Producing Authenticity: Ethnic Costumes in Contemporary Inner Mongolia

Abstract

This article examines multivocal Mongolian costumes to shed light on the performance and representation of Mongolian identities in China. In particular, it explores the promotion of Mongolian costumes in online media spaces, in commercial cultural studios, and at state-sponsored heritage events. The article argues that the discursive construction of authenticity and cultural hegemony overshadows and hierarchises heterogenous Mongolian cultures and identities. The article also finds that the meanings taken on by Mongolian costumes contest and go beyond those inscribed by the state. The study aims to improve our understanding of minority cultural transformation in post-Mao China and the agency of minority Mongols who reshape their evolving cultural forms.

English as Eastern: Zhuang, Mongolian, Mandarin, and English in the linguistic orders of globalized China

“…Baioud's Mongolian study asks what semiotic ideologies are produced in the performance of bilingual and bicultural weddings of Mongols in the PRC and how the indexical relation of Mongolian as traditional and Chinese/English as modern are reproduced and contested in the performance. The study draws on data collected during 2016 in Inner Mongolia where Baioud participated in weddings, collected wedding videos and interviewed a range of wedding participants including wedding ceremony speakers, wedding costume studios owners, photographers, wedding guests, and couples (Baioud 2018;Baioud 2021aBaioud , 2021b). Baioud's study finds that the performance of bilingual and bicultural weddings of Mongols expands and reproduces the orthodox representation of Mongolian culture as traditional while representing Chinese culture and the Sinicized Western culture as modern.…”

“…Both studies are rooted in social constructionist, Bourdieusian critical sociolinguistics. The aspect of that school of theory on which we center this combined analysis is Agha's theory of enregisterment, thereby offering a new perspective on Grey's study and extending Baioud's (2021aBaioud's ( , 2021b prior use of Agha's theory. Agha's theory builds upon contemporary sociolinguistic research on the social and ideological aspects of linguistic representation, which have been examined extensively (e.g.…”

Transforming Mongolian Wedding Speech Genres in Bilingual Bicultural Urban Inner Mongolia

“…Of particular relevance is that their emergence dovetails with the separation of Mongolian wedding rituals into two major segments: private/simplified rituals at home, and publicly-staged/elaborate wedding performance and feasting in glamorously decorated reception halls in hotels or restaurants. It is at the latter publicly staged Mongolian weddings that key ceremonial roles are handed over to outsiders, in this case a group of specialized wedding experts (Baioud, 2018). In short, the performance of Mongolian wedding speech in public, and the emergence of cultural entrepreneurs and experts, have placed the repertoires of Mongolian weddingsincluding the wedding speech genreunder an unprecedented scrutiny.…”

“…In the Mongolian verse, the injunction to inherit and develop Mongolian culture from line 11 to line 13 is a particularly noteworthy content innovation in this blessing as such discourse relates to Mongolian ethnolinguistic movement where Mongols are often urged to develop their culture or reminded of their glorious history. In a sense, the reanimation of Mongolian blessing on stage resonates with the Mongolian cultural revival movement that has gained momentum since the turn of this century (see Baioud 2021). In general, the very design and artful performance of the Mongolian blessing from line 1 to line 21 stays faithful to the Mongolian blessing genre, yet the established authority of tradition is about to be diffused further when the content of its Chinese counterpart brings in multiple competing voices that are dialogized with the listeners' subjective belief system or conceptual horizon.…”

Constructing ‘corrupted village wives and urban men’ through multilingual performances

“…Further, Axeman's parodic stance-taking in the rap '50 50' does not only materialize a gendered figure but also plays with ethnolinguistic boundaries as with Chen's construction of a modern village wife in the previous case. For instance, Axeman's donning of traditional Mongolian dress-a highly ideologized cultural symbol in Inner Mongolia (Baioud 2021)-and his sitting on a royal chair while crossing into the language of Chinese migrants-the Chinese Jin dialect-break the ethnosemiotic boundary and straddle a range of local linguistic and cultural repertoires. Throughout the rap '50 50', the creative synthesis and hybridity as displayed through Axeman's stylization of different linguistic and non-linguistic variants including Mandarin, standard Mongolian, and the Chinese Jin dialect as well as other miscellaneous signs index a pluralistic identity that flouts ethnic and cultural boundaries in Inner Mongolia.…”