CHAPTER CONCLUSION The present study has provided a critical analysis of identities textually constructed and (re)presented in the context of Chinese-English bilingual advertising. In doing so, it approaches the issues of identity and English usage from a discourse perspective, paying special attention to discourse and social practice. Specifically, the study, by viewing identity as a social and cultural category and the use of English as social practice, analyzes and discusses the construction of three collective identities---that of Chinese people, gender, and nation---and their social meanings. Combining socio-critical and cognitive approaches to advertising discourse and identity, it is able to look closely into the conceptual processing of identity formation, providing an explanatory account of the range of extent to which the use of English contributes to constructing different forms of identity. In the final chapter, I conclude by summarizing the major findings of the study, reflecting on some insights gained from the results, pointing out the limitations, and considering some implications for future research. 9.1 Summary of Major Findings Extending prior research (i.e., Piller 2001; Gao 2005; Lee 2006) on the hypothesis that English always plays a decisive role in constructing identity in non-English-language advertising, this study examined critically whether English is closely indispensible to identity construction when used in Chinese advertising. In the data it is proved that the role English plays in constructing identity is surprisingly multidimensional and its effects, vary between being decisive and being complementary, marginal or sometimes conflicting. When English plays a crucial role in the blend, its meanings are various and hybrid. Not 272 only was English observed to present semantic meaning, but simultaneously to fulfill symbolic meaning, semantic nuance and cultural significance that Chinese lacks. In some cases the function of English tends to be more decorative than referential. These findings of English usage in Chinese advertising suggest that the advertisers of China, rather than drawing on undifferentiated “global English”, selectively appropriate social styles of English from its global flow, illustrating the notion that the use of English tends to be a local practice. If situated in the broader discursive and social context, social meanings of English can be best ascertained by examining its internal composition within advertisements. Where English is strategically used the options for the advertisers to construct identities are immense. Consistent with the previous studies, in the data modern identities are presented in the form of orientation: emotion, success, internationalization, future, and innovation. Among them, two forms of modern identity (i.e., emotion and innovation) were found new. Of particular significance, although the modernist ideas of emotion, success, internationalization, future and innovation are globally shared, some of them are locally particular in social meaning. English basically plays a predominant role in constructing all forms of modern identity, and an intersection is identified of the use of English to the construction of modern identity. This supports the overall argument that the language practice of English mixing is an effective way to construct modern identity in Chinese advertising. In the construction of modern identity it was also found that China gives heavy weight to high technology and its innovations for the acquisition of modern life and socially upward mobility. But the nation has no intention of discarding the Confucian values of self-reliance, hard word and effort for this aim. The occurrence of English in Chinese advertising does not at all indicate that China wants to essentially change or transform its own system of value by borrowing from abroad but, instead, to adapt or 273 modify the already existing aspects of its own so that they can be more suitable to new circumstances and new social needs. The enduring cultural significance reconciles with the perceived national concern about the loss of traditional Chinese values to the forces of global capitalism. In fact, the practice of reconciling the potential conflict between introduction of western technology and traditional Chinese values is a history of the Chinese dilemma captured in the Chinese slogan “ 中学为体 , 西学为用 ” zhongxue weiti, xixue weiyong (lit. Chinese learning for essence, western learning for utility). The idea of localism embedded in the slogan is a measure calling for a balanced and structured way to handle the complex relations between the local China and the globe. It is evenly helpful to account for the situation why the use of English in the Chinese context does not bring much threat to or undermine cultural authenticity and national identity of contemporary China. The construction of national identity in contemporary China was identified as being extremely ambiguous, and often involves the simultaneous articulation of contrary elements, both global and local, universalizing and particularizing. The nation is strategically compromised by globalization in its capacity to maintain exclusivity of identity attachments. In the data every effort is found to seek after a different and unique national identity through sustaining and refashioning cultural heritage and factual historicity as well as traditional Chinese values. Meanwhile, China has a strong desire to become a new powerful nation on the world stage by deeply taking pride of its past glories and present success in every field. And the role English plays in constructing national identities is much fluid, multivalent, and sometimes unpredictable. Even if there is no mismatching of English with other meaning-making elements, the contribution English may have in this process sometimes is complementary or trivial. Sometimes it is also normative for English to work paradoxically, generating and reproducing in-between, hybrid identities. 