An analysis of culture rich points as semiotic resources : a case study of Chinese guanxi

Abstract

This thesis investigates competing ideologies around a Chinese culture rich point, guanxi, which is actively created and recreated by a wide range of social actors, including cross-generational groups in contemporary urban communities of China, authors of a heavily censored Chinese news website (Renmin website), and YouTube video producers. Some persistent problems that have not been sufficiently addressed in studies of culture rich points to date are identified in this thesis: (1) culture rich point is consistently reified as an inherent and impenetrable barrier to “intercultural communication”; (2) the contextual focus adopted by studies of culture rich points is typically very narrow. This thesis, in contrast, identifies culture rich points as a set of incomplete collective projects that are continuously renewed by social action. Consequently, the attention of this thesis shifts to the dynamic and multi-sited semiotic processes in which the meaning of guanxi is precariously reified and limitlessly reproduced. Both situated guanxi practices (Wechat data) and metacultural commentaries on guanxi (interview, Renmin website and YouTube data) are taken as data in this thesis in the attempt to reveal how metacultural commentaries can substantially depart from actual cultural practices in their aim to produce specific linguistic ideologies. The analysis shows that guanxi is a locus of ideological constructions and is highly susceptible to semiotic appropriation. It essentially acts as a method of control proliferatively put into use in a wide range of social contexts, producing social integration and social division alike. This thesis critiques the arguments that stereotypically conceptualize guanxi as a unique Chinese indirect communicative practice, as well as those that misrecognize guanxi as a shared Chinese philosophy, which euphemize the violence this ideology brings against marginalized Chinese groups, such as females, workers and young people.