Ideologies, qualia, and rhematization: unpacking the semiotic process of experiencing Beijing hutong’s “oldness” quality

1 Introduction

Hutong (胡同) is known as residential areas with a distinctive Chinese architectural style. It is a reserved area in the central part of Beijing, China, and is widely agreed to embody the “quality” of “old Beijing”, not only in that it has a long history of existence, but in that it is distinctive among the near-by modern buildings. This quality of old Beijing, like others such as the “softness” of material and “redness” of colour, are abstract but can be experienced, thus “qualia”, the experiential instantiations of abstract qualities (Woolard 2021: 12). Qualia, according to Pierce (1998: 432), exists in qualisigns, being the embodiments of abstract quality. While qualia may reasonably be characterized as inherently subjective, interior, and ineffable, they clearly are produced through intersubjective processes, in interactional settings, and projected from relatively stable, predicable cultural concepts (Harkness 2017). For example, qualities like “softness” and “lightness” can be experienced through certain materials like a soft blanket or a piece of paper, so can hutong’s “oldness” be stretched across multiple objects such as hutong’s buildings and residents’ ways of living. That is, qualities are not something which we see or touch, but “pragmatic signals (indexes) that materialize phenomenally in human activity as sensuous qualities” (Chumley and Harkness 2013; Harkness 2015). Accordingly, to understand qualia needs to go through a semiotically theorized understanding of it as social, rather than purely subjective (Chumley and Harkness 2013). In this case, the seemingly natural connection between hutong and “old Beijing” can be a complex arena where semiotic processes and language ideology are at play.

Informed by Gal and Irvine’s (2019) observation of semiotic processes and aligned with language ideology research (Calder 2018; Irvine and Gal 2000; Su and Chun 2021; Tian 2023; Wong 2016, 2021; Zhang 2008, 2018; Zhao and Tian 2022), this article underscores how oldness and traditionality have been taken by the American journalist Peter Hessler as a sign of difference that contrasts “hutong interior” with “hutong exterior”. Specifically, we ask three questions: (1) How is the “oldness” quality of Beijing hutong construed in linguistic signs? (2) How are the “oldness” and “traditionality” of Beijing hutong reflected in Hutong Karma perceived and formed into qualia? (3) What role does language ideology play in the semiotic construction and explanation of differentiation? Inspired by the recent work of Gal and Irvine (2019) and Irvine (2022) on language ideology, the current research aims to shift away from taking ideologies as “things to identify and describe” to the “ideological work” that has surrounded social activities (Irvine 2022). Before we explore the semiotic process of experiencing the oldness quality of Beijing hutong, we first provide some background information on Beijing hutong.

2 Beijing hutong and its “oldness” quality

In the Chinese language, hutong is a word that has a Mongolian origin, referring to the space between tents that leads to the well. Later on the word came to bear symbolic meaning for the traditional social culture of the city in China (Heath and Tang 2010). As most commonly understood now, hutong refers to alleys lined by residential courtyards, notably in Beijing, China (Day et al. 2015; Gu and Ryan 2012) (Figure 1). Hutong is typically an integrated mixture of residential and commercial buildings together with important public buildings such as temples and monasteries (Tibet Heritage Fund 2004). Since the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), hutongs have been traditional dwellings where native Beijingers have resided for generations. They are formed by groupings of traditional single-storey residential buildings arranged around one or more private courtyards (or Siheyuan) (Figure 2). Therefore, hutong, together with the courtyards therein, is described as the “cultural DNA” of the city of Beijing (Wang 1997). Owing to such cultural and historical significance, hutong has developed into a tourist destination since the mid-1990s and garnered tremendous popularity worldwide thereafter. In particular, it serves as a strong magnet for tourists from the U.S. and Britain and has been included in the must-visit lists of world-renowned news media over the decade (e.g., Gavin 2016). In recent years, with traditional culture underlined as an essential foundation of national development in China, the Beijing administrations at various levels have made renewed efforts to restore the original features of hutong so as to promote the tourist industry. In 2010, the Beijing local administration issued the Document on Accelerating the Development of Tourism Industry in which hutong was shown to be connected with traditional and old Beijing and “institutionalized” (to use Gal and Irvine’s word, 2019: 206) its emblematic status of a city.

Figure 1:

Fuxiang hutong.

Figure 2:

A model of a courtyard displayed at the Shijia Hutong Museum.