274 In construction of gender identity English has the same role as that in constructing national identity. But in sharp contrast to Lee’s (2006) finding, the use of English in Chinese advertising does not automatically involve a subversive construction and, consequently, the emergence of new paradigms of gender roles. English is hardly used to destroy the hegemonic power of social values of gender in contemporary China. At times English is simply deployed as a means of strategy temporarily breaking rules of gender relations, or even to adhere to and naturalize these rules. Yet, we have to acknowledge the emergence of considerable variations within patriarchal patterns of gender---the traditional images of male and female have changed much in contemporary China, although gender relations, as they used to be, are overall still tenaciously asymmetry. And finally, unlike the observation of German-English bilingual advertising (Piller 2001), the data not set males as the sole target audiences. The proposed integrative methodological approach was demonstrated to offer an analytical lens far better able to capture the affiliation of English usage with identity construction and the conceptual manipulation this language practice may have. Compared with traditional approaches to bilingualism and identity study, such as the Markedness Model, Conversation Analysis and Referee Design, the integrative approach is much more practical and productive in revealing the subtle interrelations between the use of English and identity construction, and facilitating the discovery of what kind of role English may have in this process. One of its significant strengths emphatically lies in its ability to describe in explanatory terms how different forms and meanings of identity are textually constructed, and what social ideologies are (re)articulated and embedded in and through the strategic practices of English usage. This, however, would not have been possible if the cognitive tools of frames and blending had not been added to the analytical framework of CDA. 275 9.2 Contributions of the Study With its focus on the particular social, cultural and political contexts of China and its broader examination of different categories of collective identity, this study has certainly made some valid and original contribution to identity study in the research of bilingual advertising. Its contribution, however, is not merely this but includes others. In theoretical terms, bringing together a number of different perspectives to examine English usage and its connection to identity construction, the study has enriched and advanced in a remarkable way the general study of identity in bilingualism research in advertising. Specifically, the study questions the perspective adopted by Piller (2001), Gao (2005) and Lee (2006) of static social-indexical qualities of English. The position it takes is that this bilingual practice is a social practice mediated by language ideologies of the local. Besides, identity is not seen as being universally indexed by the modern sign of English but as a social and cultural category related to modernity that has various forms and meanings in different contexts. Of equal significance, weaving together different strands of current research of identity including discourse, cognition and emotion, the study provides new framings and directions for the study of bilingualism in general and of identity in bilingual contexts specifically. It is with these perspectives that the study could identify specific strategies of English mixing and cogently tells the story of how the complex meaning and function of English as a global language tend to emerge as a brilliant instance of the linguistic performativity of identity. The finding of identities being particular in social meaning is significant for future research to examine the relationship between the local practice of English usage and identity construction. Additionally, the particular social meanings of identity are a testimony to the seizure of the English language and to bilingual advertising as a good site of Referee Design (Bell 1999, 2001). The politics of modern technology, gender, and nationalism in contemporary China, then, suggests that language practice of 276 English usage in China’s contexts involves multiple competing ideologies of the relations between language practice, context, and identity. This finding supports the growing recognition that in a given institution or community there is typically not a single, unified set of beliefs about language, but, instead, a “[d]iversity and contestation in language ideologies” (Gal 1993). In the data identity change or transformation cannot always be witnessed in discursive change when the latter is viewed from the angle of intertextuality in specific relation to the use of English. This finding shows radically that some aspects of social identity continue to reflect some structural characteristics and are less susceptible to reflexive intervention than CDA usually holds. The perception of identity by CDA simply as an issue of reflexive self-transformation therefore fails to fully consider social issues of identity. Primarily following the work of Giddens (1991), CDA practitioners, quoted previously, commonly conceives of linguistic (semiotic in general) reflectivity as the means for transforming social identity (Chouliaraki & Fairclough 1999: 83). Given a specific social, cultural and political context, reflexivity in late modern societies, as Giddens himself has already pointed out, is not necessarily always transformative or detraditionalizing, but at the same time to rediscover a sense of rootedness. Adams develops this point, saying that “an embedded, embodied and contradictory reflexivity [which] is not naively envisaged as either some kind of internalized meta-reflection or simplistic liberatory potential against a backdrop of retreating social structure” (2006: 521). This recognition shapely throws into question the overemphasis on possibilities for a selfconscious fashioning of identity in the context of globalization, which in turn demands an ample rethinking of practice within CDA with specific reference to the conception of reflexivity and transformation. To deal with the interrelations between discursive practices and the construction of identity, it is suggestive for CDA to reconsider the conception of linguistic reflexivity it holds. 