchard. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ———. 1986. Disciplinary power and subjection. In Power, ed. Steven Lukes, 229–242. Oxford: Blackwell. Goffman, Erving. 1979. Gender advertisements. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Harris, Zellig. 1952. Discourse analysis. Language 28 (1): 1–30. Hiramoto, Mie, and Cherise Shi Ling Teo. 2015. Heteronormative love makes a house a home: Multimodal analysis of luxury housing ads in Singapore. Journal of Language and Sexuality 4 (2): 223–253. Howers, David, ed. 1996. Cross-cultural consumption: Global markets, local realities. London and New York: Routledge. Jaworski, Adam, and Crispin Thurlow. 2009. Taking an elitist stance: Ideology and the discursive production of social distinction. In Stance: Sociolinguistic perspectives, ed. Alexandra Jaffe, 195–226. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2017. Mediatising the “super-rich,” normalising privilege. Social Semiotics 27 (3): 276–287. Jaworski, Adam, and Simone Yeung. 2010. Life in the Garden of Eden: The naming and imagery of residential Hong Kong. In Linguistic landscape in the city, ed. Elana Goldberg Shohamy and Monica Barni, 153–181. Clevedon, Buffalo and Toronto: Multilingual Matters. Jewitt, Carey., ed. 2009. The Routledge handbook of multimodal analysis. London and New York: Routledge. Jewitt, Carey, Jeff Bezemer, and Kay O’Halloran. 2016. Introducing multimodality. London and New York: Routledge. Kang, Agnes. 2008. At the intersection of elitism and gender in Hong Kong: Advertisements of luxury residences. In Proceedings of the 5th biannual International Gender and Language Association conference (IGALA 5), ed. Julia de Bres, Janet Holmes, and Meredith Marra, 97–106. Wellington, New Zealand: Victoria University of Wellington. Kapferer, Jean-Noël, and Vincent Bastien. 2009. The specificity of luxury management: Turning marketing upside down. Brand Management 16 (5/6): 311–322. Keller, Kevin Lane. 2003. Brand synthesis: The multidimensionality of brand knowledge. Journal of Consumer Research 29 (4): 595–600. Kress, Gunther. 2010. Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. London and New York: Routledge. Kress, Gunther, and Carey Jewitt, eds. 2003. Multimodal literacy. New  York: Peter Lang. Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. 2001. Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication. London: Edward Arnold. ———. 2006. Reading images: The grammar of visual design. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge.

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Leonard, Peter. 1997. Postmodern welfare: Reconstructing an emancipatory project. London: Sage. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1967. The scope of anthropology. Translated by Sherry Ortner Paul and Robert Paul. London: Jonathan Cape. Liu, Juliana. 2012. Hong Kong debates ‘national education’ classes. BBC News Hong Kong, 1 September. Accessed October 4, 2018. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ news/world-asia-china-19407425. Lowe, John, and Eileen Yuk-ha Tsang. 2017. Disunited in ethnicity: The racialisation of Chinese Mainlanders in Hong Kong. Patterns of Prejudice 51 (2): 137–158. Machin, David, and Joanna Thornborrow. 2003. Branding and discourse: The case of Cosmopolitan. Discourse & Society 14 (4): 453–471. ———. 2006. Lifestyle and the depoliticisation of agency: Sex as power in women’s magazines. Social Semiotics 16 (1): 173–188. Machin, David, and Theo van Leeuwen. 2003. Global schemes and local discourses in Cosmopolitan. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7 (4): 493–512. ———. 2005. Lifestyle and language style: The case of a global magazine. Media, Culture & Society 27 (4): 577–600. ———. 2007. Global media discourse: A critical introduction. London and New York: Routledge. O’Halloran, Kay. 2004. Visual semiosis in film. In Multimodal discourse analysis: Systemic functional perspectives, ed. Kay O’Halloran, 109–131. London: Continuum. Park, Whan, Bernard Jaworski, and Deborah MacInnis. 1986. Strategic brand concept-image management. Journal of Marketing 50 (Oct.): 621–635. Rooney, Nuala. 2001. Making house into home: Interior design in Hong Kong. In Consuming Hong Kong, ed. Gordon Matthews and Lui Tai-lok, 47–79. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Saunders, Peter. 1990. A nation of home owners. London: Unwin Hyman. Thibault, Paul. 2000. The multimodal transcription of a television advertisement: Theory and practice. In Multimodality and multimediality in the distance learning age, ed. Anthony Baldry, 311–385. Campobasso: Palladino Editore. Tomlinson, John. 1991. Cultural imperialism: A critical introduction. London: Pinter Publishers. van Leeuwen, Theo. 1995. Representing social actions. Discourse & Society 6 (1): 81–106. ———. 1996. The representation of social actors. In Texts and practices: Readings in critical discourse analysis, ed. Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard and Malcolm Coulthard, 32–70. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2000a. The construction of purpose in discourse. In Discourse and social life, ed. Srikant Sarangi and Malcolm Coulthard, 66–82. London: Longman.

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———. 2000b. Visual racism. In The semiotics of racism: Approaches in critical discourse analysis, ed. Martin Reisigl and Ruth Wodak, 330–350. Vienna: Passagen Verlag. ———. 2005a. Introducing social semiotics. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2005b. Time in discourse. Linguistics and the Human Sciences 1 (1): 125–145. ———. 2007. Legitimation in discourse and communication. Discourse & Communication 1 (1): 91–112. ———. 2008. Discourse and practice: New tools for critical discourse analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2011. The language of colour: An introduction. London and New York: Routledge. Vickers, Jonathan, and Franck Renand. 2003. The marketing of luxury goods: An exploratory study—Three conceptual dimensions. The Marketing Review 3 (4): 459–478. Vinikas, Vincent. 1992. Soft soaps, hard sell: American hygiene in an age of advertisement. Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press. Williamson, Judith. 1978. Decoding advertisements. London: Merion Boyars. Zhang, April. 2012. Hong Kong identity caught between political reality and insecurity. South China Morning Post, 17 October.

CHAPTER 6

Digital Photography and Identity of Hong Kong Females: A Case Study of Facebook Images

Abstract  The aim of this chapter is to explore how multipurpose applications of smartphones combined with growing insights of socio-cultural transformations have affected personal photography of Hong Kong females. About 80 digital photographs taken and distributed via the social networking site Facebook were analysed within the social-semiotic theory of representation and communication. The major finding is that photographic images have shown a remarkable degree of homogeneity of representational practices used by females in Hong Kong for self-remodelling. Taking photographs seems no longer primarily to provide factual evidence of a human activity (‘image as record’), but is increasingly becoming a tool for an individual’s identity formation and communication (‘image as construct’). It is argued that the increased economic and social status of Hong Kong females has spawned new ways of manipulating digital photographs disseminated over the internet. Keywords  Facebook pictures • Digital photography • Identity formation • Art filter • Collage

6.1   Introduction Photography has traditionally been regarded as a tool for memory and its functions as a tool for identity formation and as a means for communication have appeared to be secondary and less important (Sontag 1973; © The Author(s) 2019 M. Wong, Multimodal Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15428-8_6

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Barthes 1982). In the analogue days, the prime purpose of taking photographs was to be a person’s most dependable aid for recording the most precious moments in life. However, the intrinsic role and function of photography have changed substantially since digital cameras and cameraphones were invented in the past decade or so (Harrison 2002; Garry and Gerrie 2005; van Dijck 2008; Cobley and Haeffner 2009; Vivienne and Burgess 2013; Zappavigna 2016). The younger generation seems to increasingly use personal photography as a means of communication and identity formation at the expense of photography’s use as tool for remembering, thanks to the easy manipulation of images and quick dissemination over the internet via personal handheld devices. As van House (2011: 133) rightly points out, “[p]ersonal photographs may be becoming more public and transitory, less private and durable, more effective as objects of communication than of memory”, leading to the social practice of enacting an individual’s identity through the sharing of their personal photographs. Indeed, the concept of a relationship between photography and a specific identity and habitus can be found in the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1996). In his study of amateur photography, Bourdieu describes photography as a less ambitious cultural practice in which every individual with no specific education, apprenticeship or trained skills can partake, with a definite selection of objects, places, persons and generally, scenes represented within the photograph potentially indicative of particular social expectations and dispositions. As Philipps puts it succinctly, “a photograph represents the world as the photographer has seen it according to the logic of his world view” (2012: 9). In this chapter, I will examine this transformed use of photography as a major tool in sculpting identity, and argue that (personal) photography’s function as a means of self-representation and expressiveness forms the basis for this discussion. I wish to address the issue that notions of identity and individuality are crucial to the interpretation of these images. Identity is, after all, the sense of self that grows out of one’s interactions with others, typically through communication on social networking websites in this day and age (Zhao and Zappavigna 2018). The second aim of this chapter, then, is to show how the changing function of photography is part of a complex technological, social and cultural transformation. Part of the digital camera and cameraphone’s popularity can be explained by an increased command over the outcome of pictures—improved technological specifications of new camera models and growing smartphone applications allow for greater manipulability, helping users to brush up their pictures and (re)construct perfect realities

