Journal of Language and Literature Volume 1 Number 1 2002 ISSN 1478 - 9116

"Things are not always as they seem; the first appearance deceives many."
Phaedrus (15BC - 50AD, Roman poet, short-story writer)

1. Motivation

This is an advertisement of China Times from its web site. Café is not uncommon any longer, and has become a cultural polysemy whatever facets we might notice, coming silently and smoothly into our daily life, also playing a role of friend or being a company among friends, standing by your side, encouraging you all the time. This is much more obviously from mass media involving diverse strategies to inform the audience and promote commodities. Advertising, as compared to that in earlier times, no matter in commercials or political propaganda, in print form or through TV and radio's visual/sound effects, is no longer limited to directly selling products and has provided a site where emergent various interesting and appealing forms. One of the most significant features is that longer texts and/or storytelling (Chang 2oo1b, 2ooob, c) in a literary style have largely been applied by many institutions and corporations intending in particular to construct certain cultural image, such as President Enterprises Corporation discussed in this study. It weakly communicates a lot of messages, inviting the audience members as potential consumers to join the stories and interpretation process, and helps on the other hand to shape itself as a cultural landmark.

2. Research Questions

This study attempts to investigate popular culture expressed in advertising discourse, and explores the ideology and power relations shaped in the advertisements by society and culture, and their possible effects on society and culture, trying to explain and render plausible interpretations to the following research questions:

1)	The audience is often conceptualized as a passive receptor, receiving the communicated information from the advertiser. I would like to reexamine what the role the audience plays in media communication and in the process of interpretation.
2)	How to use diverse linguistic/communicative strategies and advertising appeals to affect and persuade the audience?
3)	What cognitive effects could be communicated and perceived by the (different) receptors through storytelling?
4)	What is the social meaning accompanying or behind the language use? What competing ideologies and changing cultural values can be seen from advertising discourse, and further to shape social cognition?

Theoretical Framework

The studies on language in advertisements (in Taiwan) are mainly from marketing and advertising, and the researches from linguistic perspectives are still less (Wei 1996: 133), especially as compared to those in United States, UK and Europe. This paper thus presents a qualitative study on President Enterprises' five advertisements, intending to explore the research issues outlined above. Analytical framework is based on Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory (1986/1995). Since proposed in 1986 by them, the implications of Relevance on communication and cognition have been widely applied in various fields, including literature, linguistics, psychology, political language, language education, advertising and film studies, etc. (ibid.: 255-6, 259-6o). In Relevance, Sperber & Wilson define 'optimal relevance' from the hearer's processing ability in terms of her processing effort and those possible effects:

An utterance, on a given interpretation, is optimally relevant if and only if:

(a)	it achieves enough effects to be worth the hearer's attention;
(b)	it puts the hearer to no gratuitous effort in achieving those effects.
	(Smith and Wilson 1992: 5)

Also they define 'principle of relevance' and 'criterion of consistency with the principle of relevance' as follows:

Principle of relevance:

Criterion of consistency with the principle of relevance:

In Relevance, Sperber & Wilson mainly discussed the examples from word/phrase and sentence levels. While as Blakemore (1992: 165-6) analysed the example of irony, "irony is not always restricted to a couple of lines or a single utterance. In many cases it extends over a whole poem or story…" in which ironical effects are achieved through processing a whole text or, a level of a more global organization, i.e. macrostructure (van Dijk 1977: 130). Thus, since the data for analysis in this study are in storytelling style with longer texts that I tried to apply Relevance Theory to analyse those larger units, from the viewpoint of macrostructure level to see the relevance reached by the audience, though they do not generate irony.

