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Performing microcelebrity: Analyzing Papi Jiang's online persona through stance and style
Citation
Weninger, C., & Li, D. (2022). Performing microcelebrity: Analyzing Papi Jiang's online persona through stance and style. Language in Society. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404521001020
Abstract
Contemporary digital media is characterized by a cultural logic of participation that encourages sharing, confession, phatic communication, and an emphasis on the visual. In this techno-cultural milieu, self-presentation has become a key mode of communication, and has enabled ordinary individuals to attain a measure of celebrity status. A key component of being a microcelebrity entails developing a consistent persona that is recognizable and unique. How such persona can be studied from the sociolinguistic perspective of stance and style is the focus of this article. We combined corpus linguistic and qualitative discourse analytic methods to examine a small corpus of videos produced by Chinese online celebrity, Papi Jiang. The article presents key lexico-grammatical, discourse-level, and non-linguistic resources that are analyzed as stance markers that together contribute to Papi's intense, critical-satirical performative style. The significance of the findings is discussed in relation to performance, performativity, and critique in digital media. (Persona, microcelebrity, style, performance, stance)
Date Issued
2022
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Journal
Language in Society
DOI
10.1017/S0047404521001020