Migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong have attracted international attention since the concerning circumstances around the unfair and exploitative treatment of domestic workers are still lingering and unsolved. Many scholarships have put their stress on government policies, organization dealings, and public response while relatively few researchers have examined the significant role employment agency played during the migration process. This essay will examine the recontextualization of advertising discourse from domestic helper agencies in Hong Kong through the lens of critical discourse analysis. Following the established pattern suggested by Norman Fairclough, the commodification process is dissected from four stages beginning with the commodification at the semiotic level (social wrong), deeply rooted public stereotypes (obstacles), shared values in the profit-oriented mechanism under the trend of marketization (the rationalization of the social wrong) and the rising self-awareness from migrant workers (the possible “point of entry”). The commodifying process is realized through the recontextuality of commercials and other product promotions, which is the main linguistic instrument to materialize domestic workers and create a stereotyped image for circulation in other discourses and contexts. This also created a prerequisite for the marketization power to gradually filtrate into the public discourse without awareness. It is facilitated by the social order to continuously push forward the trend until it is justified and accepted. An interdisciplinary study across sociolinguistics, society and economy is required since social elements can be fully interpreted in a larger background but through a microscopic lens.

Authors:
Yating Li, City University of Hong Kong, China

About the Presenter(s)
Miss Li Yating is a phd student in Linguistics and Translation department of City University of Hong Kong. Her research interests is social linguistics, critical discourse analysis and migrant study.

Additional website of interest
https://scholars.cityu.edu.hk/en/persons/yating-li(6d07393f-f8b0-4026-9d61-52ca28b44632).html

See this presentation on the full schedule – Saturday Schedule

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