Title: Who are the “grassroots”? On the ambivalent class orientation of online wordplay in China

ABSTRACT

Chinese cyberspace is vibrant with new expressions created and disseminated by Internet users. Generally light in tone, they have been viewed by numerous media scholars as constituting a playful and satirical form of speech which exemplifies “grassroots” netizens’ carnivalesque resistance against the authoritarian party-state. Adopting a critical sociolinguistic perspective, the article focuses on the textual constructions of two online buzzwords diaosi and shamate to illustrate the ambivalent class orientation of Chinese Internet discourse. It argues that while the diaosi wordplay appears to signify an underprivileged or grassroots identity, its discursive construction is in effect characterized by an intermediate position which oscillates between identifying with the economically dominant and recognizing the truly subordinate social groups in contemporary China – such as rural migrant workers. The social stratification and hierarchy of Internet users, as well as the simultaneous cooption of digital culture by institutional forces must be taken into account so as to fully evaluate the political implications of playful online practices in China and beyond.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital participation
• memes
• grassroots
• discourse analysis
• class analysis
• diaosi
• contemporary China

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. It’s noticeable that all the scholars cited above only rely on textual analysis to address the diaosi phenomenon. For how the term is interpreted by different social groups of youth, see (Y. Huang, 2018).

2. accessed via: https://www.yicai.com/news/5390595.html.

3. Watch the video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYCoaarG6c8.

4. Mu’er refers to a kind of edible mushroom in Chinese.

5. “Pink wood ear” is a metaphor for a virgin’s clitoris.

6. See a feature writing in Chinese titled “shamate by the sea” via http://chuansong.me/n/840428031330.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yanning Huang

Dr Yanning Huang is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Media and Communication of Xi'an Jiaotong Liverpool Uiversity. He received his PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). His research interests include youth and digital culture, audience research, media gender studies, rural-urban divide in China, and environmental communication.