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in the process of recollection. Yet the flipside is that pictures are becoming increasingly unreliable as a tool for storing memories and more as a tool for enacting one’s social status and perceived cultural identity in mediated communication practices. As Sontag (1973: 88) persuasively argues, “photographs are evidence not only of what’s there but of what an individual sees, not just a record but an evaluation of the world”. In any method of visual analysis, van Leeuwen and Jewitt (2001) demonstrates that there are always two ways of analysing images. Images can be interpreted as “records of reality, as documentary evidence of the people, places, things, actions and events they depict” (Ibid.: 4). Images, are, in this context, regarded as a reliable source for extracting factual information. In other cases, however, images are analysed, not as evidence of reality, but as “evidence of bias, ideologically coloured interpretation, and so on” (Ibid.: 5). Indeed, these two interpretations of image are reminiscent of the functions of photography as a tool for memory and as a tool for communication and identity formation. Private snapshots are typically taken for autobiographical remembering and usually end up in someone’s (digital) album as records of people, places, things, actions or events. On the other hand, as noted above, personal pictures can be easily edited to suit an individual’s need for self-remodelling with ideological implications of (re)constructing a preferred representation and framing a perceived identity. This issue of ‘record’ versus ‘construct’ is particularly relevant to this research because many images collected for this study have an element of both and thus require a mode of analysis which must reveal the nature of both the recorded reality and the constructed one. To this end, the changing practices of representation as manifested in a small corpus1 of about 80 Facebook images produced by females in Hong Kong are analysed within the social-semiotic theory of meaning and representation, which I now turn to in the next section. 1  Admittedly, this is a relatively small sample of data given the ubiquity of digital images. However, careful consideration has been undertaken to make sure that the images are selected in order to achieve the aim of the current study which is to explore both changing production and consumption practices in presenting/representing oneself in connection to gendered identity formation and changing socio-economic status of females in Hong Kong. Thus the choice of images has been made in relation to four important factors: (1) permission for reproducing these images for research purposes; (2) age of female subjects ranging from early 20s to early 30s; (3) education level at university or above; (4) full-time employment. The sampling of the data was undertaken for one year from 1 January 2014 to 31 December 2015 based on news feed of the author’s personal Facebook page. The results presented are part of a larger ongoing research study which aims to examine social media photography of females in Hong Kong.

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6.2   The Social-Semiotic Theory of Meaning and Representation Social semiotics is a theory used to account for meaning-making (or sign-­ making) in social environments and social interactions. In their introduction to a special issue of Semiotica, Cobley and Randviir (2009) point out that there is no uniform social-semiotic perspective. For this reason, they prefer the term sociosemiotics to social semiotics. Cobley and Randviir (2009: 24–27) outline six major sociosemiotic strands represented in the literature: the Anglo-Australian school, the Bari school, the Finnish school, the Tartu school, the Greek school and the Vienna school. With the focus on the relation between social practices, cultural identity and ideology, and multimodal texts, the present study can be broadly placed within the Anglo-Australian school, which has come to adopt the semiotic perspective of Halliday’s (1978, 1985) theory that sets the Anglo-Australian school apart from the other schools. The Anglo-Australian social-semiotic theory (Hodge and Kress 1988; Kress 1993, 1997, 2003, 2010; Kress and van Leeuwen 2001, 2006; van Leeuwen 2005a) is grounded in four fundamental assumptions: (1) signs are always newly made in social interactions; (2) signs are motivated, not arbitrary relations of form and meaning (as opposed to the Saussurean view); (3) the motivated sign is based on the interest of the sign-maker; (4) the forms/signifiers used in the making of signs become part of the semiotic resources of a culture (Kress 2010: 54–55; see also Sect. 1.1, Chap. 1 for a fuller description of these four theoretical assumptions). In this chapter, all three reasons for choosing a social-semiotic stance are relevant to these central concepts. My arguments are: (1) photographs are taken out of the interest of the image-maker in social context and are mediated through social networks; (2) the link between photographic practices and their symbolic meanings is shaped culturally, in wider technological, economic, social and cultural contexts; (3) the photo­ graphic practices are recurrent and appear to form a homogeneous set of meaning-­making resources that can be studied systematically as part of the semiotic/cultural resources of a community; the homogeneity of the images recorded must carry some semantic weight (Loizos 2000: 101). It should also be noted that social semiotics can be used as a marker to stress the social as a more feasible and interesting explanatory framework than the other semiotic approaches. Social semiotic research has tended to take empirical questions from education, mass media production and politics in

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particular as points of departure for theory construction (Kress and Hodge 1979; Kress et al. 2001; Kress 2003). This might explain why the focus of the theory has always been on the relation between instances of representational practices and the larger social structures and cultural traditions that surround them. This is of paramount importance to this chapter as one of the aims of the present study, as mentioned above, is to show that photographic images reflect changes in economic and social status of the image-makers—Hong Kong females—who will be shown in Sect. 6.6 to have attempted to negotiate a new identity for themselves. In this chapter, I apply a multimodal perspective, where the natural focus is on the linguistic and visual resources as the main units of semiosis. I also wish to stress the importance of pictorial representation and its relation to technological, social and cultural transformations. Both of these standpoints stem from social semiotic theory, but the methods for analysing photographic techniques are brought in from other fields such as art and design and their applications in image-processing to be outlined in Sects. 6.3–6.5, followed by a discussion of the possibilities and challenges posed by these digital images for enacting a new identity for Hong Kong females in Sects. 6.6 and 6.7.

6.3   Collage Almost half of the pictures collected in my corpus are created through an artistic technique called collage, in which various ‘found images’ are stuck onto a larger surface. Found images refer to “pictures that have mechanically reproduced from original photographs or drawings, such as newspaper or magazine illustrations” (Larbalestier 1990: 47). Before examining the components that make up these images, it is worth looking at the French origin of the word ‘collage’ and how it relates to other similar methods of combining collected and processed images such as ‘bricolage’ and ‘montage’. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary (n.d.) online, collage comes from coller (to glue), while bricolage derives from bricoler (to putter about) and montage from monter (to mount). D’Angelo (2010: 10) makes a clear distinction between these three terms. The term bricolage, originally used by the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss to describe a kind of activity performed in primitive societies to complete a task by using whatever materials that happened to be lying around, is a way of making art in the modern world by appropriating whatever comes to hand. A collage, however, is “a pictorial technique in which photo-

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graphs, news cuttings, and other suitable objects are pasted on to a flat surface often in combination with painted passages” (Chilvers 1996: 114, cited in D’Angelo 2010: 40). The term montage refers to a technique in motion-picture editing in which a rapid succession of images are produced by juxtaposing shots and sequences to illustrate an association of ideas as well as to achieve an emotional effect. It is easy to see that these three terms describe a certain style of artistic composition, albeit with differing inherent qualities of their chosen source materials from different media. I have decided to employ the word ‘collage’ to describe some of the images in my collection because these images are all composite pictures by ‘gluing together’ several separate found images, and found images are generally considered as a perfect source material for collage (Larbalestier 1990: 47). It does not take long for one to discover in the scholarly literature that collage is no longer a tool exclusively used by artists and the like. It has been so creatively used by educationalists and advertisers that it is worth mentioning a few recent exemplar studies. Crick and Grushka (2009) reports on the fruitful process of an inquiry-based learning project carried out in an indigenous learning centre in a school in New South Wales, Australia. To track students’ aspiration in learning through self-reflection and assessment, they asked their students to construct a collage, linked with their chosen objects and one of the seven native Australian animals representing the learning dispositions, namely ‘Changing and learning’ (represented by snakes), ‘Critical curiosity’ (emus), ‘Meaning making’ (platypuses), ‘Creativity’ (willy wagtails), ‘Learning relationships’ (ants), ‘Strategic awareness’ (wedged-tail eagles) and ‘Resilience’ (echidnas). The article reveals how the naming of native Australian animals as icons for learning aspiration and the storying of a learning journey in the form of a collage can performatively re-represent and recall their identities as learners. The actions of cutting, reorganising and gluing selected physical ­animal attributes in the creation of the ‘self-portrait’ collage enable the students to make connections between self and the negotiated metaphoric meaning about the pictorial texts and thus to develop self-awareness and responsibility in their own learning. Similarly, in Devoss and Lebeau’s (2010) study of native American Indian identity through visual literacy, they focus specifically on how students translate their understandings of what an ‘Indian’ is to visual items put together in drawings and collages. Drawing on the same theme of native American Indians, Friedel (2008) examines transnational energy companies’ purposeful use of images of

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indigenous people and landscape in the advertising and promotion of corporate social responsibility. One of the full-page advertisements she analysed features a collage of three images roughly equal in size, each displaying a separate human face. The image on the left shows an old man, wrinkled and dark-skinned, wearing a traditional headdress emblematic of ‘Indian’; the centre image gives the face an adult male without headgear; the image on the right depicts a fair-skinned young person (male or female), wearing a white hard hat. The reading of the resultant image is anchored by the textual elements of the advertisement: ‘Remember where we have been’ (past), ‘See where we are’ (present), ‘Imagine where we are going’ (future). A strong reference to temporality is alluded to by the text; viewers are encouraged to think in terms of past, present and future, and to see energy corporations not only as environmentally friendly, but as friendly in a social sense through inclusion of aboriginal peoples as economic ‘partners’ in energy development (Friedel 2008: 241). What is striking about these studies is not so much the pure coincidence of subject matter (dealing with indigenous peoples and representation of their identity in visual texts) as the meaning-making power of collage—the art of combining found images—in that it is essentially a semiotic process comprised of three main phases: selection, reconfiguration and assembly (cf. Humphreys 2006: 378). Selection of found images necessitates the rejection of others; the reconfiguration of selected fragments depends on the decomposition or cutting into pieces of the source material; the assembly of visual elements (in combination with the caption) generates the semiotic potential expressed in the domain of social communication. A collage can be interpreted in a variety of different ways, depending on how you arrange your found images on a page. One possible reading of the collage, albeit something of a rarity in my collection, is a temporal reference, an understanding largely influenced by the common practice of reading from left to right and from top to bottom. Figure 6.1 features a collage of three images which shows two sisters as toddlers, in their teens and as grown-ups, reminiscent of the timeline (in reverse order) of the Facebook interface.2 The collage (and its implied temporal meaning) allows the image-maker to ‘re-live’ past memories and reinvigorate remembrances of things past. 2  Due to copyright and anonymity reasons, the images taken by the female subjects in the research study are not reproduced here but appear as illustrations only.

