'Never Seen Chinese People and Korean People Try to Learn Each Other's Language so Hard': Scaling Multilingualism and Digital Nationalism in Transnational Online Conflict
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| Title: | 'Never Seen Chinese People and Korean People Try to Learn Each Other's Language so Hard': Scaling Multilingualism and Digital Nationalism in Transnational Online Conflict |
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| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Mengdi Liu, Luk Van Mensel, Robert Blackwood |
| Source: | Multilingua: Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication. 2026 45(3):407-435. |
| Availability: | De Gruyter Mouton. Available from: Walter de Gruyter, Inc. 121 High Street, Third Floor, Boston, MA 02110. Tel: 857-284-7073; Fax: 857-284-7358; e-mail: service@degruyter.com; Web site: http://www.degruyter.com |
| Peer Reviewed: | Y |
| Page Count: | 29 |
| Publication Date: | 2026 |
| Document Type: | Journal Articles Reports - Research |
| Descriptors: | Foreign Countries, Language Role, Language Usage, Nationalism, Computer Mediated Communication, Food, Multilingualism, Cultural Differences, Video Technology, Ownership, Culture, Web Sites, Language Attitudes, Multidimensional Scaling, Interpersonal Communication |
| Geographic Terms: | China, South Korea |
| DOI: | 10.1515/multi-2025-0212 |
| ISSN: | 0167-8507 1613-3684 |
| Abstract: | Although transnational digital platforms are often associated with global connectivity, they also provide powerful arenas for the interactional production of nationalism. This article examines how digital nationalism is enacted through multilingual practices in transnational online conflict. It analyzes comments on two YouTube videos by Chinese influencer Li Ziqi, whose pickle-making content sparked a Sino-Korean dispute over the origin and ownership of a pickle labelled "spicy Chinese cabbage" or "kimchi". Drawing on sociolinguistic scaling as a critical metapragmatic approach, this paper shows how participants mobilize the "scope" and "value" of linguistic resources through code choice, code-switching, code emplacement, and metalinguistic commentary to negotiate stance, visibility, legitimacy, and belonging before heterogeneous audiences. The analysis demonstrates that digital nationalism is not merely the online expression of pre-existing identities, but a situated performance through which national boundaries and broader global center-periphery hierarchies are constructed, contested, and reconfigured. It further shows that polarization in transnational conflict is non-linear: rather than producing a fixed "us versus them" dichotomy, participants repeatedly rescale these categories, expanding "us" toward broader witness, arbiter, and ally publics while narrowing "them" as a more isolated out-group. Multilingualism functions as both a communicative resource and a symbolic battleground in the co-production of nationalism, belonging, and hierarchy in everyday online interaction. |
| Abstractor: | As Provided |
| Entry Date: | 2026 |
| Accession Number: | EJ1508896 |
| Database: | ERIC |
| Abstract: | Although transnational digital platforms are often associated with global connectivity, they also provide powerful arenas for the interactional production of nationalism. This article examines how digital nationalism is enacted through multilingual practices in transnational online conflict. It analyzes comments on two YouTube videos by Chinese influencer Li Ziqi, whose pickle-making content sparked a Sino-Korean dispute over the origin and ownership of a pickle labelled "spicy Chinese cabbage" or "kimchi". Drawing on sociolinguistic scaling as a critical metapragmatic approach, this paper shows how participants mobilize the "scope" and "value" of linguistic resources through code choice, code-switching, code emplacement, and metalinguistic commentary to negotiate stance, visibility, legitimacy, and belonging before heterogeneous audiences. The analysis demonstrates that digital nationalism is not merely the online expression of pre-existing identities, but a situated performance through which national boundaries and broader global center-periphery hierarchies are constructed, contested, and reconfigured. It further shows that polarization in transnational conflict is non-linear: rather than producing a fixed "us versus them" dichotomy, participants repeatedly rescale these categories, expanding "us" toward broader witness, arbiter, and ally publics while narrowing "them" as a more isolated out-group. Multilingualism functions as both a communicative resource and a symbolic battleground in the co-production of nationalism, belonging, and hierarchy in everyday online interaction. |
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| ISSN: | 0167-8507 1613-3684 |
| DOI: | 10.1515/multi-2025-0212 |