The similarities or iconicity between hutong and “old Beijing” is constructed through perceived likeness rather than inherent shared qualities (Goodman 1972). Two different objects share similarities with each other only because of our own perception of abstract qualities as applying to those things. This is true with our case. As we can see, apart from other qualities like “modernness” (Jiang et al. 2021) and “internationality” (Su et al. 2017) that Beijing hutong embodies, the “oldness” quality of Beijing hutong is perceived as the dominant sensation. In 2023, China Daily’s reporter Yang Feiyue published a report named Residents Feel the Benefits of Hutong Revamp, in which an architect’s account for hutong’s revamp is to “retain(ed) the layout and appearance … of life of old-generation Beijingers”. What is implied here is that the reconstruction is not to be meant to change hutong into some modern buildings but to “retain” its original feelings of “old Beijing”. Clearly the architect argues for hutong’s stereotypical connection with old Beijing. This is also seen in the Beijing Urban Master Plan (2016–2035), an official document issued by the People’s Government of Beijing Municipality in 2017 that emphasizes that “restoration and reconstruction should be carried out to preserve as much of it as possible”. These narratives from local authority, while institutionalizing hutong’s “oldness” quality and naturalizing the iconic relation between hutong and “old Beijing”, reveal that, among the infinite ways in which objects may be “like” or “unlike” each other, socially meaningful similarity must always be constructed by making certain qualities salient and others not (Ingebretson 2017).

As a unique cultural sign, Beijing hutong embodies prominent similarity (iconicity) with residents’ personalities and lifestyles. The network of hutong provides the soul of the real city as hutong residents speak their own hutong dialect and thus consider themselves as true Beijingers (Tibet Heritage Fund 2004). For example, Zhang (2018) identifies a linguistic variable (interdental realization of (ts)) that is spoken by the locals called hutong chuanzi (alley saunterer); this type of feckless Beijing males, by speaking the linguistic variable, consider themselves real hutong residents, and thus builds the iconicity between the linguistic variable and a persona of local hutong residents. For this consideration, people are now reflecting on the effect of rehousing effort in which about three-quarters of the hutong that blanketed Beijing in 1949 have been demolished to make way for contemporary building forms and wider streets (Zacharias et al. 2015). The displacement of hutong seemed attractive to residents as it can provide more room of living, but was later recognized that it could totally change their way of living (Abramson 1997; Gu and Ryan 2012).

In this vein, hutong’s fabric and residents are likely to have an indexical relation with “old Beijing” in their regional continuities. The historical development of hutong’s structure simply indexes its long history while the maintenance of the original Beijing hutong further indexes the appearance of the original Beijing. At the same time, hutong residents are indexically linked with “old Beijing” because they lived here “for generations” and “consider themselves as true Beijingers”, affording a higher (second) order of indexicality (Silverstein 2003). But indexicality is only built by way of language ideologies, and in the case of Beijing hutong, the process in which the “oldness” quality embodied in hutong residents is taken up as “old Beijing” qualia can only be understood by examining the social actors’ ideological work. To unpack this process, we resort to Gal and Irvine’s (2019) theory of semiotic processes, which will be explained in the sections to follow.

3 Previous studies on Beijing hutong and a shift of attention

Previous research on Beijing hutong has played attention to its cultural and historical value for tourism (Li 2005; Ning et al. 2003) and to sustainability issues associated with hutong tourism (Du Cros et al. 2005; Johnston 2014). However, with burgeoning tourism in Beijing around hutong, both the physical forms and business functions of hutong as material building blocks have often been modified to cater to tourists through the proliferation of bars, restaurants, souvenir shops, and boutiques (Gu and Ryan 2012; Liu and Liu 2015). This phenomenon draws the attention of more and more studies as hutong has become a tourism destination. For example, Gu and Ryan (2009, 2012) conducted a series of studies of Shichahai (什刹海), a popular hutong tourism site, and compared the attitudes of residents and business operators towards the tourism environment of this district. It was found that, despite growing concern about intrusion into daily life and skepticism toward potential economic benefits from tourism, residents showed high tolerance for tourism. At the same time, business operators demonstrated positive attitudes toward tourism and high recognition of the hutong’s cultural and historical values as the fundamental attraction to tourists. Similarly, other studies are conducted to analyze the images of Beijing hutong through questionnaires and interviews to investigate the perceptions of tourists (e.g., Day et al. 2015; Wang et al. 2012) and residents (e.g., Gu and Ryan 2009; Zhang and Lu 2016). Concerning the tourists, Day et al. (2015), for instance, notices that tourist’s perceived “authenticity” of Nanluoguxiang (南锣鼓巷), a renowned hutong in Beijing, was contributed most by the external environment and architecture and influenced by demographic factors including age, education, gender, previous times visited and monthly income.