Aside from pragmatic analysis, on the other hand, and also suggested by Sperber & Wilson (1995: 279), this paper further examines the sociocultural contexts to see the inseparable relationship between language use and social function, the major concern of the critical linguists as Fairclough (1995a, 1995b, 1989). Quoting his argumentation here (1995a: 96-7):

Data Analysis

In this section, I deal with the five advertisements of President Enterprises Corporation respectively in the light of their storytelling style to produce cognitive effects. Let us see caption (A) first:

A	1.	A jail-breaker having a sweet tooth.
	2.	Ordering two black cafés, the guy with Italian accent and his partner stared at the Café's gate, watching every customer in and out.
	3.	Since the fourth time of successful jailbreak of the Italian thief, stealing solely Egon Schiele's paintings, people paid extra attention to the Italians around them. So did I.
	4.	One quarter being past, those two guys had taken a lot of black coffee and still looked at the gate.
	5.	After another quarter, the new comer with short hair caught everybody's attention, not because he got also heavy Italian accent, but because he ordered a whole table of desserts.
	6.	'You are arrested!' The guy having black café and his partner suddenly blocked behind him, 'but, please take your time and enjoy them, there's no hurry!' Waiting for his consuming all the desserts and paying the bill for him, the two men took him out of the Café's gate.
	7.	After a moment of silence, people chattered.
	8.	'Why the painting thief only steals the works of Egon Schiele?'
	9.	'Why does that thief have such a sweet tooth?'
	10.	'Why does the thief always be arrested at the same Café?'
		La Gauche de la Seine [President Enterprises Corp.]

Café, like other foreign goods, pizza, spaghetti, French wine or English tea, shapes many fascinating images in its own right for Chinese/Oriental audience, e.g. elegance, a casual and tasteful lifestyle, which are in relation to the commodity attributes, foreign and faraway, but further being associated with its cultural aspects. The items of Italian people/accent/cafeteria, the paintings of Egon Schiele enhance the attraction about the images. Many people (including me) even have never heard Egon Schiele, while with the aids of the contexts and linguistic cues, we could know that he (or she) is at least an artist, a creator of painting, deriving the following strong implicatures without affecting the success of communication:

(1)	Getting to know or like painting is kind of taste.
	Egon Schiele is (possibly) a (famous) painter.
	A thief of paintings is somehow weird.

Besides, from the last three utterances, using three questions raised by the other customers in the Café, could arouse the attention of the audience and make her become involved with advanced processing, thus will get a series of weak implicatures , as shown below:

(2)	A thief of paintings is with some (higher) taste (though somehow weird).
	A thief of Egon Schiele's paintings has (higher) taste.
	A thief steals solely Egon Schiele's paintings signifies a kind of loyalty.
	A big sweet tooth (including Tiramisu?) represents a kind of 'loyalty'.
	A painting thief always coming in the same café is a kind of insistence.
	A painting thief always being arrested in the same café is a kind of insistence.
	A painting thief always being arrested in the same café is a kind of no-regret.
	[...]

By using this communicative style, storytelling (in this study) and/or figures of speech (Chang 2oo1a, b), the speaker could leave a wide space of interpretation to the audience (accompanying larger responsibility at the same time). Moreover, he would not communicate only the strong implicatures in (1), for in that case he might directly express in another way to save her processing efforts, as shown in (3):

(3)	Come to join us, have a café, with Italian flavour in an Italian (or French) atmosphere.

As compared to the text of (A), except the propositional content, the audience could not infer any weak implicatures from (3). Besides, the cops' (unusual) consideration and generosity in (A6) and paying for the thief completely soften the presumably intensive and pressing scenarios, and construct 'respect' and 'harmony' to some extent. The points concerning 'harmony' and 'respect' will be more illustrated later.

The similar advertising appeal, interweaving different or perhaps even being regarded as socially incompatible and contradictory tastes for certain hierarchies, based on our general cognitive mechanisms, is also manipulated in caption (B):

B	1.	Meeting a workman reading a book in (letter)L initial.
	2.	Next to the Café located the library.
	3.	Everybody is used to borrowing a book first and back to the Café's habitual seat. An elderly waiter, then, would serve you an accustomed café, put it quietly on your table.
	4.	If somebody got a wrong place, he had to be a newcomer.
	5.	The brightest corner belonged to the blue-collar of fifty or so.
	6.	Keeping a modest and polite style, he never talked to anybody.
	7.	What he read today was 'Lupus Theory'.
	8.	Still remembered he was reading 'Luge Production' the day before yesterday.
	9.	And 'A Lumberjack's Handbook' last time.
	10.	What an amazing reading style!
	11.	Owing to my curiosity, I came to the library and checked from the bookshelf.
	12.	I couldn't believe what I've found out…
	13.	He was reading according to the alphabetical order, and having read to 'Lu' initial.
	14.	It seemed that, thereafter, the next book was supposed to be 'Lute Melody.'
		La Gauche de la Seine [President Enterprises Corp.]

