“NoL, please be away from my life.” — Pejorative neologisms for attacking males in Chinese microblogging

摘要

© This paper is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.This study investigates the use of an emergent pejorative “蝻” nǎn by Chinese micro-blogging users on Weibo. The phonetic part “南” nán (south) of “蝻” (nymph of locust — NoL) is a homophone of “男” (male) in Chinese with a dehumanized quality; hence “蝻” was often used to devalue males, express discontent and counter gender issues, widely appearing on China’s social media with various associated neologisms. Data were collected from 898 unique Weibo postings included “蝻”. The focal neologisms were coded according to six identified linguistic structures, including “蝻” associated with identity pejoration, adjectives, affective terms, taboo terms, feminine gender markers and others. Underneath its superficial pejoration, we argue that “蝻” can be adopted as contextual strategies to counter gender issues via the above-mentioned language play, projecting a shifting gender ideology in China’s cyberspace.