The following sessions address the categories of which the frequency per ad has diminished over a decade.
3.2.2.1 Letters
In 1999, 22 instances of using English letters occur in only three ads. In the first instance of “uno 潔淨面膜－T 字部位適用”(Uno cleansing masks are designed for the T-area), T stands for the shape of the facial area from forehead to mouth. The second example W serves as a background visual for an international brand name WHITIA. As for the other 20 letters, i.e., 91% of the letters in the dataset, are concentrated in one ad marketing hair styling products, of which the descriptive text is listed as follows: “「髮線」創造「髮型」 I C S W 你找到了自己的髮線嗎？……直線到底的 I 線條……LAVENUS I 直
爽髮霧……運用「I 髮線」……造型你的直順 I 髮線……層次分明的 C 線
條……LAVENUS C 層次髮雕……運用「C 髮線」創造層次……抓出你的
層次 C 髮線……自然輕柔的 S 線條……LAVENUS S 柔度慕絲……運用
「S 髮線」創造輕柔……吹整你的輕柔 S 髮線……波浪明顯的 W 線……
LAVENUS 保濕乳液……運用「W 髮線」創造波浪..保濕你的 W 極捲髮 線，性感又俏皮，讓女人的壞，更壞” as shown in Figure 8.
Figure 8. English letters ICSW refering to waves of women’s hairdos
In this ad, copywriters mix four English letters ICSW not only in product names such as “LAVENUS I 直 爽 髮,” in background visuals, but also in descriptive texts, where these four letters are repeatedly used to stand for the shapes of four types of hairlines and hairdos, namely, I for straight, C for curly, S for soft, and W for wavelike. This ad convinces women that by capitalizing on four different hairstyling products, women can create 4 types of hairdos depending on what type of hairlines they possess. Though this ad displays copywriters’ bilingual creativity in using English letters, it also shows that English letters in the 1999 dataset are mainly confined to one ad.
On the contrary, in 2009, the usage of English letters is scattered in various ads for a variety of functions. Other than serving as pure letters such as ABCD as sets of options for multiple-choice questions in a survey type of ad, English letters are exploited to stand for various shapes. For example, V refers to the V-shaped face in ”李 倩 蓉 的 V 型 小 臉 蛋” (Ms. Li, Qian-Rong’s V-shaped face) and a type of wearing make-up as in “V 型 上 妝 手 法” (do a V-shaped make-up). Z stands for the shape of the comb teeth of a mascara as in ”防汗 Z
字震動睫毛膏……Z 字震動刷頭.” As in 1999, T describes the shape of the facial area from forehead to mouth as appearing in ”針對 T 字出油” (a facial cleanser that deals with men’s oily facial area from forehead to nose). C and W describe the wave of women’s hairdos, namely, C and W wave of curly hair, as appearing in “髮尾自然鬆散開來的 W 型立體捲髮……自然蓬鬆的 C 型捲 髮 絕 對 是 今 年 流 行 的 潮 髮 趨 勢” (W-wave and C-wave of curly hair are definitely the new black this year) as advertised by a hair salon. X is used as a graphic representation of the meaning of times as in “5X 極致濃蜜”(a mascara that can make women’s eyelashes 5 times lusher).
Additionally, English letters serve as homophones of Chinese words. For example, in the advertising line of a skincare product, “e 網打盡肌膚男題……
肌膚問題 e 次搞定,” e is a homophone of “一” (yi), number one in Chinese.
Via the use of the English letter e as an attention-getter, both phrases, “e 網打 盡”and “e 次搞定,” convey the advertising message that to cure men’s difficult skin problems, the advertised product can offer the ultimate solutions once and for all.
Lastly, English letters function as abbreviations of English words such as 3 R in “3R 保濕新概念”(the new 3R concept for moisturizing women’s skin), where 3 R stands for“RECHARGE 升級鎖水 RETIGHI 緊實毛孔 REFRESH 淨化清潔” as appearing in the descriptive text.
In sum, although English letters show higher frequency per ad in the 1999 dataset, letters in this dataset are mainly limited to one ad. By contrast, more innovating and varied usage of English letters scattered in various ads appears in 2009, used to highlight beautification effects on consumers in ads of skincare, facial care, and hairdos products.
3.2.2.2 Adjectives
Like English letters, though adjectives show more occurrences per ad in the 1999 dataset, the adjectives observed in 1999 are primarily concentrated in
one ad. Namely, 19 out of 26 adjectives, i.e., 73% of the total adjectives, occur in one ad. These 19 adjectives such as witty, feisty, adoring, girlie, forbidden, dreamy, delicious, saucy, devoted, fearless, frolic, and delicate all appear on the labels of Maybelline lipsticks as previously shown in Figure 4. They are used to describe the various effects created by different lipstick colors.