As being examined from the lexical choice of elderly waiter, accustomed seat/taste, silently, and reminding the audience of the newcomer's mistake, this caption builds also a sphere of 'old friends,' 'kindness,' and 'insistence.' While the unique reading style of a blue-collar further providing a space for wild imaginings, a lot of weak implicatures would be derived from these story lines:

(4)	It is (sociostereotypically) strange that a workman likes reading.
	It is not normal that a worker likes reading.
	It is (widely) accepted that reading with a café reflects one picture of casual lifestyles.
	A casual lifestyle seems to belong to higher social classes, e.g. white-collar.
	A workman with good manners is (a little) strange.
	A workman constantly reads a lot is not normal.
	A reading style like that is strange and not normal.
	Reading frequently at a same café displays some kind of loyalty and insistence.
	A workman reading frequently at a same café (further) displays some (special and unusual) kind of loyalty and insistence.
	A reading style according to the alphabetical order signifies a kind of loyalty and insistence.
	A workman with a reading style in an alphabetical order (further) signifies a (special and unusual) kind of loyalty and insistence.

Similar to caption (A), those seemingly socioculturally incompatible images through somewhat hyperbolic statements and fictitious scenes appear again, totally out of our perception and beyond expectation. From the aspects of social cognition, a blue-collar's lifestyle is conceptualized as working at a lower level, working with machines in a factory, without higher education and leisure activity; whereas 'good manners' and 'like reading' normally denote well educated and comparatively belong to social elite, at least to petits bourgeois. Therefore, a courteous workman being fond of reading (especially in a unique way) at the same café…once again presents a challenge to break the long-established stereotypes, social routines and cultural norms, trying to freshly build an image for those marginal entities. This might well shorten the social distance among the different groups on a social continuum: much lower social strata, blue-collar, white-collar, petits bourgeois, and social elite. Thus, in this way, such a communicative strategy provides multidimensional thoughts for audience.

With the trait of short phrases and hence ease of memory, the audience could easily memorize the slogans, which are still widely used in advertising (in view of economic consideration, saving money for advertisers). Such an advertising style of baldly demonstrating political claims and commercial appeals, however, may not necessarily be longer stayed in, or influence deeply the audience's mind. It possibly makes one getting tired and causes 'memory fatigue' during, say, a period of election campaign, though 'language attacks' among candidates and competitors are quite common, legitimate, reasonable and plausible within media, especially in election arena. Storytelling, on the other hand, embracing largely the experiences of daily life, seems to be not so drastic but could be more humanistic. The picture is this. While you are reading a book, taking a browse of a magazine, having a café, and enjoying the scenes of the stories through which you recall some mediocre experiences, and now reminded by the caption, you are like sharing your voices with a (closer or an intimate) friend. When you feel getting closer, the distance is shortened between you and the product, the advertisement, the selling motive, or the advertiser. Here, I am not eliminating or underestimating the possible effects of advertising slogans, as illustrated in relevant studies (Wei 1996), but rather more emphasizing on the richer and diverse contextual effects created by shooting stories. Different triggers will bring the audience different effects in different contexts at different times and places. As for what communicative strategies are more 'effective' than others, it could be approached through two avenues: the first falls into a quantitative study to reach empirical findings; the other resorts to time factor, leaving the challenge of effectiveness to the dynamic relations between speaker and hearer. The more the audience could accept, the longer and more effectively the advertisements would work. Effectiveness results in social continuity, ineffectiveness leads to social change. This is a vital contribution to, and underlies the dialectical relationship (Fairclough 1995a, 1995b, 1989) between sociocultural value structures and social practice, and is one of the core elements in the process of socialization.

