3rd November 2021

The online activism of mock translanguaging: Language style, celebrity persona, and social class in China

Shuang Gao (University of Liverpool)

One salient effect of neoliberalism is increasing disparity and widening inequality. Celebrity culture is deeply embedded in this process. Despite the fanfare and worship celebrities typically receive, their accumulation of fame and wealth as well as the system that enables it can also be targets of public scrutiny, especially on social media today. This paper examines online activism against a Chinese celebrity announced as the winner of an American architecture award. Drawing upon insights from celebrity studies, online activism, and social semiotics, I examine how netizens creatively appropriate and mock celebrity language, focusing the semiotic work netizens engage in to mobilize emotions, form solidarity networks, and perform collective action as they reveal the moral failures, injustice, and falsehood of celebrity culture. Three semiotic processes are identified as key in enabling netizens to formulate their critique: entextualization, stylization, and typification. It is suggested that these semiotic moves turn language into power, allowing netizens to articulate discontents against the rich amid increasing disparity and lack of trust in a neoliberal society.