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Fig. 6.1  Dear sisters

While the temporal reference is nicely captured by the transformation of represented participants made explicit by the use of a collage, many of the collages in my corpus are in fact created by placing two or more largely unrelated images on a single page. Together, the images take on a new meaning through their visual and mental associations. This combination evokes a randomness, which is somewhat like detectives piecing together the details of an incident. It is this aspect—working with disparate images—that makes the process of collage-making so appealing. For instance, both pictures (a) and (b) in Fig. 6.2 look like a jigsaw with six or seven pieces, displaying various different aspects of a social event. The captions tell us that picture (a) was taken in a domestic setting whereas picture (b) in a luxurious hotel. What can be observed from these pictures is that photography emerges as a social practice in which people want to share their experience of an event in material pictorial form. This is not

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Fig. 6.2  Examples of collage: (a) home sweet home, (b) lunch buffet at Harbour Grand Hong Kong

entirely new; in tourist photography visitors tend to take pictures of foreign places in order to communicate their experiences of travelling (Sontag 1973). Similarly, personal photography is used as an instrument of sharing experience—taking pictures of people, food, table objects and surroundings can become paramount to experiencing an event. Although the function of photography is increasingly giving way to its communicative, experiential uses, photography as an act of commemoration does not entirely disappear; it takes on a different form, not as a memory tool, but as a distributed storage tool by means of exchanging digital images and storing them on the internet (van Dijck 2008: 68). Intentionally taken to be kept as a memento of this joyous event and to be posted on Facebook, these two pictures are therefore both a memory-cum-storage tool and a social gesture of sharing and bonding. And yet, the luxury and middle-­ class culture signified by these pictures—conveyed by the consumption of wine in picture (a) and the sumptuously furnished restaurant and its sea view in picture (b)—connotes a third function of photography, namely the function of pictures as symbolic resources for identity formation.

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When it comes to dining out with friends, the female population in Hong Kong tend to be avid fans of confectionaries, as reflected in the great deal of collage-pictures featuring different kinds of desserts and sundaes, particularly the English high-tea service offered in some western cafes e.g. Agnès b. café le pain grille as well as luxury hotels (see Figs. 6.3 and 6.4). The traditional high tea set contains three tiers of delicate bite-­ sized morsels such as mini sandwiches, scones, assorted cakes and pastries, typically served with tea. Originated in England in the early 1800s, the English high tea culture was once hailed as “a formal affair among the wealth elite” (Yung 2012). This symbol of wealth does not diminish even in modern-day Hong Kong; it has attracted a huge clientele—mainly middle-­class females—and is widely regarded as a fun activity. Evidently, the three-tier tea set is prone to the making of a collage as each of the tiers can be nicely captured as a visual component of the collage. Another common characteristic that can be observed from collage-pictures of this sort is the inclusion of lavishly decorated interior of the tea rooms and their surroundings, with sea view being the recurrent theme in most of these pictures. In my view, the wide appeal of the high tea culture can be explained by the fact that it is a colonial legacy and Hong Kong people

Fig. 6.3  Disserts and high tea: (a) 2012 new year day desserts, (b) [no caption]

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Fig. 6.4  More examples of high tea: (a) Sevva @ The Prince Building rooftop afternoon tea, (b) The Lounge & Bar @ The Ritz-Carlton hotel

(male or female) are generally nostalgic about the colonial past under the British rule, and perhaps more importantly, by the fact that it is regarded by most Hong Kong females as a symbol of luxurious leisurely enjoyment very much tied to a middle-class identity as being financially independent and successful, an issue that I will discuss in Sect. 6.6.

6.4   Art Filters The use of smartphones has transformed the world of digital photography—particularly amateur photography—in significant ways. People are no longer satisfied with using their smartphones to check the news or keep up with friends. They install photo-sharing smartphone apps to shoot, store, edit and share their images. As Kress and van Leeuwen (2001: 43) rightly point out, multimedia production in the modern world “favours multi-skilling, complex practice” in which the specificity of skilling in pro-

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fessional photography is now seen as “one integrated practice”. A feature story published in one of the recent issues of the local entertainment magazine Ming Pao Weekly reports that people from all walks of life (students, stay-at-home mums, white-collar workers, journalists) are beginning to use photography apps installed on their smartphones as their primary photographic instrument (Cheng et al. 2012). Therefore, it is no accident that the number of photography apps targeting retouching techniques for smartphone users have mushroomed in recent years. To take Instagram™ as an example. Instagram™ was only launched in October 2010 and has proven hugely popular ever since; it now has more than 30 million users uploading more than 5 million new pictures every day (Weber 2012). The success of these photography apps lies in the fact that they enable users to take and edit photos where they are, and that it is quick and easy to fashion pictures with in-built, essential image edits such as fixing exposure, editing saturation, boosting contrast, converting to black and white and applying an art filter. For instance, Instagram™ allows users to apply 17 filters to the pictures they take—changing the colour balance to give the images a different feel—before they are uploaded. Another commonly used photography app, Hipstamatic™, provides 14 art filters (by configuring different combinations of lenses and films) that make pictures look as if they were taken by an antique film camera; see Fig.  6.5 for three different tonal effects of pictures I took in my study. The Hipstamatic™ photography app has become a sensation in Hong Kong after two local photographers have used the app for taking pictures

Fig. 6.5  Three different art filters of Hipstamatic™: (a) Kaimal Mark II Lens, Ina’s 1969, No Flash, (b) Jimmy Lens, Blanko Film, No Flash, (c) John S Lens, Kodot XGrizzled Film, No Flash

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of ordinary neighbourhoods and the general populace. A Hong Kong-­ based internationally renowned professional photographer, Palani Mohan, published a book (entitled ‘Vivid’) about Hong Kong in November 2011; the pictures in the book were all shot with the help of the retro Hipstamatic™ app (see the photographer’s web site, http://www.palanimohan.com/; Mohan 2011). A couple of months later the amateur photographer Lai Yat-nam used the same photo app to take pictures surreptitiously on the MTR (the local underground trains) during his daily commute from Sheung Wan to Kowloon Tong; he held an exhibition featuring all these images at Studio Kim Tak in Jordan in March 2012 (Lam 2012b). Both of the news stories make a strong case for the fact that photographic works of artistic merit are not a privilege of professional photographers; anyone armed with a smartphone app with a decent amount of art filters can turn into an amateur photographer. Furthermore, both of the photographers in the news stories stress that images should be produced out of your interest and the way you see the world, rather than relying on powerful camera equipment (see Chap. 1 for the notion of ‘interest’ in the process of sign-making, particularly ‘the motivated sign’, which lends credence to the pivotal role of image-producer’s interest in personal photography discussed here). Consider their comments made in the news articles. Technology has changed many things about photography but the art will never be dependent on gigabytes and megapixels. It’s about light, composition and, most importantly, the moment. Photography is the connection between you and what you see. (Palani Mohan’s comments; quoted in Mohan 2011) People don’t notice and the images tell so many stories. You don’t have to buy a Leica [camera]. The main thing is what you see and how you think. (Lai Yat-nam’s comments; quoted in Lam 2012b)

Both quotes coincidentally use the same phrase ‘what you see’ to describe the very essence of photography. This brings us back to the notions of ‘images as records’ and ‘images as constructs’ discussed earlier in the introductory paragraph. With the wide availability of basic image-­ editing tools and filtering effects afforded by virtually any photo app, the boundaries between images as factual evidence and images as constructed reality can become increasingly blurred as images can embody both of them. By choosing a particular art filter and altering the colour tones,

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Fig. 6.6  The effects of art filters: (a) nice celebration night, (b) my Stockholm trip

images can be doctored to convey a particular connotative message. In Fig.  6.6a, the diffusion filter which can soften subjects and generate a dreamy hazy is applied to modify the picture to highlight a sense of romance between two lovers having a dinner at a plush restaurant, whereas in Fig. 6.6b the image is morphed into a sepia photography, creating the effect of nostalgia. The latter use of “dated aesthetics” (Lüders et al. 2010: 960) in personal photographic practices is currently gaining momentum on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram where users apply digital filters to invoke a kind of “instant nostalgia” (Chesher 2012; cited in Zappavigna 2016: 285), representing in their personal photographs the “look of aged photographs as they appear to us in the present” (Bartholeyns 2014: 60).