Local devices include the employment of the word new, which occurs four times, placed on top of product names or product labels, serving as an attention-getting device for newly marketed products. In other words, the use of new serves not only as a graphic design for attention-getting but also as a device for highlighting the novelty of advertised products.
In 2009, new becomes proliferated. That is, among the 71 adjectives found in the data, new occurs 44 times, constituting 62% of the total usage of adjectives (Figure 9). They are placed close to product labels or product names.
The next popular device involves five occurrences of Q and two occurrences of QQ, to refer to skin resilience, as discussed in section 3.2.1.3. Free appears three times in ads offering free gifts. Other adjectives such as juicy, beautiful, and sexy appear in ”肌 膚 自 然 水 嫩 又 juicy…… 美 人 當 然 Q sexy” (When women’s skin is juicy and resilient, women naturally become sexy). In this instance, juicy is used non-natively, which can only refer to non-animate objects and not to humans. Moreover, best and easy are employed in the offering of skincare solutions, as in ”找出 BEST 美白對策” (to find the best treatments for skin whitening) and “保 養 可 以 很 easy” (Skin care can be very easy). One interesting usage worth noting is the possessive case of men as in “Men's 運動 防曬乳液” (men’s sport sunscreen lotion), a rare usage employed by Taiwanese copywriters, where English grammatical rules are observed.
Figure 9. New abounding in cosmetics ads
In sum, a comparison of the two datasets shows that copywriters come up with more local innovations in 2009, and the most dominating device is the widespread use of new, composing three fifths of the total usage of adjectives in the 2009 dataset. This adjective serves as an iconic graphic symbol to constantly remind consumers that “new is always the new black”—a canon in marketing cosmetics.
3.2.2.3 Verbs
In 1999, among the 10 verbs observed in the data, 6 of them (crush, seduce, tempt, desire, wink, and delight) appear on the Maybelline lipsticks labels as previously shown in Figure 4. The other 4 verbs involve the local use of one word, open, as appearing in “10 月 上 旬 OPEN” (opened in the first decade of October), serving to provide information concerning the opening dates of product sales outlets.
By contrast, among the 26 verbs found in 2009, only 6 of them are not concerned with local innovations, including the 3R verbs discussed in 3.2.2.1 and the three verbs in “1PRIME 2COVER 3FINISH,” referring to the three steps for using advertised makeup products.
Local copywriters’ bilingual creativity falls into two subtypes of usage.
One type involves the device of changing parts of speech, including the use of adverbs up, out, and down, and the use of an adjective, fun, all functioning as verbs. This part of information is provided in section 3.2.1.3.
The other subtype involves mixing of verbs to deliver advertising messages as listed in “上質光感肌 SHOW 出耀眼自信” (One’s beautiful skin shows his/
her self-confidence), “update 美 麗 新 訊 息” (an update on the latest beauty news), “search 生化保養” (search for the bio skin care), “錢韋杉 Say” (Miss Qian, Wei-Shan says), and “超 凡 卸 妝 新 體 驗 GET” (get new extraordinary experiences of removing makeup). Unlike other examples listed above, where English verbs mixed with Chinese texts follow the word order of both Chinese and English, get in the last example is placed after the noun phrase it specifies, perhaps merely for attention-getting.
In conclusion, though the frequency of verbs per ad decreases over a decade, more creative and diversified use of verbs has been developed.
3.2.2.4 Sentences
In the 1999 dataset, six out of seven sentences are drawn from original
English ads, including one slogan of Cerruti Image, two signature lines of Maybelline, and three sentences copied from an original Shiseido ad. The only sentence created locally is a proverb as appearing in “儘管西洋俗諺云: Beauty is but skin deep (美麗只是像皮膚一般膚淺)，卻有不少女性為了這層薄薄 的肌膚大費周章” (Although beauty is but skin deep, many women would go through all the trouble to search for the best skincare treatments), serving as a statement in contrast to women’s aspiration for beautifying themselves.
In 2009, among the 26 sentences observed in the data, half of them come from original ads of international brands: seven signature lines, three slogans, and three sentences copied from original texts. The other half are mainly created by local copywriters. However, most of them contain grammatical and collocational errors. Examples are listed as follows. The first instance appears in “miss SHARK 找到了突破性的美白策略……我是小白鯊，I am miss SHARK，white not? miss SHARK 年度代言人國際名模 AKEMI 香月明美 衷心推薦” (The brand miss Shark has come up with a breakthrough solution to skin whitening; I am miss SHARK, white not? AKEMI, the brand ambassador, recommends this brand). In the above text, the meaning of the grammatically incorrect phrase white not is not clear. The usage of white in white not may serve as an equivalent meaning of the Chinese word “白” (white) in “小白鯊” (a small white shark), the Chinese brand name of miss SHARK, or “ 白” in the phrase”美 白 策 略” (a solution to skin whitening), to emphasize the skin-whitening effects of products.
