A Study On Changes Of Cultural Values In Printing Advertisements (1987～2007): To Take Southern Weekly As An Example

Advertising is a mirror of society which can reflect the changes of social environment in certain ways. Cultural values, functioning as an important part of social environment, can play a critical role in deciding the consumers' consumption needs, their ways for information selecting and understanding, and their methods for consumption resolution formulating. This paper takes exactly the printing advertisements as the research base to explore the diachronic transformation of cultural values and the dominating cultural values in today's society.The paper firstly takes advantage of previous literatures to conclude several typically oriental and western cultural values; then, 697 advertisements, sampled from Southern Weekly within the period of 1987～2007, are analyzed in terms of 32 indicators. The findings demonstrate that western cultural values have occupied the predominant position in printing advertisements with a diachronic ascending tendency; while, its counterparts in the east are in a subordinate position with slightly descending inclination from a perspective of history. It has been found that "modernity", "competition", "quality", "technology", "effectiveness" and "wisdom" have been predominant in the advertisements within a period of 20 years. Moreover, the occurrence of functional cultural values, quite different from previous research results, has been much more frequent than that of the symbolic ones. The appeals in advertisements of foreign-funded companies have concentrated on a few cultural values. However, when it comes to the advertisements of local companies, the appeals are a little decentralized. The paper concludes that the lack of corporate social responsibility and the promulgation of such related laws and regulations as the Advertising Law have contributed a lot to the changes of cultural values.