A discursive pragmatic approach to the third person pronoun ta in Chinese computermediated communication. (7th December 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Sluchinski, Kerry
• Is Part Of: East Asian pragmatics. Volume 5:Number 2(2020)
• Page Start: 247
• Page End: 277
• Publication Date: 2019-12-07
• Subjects: sina weibo -- rhetorical move analysis -- non-standard spelling -- ta -- third person pronoun -- pragmatics -- chinese social media; Pragmatics -- Periodicals; 401.45
• DOI: 10.1558/eap.39165
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2055-7752

Abstract

Abstract : This study examines the persuasive discourse of institutional accounts on Sina Weibo which contains the genderless non-standard third person pronoun ta written in the Roman alphabet instead of standard Chinese characters. Mandarin Chinese originally used the single character 他 (ta) to refer to the third person 'he', 'she', and 'it', which later gave way to three separate written 'standard' forms: ta 他 'he', ta 她 'she', and ta 它 'it' all with the same pronunciation. From a discourse analysis perspective, the study incorporates the 'three-move structure' textual analysis methodology to shed light on both contemporary language use and one of the most under-studied interpersonal dialogic practices in Chinese computer-mediated communication: ta. The research shows that the environments in which ta appears are associated with two main goals: (1) generating monetary profit and (2) generating engagement with services/ideologies.