6.5   Borders The addition of borders or frame lines is a semiotic resource most frequently used by Hong Kong females, at least in my collection of images. In their book on the grammar of visual design, Kress and van Leeuwen

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(2006: 203–204) introduced the notion of ‘framing’ as the disconnection of the elements in a visual composition, for instance, by frame lines, empty space, discontinuities of colour, shape, and so on (see also Chap. 1). The semiotic potential of framing, as van Leeuwen (2005a: 7, b) argues, is that disconnected elements are in a sense “separate and independent” units of information. The precise nature of this ‘separation’, however, has to be determined by context (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006: 203). It is argued, in the case of the present study, that the photographs taken by Hong Kong females and later on touched up by them to insert a frame are to signify their individuality and differentiation from the opposite sex, an identity that arises from their improved economic and social status (see Sect. 6.6). The framed Facebook pictures can fall into two broad categories, namely freestanding images and images with captions. When picture become the sole form of communication at the expense of spoken words, they become ‘a visual language’ carrying a brief message in mediated communication practices. With the growing popularity of the use of social networking sites, pictures are turning into the new currency for social interaction. For example, a friend of mine went to Seoul (capital of South Korea) for her spring holiday. At the airport, she said farewell by taking a picture of a sign displaying the gate number, the airline and the destination (see Fig. 6.7a) Sometimes pictures are accompanied by captions that

Fig. 6.7  Illustrations of framing: (a) [no caption], (b) ‘freezing cold, need some hot drinks’

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explain them. For instance, my friend visiting Seoul took a picture of the canned drinks she bought, added a few words (‘freezing cold, need some hot drinks’) and immediately sent off the message on Facebook (see Fig. 6.7b). In this way, pictures become more like the old-fashioned postcard (van Dijck 2008: 62): recipients are informed of the whereabouts and daily experiences of the sender. Like postcards, pictures circulated via cameraphones are meant to be temporary reminders rather than permanent keepsakes. Therefore, as van Dijck (Ibid.) points out, the social meanings such as ‘connecting’ or ‘getting in touch’ rather than ‘reality capturing’ or ‘memory preservation’ are transferred onto this type of personal photography. Moreover, she argues that this new communicative deployment of personal photography is “part of a broader cultural transformation that involves individualisation and intensification of experience” (van Dijck 2008: 62). She attributes the emphasis on individualisation and personhood to a global economic and social drive at the turn of the millennium whereby commercial products are increasingly marketed as memorable experiences and packaged in attractive themes to establish strong affective bonds with potential buyers. Personal photography is part of this larger transformation in which individuals, like commercial products, articulate their identity as social beings by sharing photographs as experiences rather than sharing them as objects; they appear to take more interest in using photography as an instrument for peer bonding and identity formation than in building up material collections of pictures for remembrance and future reference. Clearly, in the case of Hong Kong females, we are witnessing an even stronger shift towards using pictures to establish and reconfirm their identity as active producers and consumers of middle-class culture, which will be addressed in the next section.

6.6   Discussion: A New Identity for Hong Kong Females As stated earlier, the endless potential of digital photography to manipulate one’s self-image seems to make it the ultimate tool for identity formation. We have seen pictures taken by females in Hong Kong who employ image-editing tools afforded by digital cameras and smartphone applications to brush up their photographs, adjusting them to suit their expectations and desires. Their photographs tell us who they want to be and how they want to be remembered. Indeed, enhanced versatility and multi-­ purposing of digital pictures does facilitate the promotion of one’s self-­

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image; we now have increased control over our personal identity by carefully selecting the objects and things to be included in a collage-image or by adopting an art filter that can conjure up a feeling or connotation in viewer’s mind. Rather than being merely a means of documenting precious moments with family and friends, online photographic representations might well be able to address “the social functions of self-expression, identity construction and socialisation, which are based on a common interest in the photograph as an aesthetic object” (Wang et al. 2014: 193). In her ethnographically informed research on people’s actual, daily practices of photography, van House points out that most of her participants made considered, purposeful use of their online images as expressions of their viewpoint and aesthetics, leading her to conclude that “making, showing, viewing and talking about images are not just how we represent ourselves, but contribute to the ways that we enact ourselves, individually and collectively, and reproduce social formations and norms” (2011: 131; original emphasis). Even if we agree to this emerging status of photographs as building blocks for personal identity, it still begs the question: what kind of identity do Hong Kong females attempt to construct through visual resources deployed in mediated communication practices? In other words, is there a unique identity for females in Hong Kong due to changes in economic, social and cultural conditions across the globe or locally? Of course, what is most remarkable about the Facebook images I gathered for the purposes of this research is that where once photography was the province of photojournalists which is a male-dominated industry, now the females are all photographers themselves—recording their everyday life, their fun, their observations of what they find picturesque, their favourites. Many digital camera manufacturers have started to reach out to new demographics to market products specifically for female amateurs who want quality photographs for leisure purposes. Take Olympus™ as an example. Its PEN series of digital cameras appears to target female customers: as stated on its UK web site, the PEN series connotes the idea of ‘indePENdent’ and features in its online advertisement a girl soaking wet happily in a downpour, while an advertisement emphasising ‘photography is fun’ is used on its Hong Kong web site (see Fig. 6.8).3 In the social-semiotic theory of representation, a semiotic mode, be it speech, writing, image or sounds, has to fulfil three metafunctions pro3  For copyright reasons the advertising images illustrated in Figs. 6.8 and 6.9 are not reproduced here, only represented as diagrams.

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Fig. 6.8  Olympus™ advertisement in Hong Kong

posed in the work of Michael Halliday (1985): ideational, interpersonal and textual (see also Sect. 1.1, Chap. 1 and Sect. 2.2.2, Chap. 2). The ideational metafunction is realised in our Facebook pictures in terms of ‘analytical structures’ (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001: 87–104), representing participants (people, places, things) in terms of “their more generalised and more or less stable and timeless essence” (Ibid.: 79), rather than presenting unfolding actions and events as in narrative processes. Given that people normally pose for their photographs by pausing what they are doing, it is hardly surprising that these images are essentially analytical, relating the represented participants in terms of a part-whole structure: they allow viewers to scrutinise the different facets of the pictured scene (i.e. ‘possessive attributes’) and then identify the relevant social event (i.e. ‘the carrier’). This is particularly so for collages as viewers are given diverse visual elements serving as possessive attributes randomly arranged in a single image, leaving it to them to work out the carrier through mental associations and cultural knowledge. Moreover, the interpersonal meta-

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function is characterised by lowered naturalistic modality; that is to say, our Facebook pictures are not intended to be truthful representations of the reality. Visual modality refers to the degree of realism, with naturalistic images having high modality and morphed images having low modality. As noted above, the pictures taken by our female subjects are often doctored with the help of art filters. In such images, the use of filtering effects is done to appeal to ‘sensory’ qualities: reality here is constituted precisely by subjective emotions and sensations such as aesthetics, romantic feelings, festive mood, nostalgia, etc. Finally, the textual metafunction is realised by the presence of framing in most of our Facebook photos. All three metafunctions are relevant to the present study: (1) the ideational choices offer a glimpse of an array of lifestyle choices that Hong Kong females typically make through their everyday activities and social gatherings; (2) the sensory orientation of their photographic images clearly points to the pleasure principle—in line with the advertising slogan ‘photography is fun’—that is likely to be embraced by the female population as part of their self-image; (3) the framing of pictures strongly signifies a sense of individuality. It is for these reasons that we need to take a close look at the issue of female identity (past and present) and its relation to the economic, social and cultural transformation of the Hong Kong society. Since the early 1990s, Hong Kong has qualified as a global city as a result of its transformation from an industrial city to a knowledge-based, service-driven economy (Chiu et al. 1997). Hong Kong females have benefited from this globalisation process as evidenced by their growing ­participation in the labour force. However, gender discrimination prevailed in the workforce in terms of occupational polarisation: Lee (1997, 2000) showed that females were disproportionately overrepresented in traditionally ‘feminised’, elementary occupations such as clerks, service and sales workers, and by the same token they are underrepresented in higher status occupations, for instance, managers, professionals and associate professionals. The author concluded that females’ participation in the labour market had not brought about any fundamental changes in the patriarchal ideology that has been dominating the Hong Kong society. In traditional Chinese culture, males are accorded greater esteem, privileges and status whereas females are expected to be obedient and respect the patriarchal hierarchy within the kinship system (Croll 1995). The virtues for a woman are defined narrowly in her role as wife and mother (Cheung 1996). Therefore, their presence in the workplace was still hindered by their childbearing responsibilities and familial role as homemakers and

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caregivers. It is only from 2000 onwards that females in Hong Kong have finally begun to be emancipated from their domestic roles, mainly due to their higher educational attainment. The gender gap in earnings has shown some signs of narrowing, especially for females with tertiary education (Cheung 2002; Chiu and Lui 2004). The availability of Filipino domestic helpers has also freed many middle-class females from the routine domestic labour. As a consequence, Hong Kong females have had more disposable income and time to spend on more luxury items and activities such as holidays, electronic gadgets, meals out, entertainment, prestigious brands, etc. (cf Kang and Chen 2014). Indeed, the Facebook images we have seen offer comparable insights into their consuming behaviour: fine dining in plush restaurants, having buffets and high tea in luxury hotels, strong appeal to pleasurable sensation afforded by high-end digital cameras and cameraphones. Those photographic images represent Hong Kong females as having material desires and actively pursuing them through consumer choices and lifestyle products. This agency is made explicit in the use of framing in virtually all of the pictures recorded; by the signification of framing as separation, these female image-makers are disconnected from the socio-economic realities of their past lives as being constrained and impeded by their domestic role. They are shown in their Facebook pictures as independent, cheerful and self-assured in a way similar to the portrayal of women in international magazines such as Cosmopolitan as ‘fun fearless female’ (Machin and Thornborrow 2006). In this process of identity formation, influences from international ­post-feminist trends are evident. Economic independence is a cornerstone of post-feminist identity and much celebrated as an achievement; closely linked to economic success and consumerism, post-feminism sees the empowerment of women as a positive value (McRobbie 2004). While it is debatable whether post-­feminism can achieve real social change, it has at least constructed a new type of confident, hedonistic femininity that defies notions of subservience and dependence.

