Crazy literature: A case of mock self-impoliteness

Shiyu Liu, Rong Chen and Fengguang Liu
Dalian University of Foreign Languages | California State University, San Bernardino

In this paper, we investigate crazy literature, a newly emerged genre on Chinese Internet in which posters portray themselves as being mentally instable or, simply, insane. Based on data collected from the Internet and findings from a survey of college students, we argue that the image created by crazy literature is best captured by the notion of mock self-impoliteness. That is, although the image of insanity is damaging to the self-face of the poster, the impolite self-image is a persona, not the real image, motivated by transactional effectiveness. In addition, crazy literature helps the blogger to appear humorous, to express their helplessness in vulnerable situations, and to gain a sense of belonging. Our paper, therefore, contributes to the pragmatics literature by drawing scholars’ attention to a (possibly) hitherto non-existent type of language use, offering an analysis of the genre that is innovative, and demonstrating a need for investigating Internet pragmatics seriously.

Publication history

Date received: 1 August 2023

Date accepted: 22 March 2024

Published online: 18 October 2024

Table of contents

In 2021, crazy literature (fafeng 发疯 ‘go crazy’, wenxue 文学 ‘literature’) gained popularity among bloggers on China’s social media platforms. It is a unique new genre on the Internet, via which the bloggers behave in an insane manner, as is illustrated by Example (1).

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