What is it about?
This study analyzes the usage of Sinographs (Chinese characters) across globally dispersed user communities on YouTube, and focuses on their usage patterns in relational communication about ethnic Chinese identities. This is achieved by analyzing YouTube comments on the official music video for the Mandopop (Mandarin pop music) song “Fragile” (玻璃心) as a corpus.
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Photo by Chi Lok TSANG on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Due to China's Great Firewall (GFW) blocking access to global mainstream social media platforms for netizens within China, researchers are unable to utilize data from these popular social media platforms to study how globally dispersed users, including Chinese users, utilize Sinographs. However, the Mandarin pop song "Fragile" (玻璃心), released on YouTube, has attracted a global audience, including a significant number of Chinese netizens who circumvent the GFW to watch and comment on it. This study utilizes these valuable comments to examine the patterns of Sinograph usage among globally dispersed users on YouTube, which is a global mainstream social media.
Perspectives
While writing this paper, I have discovered that utilizing English (as phonetic characters) rather than Chinese (as logographic characters) to study the patterns of Sinograph usage sometimes provides a clearer representation.
Lu-Yen Ko
Huaqiao University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The usage of Sinographs in relational communication about ethnic Chinese identities on YouTube, International Review of Pragmatics, July 2023, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/18773109-01502007.
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