There are also studies that focus on residents’ attitudes toward urban renewal and tourism development in hutong neighborhoods. For example, Zhang and Lu (2016) compares dwelling conditions, daily activities, and individual satisfaction in traditional and redeveloped neighborhoods. They find that although the latter has improved in the building environment, residents exhibit significantly lower satisfaction. Since hutong serves as both residential and tourism sites, conflicts exist among hutong images perceived by different stakeholders. Therefore, a multi-stakeholder approach would be more appropriate to provide a holistic picture of the hutong. For example, Su et al. (2017) examine the images of Nanluoguxiang (南锣鼓巷) by domestic and international tourists, residents, and business operators and find similarities and differences in the hutong’s images perceived by four groups of stakeholders. The study also finds differences between tourists’ motivations for visiting and those perceived by residents and business operators. By advocating an interdisciplinary theoretical framework and offering implications for the preservation and development of heritage sites globally, some linguistic researchers suggest that hutong is represented mainly as “modern tourism and leisure destinations” and “traditional residential areas” (Feng 2011; Jiang et al. 2021) through attitude system and discourse analysis.

Different from the above reviewed studies on Beijing hutong, the work of our team has turned attention to the tourist experience of Beijing hutong. For example, Tian and Dai (2024) have begun to examine how tourists gain their sensory feelings while visiting Beijing hutong. In line of this trend, this study particularly focuses on tourists’ feeling of the narrowness and oldness of the hutong structure and people living there. We are more interested in how ideology works in the semiotic process, in which qualities first perceived contrasting in the signs of hutong are then taken to be alike. In other words, we attempt to understand why hutong’s narrow alley and public equipment are first taken to index narrowness and oldness, and then these qualities are in turn taken to resemble the “oldness” of hutong residents’ way of living and the “narrowness” of personal relationships in hutong. To fulfill our task, we selected an American tourist report named Hutong Karma as data, interpreting how the Oldness is sensed by its author and how ideology unfolds “in semiotic activity and in the social projects those activities pursue” (Irvine 2022).

4 Data and analytical framework

For the purpose of this research, Hutong Karma, a travel report first published in the New Yorker in 2006, is taken as the primary data for discourse analysis. The report was later collected in the book Strange Stone: Dispatches from East and West (Hessler 2013). As a famous journalist, Peter Hessler has been a column writer at New Yorker and National Geographic and is the winner of an American Society of Magazine Editors Award in 2008. He was the magazine’s correspondent in China, a role he held from 2000 until 2007. His subjects include archaeology both in China and Egypt. Before joining the New Yorker, he was a Peace Corps volunteer in Fuling, a small Chinese city on the Yangtze River. In 2011, Peter Hessler received a MacArthur Fellowship in recognition and encouragement of his “keenly observed accounts of ordinary people responding to the complexities of life in such rapidly changing societies as Reform Era China” (John and Catherine 2011). He is the author of four Chinese books, all of which are based on his experience in China for over ten years.

Hutong Karma, translated into Chinese with the title Hutong Qingyuan (胡同情缘), records his daily life in Beijing hutong during the Olympic Games held in Beijing in 2008. The report can be roughly divided into the description of hutong itself and hutong residents. Throughout the narrative, the architecture’s layout such as hutong’s toilets, streets, and exercise equipment, and the residents’ practices such as street vendors’ cries, ways of having meals in restaurants, and local club activities, are all noted and mobilized as objects of attention. The report contains 5,196 English words and describes locals’ everyday life from a first-person perspective. There are two considerations for taking it as data for this research: (1) Although Peter Hessler was born in the United States, he has lived in Beijing for a long time. His description of Beijing hutong may better reflect the perspective of the integration of East and West; (2) His description of Beijing hutong involves both the hutong itself and hutong residents, which can provide a more comprehensive observational dimension for this study to explain the semiotic processes.