277 Methodologically, the study constitutes a relatively new attempt by tentatively connecting this language practice to the concurrent process of activating English and suppressing the native language for conceptual manipulation in the process of identity construction. Differentiated from traditional approaches to bilingualism and identity study, the study, by looking into mental processing of identity construction and (re)presentation, plausibly provides an explanatory account of how these different forms of social identity are produced, reproduced, or shaped as the consequence of power relations and social ideologies. The tentative attempt to study identity in the cognitive perspective would be quite inspiring to any study of identity in other bilingual contexts. Of particular importance, it adds significant evidence for CDA to rely on cognitive tools to make more visible and transparent the ideological dimension of semiotic practice, when exploring and explaining agency, identity, racism, class, and, most generally, political and rhetorical legitimacy embedded in and through discursive practices (cf. Chilton 2005a). Apart from making analytical results more convincing with the integrative approach, the qualitative analyses conducted on the basis of quantitative evidences produced findings that are much reliable and generalizable. 9.3 Limitations and Implications for Future Research I should not miss a few limitations derivable from the findings presented above that I think provide some implications and suggestions for future research. Similar to all studies, this study is limited by methodological short-comings. One is representativeness of the data. The data were collected in terms of advertising value. But the source media of the data are still fairly narrow in terms of diversity. For example, beauty products that are traditionally classified as within the female domain of interest, such as cosmetics, skin care and perfume, nowadays also set males as intended consumers. But in the data was oddly found no beauty advertisement targeting at males. When exploring masculine identities in 278 Chinese-English bilingual advertising, future researchers should collect and look at such beauty advertisements. In addition, although sample advertisements for analysis were carefully chosen based on an extensive examination of the data, some were simplified to reduce task complexity and to increase the generalization of analytical results. Another methodological short-coming involves potential respondent bias. Principally relying on Sperber’s (2000) idea of metarepresentation, the study hypothesized the uncomplicated, unilineal transmission of advertising messages directly from the advertisers to the target audiences. The Chinese-English bilingual advertisements are assumed being interpreted by the target audiences as the most faithfully as the advertisers are intended for, around which the analyses were mainly built. But the performative mechanism cannot be a matter of production only, and such an assumption is often questioned and problematized particularly in cultural studies (Hall 1980) and in multimodal analysis (Kress & van Leeuwen 2001). Rather than mere consumers, the target audiences are usually recognized as active producers of meaning. The interactional, dialogical nature of meaning-making suggests that attention at the same time must be given to the ways in which meaning is shaped by the target audiences’ uptake (Cook 2001), although it is difficult to think how methodologically we analysts might retrieve the kind of mental workings and inclinations that they make during meaning construction1. Interestingly, this is an issue at the forefront of CDA that tries to avoid structuralist determinism by inscribing in local practices the power to negotiate, shape and potentially resist hegemonic structures of control and domination. For instance, Wodak says, “Readers/hearers are not passive recipients in their relationship to texts” (2001: 6). Given the fact of the analyses being made within the framework of CDA, an examination of identity in bilingual advertising equally “needs to move beyond text analysis to the This is not to deny that advertisers may apply a host of strategies that predispose and guide audiences towards readings favoring existing power structures (Hall et al. 1997). 279 critical analysis of the visible practices of text interpretation and use” (Luke 2002: 102)2. Since advertiser production and audience reception might be complimentary, co-respective and even symbiotic, future researchers should consider ways to avoid the dichotomy of either textual determinacy or audience freedom. In order to make the observations and interpretations to be verifiable as it was set as one of its aims in the study, it is advisable to work directly with the advertisers to seek their introspection as well as with the target audiences for their response, rather than depending merely on analysts’ own interpretative methods. Their accounts of how the language practice of English mixing takes on social and psychological meanings surely cannot be taken as a transparent reflection of what the advertisers and the target audiences separately in designing an advertisement and in interpreting it. Nevertheless, as a way of complementing close textual analysis, in any way this may yield some insight into the ways they practice and interpret English and identity construction. This point of view is allusive for future researchers to investigate the manner in which bilingual advertisements are perceived as a division between the target audiences, in ways which correspond to the class and other divisions of the society. The issue of audience positioning that comes into play here has interested people