Creating “Us” and Addressing “You”: Linguistic Strategies of Participant Reference in German and Chinese Social Media Advertising

Abstract

Social media advertising constructs complex communicative relationships between brands and consumers through strategic deployment of person reference forms. This study examines how German and Chinese cosmetics advertisements employ personal pronouns and person designations to create intimacy, build solidarity, and construct gendered identities. Drawing on 602 advertisements from Facebook and Weibo, the analysis compares Nivea and Nivea Men campaigns across both languages. Results reveal striking cross-linguistic differences: German advertising relies heavily on pronominal reference, creating dialogic relationships through combinations of first-person plural wir (“we”) and second-person plural familiar ihr (“you”). Chinese advertising deploys more person designations, with extensive use of gendered nominal forms for identity construction. German achieves gender targeting primarily through contextual disambiguation and generic masculines, while Chinese employs elaborate person designation vocabulary including kinship terms, diminutives, and internet slang neologisms. These patterns reflect language-specific pragmatic resources and cultural communication norms: German dialogic bilaterality versus Chinese social categorization emphasis. The findings demonstrate that reference form selection constitutes strategic relationship technology reflecting and reproducing cultural values and gendered identities within commercial discourse.