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Abstract

Emerging as an Internet meme, the word dagongren, literally meaning “laborer,” has recently become popular across various online platforms in China. Coined by a local security guard in September 2020, it has been taken up by the young educated white-collar workers for self-identification in work-related topics. Based mainly on the short videos on Douyu platform and the posts in the online group “Dagongren Gathering Place” on Douban platform, this research follows the circulating trajectory of the meme and unpacks the language ideologies underlying the changes of meanings of this word. While previous studies on the meme culture in China primarily situate these discourses under the binary liberating/reifying framework, this study instead argues that dagongren signals neither a united resistance nor an outright passivity towards the status quo. Uncertain and ambiguous as it is, it constitutes a “floating signifier” through which young educated white-collar workers can foster an identity-in-the-making in the face of the “loss of the ideal self.”

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