Food for Thought: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Food-Related Metaphors in Chinese Online Fanfiction

Sammanfattning

This study aims to provide an in-depth understanding of discursive practices and power dynamics in Chinese fanfiction spaces through a close analysis of food-related metaphorical expressions. The primary research question is: how are fanfiction practices constructed through food-related metaphors within Chinese digital spaces? Situated within Media and Communication Studies, the theoretical framework integrates deep mediatisation theory, affect theory and cognitive-pragmatic metaphor theory, approaching the articulation of fanfiction practices as a process of embodied meaning-making through which fans negotiate agency, build collectivities and challenge social order in a platform-mediatised environment. Guided by this multi-layered framework, Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis is adopted to examine social media posts purposively sampled from the Chinese platform RedNote. The analysis finds that food-related metaphors have become a symbolic and institutionalised feature of Chinese fanfiction discourse, embedded in the everyday communicative practices of fan writers and readers. It further reveals that Chinese fanfiction communities are undergoing a structural transformation from relatively stable communities organised around gift culture into more unstable and platform-mediatised collectivities. Facing the hegemonic struggle brought by platform monetisation and the decline of gift culture, some fans withdraw from communication while others attempt to reconfigure community norms and propose new collective orientations. This study contributes to fandom studies by examining the meta-discursive practices through which social order of fandom is reproduced, contested and transformed, and reflects more broadly on the conflict between subcultural practice and commercial platform logic in the age of deep mediatisation, with particular implications for understanding online community life within China’s specific political-economic and platform conditions.