Constructing cultural Self and Other in the Internet discussion of a Korean historical TV drama

In this paper messages from viewers of the popular Korean historical TV drama — Dae Jang Geum (Da Chang Jin) — in a Hong Kong web-based discussion forum are analyzed to see how some Hong Kong viewers construct their Chinese cultural identities through discursive moves of positioning (Harrè and van Langenhove, 1999). Different subject positions are adopted by these forum discussion participants to draw, maintain, and shift the boundary between “self” and “other” in different storylines projected in their messages. In asserting their Chinese cultural identities they also seem to be engaged in discursive construction of cultural others (e.g. Japanese, Koreans). We problematize these constructions as double-edged in their possible consequences: while they seem to cultivate a sense of Chinese cultural solidarity (albeit only temporarily), they also show the danger of constructing a hegemonic Sino-centric discourse of Great China culturalism. The cultural identification patterns of these Hong Kong viewers also seem to be unstable, ambivalent and contradictory, perhaps reflecting Hong Kong people’s general sense of ambivalence and fluidity in their negotiation of cultural identities.