Locating and Recalling Socialism: A Social Media Discourse Analysis of Chengdu’s Industrial Heritage (78701)
Session Chair: Chaipat Ngambutsabongsophin
Saturday, 25 May 2024 09:30
Session: Session 1
Room: Room 705
Presentation Type: Oral Presentation
Socialist industrial heritage has been transformed in multiple ways in post-socialist China. Chengdu's Dongjiao Jiyi is an example of this practice. It is a factory built in the 1950s that was transformed into a creative industrial estate at the beginning of the 21st century. This transformation is represented as a multi-subjective social media discourse at the language level. This study explores the representation of socialist memory in social media discourses about Dongjiao Jiyi and the appropriation and negotiation related to it. Corpus Linguistics (CL) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) are the methodologies of this study, utilising textual data obtained from Chinese social media as objects. CL can illuminate the preferences of Chengdu’s industrial heritage discourse and relevant metadiscourse. Further, this study uses CDA to contextualise the outcomes of CL and some of the texts used as cases in a more nuanced way. Specifically, this study reveals strategies regarding which socialist memories are appropriated and inherited, as well as which are absent. These language practices romanticise the memory of socialism and legitimise neoliberal urbanism in contemporary China. However, there is no guarantee from the authority as to how to keep people's nostalgia under control to the proper extent.
Authors:
Zhongxiao Hu, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom
About the Presenter(s)
Mr Zhongxiao Hu is a University Postgraduate Student at University of Sheffield in United Kingdom
See this presentation on the full schedule – Saturday Schedule
Conference Comments & Feedback
Place a comment using your LinkedIn profileShare this Presentation
Comments
Powered by WP LinkPress