A useful toolkit is essential for our attempt to unpack the semiotic process of experiencing the quality of Beijing hutong. We have drawn on a variety of conceptual tools, such as Silverstein’s (1979, 2003) concept of “indexicality,” which refers to a semiotic relationship whereby linguistic features are linked to contextually relevant social constructs (Campbell-Kibler 2021, 127), along with his concept of indexical order (Silverstein 2003). Eckert’s (2008) concept of indexical field also aids in understanding the relevant issues. In terms of the purpose of this research, we find Gal and Irvine’s conceptual toolkit particularly practical for investigating the semiotic processes under concern. This toolkit was initially defined as the three semiotic processes of iconicity, recursiveness, and erasure, addressing “the ideological aspects of linguistic differentiation” (Gal and Irvine 1995). Later, it was expanded and redefined as the axis of differentiation, erasure, rhematization (iconization), and fractal recursivity (Gal and Irvine 2019). Here, the axis of differentiation serves as a schema of qualitative contrast applicable to both indexical signs and what they represent (Gal and Irvine 2019: 19). Thus, contrasts such as traditional building versus modern building, narrow alley versus broad road, public equipment versus private equipment can be listed vertically along an axis of differentiation. In Su’s (2021) example, the axis of differentiation for Taiwan–China differences expands to include more qualitative contrasts, such as politeness versus rudeness and softness versus hardness.

Creating an axis of differentiation requires selecting some qualities while ignoring or downplaying others (Gal and Irvine 2019: 20), the latter known as “erasure”, by which those qualities that do not fit the axis are intentionally eliminated from the narratives. Axis of differentiation and erasure usually happen simultaneously in that when the schema picks up some qualities other qualities are erased. Such selection is never neutral but involves interpretants’ multiple points of view, or what is essential to this article, ideology. An example for this is the case with the Senegalese, in which sustaining the image of the simplicity of the Sereer language required those European linguists to pay selective attention, regularize grammatical structures, and interpret complexity and variations as deriving from interference from other languages rather than from Sereer’s own original, pure, and simple form (Woolard 2021: 11).

Rhematization refers to the process through which an index (e.g. slow speech as a pointer to southern origin) becomes an icon (of the mental process) (Irvine 2022). It is widely recognized as a crucial semiotic process through which linguistic differences are assigned social significance (Wong 2016). This is evident in the growing body of research that have begun to employ rhematization in the examination of social meanings (Irvine and Gal 2000; Lindfors 2021; Su 2021; Wong 2016, 2021; Zhang 2008, 2018). Zhang (2008, 2018), for example, details how rhoticity in Beijing Mandarin is iconized as an ‘oily’ sound befitting the ‘smooth operator’ persona and their slippery qualities. The essence of this process is the “explanatory stories” which are shown as reasonable grounds for the similarity of sign and object. In terms of how a particular phonological variant is related to a persona, Calder (2018) analyzes the interplay of visual presentation and acoustic dimensions of /s/ in constructing the fierce queen persona through rhematization, arguing that the iconic relation between /s/ and fierce femininity is constructed through the indexical congruence between the qualia “harshness” and feminine performance.

Fractal recursivity is that aspect of ideological work that reiterates the comparison created by the axis of differentiation, altering the sets of objects that are compared and contrasted. As the axis of differentiation is a binary contrast, one dichotomy is often valued over another and scaled higher than the opposite one. But with a changed perspective, the scale of the two items would shift accordingly. Fractal recursivity incorporates the possibility of changing perspective within the process itself (Gal and Irvine 2019: 225) and, instead of treating the differentiation process as static and still, claims a perspectival and dynamic comparison between two dichotomies. In Su and Chun’s (2021) study mentioned above, for example, the politeness contrast across Taiwan province and the rest part of China is mapped onto generational differences within Taiwanese in China. Through politeness, Taiwanese is seen as possessing the “politeness” and “softness” qualities while people from mainland China possess “impoliteness” and “hardness” qualities. When Taiwanese are further divided into Taiwanese in Taiwan province and younger Taiwanese in other parts of China, the latter are deemed as not polite enough because they are “under the local influence.” By repeating the comparison and contrast of different qualities on the differentiation axis, the objects of comparison and contrast are changed, and then this comparison and contrast are projected into multiple social fields, creating new social meanings (Tian 2023).

Gal and Irvine’s (2019) semiotic processes are widely recognized as crucial conceptual tools through which linguistic differences are accorded social significance (Wong 2016). As is understood, axis of differentiation and erasure may represent different linguistic forms chosen by language users in the semiotic processes on the one hand, and on the other hand, rhematization and fractal recursivity reveal social meanings and consequences produced through the sociopolitical process. To different degrees, any linguistic form, a pragmatic realization of structure in use, has multiple indexical values for its users, whether or not these are explicitly recognized in conscious awareness (Silverstein 1981, 1985). Therefore, for the convenience of analysis, we follow the analytical framework (Figure 3) proposed by Tian and Dai (2024) and attempt to unpack the semiotic processes by two phases: we first look at the report author’s choice of linguistic form by way of axis of differentiation and erasure, and then we look at the projection of social meanings indexed by those linguistic forms via rhematization and fractal recursivity.