Higher involvement (renqingwei/??? in Mandarin) and harmony, as compared to Western cultures, are among the most prominent values within Chinese communities and in general outweigh many others. Caption (C) illustrates this standpoint:

C	1.	Raining, I was having café for a whole afternoon.
	2.	Walking alone on Avenue Monpanas in a boring afternoon. There came a sudden rain. I waved at a taxi.
	3.	'Where to?' The white-haired driver asked me three times. I was back then to my consciousness.
	4.	'To…' I got no response at that moment without any planned destination.
	5.	'Hiding from the rain?' said the driver with a look from the rearview mirror. I was laughing, without reply.
	6.	As the rain was getting heavy, the taxi driver stopped at the Café and asked me to drop by, 'Go for a café!' said him with a smile, and waved me without need to pay. Before I could express thanks, the taxi was already back to the cars in rows.
	7.	As I entering into the lonely Café, there were four waiters chatting away around a table.
	8.	Standing up as having seen me, they all asked me, 'Hiding the rain?'
	9.	A sudden rain in an afternoon made me experience five persons of being able to 'read one's mind,' I was having café a whole afternoon.
		La Gauche de la Seine [President Enterprises Corp.]

Walking on Avenue Monbanas opens a tasteful frame for this story. A taxi ride with a white-hair driver to a familiar café connotes sophistication, while the interpersonal connection is strengthened by the 'involvement.' The amiability and concern initiation are triggered by the expression of go for a café with a smile (without payment) and the question of tacit understanding hiding rain from the four waiters, as echoed by the oriental visitor's coda in the end: reading my mind. 'Renqingwei' is a major source of maintaining the harmonious relationships of mutual satisfaction and face-saving under Chinese traditions; however, interesting is the case that, at this very moment, a Chinese visitor/customer is experiencing concern and involvement from westerners :

(5)	Travelling is characteristic of modern lifestyle.
	Travelling needs free time and money for leisure.
	Travelling (even if just wandering) abroad is attractive (and prevalent).
	Travelling abroad gains you knowledge.
	Travelling abroad helps to intercultural communication.
	Experiencing western culture is good and precious.
	Having a café should not be missed out from experiencing western culture.
	Having a café in a foreign country is fascinating.
	Having a café that is suggested by a (western) (considerate) taxi-driver is precious.
	Having a café with (western) (considerate) waiters is an experience uncommon and unforgettable.

As being Easterners, we ourselves can experience the familiar value of involvement and catch the epitome of current lifestyle. It not only makes us, through these vivid background knowledge and cognitive environment, feel sharing our voices with a considerate friend, but constructs more effectively the popular frames via the take-for-granted life experiences with empathy .

In caption (D), a guy of mercenary troop comes into play, with also an oriental customer, and, again, with even little emphasis on café.

D	1.	After this café, I will turn to be somebody else.
	2.	He turned around suddenly n' talked to me, with foam of fresh milk on his mustache. Possibly cause I'm oriental, without any liaison with him no matter from what aspects, then he was willing to talk to me about his secret.
	3.	'I just joined the mercenary unit.' Said him continuously.
	4.	'I've heard that once you joined the mercenary, all of your sins and crimes could be erased, and live once again.'
	5.	About the topic of mercenary, it was my first time to talk.
	6.	'It's authorized in particular by French government.' He took the ticket and waved it. I noticed the time was due at 4. 'There's a standing recruiting station for mercenaries, just at a small town to the south of Paris. It's quite easy to find it after riding, n' very convenient.'
	7.	'But…' it was really hard to believe that he could retry so easily.
	8.	'But is that true to be somebody else?' The pointer had already been between 3 and 4, whereas I couldn't find some wording more polite.
	9.	'Of course first you have to die, I mean, to experience something painful much more than death. After ten years' work, you could retire from the troop if you're still alive. As for new name and new identity, it's almost nothing, the government will settle it down.'
	10.	'There're you Japanese as well!' said him as he was standing up.
	11.	I'm not Japanese. But I'd like not to explain.
		La Gauche de la Seine [President Enterprises Corp.]

From (D4), it presupposes that the Westerner is a criminal, and, like the painting thief in caption (A), bearing a resolution of no-regret to head for a brand-new life, to live another time. After reading the text and processing the information, an imaginative audience is encouraged and might spell out strong implicatures and a wide range of weak implicatures along these lines, as in (6) and (7) respectively:

(6)	Coming to southern Paris could be expiated (due to erasing all criminal records).
	Being able to relive is what really matters.
(7)	What kinds of power and strength attract (/drive) the criminal to 'die easily' and to live again?
	(I might not know exactly the reasons of the criminal's choice, but) I can feel the criminal is having hope, idea, goal, and determination.
	Being able to atone for the sins is precious for the criminal.
	Being able to be expiated and then relive is precious for the criminal.
	Being able to be expiated/forgiven brings criminals/people hope.
	Experiencing the pain worse than death signifies perseverance.
	Ten years of service is a challenge to one's will.
	Even the Japanese people from far away are also willing to join this challenge.

