Face and politeness in fandom in China

Abstract

Face and politeness in fandom in the People's Republic of China are driven by a dominating focus on rank, which entails a prodigious amount of social media interaction, primarily occurring as posts and comments on the microblogging website Weibo. When interacting with their fellows in the same fandom, fans refer to a collective identity in order to maintain or enhance rapport with their interlocutors. Fan members use deliberately opaque and alien terminology for their in-group discussions, intertwining their fandom's discourse with that of their idols' fans and thereby intertwining notions of face. To further differentiate their fan base from other counterparts, thus reinforcing their collective identity as a distinctive community, fans use neologisms that are exclusive to their own fan space, thereby creating unconventional and discursive strategies of politeness similar to mock politeness. When preserving face, expressing politeness, and maintaining rapport with fellow fans, fans use carefully selected semantic strategies that act as epistemic stance markers. When interacting with idols, fans use self-referential terms that show politeness, giving face to idols and enhancing rapport between idols and fans.