Figure 3:

Analytical framework.

5 Data analysis^[1]

6 Discussion: ideology in semiotic processes

The analysis presented in the above section unpacks to some extent the semiotic process in which Beijing hutong’s “oldness” quality is experienced by the author of Hutong Karma, in which the description of hutong is closely intertwined with Hessler’s ideologies of traditional Beijing hutong and local Beijinger. We can see in his choices of linguistic forms an inside/outside hutong differentiation axis, which suggests the inside hutong side as “traditional” and the opposite side “modern”. Those qualities that don’t fit his schema of such a differentiation axis are erased from the description of hutong in Hutong Karma. Through the process of rhematization, the hutong building (like McDonald’s) has transformed from an index to an icon, turning its indexical meaning of “modern cities” to an iconic relation with hutong residents’ “traditional” lifestyle. Furthermore, the contrast between the hutong building’s “closeness” and the American building’s “broadness” recurs in social style and has been fractally projected onto that of hutong residents and Americans, leaving the impression that the residents in hutong interact closely with each other while the relationship between Americans is relatively loose.

But the study does not stop here once we think of Silverstein’s (1985) proposal of the total linguistic facts – linguistic form (language structure), social use (contextualized usage), and cultural ideology – which are inextricably linked and mutually dependent (Wong 2021). Language ideology is crucial in here, and it is taken to be metapragmatic discourse, consisting of propositions semantically referring to linguistic forms, practices, or beliefs (Gal and Irvine 2019: 177). Thus, after the discourse analysis of linguistic forms and social meanings in the above section, we need go one step further to discuss how language ideologies are deployed by people (in this case, the author of Hutong Karma) to rationalize the iconic relation between abstract qualities and social images.

During semiotic processes, Hessler’s linguistic ideology, “the cultural (or subcultural) system of ideas about social and linguistic relationships, together with their loading of moral and political interests” (Irvine 1989: 255), emerges from multiple levels of axis of differentiation, erasure, rhematization, and fractal recursivity. First, axis of differentiation and erasure are aspects of ideological work that appear in his choices of linguistics form. From Hutong Karma, we can see Hessler take inside hutong and outside hutong as a differentiation axis, and this choice itself represents his ideological work in a way in which the contrasts on a geographical ground more explicitly demonstrate hutong’s “oldness” and “traditionality” than comparing and contrasting, for instance, the past and the present hutong, another optional axis of differentiation. Second, Hessler’s ideological work is also embedded in his negative evaluation of changes that happened in hutong area. He does not completely eliminate those changes, but his attitude towards them is based on his own understanding and presumptions that are unfavourable to the changes. For instance, he regards “bars, cafés, and boutiques” as cash cows for hutong residents, ignoring the conveniences hutong tourism’s “modernness” brings about to the local residents. This is the result of his ideological work.

Third, Hessler’s ideology about old Beijing works in the process of rhematization. According to Peirce’s semiosis, rhematization happens when the indexical relation between a sign and its vehicle may be rethought as an iconic one. When the direction of change is from index to icon, Parmentier (1994: 18) calls it “downshifting”. This happens whenever the construction or transformation of semiotic relations requires “conjecture” (“interpretant” in Peirce’s term) (see Gal and Irvine 2019). In the case of Hessler’s description of the McDonald’s in hutong area, its iconic relation with hutong residents’ “slow” lifestyle is the result of Hessler’s conjecture or ideological work: he spontaneously differentiates McDonald’s in hutong area from those outside of hutong, and equates it with “hutong restaurant” to establish the qualic congruence between a restaurant and a group of people, turning McDonald’s from an index to an icon. This goes in line with Zhang’s (2018) analysis of rhotacization, which reveals the iconic relation between the linguistic feature and Beijinger’s “smooth” character. Just as this iconic relation is built via people’s stereotype of “Beijing operator’s oily and slippery quality”, the comparison of “slowness” in hutong’s McDonald’s and “fastness” in modern cities’ McDonald’s, as is shown in the travel report, is the outcome of Hessler’s stereotype of the old Beijing lifestyle that iconically links hutong’s “slowness” with “oldness” quality Beijing hutong.

