Publications

Publication details [#42622]

Wong, Andrew D. 2005. The reappropriation of tongzhi. Language in Society 34 (5) : 763–793.

Publication type

Article in journal

Publication language

English

Keywords

gay | minority | newspaper report | parody | sociolinguistics

Language as a subject

Chinese

Place, Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Journal WWW

journals.cambridge.org/

Annotation

This paper discusses how the Chinese word tonghzi or 'comrade', used for general address in Communist China, got used by gay rights activists to positively address minorities, and now gets employed by Hong Kong journalists to ridicule gay rights activists.