Startseite Linguistik & Semiotik The construction and survivability of “blaming” metaphors on Chinese social media
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The construction and survivability of “blaming” metaphors on Chinese social media

  • Dennis Tay und Ying Jin
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Abstract

Social media facilitates massive interactive dissemination of public opinion on contentious socio-political issues. In contexts with curtailed civil liberties, it has fostered refreshing examples of “blame discourse” where citizens may feel relatively empowered to criticise authorities for misgovernance. Metaphor is a wellknown and multi-faceted phenomenon in such discourses. Basic questions include who/what gets metaphorically represented, with what, how, and why (i.e., the targets, sources, mappings, and functions). Given the turn-based architecture of online forums where users and their metaphors may be both collaborative and competitive in acts of blaming, we may also consider novel methods and analytic perspectives on issues like metaphor “survivability”, as different conceptualisations vie for attention in a crowded space. This chapter is a case study of user responses to the Hubei Red Cross Foundation, whose perceived gross mismanagement of medical relief to Wuhan, China during the initial COVID-19 phase triggered huge discontent on Sina Weibo, the most influential Chinese microblogging web platform. We adopt an approach combining quantitative modelling with critical interpretation on a web-scrapped corpus of 14540 user comments (292253 Chinese characters) to investigate i) the relative survivability of different metaphor variants, and ii) the coconstruction, collaborative or otherwise, of metaphors across posts. Our objectives are both theoretical and methodological - to shed critical light on metaphors in a cultural context not traditionally accustomed to “blaming”, and to demonstrate the relevance of data analytic techniques like survival analysis for such a purpose. Relevant Python code is available on the first author’s website (https://github.com/denistay1981) or upon request.

Abstract

Social media facilitates massive interactive dissemination of public opinion on contentious socio-political issues. In contexts with curtailed civil liberties, it has fostered refreshing examples of “blame discourse” where citizens may feel relatively empowered to criticise authorities for misgovernance. Metaphor is a wellknown and multi-faceted phenomenon in such discourses. Basic questions include who/what gets metaphorically represented, with what, how, and why (i.e., the targets, sources, mappings, and functions). Given the turn-based architecture of online forums where users and their metaphors may be both collaborative and competitive in acts of blaming, we may also consider novel methods and analytic perspectives on issues like metaphor “survivability”, as different conceptualisations vie for attention in a crowded space. This chapter is a case study of user responses to the Hubei Red Cross Foundation, whose perceived gross mismanagement of medical relief to Wuhan, China during the initial COVID-19 phase triggered huge discontent on Sina Weibo, the most influential Chinese microblogging web platform. We adopt an approach combining quantitative modelling with critical interpretation on a web-scrapped corpus of 14540 user comments (292253 Chinese characters) to investigate i) the relative survivability of different metaphor variants, and ii) the coconstruction, collaborative or otherwise, of metaphors across posts. Our objectives are both theoretical and methodological - to shed critical light on metaphors in a cultural context not traditionally accustomed to “blaming”, and to demonstrate the relevance of data analytic techniques like survival analysis for such a purpose. Relevant Python code is available on the first author’s website (https://github.com/denistay1981) or upon request.

Heruntergeladen am 1.10.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111001364-009/html
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