The interpenetration between globalization and localization: Gender images in global brands and local brands commercials in contemporary Taiwan (China)

This dissertation examines the impact of cultural globalization in contemporary Taiwan through a semio-narrative analysis of gender meanings in TV commercials. The social and historical meanings of these gender identities are interpreted under the context of Taiwan's specific routes to integrate itself into the process of globalization and the rise of its self-identity since the early 1990s. By comparing the similarities and differences of gender meanings produced in the local and global brand commercials aired in Taiwan from the end of 1999 to the early year 2000, I empirically clarify the elements, processes, and locations by which cultural homogeneity, heterogeneity and hybridicity can be said to occur through narrativity. The research strategy consists of applying Greimas's semio-narrative theory (modality of doing, actantial structure, narrative schema) to (1) analyze how gender meanings are constructed through the themes of locality, globality, and cultural hybridity; and to (2) compare the homogeneity and heterogeneity of gender meanings that can be found in the local and global brand commercials. The homogeneity of gender meanings across the local and global brand commercials appears in the paradigmatic organization of language and class, i.e., the absence of native Taiwanese languages and the tendency to portray women's identities through middle class, white collar, mandarin-speaking subjects. As for the heterogeneity, it can be identified through the different constructions of gender through the themes of locality and globality. While the local brand commercials elaborate gender identities more along the themes of locality, the global brand commercials construct women as the main actor pursuing global experiences. Different narrative operations related to the actantial roles and modalities of doing also lead to different social constructions of gender identities and different significations of gender meanings in relation to the themes of locality or globality. Cultural hybridity in this study is found to be mare a narrative aperatian in the syntagmatic organization rather than simply a juxtaposition of different cultural signs. This dissertation challenges the arguments that globalization simply causes cultural homogeneity, heterogeneity, or hybridicity. This in-depth analysis of Taiwan's contemporary TV commercials reveals that the process of globalization tends to lead to three main societal effects: (1) heterogeneity is embedded as the cultural element and signified as the social dialogue that traditional gender values have in facing modernity and contemporary social change, (2) homogeneity functions as the specific cultural-socio-economic channel through which the global-local nexus is constructed, (3) and hybridity embodies the narrative aperatian that transforms social change or renovates tradition.