Digital writing, recreated orality, and identity: domestication and exoticization of multilingual speech on Chinese social media

Abstract

With their access to an unprecedented amount of streamed multimodal, multilingual content, it becomes increasingly common among Chinese social media users to translate and transcribe multilingual speech via the digital writing function of bullet comments (superimposed writing on a moving screen played simultaneously with the video). In this article, we look at “Konger” (“intentional mishearing”) to offer a timely discussion of amateur writing/literacy practice afforded by digital technologies. Leveraging unique affordances of Chinese characters (unlike alphabetic writing), when transcribing multilingual speech (from foreign speakers and Chinese dialect speakers) users deliberately select characters that deviate from their “original” meanings, often in unexpected, humorous and ludicrous ways. Adopting digital ethnography, thematic and textual analysis, we offer three case studies involving high-profile influencers who speak non-standard Putonghua with heavy regional accents. We argue that bullet comment users’ collectively produced and intricately orchestrated Konger writings recreate new layers of orality and serve diverse identity-making purposes within an increasingly commercialized Chinese social mediascape.