酷儿“基友”：对“基友”使用的话语分析

本文是一篇语言学论文，本文基于同性恋和异性恋男性在百度贴吧中具体使用基友的话语和定性访谈语料，采用酷儿语言学批评话语分析方法，探讨“基友”在实际的交际下是如何使用的，人们使用“基友”的目的是什么，人们是如何看待基友的使用的，“基友”话语中又隐含着什么意识形态、权利关系和社会规范，以及“基友”话语对当今同性恋在中国的现在和未来有什么启示。

CHAPTER ONEGENERAL INTRODUCTION

1.1 The problem: tensions/clashes in the use of ji-you
Research on the lexicon of LGBT world has been a primary interest in the field oflanguage and sexuality (Livia and Hall 1997) and extensive studies in this field havebeen carried out; however, the exploration of lexicon of LGBT world in China isstill relatively few, except some inspirational studies on ‘Tongzhi’ (Wong2008;Kong 2010). This paper then aims to extend the presently scant academic work onChinese LGBT lexicon by investigating ji-you, a recently phrased word meaning‘gay friends’ and/or ‘straight friends’.
Semantically, ji-you consists of ji meaning ‘gay’ and you meaning ‘friends’. Itsfirst part, ji originated from gaaugei or gao-ge, a Cantonese term referring to‘homosexual conduct’ with ‘homophobic and derogatory connotations’ (Wei 2016:2),Other words associated with ji, include ji-qing (gay romance), ji-lao, similar toji-you but with a suffix lao indicating discrimination, and ji-fv (gay andqueer-viewers). Within these ji-you-based expressions, it is claimed by Huang andZhou’s (2015), Zhou and Zhao (2015) and Wei (2016) that although ji-you still couldbe used to mean ‘gay friends’, its predominant meaning now is ‘(straight) intimatemale friends’ used by people on the internet and in factual life.
However, according to my observation, the homosexuality meaning of ji-you,nonetheless, is not lost, and could actually, to some extent, influence people’s usesof ji-you and create tensions in concrete interactions. I shall illustrate this throughthe following example (see Extract 11). In this short interaction, speakers (M and C)both have different understandings of ji-you. For M, in line 1, the use of ‘a girl’, bycontrast, indicated that he was using ji-you to look for a straight male game friend.This taken-for-granted meaning of ji-you to mean ‘straight male friends’ was laterchallenged by C in line 3 who understood ji-you to mean ‘gao-ji’: doing/having gaysex. Then C’s repeated understandings or negotiations of ji-you to mean gao-ji inline 3, 5 and 7 and M’s refuting to gao-ji in line 4 and 6 co-constructed a tension inthis interaction. But what makes this tension possible? I shall explain this first froma linguistic perspective.
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1.2 The purpose: queering the use of ji-you
Therefore, intrigued by the tensions in the uses of ji-you such as the one in extract 1and many other possible conflicting and/or friendly uses of ji-you, this paperendeavors a process of queering the use of ji-you. By ‘queering’, I mean to take anexpressive voice in reconceptualizing ‘dominant discourses which shape ourunderstanding of gender and sexuality’ (Motschenbacher 2011:153). So in particular,this paper seeks out to find out how ji-you is used within actual communicativeinterchanges among people, particularly people with different sexual identities, andto explore the functional properties/purposes of the use of ji-you, such asconstructing or deconstructing certain social relations/identities. It shall furtherseek to demystify the underlying ideologies and power relations/social normsinstantiated in the discourses of ji-you, and finally it aims to arrive at a betterunderstanding of the discourses of ji-you beyond the scope of causal interactions, soas to reach any implications that these discourses of ji-you might have for socialchange of gay men’s now and future place in China.
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CHAPTER TWOLITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 The research perspective: Queer Linguistics
A general review of Queer Linguistics (henceforth QL), the study of language andsexuality from post-structuralist perspective (Motschenbacher 2010, 2011, 2014;Motschenbacher and Stegu 2013; Leap 2011; Livia and Hall 1997; etc.), is needed inthat this research, with its purpose of queering the use of ji-you, intends to take QLas its primary research perspective. QL deems the ‘reconceptualization of dominantdiscourses which shape our understanding of gender and sexuality’ (Motschenbacher2011:153) as its the long-term goal, and its central target is ‘the linguisticmanifestation of heteronormativity and, connected with it, binary gender and sexualidentity discourses’ (Bing and Bergvall 1996; cited in ibid, 2011:161).Heteronormativity (Wagenknecht, 2007 [2004]) refers to the view that ‘(certainforms of) heterosexuality count as natural, normal and, therefore, preferable’, andalso QL critiques homonormativity which is ‘practices that sketch out certain formsof gay male and lesbian sexualities as normal or preferable’ (Motschenbacher,2014:23). Further, different from other poststructuralist approaches like CriticalDiscourse Analysis (e.g. Wodak and Meyer 2009), Feminism PoststructuralistDiscourse Analysis (Baxter 2003), Critical Applied Linguistics (Pennycook 2001),etc., QL views the realm of sexuality as a starting point in its practices. Thefollowing is a brief summary of some major theories in QL accompanied by adescription of what they inform me for the present study.
QL’s view on identity: From a Queer Linguistic perspective, the relationshipbetween language and identity is considered as constructive. Identities are seen asconstructed in the very moment of language use; that is to say, identities are notpreset but are performed through people’s ‘positioning’/ ‘indexicality’ practices inlocal, temporary and concrete interactions (Duranti 2004; Bucholtz and Hall 2004).In other words, what used to be taken as a fixed grid of identity facets to whichspeaker behavior may be correlated is conceptualized as an ‘intrinsically unstable,procedural accomplishment’ that may orient to dominant notions of social macrocategories but at the same time ‘negotiates them contextually in a process offluctuating identity construction’ (Motschenbacher 2011:152). This understanding ofidentity entails to examine actual conversational interchanges of ji-you if it isintended to find out the functional properties/purposes of the use of ji-you, i.e.constructing or deconstructing certain identities.
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2.2 The theoretical assumption: the use of ji-you as a discursive practice
To assume the use of ji-you as a discursive practice or a social practice is not withoutreason, in that when using ji-you, people are consciously or unconsciously makingchoices to position them or others into different sexual categories, and seen fromSociolinguistics (Coulmas 2013), Queer Linguistics (Motschenbacher 2010) and(critical) Discourse Studies (van Dijk 2001; Wodak and Meyer 2009; Chouliaraki &Fairclough 1999; Fairclough 1989, 1992, 1995a, 1995b), this choice-makingpositioning practice makes the use of ji-you by nature a ‘discursive practice’, or a‘social practice’. By assuming this, I am implying a ‘dialectical relationship’between the use of ji-you and ‘the situation(s), institution(s) and social structure(s)which frame it’ (Wodak 2002:8). When using ji-you, people are constituting socialrelations through representing and constructing different sexual identities ofthemselves and others, and since sexual identities as social categories are embeddedin power structure which is a ubiquitous force that normatively determines what canand what cannot be said (Motschenbacher 2010, 2011), people’s uses of ji-you arethus a matter of producing and reproducing this power structure or transforming it.In other words, the use of ji-you as a discursive practice is ‘socially consequential’(Wodak 2002:8), i.e. reinforcing or undermining the present unequal status ofheterosexual and homosexual people in China (Wah-Shan 2001; Coleman and Chou2013; Kong 2010; Li 2006; etc.). In this vein, when analyzing the use of ji-you, it isneeded to emphasize the ideologies and power relations it might instantiate and thepossible social consequences it might have.
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CHAPTER THREE METHODOLOGY........................12
3.1 Interactional data..........................12
3.2 Interview data.............................14
3.3 Research questions........................... 16
CHAPTER FOUR FINDINGS................................20
4.1 An overview of ji-you’s meanings in use......................... 20
4.2 Gay men’s discourse of ji-you as ‘gay friends’.......................21
4.2.1 Constructing ordinariness.........................22
4.2.2 Doing micro-resistance.............................. 23
CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSION.............................52
5.1 Overview of findings........................52
5.2 Implications............................54
5.3 Recommendations for future studies................55

