Abstract
The paper attempts to investigate speech acts and features used by Chinese celebrities to build public persona on social media, with a comparison between the Chinese mainland (on Weibo) and Hong Kong (on Facebook) and a revisit of politeness theories for Chinese. Three months of postings by twelve most-followed Weibo and Twitter celebrities from the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong have been retrieved and analyzed. It is found that the prevalent relational acts commonly used by both Weibo and Facebook celebrities include sharing personal information, retweeting others' information, inviting response, and expressing stance, etc.; and the commonly prevalent interactive features include the use of emoticons and other graphic symbols, orality, codemixing, and Netspeak, etc. Nonetheless, differences also exist in that while Weibo celebrities tend to use more acts of inviting response and directives, Facebook celebrities use many more acts of retweeting information and online video sharing; Weibo celebrities tend to use more Netspeak whereas Facebook celebrities use more codemixing. Using English only also appears on the posts of Facebook celebrities. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion and explanation of the commonalities and differences between Weibo and Facebook celebrities.
Translated title of the contribution | Relational Acts & Interactive Features by Chinese Celebrities on Social Media: A Comparison of the Chinese Mainland and Hong Kong |
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Original language | Chinese (Simplified) |
Pages (from-to) | 15-29 |
Journal | 中國語文通訊 |
Volume | 100 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Jan 2021 |