Fourth, via fractal recursivity, Hutong Karma forms a contrast between narrow hutong buildings and broad outside hutong buildings in the dimension of architectural pattern. This contrast is projected onto the characteristics of inside hutong people and outside hutong people, such as the close connection between hutong residents and the loose connection between Americans. Hence, the perception of the “flexible” and “oily” qualities of hutong residents is created. Again, this is the result of Hessler’s specific language ideologies (i.e. stereotypes of hutong residents). Based on Peirce’s three degrees of reality (Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness), signs are divided into qualisign, sinsign, and legisign: qualisigns are “qualities” (like “closeness”), which are “abstract possibilities” only to be experienced through being actually embodied in sinsigns (like “narrow” hutong buildings). The specific manifestation (the relationship with “sinsigns”) of abstract qualities (such as “close connection”) in a social context, however, needs to be restricted by cultural categories and ideologies such as “laws” and “conventions” that are embodied in “legisigns”. In our Beijing hutong’s case, if we interpret close and narrow hutong buildings as “sinsigns”, the abstract qualities they embody may become the close connection between people, which is just because Hessler’s language ideology comes into play as the “law”.

So far, the “oldness” quality of Beijing hutong we have discussed in this article could be interpreted in different ways, including a “slow” lifestyle and a “close” social connection. To feel these qualities, as is shown in the analysis and discussions, Hessler, the author of the travel report, experiences a semiotic process of ideological work, through which potential qualities (qualisigns) of a subject are perceived or experienced through hutong buildings and residents (sinsigns) under the influence of specific culture, convention, or, terminologically, ideology (legisigns), thus forming hutong’s “oldness” and “traditionality” qualia. By utilizing the conceptual tools of axis of differentiation, erasure, rhematization and fractal recursivity, this article unpacks the semiotic process of experiencing the quality and touches the concept of qualia, which can serve as sensuous pivot points in practical human activity (Harkness 2015). Following Chumley and Harkness (2013), qualia have a crucial capacity to link the thinginess of things with the feeling of doing within a broader pragmatic semiotics of culture. As is shown in this study, qualia do not equate abstract qualities of “oldness” of Beijing hutong, but are personal feelings of “old Beijing” in the actual experience of Beijing hutong. It is further highlighted in this research that the formation of qualia is affected by social categories like personal experience, knowledge and customs, and it is the result of ideological work.

7 Conclusions

In Peircean terms, Beijing hutong as an actual physical structure can be considered a sinsign; it is also associated with qualisigns (Harkness 2017), functioning as “old Beijing”, a value-laden index within a qualitative space that emphasizes the feeling of lived experience. The embodiment of the “old Beijing” quality in Beijing hutong and its formation into qualia result from the constraints imposed by laws or conventions (legisign). This research aligns with Peircean semiotic theory, applying Gal and Irvine’s (2019) theory of semiotic processes to analyze the tourist report Hutong Karma. It elucidates how this semiotic process constructs qualia. As demonstrated in this study, the “old Beijing” qualities of Beijing hutong manifest across multiple dimensions, including narrow streets, close-knit social networks, and a leisurely lifestyle. These qualities of “traditionality” and “oldness” are vividly portrayed in Hessler’s narrative about Beijing hutong, where his ideological work plays a crucial role in shaping perceptions of “old Beijing”. In this sense, it is important to note that the role of linguistic ideology in exploring the semiotic process is of dynamics, varying in degree with people of different backgrounds.

This case study, though focusing on a particular person’s feeling of Beijing hutong, offers a general understanding of how Beijing hutong is metadiscursively transformed from an indexical sign (quality) into an iconic sign (qualia), becoming a symbol of old Beijing. Through the three semiotic processes of rhematization, fractal recursivity, and erasure, it showcases the iconicity of hutong is embedded with cultural values, beliefs, and emotions tied to Beijing’s local customs and traditions, which could be a novel attempt to expand the scope of relevant research (e.g. Calder 2018; D’Onofrio and Eckert 2021). Furthermore, as is seen in the discussion section, it extends Tian and Dai’s (2024) semiotic research of Beijing hutong by highlighting the role of language ideologies in the semiotic process of rhematization. Meanwhile, in answer to Zhao’s (2023) acknowledgement of “qualia and rhematization” as a new trend of art semiotic research, this article also provides a meaningful case study.