Saving Mianzi: A Cultural and Interactional Context for Positioning and Agency Through WeChat Discussion

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: Language Learning, Social Media, and Identity

Abstract

Through examination of WeChat discussion of three Chinese international students at a US public university, I investigated the complex interrelationship among texts, contexts, positioning, and agency. Discourse analysis of the WeChat discussion exchanges reveals that the students selectively developed lexical and grammatical devices through existing interactional, social, and cultural contexts to create new contexts for their desired positionings. By taking up or rejecting positions, they utilized (non)verbal language to articulate their meanings, ideas and desires, which formed a fundamental aspect of the social, discursive, personal, and cultural contexts for agency negotiation and development. Worthy of note is their feature of the value of mianzi through text-making as a significant cultural and interactional context, which shaped their positioning and agency.

Author

• Min Wang, Wenzhou-Kean University