The Comparative Study Of Cultural Value From Chinese And English Food Advertisements

With the development of global economy and the global trade, advertisements, asthe important component in people’s life, have to get more variable to cater to thisdevelopment. Meanwhile, advertisements, also as one of the means of culturalcommunication, contain profound cultural elements from its writing styles to itscontents. Food is the first necessity of people, and there are a lot of differencesbetween Chinese and Western diet culture. Therefore, the author selected the wide-representative modern food advertisements to reflect the differences between Chineseand Western.In the thesis, the author employs Hofstede’s cultural values system and Pollay’sadvertising appeal as the theoretical framework from the perspective of cross-culturalcommunication, in which SPSS17.0is used to analyze the advertising appeals in150Chinese and English food advertisements. According to the results, the similarities anddifferences between Chinese and English food advertisements are analyzed by contrast,and in addition, the author tries to analyze and explain the origination of thesedifferences in cultural values and the influence they bring in the cross-culturalcommunication.The results show that there are common similarities and respective characteristicsexisting in Chinese and English food advertisements. First of all, Healthy, Enjoyment,Effective and Natural appeals occur more frequently in Chinese and English foodadvertisements, which show that the four appeals are the basic appeals in foodadvertisements. At the same time, these appeals are also corresponded to the featuresof food advertisements. Secondly, there is significant difference in the use of Tradition,Status, and Affiliation appeals between Chinese and English which are consistent withthe Chinese cultural values in Hofstede’s cultural value dimensions, i.e. collective,high power distance, high uncertainty avoidance and femininity. In the end, comparedwith Chinese advertisements, English advertisements have significant difference in the use of Technological, Independence and Adventure appeals, and these differences alsoconfirm the value systems behind it. Meanwhile, different values have an influence onpeople’s communication style, written and verbal communication.