On The Building Of Intercultural Discourse Dynamics In Current Shanghai Consumerism

Nowadays Shanghai has become a mature civic society as well as a consumer societyunder the bombardment, advocation, and promotion of symbolized consumerist ideasfrom various fashion media. In the context of globalization, culture is not an intrinsicand static attribute any more, rather a group dynamic of integrated components. In asociety of overflowing information, mass media are one of the most important carriersand are combined with the audience in a dynamic system. This influences a variety ofsocial components such as consuming ideas and aesthetic values. The author takes aninfluential magazine in Shanghai–The Bund: Style, as the object and the source tostudy the dynamic composition of the media discourse in the magazine and of itsreaders. Through close investigation using the semiotic approach, the author finds outthat this discourse has already had an effect on shaping the social values and standardsas well as consuming behaviors of the audience, and the media are also undergoing agraduate shift by the effect of this discourse. From a culture critical view, in aglobalized consumerist society we are inevitably assimilated into postmodernity.Multiculturalism is becoming symbolized and consumerist, yet this dynamicpossesses the power to generate new ideas and values from the cycle within.