6.7   Final Remarks: An Uphill Battle This chapter deals with the current representational practices of personal photography of Hong Kong females and how photographic images are used to frame social status and identity. This is typical of the lifestyle society in which we now live. In this society, we define ourselves not on the basis of the traditional notion of gender or social class, but in terms of

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what we do and the values we hold (Machin and van Leeuwen 2007: 50). It has been argued in the present study that females in Hong Kong communicate their core values such as fun, independence, financial and professional power, and self-confidence through their personal photographs and their choice of consumer products recorded on these photographs. There seems to be a tendency for Hong Kong females to follow the thinking of post-feminists who regard themselves as having achieved equality in social and economic terms and are therefore able to embrace consumerism and lifestyle as markers of their new identity. As a cautionary note, such post-feminist thinking rests on false premises, however—even a cursory glance at any statistics on opportunities for job promotion and sexual harassment against female employees in the workplace shows that females in Hong Kong have not yet achieved socio-economic equality. The Women’s Commission has recently cited data from the census department that suggest that men held 70 per cent of the management and administration positions in 2009 (Ngo 2011). Let us now turn to the number of females on the boards of public bodies and listed companies. The government has pledged to ensure women hold at least 30 per cent of posts on any advisory board or statutory body. Although females now make up about 30 per cent of non-official members appointed to government advisory bodies—in line with the government’s target, some powerful boards, such as those of the Town Planning Board, Airport Authority and Urban Renewal Authority, still lag (Lam 2012a). The private sector, anecdotally, is further behind. Surprisingly, the sexist ideology exists even in the digital camera advertisements targeted specifically at females. It would be easy to identify some culturally entrenched gender stereotypes in these advertisements (see Fig. 6.9) with reference to the dimensions proposed in Erving Goffman’s Gender Advertisements (1979): function ranking, the ritualisation of subordination and licensed withdrawal. In terms of function ranking, males are more likely to be portrayed as product authorities and females are more likely to be product users, as shown in Fig. 6.9a. The ritualisation of subordination refers to the tendency for women to be presented in inferior positions and poses; as in Fig. 6.9b, the female model is found to be pictured in recumbent position on the roof of a car. Goffman theorises that women in advertisements are symbolically licensed to withdraw from the scene, and this withdrawal is often signalled by certain types of gaze: for example, in Fig. 6.9c, the female holding the camera is depicted as gazing in an undirected way into the middle distance. Returning to the advertise-

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Fig. 6.9  Advertisements for digital cameras

ment given in Fig. 6.8, the adult female model is portrayed in a subordinate manner by engaging in a childish act. All these advertisements seem to suggest that while females are given the opportunity to possess a professional-­looking camera and embrace male-dominant values such as ‘sense of direction’ (see Fig. 6.9b) and ‘intelligence’ (see Fig. 6.9c), their portrayals in advertising betray undiminished gender stereotyping. While the empowerment of Hong Kong females is evident in their personal photography, it will still be an uphill fight for them to get their new, ‘post-feminist’ identity more widely accepted.

References Barthes, Roland. 1982. Camera lucida: Reflections on photography. 2nd ed. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang. Bartholeyns, Gil. 2014. The instant past: Nostalgia and digital retro photography. In Media and nostalgia: Yearning for the past, present and future, ed. Katharina Niemeyer, 51–69. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1996. Photography: A middle-brow art. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Cheng, Ching-shan, Chan Yee-min, & Ga, Shing-fung. 2012. Farewell, Kodak films: Mobile phones hold sway: The era of universal photography. Ming Pao Weekly, 17 March: 56–79 (in Chinese). Cheung, Chau-kiu. 2002. Gender differences in participation and earnings in Hong Kong. Journal of Contemporary Asia 32 (1): 69–90.

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Cheung, Fanny. 1996. Gender role development. In Growing up the Chinese way: Chinese child and adolescent development, ed. Sing Lau, 45–67. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. Chilvers, Ian (ed.). 1996. Collage. The concise Oxford dictionary of art and artists (2nd ed.). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Chiu, Stephen, K.C. Ho, and Tai-lok Lui. 1997. City-states in the global economy: Industrial restructuring in Hong Kong and Singapore. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Chiu, Stephen, and Tai-lok Lui. 2004. Testing the global city-social polarisation thesis: Hong Kong since the 1990s. Urban Studies 41 (10): 1863–1888. Cobley, Paul, and Nick Haeffner. 2009. Digital cameras and domestic photography: Communication, agency and structure. Visual Communication 8 (2): 123–146. Cobley, Paul, and Anti Randviir. 2009. Introduction: What is sociosemiotics? Special issue. Semiotica 173 (1–2): 1–39. Crick, Ruth, and Kath Grushka. 2009. Signs, symbols and metaphor: Linking self with text in inquiry-based learning. The Curriculum Journal 20 (4): 447–464. Croll, Elisabeth. 1995. Not the moon: Gendered difference and reflection: Women of reform. In Changing identities of Chinese women: Rhetoric, experience, and self-perception in the twentieth century, ed. Elisabeth Croll, 136–179. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. D’Angelo, Frank. 2010. The rhetoric of intertextuality. Rhetoric Review 29 (1): 31–47. Devoss, Dànielle, and Patrick Lebeau. 2010. Reading and composing Indians: Invented Indian Identity through visual literacy. The Journal of Popular Culture 43 (1): 45–77. Friedel, Tracy. 2008. (Not so) crude text and images: Staging Native in ‘big oil’ advertising. Visual Studies 23 (3): 238–254. Garry, Maryanne, and Matthew Gerrie. 2005. When photographs create false memories. Current Directions in Psychological Science 14 (6): 321–325. Goffman, Erving. 1979. Gender advertisements. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Halliday, Michael. 1978. Language as social semiotics. London: Arnold. ———. 1985. An introduction to functional grammar. London: Arnold. Harrison, Barbara. 2002. Photographic visions and narrative inquiry. Narrative Inquiry 12 (1): 87–111. Hodge, Robert, and Gunther Kress. 1988. Social semiotics. Cambridge: Polity Press. Humphreys, Karen. 2006. Collages communicants: Visual representation in the collage-albums of Max Ernst and Valentine Penrose. Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 10 (4): 377–387. Kang, Agnes, and Katherine Chen. 2014. Stancetaking and the Hong Kong Girl in a shifting heterosexual marketplace. Discourse & Society 25 (2): 205–220.

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Kress, Gunther. 1993. Learning to write. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. ———. 1997. Before writing: Rethinking the paths to literacy. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2003. Literacy in the new media age. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2010. Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. London and New York: Routledge. Kress, Gunther, and Robert Hodge. 1979. Language as ideology. London and Boston, MA: Routledge/Kegan Paul. Kress, Gunther, Carey Jewitt, Jon Ogborn, and Charalampos Tsatsarelis. 2001. Multimodal teaching and learning: The rhetorics of the science classroom. London: Continuum. Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. 2001. Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication. London: Edward Arnold. ———. 2006. Reading images: The grammar of visual design. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge. Lam, Lana. 2012a. Few women on powerful boards. South China Morning Post, 22 April. ———. 2012b. Stealing art from MTR riders with his phone: Exhibit features images that Lai Yat-nam secretly captured with his iPhone despite photo restrictions. South China Morning Post, 26 February. Larbalestier, Simon. 1990. The art and craft of collage. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. Lee, William. 1997. Industrial dualism, income, and gender inequality in Hong Kong. Asian Affairs 24 (1): 15–33. ———. 2000. Women employment in colonial Hong Kong. Journal of Contemporary Asia 30 (2): 246–264. Loizos, Peter. 2000. Video, film and photographs as research documents. In Qualitative researching with text, image and sound: A practical handbook, ed. Martin Bauer and George Gaskell, 93–107. London: Sage Publications. Lüders, Marika, Lin Prøitz, and Terje Rasmussen. 2010. Emerging personal media genres. New Media & Society 12 (6): 947–963. Machin, David, and Joanna Thornborrow. 2006. Lifestyle and the depoliticisation of agency: Sex as power in women’s magazines. Social Semiotics 16 (1): 173–188. Machin, David, and Theo van Leeuwen. 2007. Global media discourse: A critical introduction. London and New York: Routledge. McRobbie, Angela. 2004. Post-feminism and popular culture. Feminist Media Studies 4 (3): 255–264. Merriam-Webster Dictionary. n.d. Accessed October 4, 2018. http://www.merriam-webster.com/. Mohan, Palani. 2011. Focus pocus. South China Morning Post, 6 November. Ngo, Jennifer. 2011. Outdated attitudes about working women persist. South China Morning Post, 14 October.

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Philipps, Axel. 2012. Visual protest material as empirical data. Visual Communication 11 (1): 3–21. Sontag, Susan. 1973. On photography. New York: Delta. van Dijck, José. 2008. Digital photography: Communication, identity, memory. Visual Communication 7 (1): 57–76. van House, Nancy. 2011. Personal photography, digital technologies and the uses of the visual. Visual Studies 26 (2): 125–134. van Leeuwen, Theo. 2005a. Introducing social semiotics. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2005b. Time in discourse. Linguistics and the Human Sciences 1 (1): 125–145. ———. 2008. Discourse and practice: New tools for critical discourse analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. van Leeuwen, Theo, and Carey Jewitt, eds. 2001. Handbook of visual analysis. London: Sage Publications. Vivienne, Sonja, and Jean Burgess. 2013. The remediation of the personal photograph and the politics of self-representation in digital storytelling. Journal of Material Culture 18 (3): 279–298. Wang, Li, Pertti Alasuutari, and Jari Aro. 2014. Aesthetic and family frames in the online sharing of children’s birthday photos. Visual Communication 13 (2): 191–209. Weber, Tim. 2012. Facebook buys Instagram photo sharing network for $1bn. BBC News: Technology, 10 April. Accessed October 4, 2018. http://www.bbc. com/news/technology-17658264. Yung, Vanessa. 2012. No scone unturned. South China Morning Post, 22 March. Zappavigna, Michele. 2016. Social media photography: Construing subjectivity in Instagram images. Visual Communication 15 (3): 271–292. Zhao, Sumin, and Michele Zappavigna. 2018. Beyond the self: Intersubjectivity and the social semiotic interpretation of the selfie. New Media and Society 20 (5): 1735–1754.