since Kress’s discussion of this in 1985 (e.g., Lemke 1995). In a society of contemporary China where there is a plurality of sociolinguistic resources including English, the ability for different social groups there to get access to and interpret them must be widely diverse. The uptake Realizing little concern with cognitive evidence of language manipulation in the interpretation stage of CDA (Fairclough 1992), O’Halloran (2003) has tentatively made some attempt to fill this gap by designing a model of “reading for gist” through combining elements from cognitive frameworks of connectionism, cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, and relevance theory. Yet, due to its overemphasis upon the dynamics of individuals’ cognitive processing, this model disconnects text interpretation with cognitive operations of manipulation prescribed by text producers. Thus, mystification still remains (see Iedema 2004 for a discussion). 280 by audience members of semiotic acts within bilingual advertising is closely tied to their knowledge and capacity to understand, interpret and evaluate them. Since knowledge is social (van Dijk 2002; 2006b), we cannot reject the possibility of English being used within the national community of China for negotiating identities among Chinese people, constructing social networks, and marking social group boundaries structured by their positioning (cf. Blackledge & Pavlenko 2001). This recognition naturally brings to light bilingual advertising as a site of constant processes of contestation and struggle between class and other groups, despite the hypothesis that each aspect of modern identity constructed and (re)presented within this site in theory is available to all. With no doubt, this is another crucial respect of identity worth a critical inquiry in future, although social identities constructed and conveyed through Chinese-English bilingual advertisements are presumptively available to anyone in the consumer society of China in light of the ideas of Referee Design and self-reflexivity. Diverged from the previous ones, this study in additional situates identity-forming practices within the frame of “text trajectories” (Blommaert 2005: 62) along institutionalized paths, rather than in individual advertisements, by presuming the individuality of English spread and its application worldwide. As such, it has to certain extent made an initial attempt, albeit in a somewhat trial way, to investigate social relations between nation-states by looking into different forms and meanings of social identities. Despite this effort, the concentration of this study overall is still on the reproduction of existing conventions and relations, as well as the production of new ones, within the nation-level community of China. In future it would be fruitful to conduct some cross-cultural study of identity in the perspective of social differences and inequalities between and among nation-states as represented in the textual form of bilingual advertising. An interest in socioculturally situated processes and practices of bilingualism 281 in advertising of different non-English-speaking countries, I believe, must be very useful to capture and explain the construction of power relations between nation-states. The proposed integrative approach seems practical and productive in capturing pointedly and explaining powerfully the affiliation of this language practice with identity construction and its conceptual manipulation in the particular site of advertising. The question arises---can this approach be applied to examining identities constructed and conveyed in other bilingual contexts? Other than verifying its possible applicability to identity study in all bilingual contexts, much work needs to be conducted in order to develop and better this interpretative method. As noted previously, there are other approaches to bilingualism and identity study which can be used to analyze face-to-face interaction. Then, in what ways these varied approaches differ? Do they simply study the same things, but in different way? More interestingly, is the proposed approach complementary to the Markedness Model and Conversation Approach, or vice versa? They are all the worthwhile questions for a deep study in future. 282 [...].. .in advertising of different non -English- speaking countries, I believe, must be very useful to capture and explain the construction of power relations between nation-states The proposed integrative approach seems practical and productive in capturing pointedly and explaining powerfully the affiliation of this language practice with identity construction and its conceptual manipulation in the particular... particular site of advertising The question arises -can this approach be applied to examining identities constructed and conveyed in other bilingual contexts? Other than verifying its possible applicability to identity study in all bilingual contexts, much work needs to be conducted in order to develop and better this interpretative method As noted previously, there are other approaches to bilingualism and... to bilingualism and identity study which can be used to analyze face-to-face interaction Then, in what ways do these varied approaches differ? Do they simply study the same things, but in different way? More interestingly, is the proposed approach complementary to the Markedness Model and Conversation Approach, or vice versa? They are all the worthwhile questions for a deep study in future 282 . and among nation-states as represented in the textual form of bilingual advertising. An interest in socioculturally situated processes and practices of bilingualism 282 in advertising of. 200 5a) . Apart from making analytical results more convincing with the integrative approach, the qualitative analyses conducted on the basis of quantitative evidences produced findings that are. recognized as active producers of meaning. The interactional, dialogical nature of meaning-making suggests that attention at the same time must be given to the ways in which meaning is shaped by the