ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 investigates how women’s clothes are branded on the e-commerce site of Taobao. Adopting a social semiotic genre analysis approach, it explicates the complexity of e-commerce branding discourse as an emergent hybridized genre shaped by socio-economic changes in contemporary China and the technological affordances of the Taobao platform. Analysis shows that e-commerce branding has become a relatively stable genre composed of vestimentary discourse, fashion discourse, and lifestyle discourse in a roughly linear structure. The analysis reveals how consumption is constructed as a cultural capital for enabling the display of a xiaozi identity which is characterized by fashion consciousness and a leisurely lifestyle. Interdiscursivity is manifested in the multiple communicative functions, including informational, promotional, instructional, and relational functions, as well as the stylistic features of the language and images through which the functions are realized. Together, the e-shops construct both an expert identity through demonstrating expertise in fabrics, clothes design, and fashion, and a peer identity who is experientially relatable and interpersonally intimate to the viewer. The discursive features are discussed in relation to the consumerist society and the affordances of e-commerce platforms in contemporary China.
