VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ***** PHẠM THỊ TÂM INDIVIDUALISM AND COLLECTIVISM IN AMERICAN AND VIETNAMESE ADVERTISEMENTS (Tính cá nhân và tính tập thể trong quảng cáo của Mỹ và Việt Nam) MAJOR: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS CODE: 9220201.01 A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics Supervisor: 1. Huỳnh Anh Tuấn HANOI, 2023 STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I certify my authority of the dissertation submitted entitled INDIVIDUALISM AND COLLECTIVISM IN AMERICAN AND VIETNAMESE ADVERTISEMENTS In fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics at Vietnam National University, Hanoi Except where the reference is indicated, no other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the dissertation. Signature Pham Thi Tam ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratefulness and my sincerest gratitude to many people who greatly contributed to the completion of this dissertation. First and foremost, I am greatly indebted to my supervisors, Asso c.
Nguyen Van Trao and Dr. Huynh Anh Tuan. Without their invaluable advice for the conceptualization of the study, close reading and editing of numerous drafts, and skillful guidance in conducting the various aspects of the degree-seeking process, this dissertation would not have been completed. Their warm support, steady interest, infinite patience, and generosity with their time are deeply appreciated.
My profound thanks extend to Prof. Nguyen Hoa, Assoc. Le Hung Tien, Assoc. Phan Van Hoa, Assoc.
Hoang Tuyet Minh, Assoc. Nguyen Thuy Nga, and Assoc. Nguyen Thu Hanh, Dr. Nguyen Trong Du, Dr.
Nguyen Thanh Long, Assoc. Nguyen Quang Ngoan, Assoc. Tran Ba Tien, Assoc. Kieu Thi Thu Hương, Assoc.
Phan Van Que for giving me insightful and invaluable comments in many academic seminars in their role of examiners. I particularly extend my warm thanks to all executives and staff of the faculty of post-graduate studies who have been friendly and helpful to me in any way possible. My sincere gratitude goes to the board of directors, personnel departments, and faculty of foreign languages department, and my colleagues of the Academy of Finance, for their generosity of creating all favorable conditions including time, financial supports, and permission for me to conduct the research. I am also indebted to my friends who have always been beside me since I was in great difficulties.
But for their help, I might have stopped my education journey when I was a small child. Last but not least, I wish to express my sincerest gratitude and appreciation to my parents, my parents-in- law, my relatives, my husband and my children for their support to help me overcome the obstacles and challenges during the process of accomplishing this study. Also, I would like to extend my sincerest thanks to my husband for his tolerance, endurance, patience, and support for me as well as his devoted care. Without his immense help, love, encouragement and sacrifice, this work could not have been completed.
i ABSTRACT The current study aims at investigating the manifestation and the representation of the individualist and collectivist values in American and Vietnamese advertisements under a non-essentialist view of culture through analyzing themes, creative tactics, and multimodal devices. To fulfil the aims of the study, multidimensional frameworks deriving from the individualism-collectivism cross-cultural theory and empirical evidence about their manifestation in cross-cultural psychology and advertising and a framework of multimodal devices representing these values are chosen for data analysis. These frameworks are created from three sources, namely the theory of social semiotics, in particular images, theoretical communication style, and theoretical foundation of the high-context and low-context communication, politeness strategies and empirical evidence about the multimodal devices representing individualist and collectivist values in advertisements of the I-C cultures. These frameworks are applied for analyzing data under exploratory sequential mixed methods with two datasets, one hundred thirty-one randomly selected American and one hundred and twenty-three randomly selected Vietnamese magazine advertisements.
The two datasets are firstly qualitatively coded into themes, creative tactics, images and linguistic devices and then quantitatively grouped for easy comparison and contrast between two datasets. These findings align with Hofstede‘s (1980, 2001) analysis of these two countries, and thus strongly confirm a correspondence between culture and language perspectives in exploring culture-based issues. However, both individualist and collectivist orientations are observed in both datasets with an insignificant difference between the two orientations in the American and Vietnamese dataset, indicating that American and Vietnamese cultures are not to be placed at the extremes of the individualism-collectivism continuum. The dissertation should be a useful resource for marketing policy makers, advertisers, academic researchers, and marketing teachers and students given its significant contributions with regards to the two proposed frameworks for investigating the representation of the individualist and collectivist values through images and linguistic devices.
