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- Volume 4, Issue 2, 2021
Internet Pragmatics - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2021
Volume 4, Issue 2, 2021
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Introduction
Author(s): Chaoqun Xie and Bingyun Lipp.: 177–189 (13)More LessAbstractHuman beings are now living in social media, for various social media apps or platforms are becoming more and more indispensable to their everyday livelihood and social practice. In fact, social media users are dwelling in two life-worlds and living two lives, online and offline, shuttling back and forth between them. China, with nearly one billion internet users, has formed the world’s largest digital society, contributing to several questions that can be raised concerning the essence of Chinese social media. After presenting some basic statistics and facts about Chinese social media, this introduction, inspired by Bakhtin’s (1981a, 1981b) views on carnival and Heidegger’s (1966, 1977, 2002, 2010, 2012) thought-provoking insights into technology, explores the essence of Chinese social media as carnival, as revealing and concealing, and as positionality, with a view to questioning the essence of human-technology relations and to thinking how it is possible to stay both connected and disconnected in an interconnected life-world.
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Chronotopic (non)modernity in translocal mobile messaging among Chinese migrants in the UK
Author(s): Agnieszka Lyons, Caroline Tagg and Rachel Hupp.: 190–218 (29)More LessAbstractMigration is often seen as crossing both space and time, from the traditional past to the modern present, while leading to perceived changes in migrants themselves. This article draws on data from a large ethnographic project to explore the ways in which Chinese translocal families dispersed between China, Hong Kong and the UK exploit mobile messaging apps to negotiate the post-migration value of Chinese-ness and Chinese tradition in geographically dispersed family and social contexts. Drawing on the concept of the mobile chronotope, we show how Chinese families and friends employ textual and multimodal resources to negotiate mobile chronotopes of (non)modernity in translocal mobile messaging interactions. Our discourse analysis focuses on critical junctures at which modernist chronotopic negotiations are most visible. The article contributes to an understanding of the discursive construction of multiple (non)modernities by showing how migrants (re)position themselves along a gradient of chronotopic modernity in everyday mobile messaging encounters.
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The construction of heterogeneous and fluid identities
Author(s): Luyao Li and Jing Huangpp.: 219–246 (28)More LessAbstractThis paper presents a case study of identity construction and performance by examining the dynamic translanguaging practices of a Chinese student in the UK on a widely-used social media platform, WeChat. Drawing on data from WeChat Moment posts, chatting records, face-to-face interviews and online interviews over a period of 10 months, the study discusses identity construction in a digital world with a particular focus on heterogeneity and fluidity. The main findings include the following two points. First, the participant is the epitome of his world; he selects and manipulates linguistic and other semiotic resources indicating his beliefs, attitudes and life trajectory, and he actively, creatively, critically and strategically uses resources from his communicative repertoire to construct heterogeneous and fluid self-identities in his interactions with others. Second, the participant actively creates a virtual translanguaging space on WeChat, within which his new and old identities and different knowledge meet, integrate and fuse. The findings of this research provide detailed insights of digital translanguaging practices of WeChat users and contribute to a comprehensive understanding of identity (re)construction and (re)formation of an increasing number of overseas Chinese students.
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More than playfulness
Author(s): Yiqiong Zhang, Min Wang and Ying Lipp.: 247–271 (25)More LessAbstractThis study aims to uncover the complexity of emoji usage on Chinese social media. We investigate emoji usage in comments on push notifications from the WeChat official account of Guokr, which was chosen as a representative for an open forum for public communication. The data includes 2,552 comments from 90 articles pushed by the account. The analysis adopts a discourse-pragmatic perspective within the framework of intercultural pragmatics (Kecskes 2014), taking into account both the local discourse environment and the cultural context. It is found that Chinese WeChat users show a preference for using emojis that are unique to the WeChat platform. Qualitative analyses were carried out on selected WeChat emojis used in comments fulfilling the speech acts of self-disclosure, self-praise, humor and complaining. Emojis are found to be used to perform and reinforce a sense of playfulness in social media, but underlying this playfulness there is a discursive conformity to social norms in real life. The use of emojis resolves the tension between the openness and freedom in social media and the conservative, constraint-bounded nature of established social norms.
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“The murderer is him ✓”
Author(s): Leticia Tian Zhang and Daniel Cassanypp.: 272–294 (23)More LessAbstractThis paper analyzes humorous comments created through a popular viewing-and-commenting system used in China and Japan, known as danmu (or danmaku). This system enables its users to superimpose anonymous comments on the video frame, which are displayed in subsequent viewing. We collected 327 user-selected ‘funniest’ screenshots of comments from danmu video sharing sites. Using content and discourse analysis, we re-contextualized the comments and identified main mechanisms of humor. Results show that speakers make fun of the plot, characters and of each other, relating to the video frame, Chinese culture and Japanese fandom. They rely on non-aggressive but rather playful teasing, allusions and retorts, and apply multimodal resources such as color, layout, and symbols to enhance the humorous effect. Our study contributes to the emerging research focus on multimodal humor (Yus 2016), social semiotics and a discursive approach to danmu-mediated communication.
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How and why people are impolite in danmu?
Author(s): Jiayi Wangpp.: 295–322 (28)More LessAbstractThis study explores how and why people are impolite in danmu. Danmu refers to anonymous comments overlaid on videos uploaded to video-sharing sites. Although there is wide recognition that impoliteness prevails in danmu, the questions of how and why people are impolite in this context have rarely been investigated. This study addresses this lacuna of research. Using both an analysis of comments identified as impolite by participants and an analysis of focus group interview data, this research identified seven impoliteness strategies, covering both conventionalised formulae and implicational impoliteness. By applying uses and gratifications theory, this study identified five uses and gratifications for performing impoliteness in danmu: social interaction, entertainment, relaxation, expression of (usually differing) opinions and finding connections. The dialectic of resonance and opposition that emerged from the data helped explain why impolite comments tended not to be perceived as inappropriate in danmu. Thus, this study contributes to the emerging research on impoliteness in social media.
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