The Emergence of Expressible Agency and Irony in Today’s China: A Semantic Explanation of the New Bèi-construction

Abstract

This paper focuses on the new passive bèi-construction in Chinese, dating approximately from 2009. By 2012, this new usage had entered the most authoritative Chinese dictionary. While previous studies have mostly focused on the pragmatic effect of this structure, my aim is to trace the motivational forces behind this language innovation by examining the linguistic, cultural and social factors contributing to its emergence. In particular, I examine the specific features of the bèi-construction, using Natural Semantic Metalanguage to spell out its meaning and identify the semantic links between its variant forms, especially with respect to degrees of transitivity. I demonstrate that it is not accidental that the conventional bèi-construction has been ingeniously and humorously recruited and modified to express agency and disagreement with a higher authority, or even dissent in an authoritarian society, and that a deeper understanding of the bèi phenomenon not only affords insight into the cultural ethos developing in today’s China, but also offers an excellent example of (a) non-autonomous syntax and (b) mechanisms of language change in the age of internet and social media, when language innovation often takes place consciously among internet users, transcends geographical barriers and is easier to trace than before.