Performing microcelebrity: Analyzing Papi Jiang's online persona through stance and style

ABSTRACT Contemporary digital media is characterized by a cultural logic of participation that encourages sharing, confession, phatic communication, and an emphasis on the visual. In this techno-cultural milieu, self-presentation has become a key mode of communication, and has enabled ordinary individuals to attain a measure of celebrity status. A key component of being a microcelebrity entails developing a consistent persona that is recognizable and unique. How such persona can be studied from the sociolinguistic perspective of stance and style is the focus of this article. We combined corpus linguistic and qualitative discourse analytic methods to examine a small corpus of videos produced by Chinese online celebrity, Papi Jiang. The article presents key lexico-grammatical, discourse-level, and non-linguistic resources that are analyzed as stance markers that together contribute to Papi's intense, critical-satirical performative style. The significance of the findings is discussed in relation to performance, performativity, and critique in digital media. (Persona, microcelebrity, style, performance, stance)*

Cultural Translation and Mamoni Raisom Goswami’s Thang Fhâkhri Tahcildârar Tâmar Tarowâl

The act of translation cannot be called a simple act of conveyance because a text is a product of a cultural milieu. Hence when a text is translated it does not remain a plain act of transfer from one language to another, it becomes an act of cultural transference. The paper dwells on this aspect of translation and analyses my own experience of translating Mamoni Raisom Goswami’s Thang Fhâkhri Tahcildârar Tâmar Tarowâl.

Originali e copie nella Lettera di Filippo Baldinucci a Vincenzo Capponi

This contribution aims to analyse Filippo Baldinucci’s Letter to Vincenzo Capponi (Rome, 1681) in all its aspects, particularly its concept of original and copy, taking into account Baldinucci’s position in the Accademia del Disegno and in the Roman cultural milieu. Through some examples, the essay also intends to assess the Letter vis-à-vis the correspondence between the Medici agents in Venice and the court, in order to emphasise the relation between the artistic literature on copies and the practical experience of the individuals who had to secure paintings for demanding collectors such as prince Leopoldo de’ Medici.

Gymnasia and Greek Identity in Ptolemaic Egypt

This is the first complete study of all the documentation relevant to the gymnasium and gymnasial life in Egypt at the time of the Ptolemies, the longest-reigning Hellenistic Royal House (323–30 BC). It analyses the diffusion, characteristics, administration, and developments of the institution of the gymnasium in Ptolemaic Egypt and its implications for the assertion of Greek identity. It shows how this institution and its people were affected by the local environment and how ‘those from the gymnasium’, the members of the most Greek institution ever, were truly embedded in the social and cultural milieu of the country where they lived: they were the ‘Greeks’ of Egypt. Thanks to the information from Ptolemaic Egypt with its papyrological sources, this work showcases the variety of concomitant features and different traditions alive and active in the Hellenistic world, thus contributing to a better understanding of the ancient world in all its complexity and vitality.

Alfonso X: lenguas, escuelas poéticas, redes políticas y patronazgo regio

Reviewing historical data available on some of the troubadours and poets belonging to Alfonso X᾿ cultural milieu opens a window into the internal and external political designs employed by the king. These documented particulars include the presence of several poetic languages (Galician Portuguese, Occitan, Hebrew), the poets’ provenance, the occasion informing the selection, as well as the manner of recruitment employed in each case.

All Is Burning: Buddhist Mindfulness as Radical Reflection

This paper consists of two parts. In the first part (Section 1, part of Section 2), I put forward a critique of what I refer to as the ‘received’ or ‘standard’ view of mindfulness in the Western cultural milieu. According to the received view, mindfulness is the acontextual ‘core’ of Buddhism whose determining characteristic is bare (present-oriented, non-judgmental) attention to the flow and content of experience. As noted by many researchers, this conception is in stark contrast to the traditional Buddhist understanding, where mindfulness is not only embedded in a broader context that provides it with a specific philosophico-existential orientation (normative aspect) but is also construed as a reflective activity (noetic aspect). In the second part (part of Sections 2–4), I argue that one of the main issues with the standard view is that it frames experience in terms of what Maurice Merleau-Ponty calls ‘objective thought’ (using objectivity, or ‘thinghood’, as an onto-epistemological standard of reality), which makes the two aspects of the traditional conception (normative and noetic) unintelligible. I then provide an alternative view based on the phenomenological work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty that attempts to integrate the two aspects into a broader conception of experience. By drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s notions of ‘phenomenal field’ and ‘radical reflection’, I argue that mindfulness needs to be understood as a reflective attitude that allows one to discern not only the content but also, and primarily, the context of each experience, and that this also includes seeing itself—the act of reflection—as an act that stems from, and returns back into, the pre-reflective current of existence.

