The local and the global in the visual design of a Chinese women’s lifestyle magazine: a multimodal critical discourse approach

Abstract

This article uses a multimodal critical discourse analytic approach to analyse how a Chinese women’s magazine has changed visually over 17 years, partly through the gradual adoption of international branding design styles and partly through consumer product influences from Japan that are used to recontextualize core Chinese values and women’s identities. The authors conclude that, like established international magazine brands, this title signifies freedom, but of a very different order to that found in those counterparts.