Socio-metaphorically speaking, we could further infer much weaker implicatures listed below:

(8)	Something wrong n' uncomfortable in you (daily) life? Join us, have a café.
	Having a café makes you refreshing, as a criminal's reliving.
	The café La Gauche de la Seine brings you hope.
	The café La Gauche de la Seine leads you to restart.
	The café La Gauche de la Seine brings you energy to face the trials and challenges in your (daily) life.

The more peripheral the target product is arranged, the more possibly the selling motive and buying concern could be evaded and shifted. From caption (D), the audience is guided to process the story scenes and even entertain them after which she would be rewarded by extra contextual effects (wide-ranging implicatures), and feel closer to the author/speaker. To mention here again, the audience members are invited to join the story and persuaded to consume the product---the text. Undoubtedly (but very invisibly), she is persuaded to buy the café of La Gauche de la Seine as well, that is the ultimate end of the advertiser. However, whether the audience would buy the café or not, whether there is any effect on consumer behaviour, falls outside the scope of this study, as mentioned earlier. It could be explored in a separate paper of quantitative research or experimental design. Furthermore, as pointed out by Sperber & Wilson (see also Tanaka 1994; Blakemore 1992), the speaker/advertiser employs the stylistic patterns such as telling stories in question, he intends to convey various information. It is possibly to bring some reading pleasure to the reader in a society full of stress and competition nowadays. It is possibly to build a cultural image for a profit-oriented corporation, trying to renew itself as a cultural landmark and to shed some light on business' stereotypes as realistic, 'making money (only)' and the like. Most of all, it is because "every act of ostensive communication communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance" (cf. Section 2) that the advertiser adopt this communicative style.

The main themes of 'old friend,' 'belief,' 'faith,' 'perseverance' and 'optimism' is more obvious in caption (E):

E	1.	God, Lottery, Blind Musician.
	2.	Frequently playing piano accordion at the piazza, the blind musician walked through the street easily and came into the Café.
	3.	His familiarity with the Café went beyond my imagination.
	4.	A curious customer of the next table tried to dig something about the musician from the waiter.
	5.	'As aged 27, travelling with his circus everywhere, he prayed as usual before performing 'walking on the string.'
	6.	In front of the audience's entire gaze, with only one step, he fell down from the steel string…'
	7.	The waiter took a look at the musician, 'and getting blind!'
	8.	The waiter suddenly took a morning post, walking fast to the musician.
	9.	The blind musician took a couple of lotteries from his woolen hat and handed them to the waiter. The waiter opened the pages of post, skillfully checking the numbers for him. After a little while of their whispering, the blind musician took up his lotteries cautiously, smiled. The waiter put him on his coat n' lit him up a cigarette.
	10.	Shortly the musician took his accordion and played quick tempo music, joyfully walking out of the Café. Still the same as he'd entered, he left without touching any table or chair.
	11.	The waiter was back to the customer of curiosity, continuing their topic.
	12.	'After that incident, he started buying lottery, and has been for thirty years.
	13.	He never won any lottery, without exception today.
	14.	However, he is always keeping pessimistic. Cause he always said, 'God owes me once.''
		La Gauche de la Seine [President Enterprises Corp.]

The background information about the blind musician, a member of a circus and playing piano accordion represent a profession and one picture of western cultures , though these jobs are phased at a lower social level. From the reaction of the Easterner in (E3), we can regard it is as an echoic element or an attributed thought (Sperber & Wilson 1995: 241; Blakemore 1992):

(9)	The speaker believes that a blind is not convenient in daily life.
	The speaker believes that a blind is supposed to be with some (/many) difficulties in getting somewhere.

