Article In:
Pragmatics: Online-First ArticlesCrazy literature
A case of mock self-impoliteness
In this paper, we investigate crazy literature, a newly emerged genre on Chinese Internet in which posters portray
themselves as being mentally instable or, simply, insane. Based on data collected from the Internet and findings from a survey of
college students, we argue that the image created by crazy literature is best captured by the notion of mock self-impoliteness.
That is, although the image of insanity is damaging to the self-face of the poster, the impolite self-image is a persona, not the
real image, motivated by transactional effectiveness. In addition, crazy literature helps the blogger to appear humorous, to
express their helplessness in vulnerable situations, and to gain a sense of belonging. Our paper, therefore, contributes to the
pragmatics literature by drawing scholars’ attention to a (possibly) hitherto non-existent type of language use, offering an
analysis of the genre that is innovative, and demonstrating a need for investigating Internet pragmatics seriously.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Preliminaries
- 2.1Research on crazy literature
- 2.2Theoretical prerequisites
- 3.Methodology and findings
- 3.1Data collection
- 3.2Survey
- 4.Discussion
- 4.1Linguistic features of crazy literature
- Interrogation
- Emotive lexicon
- Hyperbole
- Illogicality
- Parody
- Metaphors
- Special symbols
- Misordering of elements
- 4.2Self-image in crazy literature
- 4.3Motivations for crazy literature
- 4.4Crazy literature, other Internet genres, and the Internet modality
- 4.1Linguistic features of crazy literature
- 5.Concluding remarks
- Notes
- Author queries
-
References
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