We chose this text to find out what is the perception of humour by people from different cultures? And the stereotype is perceived by the storyteller or the audience, and whether this is a variable for different cultural backgrounds.

Moalla, Asma. (2015). Intercultural strategies to co-construct and interpret humor. International Journal fo Applied Linguistics 25(3): pp 366-385.

Weichao, W., & Xiaoya, W. (2020). Stereotyping as a Barrier in Intercultural Marketing: An Analysis of Public Online Comments on Dolce & Gabbana’s Incident in China. International Journal of Literature and Arts, 8(2), 70.

Zhao, Wei. (2019). Advertising Thinking: To investigate the use of “the story” in creative advertising in the West and analyse its possible application in China. [Doctoral dissertation, University of Huddersfield]. University of Huddersfield Repository. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/35177/

But the fact proved that the brand’s intention was failed. Why?

According to Molla (2015), humour in transcultural communication is intended to be amusing and the receiver recognizes and identifies it as humour. And because different cultures have different norms concerning the suitable subject matter of humour (Martin, 2007), when humour was applied in transcultural communication, it could be easily cause communication breakdown if the speaker didn’t pay attention to norms of humour in another culture.

Humour could generate from awkward actions or words mostly based on cognitive dissonance. Using chopstick eating western food was a dissonant action. So, the video maker indeed wanted to amuse the audience. D&G as a global luxury fashion brand, it has consumers from all over the world including western world and China. These videos aroused wide repercussion in China, and finally the running show in Shanghai was cancelled. Chinese culture focus on the property or the courtesy which appears everywhere in Chinese people’s life including manners on table. The video content of an Asian model using chopsticks awkwardly eating western food seems to make fun of Chinese traditional culture. Therefore, for Chinese audience, this action was hard to be identified as humour. And furthermore, the Asian model in the video was slant-eyed which was commonly regarded as a stereotype towards Chinese people. 

Nevertheless, in terms of the cultural difference, in modern Chinese society on mainland China, the central government adopted a strong national ideology as the dominant reference for emotional transference and personal identification. So, in this case, the contents that are relevant to praising the nation and emphasizing the national spirit are more frequently used in the ads in China. 

China-based social media users analyzed the non-verbal behavior in D&G’s apology and think it is insecure due to the frequent use of teleprompter and the too loose pants.  One of the designers also made a gesture which looked like contempt. China is a typical high-context culture, in which people communicate in a way that is implicit and rely heavily on context. High-context culture also highly values impersonal relationships and nonverbal communication. So, bowing and wearing formal suits are necessary for an apology in Chinese cultural context. 

As a response to the wording used by the two designers in the apology video, "Our Instagram account has been hacked", which has created an uproar in China. Many Chinese people consider this apology indicates superiority and lack of responsibility. In this case, Chinese people normally praise the ones who are brave enough to take responsibility for their faults. On the contrary, western people think "admission of guilt can mark the beginning of legal and reputational difficulties to come" (Wang et al., 2020). 

Therefore, effective intercultural communication presupposes equality, mutual respect, and empathy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77fZGUE-zwk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip66PNzmd6c

 

1

I am an international student with an Asian cultural background. I would feel insulted and unhappy if someone ask me to eat pizza with chopsticks. Most of the time I eat pizza with my hands. But I also use chopsticks if the pizza is hot. Another benefit of using chopsticks is that I can finish pizza with one hand (compared with someone who needs knife and fork) and use the other hand to find something really 'humorous' from my phone.

 

2

This is D&G's most expensive failure. This failure cost not only money but also reputation. I think the original intention of the advertisement is to express that the collision of Eastern and Western cultures can be 'beautiful'. But the producers obviously don't understand Asian culture or are full of stereotypes. After all you can't send 'a cat' to do 'a dog' job (We don't eat cats and dogs. We just make them work for us really hard). 
1242437--Manxi Shen