CHAPTER 7

Significance of Social Semiotic Research

Abstract  A social semiotic approach is central to the analysis of visual imagery drawn from a given community. To provide a fine-grained social semiotic account, the social context of meaning making is crucial in making sense of the visual texts in relation to the wider discourse environment and its ideological underpinnings. It has been demonstrated that a multidisciplinary approach to social semiotic empirical research is extremely helpful in analysing socially shaped semiotic artefacts and unpacking the multiplicity of meanings attached to them. As will be outlined shortly in this chapter, further research could possibly explore the synergy between social semiotics and theoretical constructs from cognitive blending theory and the new semiotic regimes created by the advances in computer technologies in virtual reality in which realistic visual images are employed to replicate a real environment as well as the agency of its user and the semiotic choices made by software designers. Keywords Social semiotics • Semiotic artefacts • Social context • Multidisciplinary research • Further research

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7.1   Contributions of the Visual Analyses Undertaken in This Book By drawing on visual data ranging from print advertisements to digital photography, this book has provided a fine-grained social semiotic analysis of a full range of visual texts in terms of specified periods, offering a complex interpretation of what different social functions these texts realise in a semiotic artefact. Situated in the semiotic landscape of the city of Hong Kong, the current study demonstrates that the social context of meaning making is an important feature of a social semiotic visual analysis. For example, it has been shown that the widespread use of smartphone applications has a significant impact on the personal photography of Hong Kong females, leading to socio-cultural transformations that are reflected in the representational aesthetic practices of digital photographs for self-­ modelling as well as an emerging gendered identity within the community. Through a study of three distinct sets of definitive stamps issued during the post-colonial period of the city, the social semiotic analysis has been able to track the social changes that can be inferred from the semiotic resources and principles mediated in the design of the postage stamps. These examples have shown how the processes of meaning making (design, use and interpretation) lie at the heart of the analysis of semiotic artefacts and should be augmented by theories and concepts from art history and design studies. The present volume has also discussed how social semiotic analysis might attend to the broader notion of discourses as “resources for representing social practices in text” (van Leeuwen 2008: 6), as in the case of TV commercials focussed on personal loans and luxury property. The discursive construction of voices, viewer engagement, social actors and actions could be significantly aided by a focus on the semiotic interplay between the verbal and visual resources. It has been argued that legitimations in the form of both emotional branding strategies and the rationalisation of knowledges of habitual social actions and narratives are frequently employed to enhance the persuasive power of the advertising discourse. Again, the contextual information specific to the social conditions of the community is central to the analysis of the semiotic artefacts. The desire of a hedonistic lifestyle has been the driving force behind these discursive practices in which social actors are idealised through semiotic resources in such a way that their semiotically shaped identities in the advertising discourse become a site of ideology on the basis of which intertextuality and

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the broader discourse of social stereotypes could be analysed. In addition, the social semiotic analysis of print advertisements in magazines on slimming products and services also offers deep insights into the media ideologies relating to female body idealisation, gender roles and stereotypes, providing a useful sociologically relevant analysis on the basis of analytical tools from social semiotics and further pointing to the need for combining social semiotics with sociological theory. Hence, the book’s main contribution lies in its empirical component. Essentially a series of in-depth social-semiotic/media studies, it provides a powerful illustration of the context-dependent application of Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) social semiotic theoretical and methodological constructs. The author takes concepts which have been prominent in social semiotics for decades and applies them to rich examples from the real media environment of Hong Kong, bringing in the major asset of the author’s local expertise and demonstrating how such analyses can be carried out by local experts elsewhere, too. Another contribution of the book is its multidisciplinary positioning. It takes a theoretical framework which originated in linguistics and applies it in areas previously confined to (multimodal) media studies, art history, sociology, and advertising studies, to name but a few. This approach provides a rich tapestry of ideas and angles on the various media examples the author scrutinises, and it makes the volume all the more exciting and relevant. Furthermore, this book takes well-developed theory and applies it empirically to different media cases from Hong Kong, and this is, hopefully, its major asset. Volumes with a similar focus on empiricism which have come out recently are Wildfeuer’s (ed.) (2015) Building Bridges for Multimodal Research (Peter Lang) and Seizov and Wildfeuer’s (eds.) (2017) New Studies in Multimodality (Bloomsbury) where empirical application is roughly on a par with theoretical discussion. The present volume, however, benefits from offering a single author’s empirical effort in a singular media environment which makes the material more easily accessible than the empirical studies in a classic edited volume. Additionally, much of the work on visual texts in previous literature comes from education and children’s media practices, so the present volume offers a welcome expansion of focus. Through a good application of Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) brand of social semiotic media analysis to a variety of intriguing examples from Hong Kong media, this book takes a well-known theory and demonstrates

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how much it can do “in real life”, with the hope of inspiring more scholars with local expertise to revisit social semiotics and apply it to their media formats of choice with surprising and noteworthy results. The book has offered an illuminating example of how classical social semiotics can be combined with deep local media expertise to produce insightful and impactful media analyses. Therefore, it makes important primary reading for students in Visual Communication, Media and Mass Communication, Advertising courses as well as useful secondary reading for students of media production and media analysis.

7.2   Future Research By adopting a multidisciplinary perspective on visual research (Pauwels 2011), this book has contributed to the recent call for an integrated approach to the study of semiotic artefacts in which social semiotics can be fruitfully informed by ethnography (from sociology) and cognitive psychology (see Jewitt et al. 2016: 84–85). Future research can look into the possibility of synergising the social semiotic theory of representation and communication and the theory of conceptual blending in cognitive linguistics to illustrate how image-viewers construct meanings from a vast array of visual images that represent different types of visual structures and blending networks (see Wong 2018 for an exploratory study). Blending is a ubiquitous, fundamental cognitive activity with wide applications. Fauconnier and Turner (2002) eloquently demonstrate that blending theory has been applied to the study of verbal, musical and visual art, in cartoons and allegory, in mathematical and scientific thought, in grammar and rhetoric, and in the actions, rituals and artifacts of everyday life. The comprehension of an image must be understood in terms of the cognitive processes of deduction, comparison, selection and combination of textual and visual materials at work. Although Fauconnier and Turner (2002) do not address the issue of discourse context, and its effect on the creation of blends, the social semiotic theory can complement in this respect by assuming that all images serve ideological agendas in relation to the social environment in which the images are produced and interpreted. In social semiotic theory, meaning is shaped visually, socially and culturally. One could say that the ‘inner’ mental processes of interpretation and understanding are downplayed in favour of the more ‘outer’ semiotic resources of images carefully selected and configured in meaning-making. In essence, the social semiotic theory can be complemented by blending theory, particularly in understanding individual

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c­ ognition or in the production of a new ‘inner’ sign, to use social semioticians’ terminology. Hopefully, this synergic perspective on meaning can also contribute to the theoretical discussion in the broader field of human comprehension. Further studies could also explore new semiotic resources made available through advances in digital technologies such as immersive Virtual Reality (VR), in particular the semiotic choices made by software designers on how they configure realistic visual images that replicate a real environment as well as the agency of its user actively engaged in the processes of meaning making. Carrozzino and Bergamasco (2010) report on a survey about the use of new technologies such as VR and novel interaction paradigms in cultural heritage applications; specifically, these technologies have been demonstrated to be particularly helpful in contemporary museums as an effective means of visual communication between curators and visitors by making culture more accessible to the general public through enhanced sensorial experience. This again calls for multidisciplinary research for testing, evidencing and refining social semiotic theories and concepts. By focussing on the semiotic landscape of a specific locality, the visual analysis undertaken in this book on the basis of some globally recognised visual-verbal genres such as magazine advertisements, TV commercials and digital personal photographs on social media would also shed light on such kinds of text in other cultural contexts in Southeast Asia and other major cities in the world, offering a fertile ground on which to explore how visual imagery and text are employed to perpetuate or challenge, conceal or reveal, legitimise or subvert sociocultural beliefs, stereotypes and norms across different cultures. Hopefully, the book’s strong focus on the visual and verbal modes will attract more researchers to study text-­ image relations and the role they play in (de)naturalising existing power relations and promoting social change.

References Carrozzino, Marcello, and Massimo Bergamasco. 2010. Beyond virtual museums: Experiencing immersive virtual reality in real museums. Journal of Cultural Heritage 11 (4): 452–458. Fauconnier, Gilles, and Mark Turner. 2002. The way we think: Conceptual blending and the mind’s hidden complexities. New York: Basic Books. Jewitt, Carey, Jeff Bezemer, and Kay O’Halloran. 2016. Introducing multimodality. London and New York: Routledge.

