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

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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.

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Notes

  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.

  2. 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 ‘hyper-ritualisations’ 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.

  3. 3.

    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’). 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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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of English, University of Hong Kong, Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong

    May Wong

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Wong, M. (2019). The Discourse of Advertising for Luxury Residences in Hong Kong: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis. In: Multimodal Communication. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15428-8_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15428-8_5

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