Language and Identity across Modes of Communication

Dwi Noverini Djenar, Ahmar Mahboob, Ken Cruickshank, Dwi Noverini Djenar, Ahmar Mahboob, Ken Cruickshank

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781614513872
• eBook ISBN: 9781501500725
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This edited collection examines how people use a range of different modalities to negotiate, influence, and/or project their own or other people's identities. It brings together linguistic scholars concerned with issues of identity through a study of language use in various types of written texts, conversation, performance, and interviews.

Wei Wang

Uncovering how identities of laobaixing are constructed in China’s most read magazine

1 Introduction

This chapter explores the relation between language and identity by examining how identities of laobaixing

‘ordinary people’) are constructed by and represented in the life stories of Duzhe (

‘The Reader’) – the most read magazine in China. As a term referring to ordinary people or the “person in the street” outside of the elite or the nomenklatura class, the concept of laobaixing has come to occupy a central position in contemporary Chinese social life. Laobaixing, often regarded as the “silent majority” in China, represents the governed and underprivileged individuals distant from power, wealth, and glory. Perhaps because of this it has attracted less academic and journalistic attention than the elite class. This chapter aims to fill this gap by investigating narrative identities of this social class and exploring the narrative/storytelling strategies that Duzhe as an influential magazine adopts in constructing these identities.

Duzhe ‘The Reader’ is regarded as the top general interest magazine for the laobaixing in China with an average monthly domestic and international circulation of over nine million. Statistics from the International Federation of the Periodical Press show that Duzhe ranks third worldwide and first in Asia and China by circulation. This magazine now has a large readership in the Chinese communities of more than eighty countries, including the United States and Australia. As a digest-type periodical, Duzhe is published twice a month with articles from various sources, including a large proportion written or recommended by its readers. Launched in 1981, with just 30,000 copies per month, this magazine has become a legend in the Chinese magazine industry and has been enthusiastically welcomed and enjoyed by people in every walk of life in China and overseas in the past three decades. With its birth and growth roughly coinciding with the open-reform era in China in the 1980s, the success of this magazine can be attributed to both the timeliness of its emergence and its content and style which appeal to ordinary people. Every issue of Duzhe contains many stories with profound inspiration for the common people. Of high quality and devoid of sex and sensationalism, these stories are usually written by people who retell their own personal experience by using the first person narrative, or those who write about the experiences of others. The stories in Duzhe are concerned with the well-being of disadvantaged social groups in China, portraying how the characters deal with various hardships and always ending with words of wisdom, encouragement, and aspirations. By doing this, these stories give the lower-tier people hope and show them that humanity can conquer all. Unlike the widely adopted top-down rhetorical approach in Chinese media (Lee 2000; 2003) which instructs people what to do, Duzhe promote a sense of closeness and affinity between the characters and the readers by invoking the idea that being ordinary people are a strength. This approach makes Duzhe an extremely popular magazine among people with low-income (Sinha 2008), people who find hope and warmth in reading stories about ‘themselves’. As one of the most influential magazines in the transitional era in China, Duzhe presents stories that deal with social issues that emerge during the social transformation which began in the 1980s. In this sense, the stories in Duzhe can be considered as a microcosm of contemporary China. The magazine represents an unparalleled print media outlet for constructing discourses on laobaixing in China.

With the rapid economic development and the changes in economic, geopolitical, and international position that China has enjoyed in the past three decades, the internal and global issues that these developments represent have become an object of huge interest and concern to scholars in a wide range of disciplines, not only in various Chinese regions and communities, but also the rest of the world. Discourse, or language use, as Fairclough (1992) pointed out, not only reflects social change, but is an integral part and constitutive of social change; therefore research into discourse in contemporary China is vitally important in the study of socio-political transformation in Chinese society. The current chapter seeks to contribute to this research by focusing on the role that narrative plays in the social-political transformation in Chinese society. It draws on narrative analysis, especially narrative identity studies, and positioning theory to explore how social identities are constructed through narrative/ storytelling in the most read ma...

Table of contents

• Language and Social Processes
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgments
• Table of Contents
• Contributors
• Identity and mode as a frame for understanding social meanings
• Language, identity, and communities of practice
• The elements of style
• All these years and still counting: why quantitative methods still appeal
• Community languages schools: the importance of context in understanding hybrid identities
• Multiple identities and second language learning in Hong Kong
• Performing identities in intergenerational conflict talk: a study of a Sicilian-Australian family
• Identity management, language variation and English language textbooks: focus on Pakistan
• The Housewife’s Companion: identity construction in a Japanese women’s magazine
• Uncovering how identities of laobaixing are constructed in China’s most read magazine
• Style and authorial identity in Indonesian teen literature: a “sociostylistic” approach
• First person singular: Negotiating identity in academic writing in English
• Constructing professional identity through Curricula Vitae
• Unpacking professional identities for Business English students
• Migrant women, hooliganism, and online social visibility in Chinese personal blogs
• Performed research for public engagement: Language and identity studies on stage
• Subject index