Hostname: page-component-7857688df4-7f72j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-11-19T07:54:15.315Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The reappropriation of tongzhi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2005

Andrew D. Wong
Andrew D. Wong
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, 569 Moore Hall, 1890 East-West Road, Honolulu, HI 96822, adwwong@hawaii.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A general address term in Communist China, the Chinese word tongzhi ‘comrade’ was appropriated by gay rights activists in Hong Kong to refer to members of sexual minorities. It has positive connotations of respect, equality, and resistance. This article focuses on the reappropriation of this word by a mainstream newspaper in Hong Kong. The parodic use of tongzhi allows journalists to ridicule gay rights activists so as to increase the entertainment value of news stories. At the same time, it mocks activists' demand for equality and may lead to the pejoration of the term. This study provides synchronic evidence for sociolinguistic accounts that explain how lexical items may undergo pejoration because of the context of their use. It shows that because the meaning potential of a word is not bounded by the intentions of its users, words that marginalized groups have appropriated can be resignified yet again in hateful contexts.An earlier version of this article was presented at the First IGALA (International Gender and Language Association) Conference at Stanford in May 2000 and was published in the proceedings of that conference. I would like to thank Penny Eckert, Jane Hill, Miyako Inoue, Don Kulick, Sally McConnell-Ginet, John Rickford, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.

Keywords

Hong Kongparodyappropriationsemantic changemeaning contestation

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 34 , Issue 5 , November 2005 , pp. 763 - 793
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Bakhtin, Mikhail (1981). The dialogic imagination. Ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Carly Emerson & Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Bakhtin, Mikhail (1984). Problems of Dostoevsky's poetics. Ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Bell, Allan (1991). The language of news mdia. Oxford: Blackwell.
Briggs, Charles, & Bauman, Richard (1992). Genre, intertextuality, and social power. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 2:131–72.Google Scholar
Bruce, Lenny (1967). The essential Lenny Bruce. Ed. John Cohen. New York: Ballantine.
Butler, Judith (1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of ‘sex.’ New York: Routledge.
Butler, Judith (1997). Excitable speech: A politics of the performative. New York: Routledge.
Chou, Wah-Shan (2000). Tongzhi: Politics of same-sex eroticism in Chinese societies. New York: Harrington Park.
Cohen, Elliot (1997). Hong Kong: The future of press freedom. Columbia Journalism Review, May/June 1997, 48–50.Google Scholar
Data Collection Group (2001). Speaking the same language without fear [tung-yin mou-gei]. In Ng Sing-Bong (ed.), Tongzhi and the news media [tongzhi yu chyun-mui], 98–103. Hong Kong: Chi Heng Foundation.
Dentith, Simon (2000). Parody. London & New York: Routledge.
Ehrlich, Susan, & King, Ruth (1994). Feminist meanings and the (de)politicization of the lexicon. Language in Society 23:59–76.Google Scholar
Fairclough, Norman (1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity.
Fang, Hanquan, & Heng, J. H. (1983). Social changes and changing address norms in China. Language in Society 12:497–507.Google Scholar
Garber, Marjorie (1999). “ ” (Quotation marks). Critical Inquiry 25:653–79.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving (1963). Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Goffman, Erving (1979). Footing. Semiotica 25:1–29.Google Scholar
Haeri, Niloofar (2003). Sacred language, ordinary people: Dilemmas of culture and politics in Egypt. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Harriss, Julian; Leiter, Kelly; & Johnson, Stanley (1992). The complete reporter: Fundamentals of news gathering, writing, and editing. New York: Macmillan.
Hewitt, Roger (1986). White talk Black talk: Inter-racial friendship and communication amongst adolescents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hill, Jane (1993). Hasta la vista, baby: Anglo Spanish in the American Southwest. Critique of Anthropology 13:145–76.Google Scholar
Hill, Jane (1995). The voices of Don Gabriel: Responsibility and self in a modern Mexicano narrative. In Tedlock & Mannheim, 97–147.
Hill, Jane (1999). Language, race, and white public space. American Anthropologist 100:680–89.Google Scholar
Iarovici, Edith, & Amel, Rodica (1989). The strategy of the headline. Semiotica 77:441–59.Google Scholar
Kennedy, Randall (2002). Nigger: The strange career of a troublesome word. New York: Pantheon.
Laai, Laan-Heung (1997). News writing in Chinese [chyun-mui jung-man se-jok]. Hong Kong: Jung-Wa.
Labov, William (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Loo, John (ed.) (1999). New reader on Chinese tongzhi (essays and conference proceedings) [wa-yan tongzhi san duk-bun]. Hong Kong: Worldson.
Matthews, Stephen, & Yip, Virginia (1994). Cantonese: A comprehensive grammar. New York: Routledge.
McConnell-Ginet, Sally (1989). The sexual (re)production of meaning: A discourse-based theory. In Francine Wattman Frank & Paula A. Treichler (eds.) Language, gender, and professional writing: Theoretical approaches and guidelines for nonsexist usage, 35–50. New York: Commission on Status of Women in the Profession, Modern Language Association of America.
McConnell-Ginet, Sally (2002). ‘Queering’ semantics. In Kathryn Campbell-Kibler et al. (eds.), Language and sexuality: Contesting meaning in theory and practice, 137–60. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
McMahon, April (1994). Understanding language change. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.
Rossen-Knill, Deborah, & Henry, Richard (1997). The pragmatics of verbal parody. Journal of Pragmatics 27:719–52.Google Scholar
Schulz, Muriel (1975). The semantic derogation of women. In Barrie Thorne & Nancy Henley (eds.), Language and sex: Difference and dominance, 64–75. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Scott, James (1985). Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Scotton, Carol M., & Zhu, Wanjin (1983). Tongzhi in China: Language change and its conversational consequences. Language in Society 12:477–94.Google Scholar
Smitherman, Geneva (1977). Talkin and testifyin: The language of Black America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Spears, Arthur (1998). African-American language use: Ideology and so-called obscenity. In Salikoko Mufwene et al. (eds.), African-American English, 226–50. New York: Routledge.
Tannen, Deborah (1995). Waiting for the mouse: Constructed dialogue in conversation. In Tedlock & Mannheim, 198–217.
Tedlock, Dennis, & Mannheim, Bruce (eds.) (1995). The dialogic emergence of culture. Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Wong, Andrew (2003). Tongzhi, ideologies, and semantic change. Dissertation, Department of Linguistics, Stanford University.
Wong, Andrew, & Zhang, Qing (2000). The linguistic construction of the tongzhi community. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 10:248–78.Google Scholar
Zelizer, Barbie (1995). Text, talk, and journalistic quoting practices. Communication Review 1:33–51.Google Scholar