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Index1

A Aaker, David, 85, 101 Abstraction, 119 Advertorials, 46 Aesthetics, 144, 147, 149, 158 Affinity, 35, 95 Affordances, 2 Agency, 5, 108, 114, 119, 150 Agent role, 114 American culture, 43 Analytical processes, 66, 68, 92, 98 Analytical structures, 148 Anecdote, 93, 97, 103 Angle, camera, 91, 95, 96, 102 Anglo-Australian school, 134 Announcement, 24 Art filters, 141–144, 147, 149 Art history, 158, 159 Aspiration, 117, 121, 136 Assembly, 137 Association, meaning via, 138 Associations, elicited, 93

Attention, 4, 18 Attributes/characteristics, 26, 101, 123 Attribution, 90, 96, 97 Aural transcription, 90 Authenticity, 24 Authorisation, 121 B Background, 26 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 84, 90 Baldry, Anthony, 89, 110 Barthes, Roland, 17, 56, 57, 132 Bartholeyns, Gil, 144 Bastien, Vincent, 124 Bateman, John, 6, 89 Beauty salons, 40 Bergamasco, Massimo, 161 Bernstein, Basil, 91 Bhabha, Homi, 72 Bias, 133

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2019 M. Wong, Multimodal Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15428-8

183

184 

INDEX

Biculturalism, 73 Bifurcation, 73 Blending, 160 Borders/frame lines, 144–146, 149 Bourdieu, Pierre, 84, 122, 132 Brand as product, 101 Brand identity, 101 Branding, 71, 84–87, 94 Branding, corporate, 84–85 Branding, emotional, 85–88, 91–97, 101, 108, 158 Branding, experiential, 87 Brand names, 24 Brand personality, 87, 94, 101, 103 Brand representatives, 92, 95, 96, 98, 102 Brand semiotics, 84 Bray, Mark, 58 Breast consciousness discourse, 42–44 Bride Wannabes, 37 C Camera angle, 91, 95, 96, 102 Capillary power, 49 Capitalism, 71, 73, 84 Captions, 69, 145 Carrier, 26, 66, 148 Carrozzino, Marcello, 161 Cash, Thomas, 14 Celebrity endorsement, 35, 48, 113 Central composition, 68 Chan, Alan, 73 Chan, Kam Wah, 120 Chan, Kara, 15, 17 Chaney, David, 120 Character voice, 90 Cheng, Ching-shan, 142 Cheng, Sammi, 45 Cheong, Yin Yuen, 19, 20, 23 Cheung, Fanny, 149 Cheung, Sidney, 108

China, separation from, 70 Chinese identity, 59, 63, 70 Chinese nationalism, 72 Chi-pao, 36 Choi, Charlene, 113 Choice, systems of, 18, 26, 58 Chugani, Michael, 74 Chun, Allen, 75 Clark, Hazel, 73 Classificational processes, 66, 68 Clichés, 63 Close personal distance, 95, 96 Cobley, Paul, 134 Co-construction, 49, 98 Cognitive appeal, 86, 87 Cognitive linguistics, 160 Cognitive processes, 160 Cognitive psychology, 160 Coherence, 92 Collage, 135–141, 148 Colonial legacy, 62, 140 Complement(s) to the Locus of Attention (Comp.LoA), 20 Compositional meaning, 18, 20, 66–69 Conceptual blending, 160 Conceptual structure, 67 Connotation, 93, 117, 144 Construals, 94 Consumerism, 110, 111, 119, 121, 126, 146, 150, 151 Context-dependency, 159 Context of situation, 97 Contextual information, 158 Contextualising discourses, 85 Contraction, 90 Cook, Guy, 84, 85, 91, 93, 98, 108, 111 Core identity, 85 Corporate branding, 84–85 Corporate image, 88 Cosmopolitanism, 72

 INDEX 

Covert taxonomies, 68 Crick, Ruth, 136 Critical discourse analysis, 110–126 Croll, Elisabeth, 149 Cultural diversity, 63 Cultural heritage applications, 161 Cultural ideals, 35 Cultural identity, 133, 134 Cultural imperialism, 112 Cultural model of femininity, 43 Cultural practice, 132, 134 Cultural references, 120 Cultural resources, 134 Cultural semiotic resources, 134 Cultural values, 108, 124 D D’Angelo, Frank, 135 Dash, Amarendra Kumar, 89 Dated aesthetics, 144 Decolonisation, 70 Decontextualisation, 68, 69 Design studies, 5, 158 Devoss, Dànielle, 136 Discourse, definition of, 109, 158 Discourse types, 90 Discursive voice, 90, 100, 101 Distillation, 117, 119 Djonov, Emilia, 110 Domains, 76, 90, 123 Dream of the Red Chamber, 36 Dual identity, 70 Dyer, Gillian, 98 E East-West hybridity, 72–73 Elicited associations, 93 Elites, 111, 117, 122, 126 Elliot, Dorinda, 37 Emblem, 23

185

Emotional branding, 85–88, 91–97, 101, 108, 158 Emotional capital, 87 Empathy, 14, 97 Empiricism, 40, 159 Endorsement, 90, 96 Engagement, 4, 90, 97, 102, 103 Enhancer, 24 Episodes, 118 Ethnography, 160 Euroamerican beauty ideology, 43 Evaluative devices, 90 Exclusion, symbolic meaning of, 111 Expansion, 90 Experiential branding, 87 Experiential dimension, 124, 126, 139 Explicit: Congruent Display, 23 Extended identity, 85 Eye level, 95, 96, 102 F Facebook, 15, 137, 139, 145–148, 150 Fairclough, Norman, 90, 110 Fauconnier, Gilles, 160 Female body image, 14–17 Feng, Dezheng, 20, 90, 97 Film analysis, 89 Filmic texts, 45 Filters, 141–144, 147, 149 Fitspiration images, 16 Flags, 76 Fleming, David, 121 Foregrounding, 24 Foucault, Michel, 49, 91, 109, 120 Found images, 135 Framing, 4, 68, 145, 149, 150 Frewer, Douglas, 56 Friedel, Tracy, 136 Friedman, Jonathan, 72 Functional dimension, 125

186 

INDEX

Functionalisation, 119 Function ranking, 151 Fung, Anthony, 37, 38, 46, 48, 58, 59, 70 G Garrett, Daniel, 75 Gaze, 91, 102, 115, 151 Gender roles, 27, 29, 37–40, 114–116, 126, 149–151, 159 Generalisation, 117–121, 148 Generic representation, 32, 114, 116 Generic structure, 19, 20 Gesture, 30, 101, 110 Given/New information, 69 Global capitalism, 71, 73 Global citizens, 75 Global consumerism, 110, 111, 146 Global Euroamerican beauty ideology, 43 Globalisation, 111, 149 Glocalisation, 71 Gobé, Marc, 86, 95, 97 Goffman, Erving, 151 Goldman, Robert, 14 Grammar of visual design, 17, 19, 68, 144 Grushka, Kath, 136 H Hall, Stuart, 58 Halliday, Michael, 2, 18, 20, 26, 134, 148 Harrison, Simon, 121 Heung Gong Yan, 71 High tea, 140, 150 Hipstamatic™, 142 Hodge, Robert, 3, 5, 134, 135 Holt, Douglas, 86

Homogenisation, 26, 84, 116, 123, 126 Hong Kong breast culture, 42 female body image in, 14–17, 36 as global city, 149 hybrid identities of Hong Kong women, 38 integration with the motherland, 73–76 national identity, 57–59, 69–76 new identity for Hong Kong females, 146–150 separation from China, 70 sovereignty, 57–59, 70, 72 westernisation, 35, 38, 59, 62, 111, 119 Howers, David, 112 Hu Jintao, 76 Hung, Kineta, 38 Huppatz, Daniel, 73 Hybrid branding strategies, 102 Hybrid identities, 38, 67, 72–73 Hybridised discourse, 84 Hybridity in branding strategies, 97–103 I Idealisation, 102, 117, 158, 159 Idealised body image, 15–17, 24, 25, 32, 34–37, 43 Idealised lifestyles, 108 Ideational metafunction, 2, 18, 20, 24, 25, 148 Identification, 119 Identity brand identity, 85 core identity, 85 cultural identity, 133, 134 discursive construction of, 58 dual identity, 70

 INDEX 

extended identity, 85 formation, 38, 58, 131, 150, 158 Hong Kong, 113 hybrid identities, 38, 67, 72–73 international identity, 71 national identity, 57–59, 69–76 new identity for Hong Kong females, 146–150 photography as a tool for, 132 signifying, 119 sources of, 69 Ideology, 5, 110, 119, 133, 134, 158–160 Iedema, Rick, 57, 89 Implicit: Incongruent Display, 23 Inclusion/exclusion (of social actors), 111 Individualisation, 146 Informational values, 68 Instagram™, 16, 142 Integrated approaches, 160 Integration with the motherland, 73–76 Intensification of experience, 146 Interactive meaning, 18, 26, 35, 91, 96, 102 Interest, as guide to selection of semiotic resources, 3, 4, 143 International identity, 71 Internalisation, 69, 70 Interpersonal metafunction, 2, 18, 148–149 Interpretation, 160 Interpreter role, 3 Intersemiosis, 89 Intertextuality, 45–48, 90, 97, 158 Intertextual voices, 88, 90, 91, 93, 103 Inversion, 120 Invisible onlooker, 117 J Japan, 16, 40–44

187

Jaworski, Adam, 117, 122 Jewitt, Carey, 2, 3, 5n1, 89, 110, 133, 160 K Kaganovsky, Lilya, 30 Kapferer, Jean-Noël, 124 Kim, Jungsik, 71 Kowner, Rotem, 16 Kress, Gunther, 2–4, 17–19, 26, 32, 33, 57, 58, 66, 68, 76, 84, 85, 91, 92, 95, 96, 102, 109–111, 117, 123, 134, 135, 141, 144, 145, 148, 159 L Labov, William, 93 Lai, Kelly, 35 Lai Yat-nam, 143 Lam, Ka Yin, 17 Lam, T. H., 71 Larbalestier, Simon, 135, 136 Lau Siu-kai, 76 Layout, 19–26, 114 Lead (most salient visual item), 24 Lebeau, Patrick, 136 Lee, Annisa, 16 Lee, Leo Ou-fan, 72 Lee, Micky, 38, 48 Lee, Sing, 35 Lee, William, 149 Legitimations, 121–126, 158 Lemke, Jay, 46, 48 Leonard, Peter, 121 Leonhardt, Ted, 85 Leung, Freedom, 15, 36 Levinson, Stephen, 89 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 135 Lifestyle identities, 119, 150 Lifestyle magazines, 19 Lifestyle society, 119, 150 Lim, Kei Victor, 89