It also merits special attention thanks to its significant theoretical, research, and practical implications. ii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Ad Advertisement I-C Individualism-Collectivism PS Politeness strategies FTA Face threatening act CT Collectivist themes IT Individualist themes ICT Individualist creative tactics IL Individualist linguistic device CL Collectivist linguistic device iii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1: The ―iceberg Analogy‖ of culture proposed by Weaver (1999,p.2: The model of culture in this study .3: Number of publications in thousands citing Hofstede (1980, 2001) per year (1980–2019). Data taken from a Google Scholar (scholar.com) search for all publications (Eriksson & Gelfand, 2021) .4: The basic consumer decision process (Arens & Weigold, 2017, p.5: The nexus among culture, cultural values and cultural dimensions of values in this study .6: Factors influencing consumer behavior (Arens & Weigold, 2017) .1: The framework of the interconnection of worldview, design and research method adopted from Creswell, W.2: The research design used in this research to answer the first, the second, and the fourth research questions - the representation of individualist and collectivist values through creative tactics.3: The research design used in this research to answer the third research question and the fourth research question- the representation of individualist and collectivist values through multimodal devices.4: Steps in the data collection procedures .5: Preparation, organization and resulting phases in the content analysis process (Elo & Kyngas, 2008, p.6: The phases of content analysis. Analytical framework of this study.1: Individualist and collectivist values in American ads compared with Vietnamese ads through self-construal themes.2: Individualist and collectivist values manifested in American ads compared with Vietnamese ads through individualist social perception themes.3: Collectivist values manifested in American ads compared with Vietnamese ads through collectivist social perception themes.4: Themes manifested in American advertisements compared with Vietnamese advertisements.1: Individualist and collectivist values manifested in the American ads and in Vietnamese ads through creative tactics.2: Images representing individualist and collectivist values in the American ads compared with the Vietnamese ads.3: Interpersonal markers in the American ads and in the Vietnamese ads .4: The representation of the individualist values in the American ads and in the Vietnamese ads through linguistic devices at phrase and sentence levels .5: Linguistic devices at phrase and sentence levels representing collectivist values in the American ads and in the Vietnamese ads .182 v LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1: Values more typically possessed by American and Vietnamese (highlighted from Jewett, 2005; Hui & Triandis, 1986; Spence, 1985; Tran Ngoc Them, 2001; Dao Thi Phuong, 2015; Do Long and Phan Thi Mai Huong, 2002) .2: Examples to illustrate how cultural values influence advertisements.3: The classification of advertising (Arens & Weigold, 2017, p.4: An illustration of magazine advertisement components .5: I-C Dimensions and their manifestation in advertising content (Zhang, 2004, p.6: Individualist and collectivist values manifested through themes in previous studies .7: Examples of impersonal images .8: Examples of personal images with and without interaction .9: Linguistic devices adapted from high-context and low-context communication more likely representing individualist and collectivist values in advertisements (Singh & Bartikowski, 2009) .10: Interpersonal markers as linguistic devices more typically representing individualist and collectivist values (Triandis, 1995; Incelli, n.11: Linguistic devices adapted from the framework of politeness strategies (Brown & Levinson, 1987) .12: Linguistic devices more typically representing individualist and collectivist values adapted from the framework of politeness strategies vi (Brown & Levinson, 1987); rhetorical devices (Frith & Wesson, 1991) and Zhang (2004) .13: Individualism and collectivism in the research context of Vietnam .14: Linguistic devices more typically representing individualist and collectivist values in advertisements adapted from empirical research by various authors (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Incelli, n.d; Triandis, 1995; Singh & Bartikowski, 2009; & Zhang, 2004) .15: Linguistic devices more typically representing individualist and collectivist values in advertisements at lexical levels.16: Linguistic devices used in advertisements more likely representing individualist and collectivist values at phrase and sentence levels.1: Distribution of magazine advertisements .2: Distribution of sample advertisements on product categories .3: A sample analysis of an American advertisement (Readers‘ Digest, 2019) .4: A sample analysis of a Vietnamese advertisement (Marketing and Family, 2019) .5: Example of quantitative data for quantitative content analysis .1: Examples and explanations of harmony in the American ads and in the Vietnamese ads .2: Examples of conformity and explanations in American ads and Vietnamese ads.3: Examples and explanations of popularity in American ads and Vietnamese ads.4: Examples and explanations of status in American and Vietnamese ads .5: Individualist and collectivist values manifested in American ads and Vietnamese ads through themes of attribution, emotion, and motivation.6: Examples and explanations of ego-focused emotions and other- focused emotions in American ads and Vietnamese ads .7: Examples and explanations of self-oriented motivations and group- oriented motivations in American ads and Vietnamese ads .1: Examples and their explanations of arguments and hard-sell tactics in the American ads and in the Vietnamese ads.2: Examples and explanations of comparative claims in the American ads and in the Vietnamese ads .3 shows some examples to illustrate imitation and soft-sell tactics appearing in the American and Vietnamese ads.3: Examples and their explanations of imitation and soft-sell tactics in the American ads and in the Vietnamese ads .4: Examples of images with interactions and their interpretations in the American ads and in the Vietnamese ads .5: Examples of images without interactions and their interpretations in the American ads and in the Vietnamese ads .6: Examples of singular self-mention (I) in the American ads and other forms used in the Vietnamese ads.7: Examples of exclusive and inclusive plural self-mention personal markers in the American data and in Vietnamese ads .8: Examples and their explanations of common nouns or indefinite pronouns used in the Vietnamese ads .9: Common nouns and indefinite pronouns in the Vietnamese advertisements .10: Examples of showing off words used in the American ads and in the Vietnamese ads.11: Examples of scientific and objective markers in the American ads and in the Vietnamese ads .12: Examples of emotional, subjective, and affective markers in the American ads and in the Vietnamese ads .13: Taxonomy of request realization strategies (Trosborg, 1995, p.14: Examples and explanation for warning and alerting in the American ads and in the Vietnamese ads.15: Examples and explanations of disagreement or criticism found in the American ads and in the Vietnamese ads.16: The upgraded classification of strategies and structures on suggestion by Abdullah (2013) based on Li‘s (2010), Martinez-F lor‘s (2005) and Jiang‘s (2006), examples and their analysis in this study.17: Hedge devices and functions (Hyland, 1998a, p.
170) and illustrated examples in the American ads and in the Vietnamese ads.18: Impersonal linguistic forms (Biber, 1988) and other linguistic resources and examples in the American ads and in the Vietnamese ads.19: Examples of nominalization used in the American ads and in the Vietnamese ads.20: Kinds of metaphors (Chang & Yen, 2013) and examples in American ads and Vietnamese ads .21: Examples and explanations of similes in the American ads and in the Vietnamese ads .22: Examples of puns in the American ads and in the Vietnamese ads .23: Examples of promises in the American ads and in the Vietnamese ads .24: Proposed framework for representation of individualist and collectivist values through images (adpted from Zhang, 2004; and Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006).