In recognition of irony (Sperber & Wilson 1995; Wilson & Sperber 1992; Blakemore 1992), it demands an echoic element or an attributed thought and, the other part, the speaker's attitude of mockery or rejection. However, from the text and context here, it seems that we could not treat the speaker's attitude is mockery, and hence without ironic effect. The lexical items, crossing through easily, familiarity, skillful, without touching table/chair, strengthen the conceptual frame of old friend, while buying lottery for having been thirty years encoding again the information of faith, belief, hope and perseverance.

Likewise, from the perspective of social metaphor, the relations between the (leading) actors and the Café could also be viewed as the relations between consumers and advertiser. The frames of loyalty and old friends are well described in a touching way and a soft tone, remote but familiar, along with those viewpoints towards life, vaguely encouraging the audience looking on the bright side of life. Or, at least, they render a site of self-examining for the audience:

(10)	A blind musician can be so brave, optimistic, joyful and faithful, how about you/us?
	Never ever give it up, always live with hope.
	Come to La Gauche de la Seine.
	The café La Gauche de la Seine is here with you.
	The café La Gauche de la Seine is always by your side.
	The café La Gauche de la Seine is faithful to you.
	The café La Gauche de la Seine is a sincere friend of yours.
	The café La Gauche de la Seine gives you real taste (/of life).
	The café La Gauche de la Seine, buy it, and try.

It is remote because an Easterner of the scenes and the plots in Western sites narrates the story. It is familiar because those value structures with which the audience is quite become involved through the influx of mass media into her daily life. It makes the audience feel touching because the story expresses humanistic concern, which, having either been long lost, forgotten or disappeared, seems particularly precious in a busy, money-oriented society of chiefly focusing on efficiency, effectiveness, and speed of work and life.

By telling stories to shelter stronger measures and claims in political propaganda and in commercials to shift voter and buyer's concern, leading directly the audience to a certain domain of thinking, is another linguistic strategy, or termed 'macro-level hedging' (Chang 2oo1b). The audience will be led to another domain of interpretation supplied by the story lines, and is at least encouraged not to focus the candidate and seller's motive. This is evidenced by the data analysed above. Vaguely communicating the importance of friends' rapport and other ideological loadings (for someone perhaps it's a feel of 'home'), this story and the other ones place special emphasis on harmony, bringing peace to the severe competition in mass media and modern society.

Concluding Remarks

From the analyses in this study, we can know that the audience is active, rather than passive, in the interpretation process, where 'relevance' is crucial for the audience's interpretability. The audience would achieve her optimal relevance through the interaction of linguistic form, the shared cognitive environment of communicator and audience, and the 'criterion of consistency with the principle of relevance' (Wilson & Sperber 1992). As demonstrated in this study, those strong and weak implicatures in (1-10) are resulted from the author's higher involvement and active processing. They are indeterminate and unlimited for inference, and might be processed continuously, as long as one is willing to, and thinks it is worthwhile, i.e. she will be rewarded with additional contextual effects, which would outweigh her processing efforts. Different readers will receive different readings and interpretations, the 'absolute levels' are diverse; also, even a same reader will receive different readings and interpretations under different degrees of involvement and circumstances. However, they (/she) would reach at any rate the 'optimal relevance' for themselves (/herself).

Communicative strategies enrich story lines, which themselves enrich life. President Enterprises Corporations released the five captions incorporating various roles within stories, namely painting thief/jail-breaker, worker of reading, taxi driver and the waiters, foreign soldier, and blind musician. Instead of claiming 'come n' take a café La Gauche de la Seine, trust me, you will like it ,' they tell the audience five pieces stories, [you don't have to buy the café, but do read the stories and share the life experiences with us]. A frequent jail-breaker of sweet tooth is surprising you that he is a thief, with taste but without regret. A gentle blue-collar worker being fond of reading is telling you reading with a café at a café is also a usual part in his life. A considerate driver and waiters of reading minds is reminding you of our/westerners' politeness and friendship. A foreign soldier with determination and hope is informing you there is always something worthy of pursuing your goals and chasing, realizing your dreams. A faithful, optimistic and energetic blind musician with perseverance and everlasting joyful heart is encouraging you life is full of hope and blessings. If we further notice these leading actors, they are overwhelmingly perceived as socially marginal of no importance. We may well recall some pictures in real life around us: they are ignorant, valueless, negatively evaluated, and sometimes somehow annoying. However, they have all become the leading actors through advertising, bringing hope and positive influence to the audience, reminding of the audience what cherish really means, what true beauty is, and where lying those precious assets. They weakly communicate the messages like 'If you are social minority, it doesn't matter, we are with you.' 'If you are social elite, well, perfect, please ignore not us periphery and let's also get together' through a general and global citizen's eye with more emphasis over humanistic concern than fulfilling selling ends. President Enterprises not merely intends to awaken those long-sleeping minds, thus shorten the social distance between the Eastern and the Western as well as the distance between consumer and advertiser in an amiable way, but intends to build cultural image through globalization and might thus gain itself competitive edges.