188 

INDEX

Literacy, learning and pedagogy, 5 Locus of Attention (LoA), 20 Logos, 24, 84 Loizos, Peter, 134 Love on a Diet (2001), 45 Lowe, John, 58, 75 Lüders, Marika, 144 Luxury as a social marker, 122, 124 M Ma, Cheung, 108 Ma, Eric, 37, 59 Machin, David, 109, 119, 120, 150, 151 Mainlandisation, 74 Manga, 42 Marketing, 84–85 Martin, James, 90, 96, 97 McNeill, David, 31 Meaning meaning-making, 2, 137, 158, 160, 161 meaning potentials, 2 multi-layered meanings, 58 renegotiation of, 57 representational meaning, 18, 26, 57, 66–69, 84, 119, 120, 125, 135, 148, 150, 158 residing in discourse, 85 role of multimodality in, 2 social context of meaning making, 2, 158 social meaning, 146 social-semiotic theory of, 134–135 symbolic meanings, 23, 93, 111, 134 Media intertextuality, 45 as social technologies of gender, 37 Mediated communication practices, 133, 145, 147 Mediator role, 69

Memory photography as tool for, 131 stamps as places of, 56 Metafunctions, 2, 18, 20, 147 Metz, Christian, 89 Miller, Laura, 26, 40, 42, 43 Ming Pao Weekly, 142 Miniature pictures, 56 Mishra, Suman, 37 Mohan, Palani, 143 Moral discourses, 123 Moral evaluation, 121–123, 125 Motherland, integration with, 73–76 See also Mainlandisation Motivated signs, 3, 134, 143 Multidisciplinary approach, 5, 159–161 Multi-layered meanings, 58 Multimedia production, 141 Multimodality increasing in modern world, 17 multimodal analysis, 110–126, 135 multimodal transcription, 89 social-semiotic theory of, 19, 134 Multinational companies, 71 Multi-skilling, 141 Music, 93, 100, 110 Mythical signifieds, 76 Mythopoesis, 121, 123 Myths, 120 N Narrative structure, 98, 100, 102, 158 National identity, 57–59, 69–76 Nationalisation, 70 Nationalism, 70, 72 Native culture, 56 Naturalistic modalities, 97, 149 Ng, Bo, 15 Ng, Sik Hung, 71 Nostalgia, 70, 141, 144, 149

 INDEX 

189

O O’Halloran, Kay, 89, 98 Olympus™, 147 Overdetermination, 117, 120 Oyama, Rumiko, 5n1

Provenance, sign that signifies through, 76, 123 Pruzinsky, Thomas, 14 Purposes, 66 Putonghua (Mandarin), 74

P Palmgreen, Philip, 16 Papson, Stephen, 14 Para-linguistic modes of communication, 110 See also Gesture Parasite discourse, 84 Part-whole relations, 66 Patient role (acted on), 114 Patriarchal ideology, 149 Patriotism, 75 Patterns of representation, 18 Pauwels, Luc, 6, 160 Pedersen, Isabel, 32 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 57 Personality, brand, 87, 94, 101, 103 Personification of brands, 94 Perspective, 84 Persuasion, 25, 158 Philipps, Axel, 132 Political implications, 57 Popular lifestyle magazines, 19 Portrait images, 26, 32 Poses, 114, 151 Position, 151 See also Layout Possessive attributes, 26, 66, 148 Postcolonial discourse, 72 Post-feminism, 150, 151 Post-industrial economies, 84 Power relations, 57, 91, 110, 120 Pragmatic/social function, 93 Propaganda, 91, 98, 102 Protest culture, 75

Q Quick Response Code (QR Code), 23, 25 Quotations, 43 R Rahm, Henrik, 84 Randviir, Anti, 134 Rational branding, 86 Rationalisation, 121, 123, 158 Rationalisation legitimation, 125 Realism, 56, 102, 149 Realist images, 63, 68 Reality, recorded versus constructed, 133, 143 Reality TV, 37, 45 Reason ads, 108 Reconfiguration, 137 Recontextualisation, 90, 91, 97, 98, 109, 111, 121 Renegotiation of meanings, 57 Representational art, 56 Representational meaning, 18, 26, 57, 66–69, 84, 119, 120, 125, 135, 148, 150, 158 Representation, theory of, 160 Resource exploitation/manipulation, 57 Rhetorical approach, 3, 160 Rhetorical structure, 97–101 Rhetor role, 3 Ritualisation of subordination, 151 Rooney, Nuala, 108

190 

INDEX

S Salience, 20, 24 Scenes, 89 Schmidt, Karl-Heinrich, 89 Schroder, K., 98 Scott, David, 57 Segmentation, 89 Seizov, Ognyan, 159 Self-enactment, 147 Self-image, 57, 71, 146 Self-reflection, 136 Self-representation, 132 Sensory orientation, 149, 150 Sexist ideology, 151 Shen, Simon, 71 Shot distance, 91, 102 Shot/frame as unit of analysis, 89, 93 Signalling to the signaller, 125 Signifier-signified relationship, 3, 17, 119, 123, 134 Signs of articulation, 57 Singh, Devendra, 36 Slater, Amy, 16 Small print, 25 Smartphones, 141, 143, 146, 158 Snapshot images, 26 So, Peter, 76 Social actions, 117–121, 126, 158 Social actors, 111–117, 158 Social agency, 56 Social collective, 125 Social comparison theory, 15 Social construction of gender, 37 Social construction of knowledge, discourse as, 91, 109 Social context of meaning making, 2, 158 Social distance, 19, 33, 91, 95, 102 Social exclusion, 111

Social expectancy theory, 16 Socialisation, 147 Social meaning, 146 Social networking sites, 15, 38, 134, 145 Social practices, 138, 158 Social process, 3 Social stratification, 122 Socio-cultural contexts, 19, 37, 46, 56, 57, 69, 75, 117, 158 Socio-cultural transformation, 132 Sociology, 69, 159, 160 Sociosemiotics, 134 Sontag, Susan, 131, 133, 139 South China Morning Post, 76 Sovereignty, 57–59, 70, 72 Spatial positioning, 114, 124 See also Layout Special K®, 32 Stance, 96 Steiner, Henry, 73 Stereotypes, 37–40, 73, 114, 126, 151, 159 Strauss, Lévi, 120 Stylistic features, 72 Subjectivity, 91, 126, 149 Subordinate/Superordinate relationships, 68 Subordination of visual to the verbal, 17 Super-thin model, 15 Sussman, Nan, 73 Symbolic attributes, 27, 68, 92, 101 Symbolic capital, 84, 117 Symbolic contact/interaction, 102 Symbolic meanings, 23, 93, 111, 134 Symbolic processes, 66, 68 Symbolic representation, 25–35 Symbolic suggestive processes, 32

 INDEX 

Symbolic values, 122–124 Symbolisation, 120 Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), 18 T Taboo, 88, 103 Tag, 25 Tai-keung, Kan, 73 Tan, Sabine, 89 Tang, Joyce, 46 Taxonomic relationships, 68 Temporal, Paul, 87 Temporality, 137, 138 Textual metafunction, 2, 18, 148, 149 Thibault, Paul, 89, 110 Thin-idealisation, 16, 32, 35–37, 46 Thornborrow, Joanna, 119, 150 Threadgold, Terry, 91 Thurlow, Crispin, 117, 122 Tickle ads, 108 Tiggemann, Marika, 16 Tomlinson, John, 112 Tourism, 74 Transcription, 89 Transductions, 4 Transformation, 4, 117 Transient moments, 26 Travis, Daryl, 85, 101 Triptych structure, 69 Tsang, Eileen Yuk-ha, 58, 75 Tung-Sing Yee, Derek, 113 Turner, Mark, 160 Turner, Matthew, 71 Typography, 43, 124 U Uncertain signs, 17

191

V van Dijck, José, 139, 146 van House, Nancy, 132, 147 van Leeuwen, Theo, 2, 4, 17–19, 26, 32, 33, 43, 57, 66, 68, 76, 84, 85, 91, 92, 95, 96, 102, 109–111, 114, 116, 117, 119–121, 123, 133, 134, 141, 144, 145, 148, 151, 158, 159 van Zoonen, Liesbet, 37 Verbal processes, 98 Vestergaard, T., 98 Viewer alignment, 93 Vinikas, Vincent, 108 Virtual Reality (VR), 161 Visual analysis, 110, 133, 158–160 Visual design grammar, 17, 19, 68, 144 Visual language, photos as, 145 Visual social actor network, 111, 114 Visual transcription, 89 Voice, 84, 90–97, 158 W Waletzky. Joshua, 93 Wang, Li, 147 West, Douglas, 85 Westernisation, 35, 38, 59, 62, 111, 119 White, Peter, 90, 96, 97 Wignell, Peter, 90, 91, 97 Wildfeuer, Janina, 159 Williamson, Judith, 32, 117 Withdrawal, 151 Women’s Commission, 151 Women’s equality, 151 Women’s rights, 37

192 

INDEX

Wong, Wendy S., 73 Written Chinese, 74 Y Yin Yang symbol, 73 Yung, Vanessa, 140

Z Zaccardo, Mia, 16 Zappavigna, Michele, 132, 144 Zhao, Sumin, 110, 132