CBS Seminar for Enhancing Learning & Teaching
Title: Cosmopolitan Mandarin and the New Chinese Middle-class Consumer
Speaker: Qing Zhang, University of Arizona
Date: 10 June 2009 (Wed)
Time: 4:30 – 6:00pm
Venue: AG 507, Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Abstract:
As a country undergoing rapid socioeconomic restructuring, China provides a rich site for investigating the constitutive role that language plays in socioeconomic transformation. This study examines the linguistic practices of two hosts of a Chinese television show, “S-Information Station,” that promotes a new cosmopolitan middle-class lifestyle through consumption. The analysis focuses on how the two hosts strategically combine a range of innovative linguistic (including phonological, lexical and syntactic) features and English-Mandarin code mixing to construct a new cosmopolitan Mandarin style. In contrast to the state-sanctioned standard Mandarin which is based on the phonology of Beijing Mandarin and considered a regional (i.e. Mainland China) Mandarin variety, the cosmopolitan Mandarin style is distinctively non-conventional and supra-regional. Analysis of the discourse of the hosts shows that the new Mandarin style not only indexes their cool, trendy and cosmopolitan persona but also constitutes part of the symbolic repertoire of those who participate in a new cosmopolitan lifestyle. As powerful tools for hegemony or social transformation (Ginsburg et al, 2002), mass media have been shown to differentiate and stratify the Chinese media publics in the reform period (Yang, 1997). This study demonstrates that the new Mandarin style (and the television show) participate in such processes of differentiation and stratification. Being integral to the lifestyle and consumption regimen prescribed by the hosts, the new linguistic style interpellates the audience as cosmopolitan consumers living a trendy and middle-class lifestyle, sharing tastes and consumption practices with their counterparts in other parts of the world.
About the speaker:
Qing Zhang (PhD in Linguistics, Stanford University) is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona, USA. Her main research interests are in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. Her research concerns the constitutive role of language in contexts of social-political transformations and globalization, with a geographical focus on China. She has worked on the ways in which linguistic resources are employed in the construction of new social distinctions and the reconfiguration of the contemporary Chinese social-political landscape. Her recent work has appeared in Language in Society, Journal of Sociolinguistics, Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, and Words, Worlds, and Material Girls: Language, Gender, Globalization.
Mailing address:
Department of Anthropology
University of Arizona
1009 East South Campus Dr.
Tucson, AZ 85721-0030
Email address: zhangq1@email.arizona.edu