Episodic Literary Movement and Translation: Ideology Embodied in Prefaces

This paper discusses translation practices from a historicist viewpoint, contextualizing them in their emerging “episode.” The latter is a concept drawn from sociology of literature and accounts for the rise of certain discourses and ideologies in a society. On the basis of the argument that translation practices are informed by the general literary and socio-cultural milieu in which they are produced and consumed (also known as ideology of representation), the paper studies the translators’ prefaces to three translations published between 1953 and 1978—a period dominated by Leftist and Marxist discourse in Iran. Drawing on a historically oriented model which holds that the translator’s ideology is revealed at the moment in which he/she chooses a text, and continues through the discourse he/she develops to translate that text, the research embarks on studying translation practices on two levels of choice mechanism and prefaces. Prefaces are discussed in the light of the dominant ideology of representation that is characterized by a revolutionary discourse. The research demonstrates that these translators opted for a strategy that incorporates the translations in the Persian cultural setting with minor changes in a way that politicizes the foreign literature.

Le muse in gara

Le muse in gara, a serenata composed by Pietro Domenico Paradies on a libretto by D. Giacomo De Belli, was a highlight of the Venetian musical and cultural milieu at its premiere in the Ospedale di Mendicanti on 4 April 1740. The performance, given by the Ospedale's all-female musical ensemble, enticed hundreds of esteemed nobles and foreigners, including a special guest, the future Prince-Elector of Saxony Frederick Christian. With so many prestigious audience members in attendance to hear the exceptional female musicians, the text and the context of the performance present an occasion of Venice's foreign relations being fashioned through the Ospedale and its musical performances. This edition of Le muse in gara offers a crucial glimpse of the importance of the Ospedale and its female musicians in Venice's political maneuvering, with an introduction that highlights institutional structure and performer contributions in relation to the work.

The First “Mrs. Japanese” of Slovenia between the Two World Wars

The paper’s main aim is to bring forward Marija Skušek (born Tsuneko Kondō Kawase 近藤常子(1893–1963) and her presentations and transmission of Japanese culture to the Slovene (at that time Yugoslav) public as the first Japanese citizen who was naturalised in Slovenia. It focuses mainly on the period from 1920, when she first entered the country, until the Second World War, drawing special attention to one of her main activities––giving lectures in the years 1930–1931, and on a smaller scale 1935–1936, mostly presented to the public under the title “A Japanese about a Japanese Woman”. Such lectures testify to the Japanese-Slovenian cultural exchanges, and the cultural milieu in Slovenia in which she acted. The author takes into consideration newspaper and journals sources discussing her activities and in particular the data available from the “Archive on Marija Skušek–Tsuneko Kondō Kawase”, recently re-discovered at the Slovene Ethnographic Museum of Slovenia, where her original lecture’s manuscripts, correspondence, newspaper clips and photos are collected.

Christian Dominionism and Violence

There are several forms of Christian Dominionism. However, all of them advocate “taking America back for God,” which is to say, from “non-Christians” (however understood), undocumented aliens, “sexual deviants,” “femi-Nazis,” liberal progressives, and the like. To be sure, most individual Dominionists and most Dominionist congregations are not violent. Nevertheless, some are. This is not because these few are ignorant, isolated, or insane, but rather because they reside in a particular kind of social/cultural milieu, one that normatively encourages them to harm others (in the name of their god) and offers them opportunities to do so, and where they are not subject to external restraints that might otherwise deter them from acting out their supremacist proclivities. One implication of this is that in order to avert Dominionist-motivated violence, policymakers must do more than merely criticize Dominionist theology—as important as this may be. Additionally, they must deal with local normative expectations that embolden potential terrorists and provide them easy access to high-powered weaponry. They must also protect vulnerable, marginalized populations from being targeted and step up law-enforcement vigilance and preparedness.