CHAPTER FOURFINDINGS

4.1 An overview of ji-you’s meanings in use
Based on my initial observation of the data, I conclude the following types ofmeanings of ji-you in actual interchanges/talks. For gay men, they generally useji-you to mean ‘gay friends’ and/or ‘partners’ particularly in gay-friendly context. Ifind this use of ji-you in the gay men’s interchanges in gay ba, and this use of ji-youis verified by my interviews and discussions with my participants. But they also tellme that some gay men use ji-you to refer themselves as straight friends. Thisparticular use of ji-you is agreed by a speaker suggesting that gay men could useji-you to pass as straight.
For heterosexual men, ji-you is mainly used to mean ‘male friends’ but withnuanced meanings in concrete interactions. My observation in gay-unclear ba(s) (noclear attitudes toward homosexuality), suggests that some straight men mainly useji-you to mean ‘game friends’, and some use ji-you to mean ‘straight and/or gayfriends’, and some refuse to use ji-you to mean ‘gay friends’. My analyses ofinterchanges in antigay love (fantonglian) ba, on the other hand, suggest an extremeuse of ji-you, which is that people in this antigay forum refuse to use ji-you to mean‘straight friends’ nor ‘gay friends’. For them, ji-you could only mean ‘despicablegay’.
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CHAPTER FIVECONCLUSION

5.1 Overview of findings

reference(omitted)