Government Monitoring of Online Media and its Influence on Netizens’ Language Use in China

Abstract

In the last 15 years, China has witnessed the world’s fastest growth in terms of Internet infrastructure construction and number of Internet users. In order to realize its ambition in maximizing the economic value of the Internet while minimizing its destabilizing and disruptive potential, the Chinese government has adopted a policy that encourages the technological development of the Chinese Internet. The government, however, also maintains a very tight control over the Chinese people’s online activities. In order to avoid or break through the government’s regulatory effort, netizens in China have worked out many interesting ways of expressing ideas online. Among the various linguistic strategies adopted by Chinese netizens, five are particularly prominent and arguably more effective. They are using homophony, dismantling Chinese characters, using sarcasm, extending the semantic sense of words, and using English or Pinyin initials. This chapter examines how government monitoring of online media in China is employed to restrict people’s freedom of expression and how Chinese netizens are using certain features inherent in their language and culture to exercise their right of free expression in such a context.

Metaphor and Entertainment

“…In the age of the Internet, online media writing itself is permeated with creative language play through which Internet users disseminate information, express their opinions and communicate with audiences appropriately and effectively (Liu & Tao 2011;Gong 2012;Jones 2012;Yuan 2012). Some of them are produced to circumvent the government's content censorship), whereas some are invented for maintaining online community identity and interaction.…”