How to deal with other people’s verbal violence – reflections on the use of language
This is the 1510 Digest, a weekly roundup of recent essays and articles published on the Chinese web, with links to translations on the Marco Polo Project.
From weibo politeness to SMS abuse, this week’s digest brings together three pieces reflecting on the role of language as social lubricant or source of symbolic violence. Novelist Pian Pian offers an advice column on how to deal with passive aggressive personality types; cultural commenter Kan Chai advocates a more formal use of weibo @’ing; film critic Cui Weiping warns against the dangers of symbolic language, and articulates instead an ethics of intellectual and literary realism.
