A study of trends and features of food advertising language in Hong Kong during the past 25 years (2000-2024) = 香港近二十五年(2000-2024)食品廣告語的演變趨勢與特徵

Abstract

Advertising language profoundly reflects social development and captures dynamic linguistic shifts over time. Yet, existing research on Hong Kong’s advertising language has often lacked quantitative analysis and focused primarily on print and television, leaving the linguistic features of burgeoning online advertising significantly underexplored. This study investigates the evolution of advertising language in Hong Kong food advertisements from 2000 to 2024 through textual analysis, distant reading, and surveys in four areas: ideologies, rhetorical techniques, discourse perspectives, and linguistic practices, providing a thorough analysis of linguistic shifts over the past quarter-century and enriching existing research with objective data and fresh insights into online advertising dynamics. It further re-evaluates the applicability of traditional rhetorical theories from audience perspectives, offering a practical and nuanced understanding of language strategies in modern advertising discourse. Key findings reveal a gradual transition from functional to more artistic and humanistic expressions, emphasizing individuality over conformity, and featuring the incorporation of trendy slang, memes, scientific terms, and tech-vibes while posing new ethical challenges. Additionally, social rhetoric is progressively overtaking textual rhetoric, increasingly utilizing news-imitating formats, puns, parodies, deviations, personification, and visual rhetoric. Furthermore, the prevalence of humanitarian, hedonistic, and anti-utopian ideologies is evident, with casual, inclusive and tailored language dominating. Moreover, the complexity and regionality of written Cantonese are escalating, alongside a more diverse and frequent integration of English and Japanese. This paper also introduces the "superimposable pun mechanism", tailored to the unique Cantonese-English hybridity milieu in Hong Kong, overcoming the limitations of traditional Conceptual Blending Theory.