The second example “go go go!”, which functions as a morale booster for audience attending a body styling campaign, also contains grammatical errors.
As for “You care, I care,” the signature line of a Taiwanese brand of skincare products, a punctuation misusage occurs. Concerning the two collocationally incorrect sentences, “Water Your Skin” and “Revive Your Skin Power,” unlike plants, skin cannot be watered, whereas the phrase of skin power is a nativized coinage, of which the correct version should be Revive Your Skin. The most
evident manifestation of deviation or nativized creativity is the instance of “Skin Power Up” (Figure 10). This device combines the phrase skin power with an adverb up, which functions as a verb and means to increase or boost, as appearing in “美 肌 保 水 機 能 UP” (increase beautification and skin-moisturizing effects). This sentence reads: “Women’s skin can be boosted.”
Figure 10. A nativized English device: Skin Power Up
In short, in contrast to the limited creativity of copywriters who primarily draw sentences from original English ads in 1999, ten years later, local copywriters create their own English sentences, along with drawing signatures lines, slogans, and texts from original ads of international brands. However,
these sentences are teeming with grammatical deviations, which manifest the local creativity in coining nativized English.
4. Conclusions
The findings of this study show that in 1999, Taiwanese copywriters mainly draw English features from ads of international brands in their copy design. However, after a decade, as a response to the increasing influence of globalization on Taiwanese market, Taiwanese copywriters adapt their linguistic strategies in two ways. On the one hand, they increase the mixing of English in the categories of personal names, product names, nouns, and noun phrases, as well as in the use of changing parts of speech, by utilizing some easy devices of proliferation of English mixing, such as reduplicating product volume and price to deliver product information, employing abundant personal names for product endorsements and testimonials, and making use of the adjective new repeatedly to imply ‘being trendy.” On the other hand, they demonstrate more bilingual creativity in innovating English usage in all the linguistic categories, including coining English phrases and sentences, which in turn leads to deviation in or nativization of English usage. On such nativized innovations, one copywriter remarks, “since English mixing primarily serves as graphic design for getting attention and creating a desired atmosphere,” full English accuracy is not a concern in her copy design (Hsu 2012:223).
A parallel advertising development is witnessed in France. Ruellot observes that via the study of English-mixing terms in French advertising from 1999 to 2007, the marketing power of English has strengthened and has resulted in “greater bilingual creativity” (2011:5).
Martin asserts that “a more ‘Frenchified’ version of English” is created “to target French consumers as advertising campaigns are adapted or ‘localized’ for the French market” (2008:73). For instance, French advertisers would sometimes hire a musician to write “nonsensical” English-sounding lyrics in
commercial jingles for French advertising campaigns, motivated by the fact that
“French audience believe that they are listening to English” (Martin 2002b:13).
In other words, the lyrics resembling English in French commercial jingles typically function as “a mood enhancer” and their intelligibility to any audience
“does not seem to be an important factor” (Martin 2006:33).
This study suggests that along the same lines of development, Taiwanese advertisers have created a “Taiwanized” version of English to target Taiwanese consumers while coping with the impact of globalization on Taiwanese market.
Additionally, the findings of this diachronic study provide a piece of evidence in support of Bhatia and Ritchie’s observation (2013:567):
... advertising actually promotes bilingualism based in English...
By doing so, they (international advertisers) solve the paradox of
‘globalization’ and ‘localization’ in an optimal fashion by following an innovative approach grounded in pluralism.
Lastly, cosmetics advertising features puffery advertising, which “invites the magazine readers to participate in a dream world of fantasy and belief”
created by cosmetics and skincare companies (Moeran 2010:501). The growing quantity and variety of English-mixing devices witnessed in 2009 all contribute to the building up of professional, authoritative, persuasive, and convincing product image, quality, functionality, and utility, rendering a sense of physical charm and trendiness to its audience. As commented by Martin (2006:243), via the use of English, a product may be linked to “the glamour of Hollywood or the art of ‘chic’ in the fashion industry.” Consequently, this study validates Bhatia’s observation of the growing leading role of English “in the race of global deception... an increasingly pervasive phenomenon” (2006:611).
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通訊作者
Jia-Ling Hsu 胥嘉陵
Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures National Taiwan University
1 Roosevelt Road, Section 4, Taipei 10617, Taiwan 國立臺灣大學外國語文學系
106 臺北市羅斯福路 4 段 1 號 jlhsu@ntu.edu.tw