Translanguaging hybrids on Chinese gateway websites

ABSTRACT

This article explores how English hybrids, as a form of language play, are blended and concocted in news headlines, briefings, and Bulletin Board System forums by Chinese bilingual web writers and netizens on two gateway websites in China. It has been found that by drawing on various strategic uses of intercultural linguistic resources, those web writers and netizens creatively resort to translanguaging practices to achieve phonological, morphological, lexical, semantic, and rhetorical effects. The article argues that Chinese web writers’ and netizens’ translanguaging practices are challenging the standardized ideology of language purism in China, whereby a new identity is constructed and negotiated in the global–local interface.

KEYWORDS:

• language contact
• language play
• multilingual creativity
• translanguaging hybrids

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dr Lu Danhuai and Dr Christopher Ward for reading an early draft of the article and providing valuable suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.