Branding devices in place: Neoliberal academic event posters in a Hong Kong university

Fanglei Corey HUANG

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlespeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Operating as a hegemonic, market-driven governmentality, neoliberalism has been colonizing academic institutions and academic professionals’ everyday lives globally. This article demonstrates how several sets of academic event posters displayed at a public Hong Kong university work as spatialized multimodal branding devices that discursively entangle certain types of individuals, activities, institutions, and political economy under a specific mode of neoliberal governmentality. It shows that the posters position the university and its academic units as internationally competitive, Global-North-oriented knowledge enterprises in a mutually shaping relationship with a globalized neoliberal political economy par excellence in Asia. The study signals the need for research on neoliberal academic discourses to pay closer attention to the spatialized, multi-semiotic nature of discursive practices and the multi-layered institutional, politico-economic and cultural contexts in which the neoliberal discourses are situated. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s).
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)632-651
JournalDiscourse and Communication
Volume16
Issue number6
Early online dateJul 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2022

Citation

Huang, C. F. (2022). Branding devices in place: Neoliberal academic event posters in a Hong Kong university. Discourse and Communication, 16(6), 632-651. doi: 10.1177/17504813221108805

Keywords

  • Academic event posters
  • Critical Discourse Analysis
  • Geosemiotics
  • Hong Kong
  • Marketization
  • Multimodality
  • Neoliberalism
  • University

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Branding devices in place: Neoliberal academic event posters in a Hong Kong university'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.