Promotion of products, services and images is the ultimate goal of advertising. The selling motive, however, as illustrated in this study, has largely been hidden and melted by persuasion through storytelling and experience sharing in an ever increasingly prominent trend. Macro-level hedging via social metaphor is also initiated intertextually to shift consumers' buying concern. Storytelling is not only frequently employed in advertising, but also frequently used in daily persuasion. Partly because of the sense of 'distance,' along with certain extent of 'safety,' it softens the stronger wordings, and keeps (at least temporarily or superficially) the harmonious relationship. This distance leaves a wider space to the audience's imagining, as other rhetoric strategies do, leaving an indeterminate domain of interpretation to the audience. While nowadays there are many speech contexts much freer, more open and direct than before, the competition between direct and indirect persuasion (e.g. storytelling) is then a challenge to language users and time. This (competition) reflects one important property in mass media, "the tools of ideological representation" (Hall 1985), being able to embrace competing forces. Advertising, lending itself as a symbolic domain of dominant ideologies (Lull 1995), incorporates fashion-driven discourse by reflecting social cognition and cultural patterns, it also invites the audience members as potential consumers to recognize these prominent values. It is socioculturally shaped but it also constitute sociocultural cognition, in ways that may be transformative as well as reproductive (Fairclough 1995b: 34), thus keeping the dialectical relationship between social structures and social practice/discourse. This functional and critical linguistic study of advertising texts heightens sensitivity to language and its (mis)uses, poses a preliminary stage to cross-cultural communication and interdisciplinary studies, which themselves constitute promising research issues to overcome the simplistic account of Eastern vs. Western cultures, and provides useful insights into a multitude of issues, including symbolic power, social stereotypes, changes in social trends and attitudes, group and ethnic identity, cultural identity and iconicity, verbal art, and gender. Comparative studies in terms of diachronic perspective and different genres, e.g. multimodal discourse (van Leeuwen 2oo2) are also research areas worthy of further investigation.

About the Author

The author works in the Departamento de Linguística, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal.

Email: vthchang@ip.pt; vthchang@hotmail.com

References

Blakemore, D. 1992 Understanding Utterances: An Introduction to Pragmatics. Oxford: Blackwell.

Bourdieu, P. 1991 Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity.

Cameron, D. 1995 Verbal Hygiene. London: Routledge.

Chang, V. T-H. 2002a Doing Pragmatics in Literary Discourse: A Relevance-Theoretic Approach. Paper to be presented at The 13th World Congress of Applied Linguistics (AILA 2002). December 16-21, National University of Singapore, Singapore.

Chang, V. T-H. 2002b Multimodality in Advertising Discourse. Paper to be presented at The LSK 2002 International Summer Conference. August 5-7, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Korea.

Chang, V. T-H. 2002c Poetic Effects as Communication: Analysing Eslite Bookstore's Advertisements. Paper to be presented at The 16th Journées de Linguistique de l'Asie Orientale. June 3-4, EHESS/CNRS/CRLAO, Paris, France.

Chang, V. T-H. 2001a Humour as Social Cognition: A Case Study of The Way We Date. Paper accepted by The 15th Journées de Linguistique de l'Asie Orientale. June 7-8, EHESS/CNRS/CRLAO, Paris, France.

Chang, V. T-H. 2001b Storytelling as Persuasion: A Linguistic Analysis of Taipei City Government's Election Campaign. Paper presented at The 9th Conference on Advertising and Public Relations in Taiwan 2oo1. April 27-28, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan.

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APPENDIX

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