Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Subverting official language and discourse in China?
T2 - type river crab for harmony
AU - Nordin, Astrid
AU - Richaud, Lisa
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - While the promotion of ‘harmony’ (和谐) in Chinese official discourse is widely regarded as a feature of state propaganda and censorship, scarce attention has been paid to the reception and redeployment of such language among Chinese citizens. The often creative and ironic reappropriation of official language in everyday speech practices, both on the Internet and in conversations with peers, is an important aspect of Chinese language/politics and deserves careful examination. Much of the current work has regarded these discursive practices in terms of a resistance to ‘harmonization’ or, following a Bakhtinian reading, as ‘carnival’. We argue that such approaches do not fully take into consideration actors’ actual experience of consuming and producing such language play. Based on semi-structured interviews with Chinese university students conducted in 2009–11, this article shifts away from the dominant assumptions about the role of ironic reiterations of official language, in order to highlight how the presumed repoliticization of these linguistic practices also involves a depoliticization, reflecting the complexity and ambiguity of the relationships they negotiate.
AB - While the promotion of ‘harmony’ (和谐) in Chinese official discourse is widely regarded as a feature of state propaganda and censorship, scarce attention has been paid to the reception and redeployment of such language among Chinese citizens. The often creative and ironic reappropriation of official language in everyday speech practices, both on the Internet and in conversations with peers, is an important aspect of Chinese language/politics and deserves careful examination. Much of the current work has regarded these discursive practices in terms of a resistance to ‘harmonization’ or, following a Bakhtinian reading, as ‘carnival’. We argue that such approaches do not fully take into consideration actors’ actual experience of consuming and producing such language play. Based on semi-structured interviews with Chinese university students conducted in 2009–11, this article shifts away from the dominant assumptions about the role of ironic reiterations of official language, in order to highlight how the presumed repoliticization of these linguistic practices also involves a depoliticization, reflecting the complexity and ambiguity of the relationships they negotiate.
KW - political discourse
KW - censorship
KW - egao
KW - harmony (hexie)
KW - online resistance
U2 - 10.1177/0920203X14524687
DO - 10.1177/0920203X14524687
M3 - Journal article
VL - 28
SP - 47
EP - 67
JO - China Information
JF - China Information
SN - 0920-203X
IS - 1
ER -