Internet celebrities, foreign speakers and Chinese learning: The case of MYBY on YouTube | Intellect Skip to content
1981
Chinese Popular Culture in Translation and Transmission
  • ISSN: 2051-7084
  • E-ISSN: 2051-7092

Abstract

This article studies internet celebrity culture as a crucial site of public learning and pedagogy, exploring the capacity of celebrated foreign speakers of Chinese to popularize discourses and knowledge of the language on social media. It specifically focuses on the YouTube channel MYBY founded by Martin Wiley Woods and Blair Sugarman, two foreign television personalities in China who have successfully extended their fame from traditional media to the internet. Through a multimodal discourse analysis of their bilingual ‘talk shows’ in which they evaluate the Chinese pronunciation and accents of other non-native speakers and share their own learning experiences, we discuss how Woods and Sugarman perform their identities as both model learners and language influencers by producing and challenging the language ideologies of normativity and speakerhood. We argue that internet celebrity pedagogy is an increasingly important genre of popular culture that discursively shapes the global transmission of Chinese language and linguaculture.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/eapc_00108_1
2023-09-25
2024-04-30
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. A Bright World (2015–17, Nanjing: Jiangsu Television).
  2. Abidin, Crystal (2018), Internet Celebrity, Bingley: Emerald Publishing.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Braine, George (ed.) (1999), Non-native Educators in English Language Teaching, New York: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Chinese Bridge (2002–present, Changsha: Hunan Television).
  5. Couldry, Nick (2012), Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice, Cambridge: Polity.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Couldry, Nick (2016), ‘Celebrity, convergence, and the fate of media institutions’, in P. D. Marshall and S. Redmond (eds), A Companion to Celebrity, Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, pp. 98113.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Craig, David (2022), ‘A pedagogue’s progress, the Cunningham Turn, and the birth of creator studies’, Media International Australia, 182:1, pp. 5966.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Doyle, Jule, Farrell, Nathan and Goodman, Michael K. (2017), ‘Celebrities and climate change’, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science, Oxford: Oxford University Press, https://oxfordre.com/climatescience/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228620-e-596. Accessed 27 September 2022.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Driessen, Olivier (2013), ‘Celebrity capital: Redefining celebrity using field theory’, Theory and Society, 42:5, pp. 54360.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Duvall, Spring-Serenity and Heckemeyer, Nicole (2018), ‘#BlackLivesMatter: Black celebrity hashtag activism and the discursive formation of a social movement’, Celebrity Studies, 9:3, pp. 391408.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Dyson, Michael E. (1993), ‘Be like Mike? Michael Jordan and the pedagogy of desire’, Cultural Studies, 7:1, pp. 6472.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Ellsworth, Elizabeth (2005), Places of Learning: Media, Architecture and Pedagogy, New York: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Gershon, Walter S. (2010), ‘Entertaining ideas and embodied knowledge: Musicians as public intellectuals’, in J. A. Sandlin, B. D. Schultz and J. Burdick (eds), Handbook of Public Pedagogy: Education and Learning Beyond Schooling, New York: Routledge, pp. 62838.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Giroux, Henry (2001), Stealing Innocence: Corporate Culture’s War on Children, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Giroux, Henry (2004), ‘Cultural studies, public pedagogy, and the responsibility of intellectuals’, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 1:1, pp. 5979.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Giroux, Henry (2005), ‘Cultural studies in dark times: Public pedagogy and the challenge of neoliberalism’, Fast Capitalism, 1:2, pp. 7586, https://fastcapitalism.journal.library.uta.edu/index.php/fastcapitalism/article/view/47/37. Accessed 14 October 2022.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Giroux, Henry (2008), ‘Hollywood film as public pedagogy: Education in the crossfire’, Afterimage, 35:5, pp. 713.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Gorfinkel, Lauren and Chubb, Andrew (2015), ‘When foreigners perform the Chinese nation: Televised global Chinese language competitions, China and the world’, in G. Song and R. Bai (eds), Chinese Television in the Twenty-First Century: Entertaining the Nation, London: Routledge, pp. 12140.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Gray, Emily M., Pluim, Caroline, Pike, Jo and Leahy, Deana (2017), “‘Someone has to keep shouting”: Celebrities as food pedagogues’, Celebrity Studies, 9:1, pp. 6983.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Haycock, John (2015), ‘Protest music as adult education and learning for social change: A theorisation of public pedagogy of protest music’, Australian Journal of Adult Learning, 55:3, pp. 42342.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Jones, Ann (2015), ‘Social media for informal minority language learning: Exploring Welsh learners’ practices’, Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 1, pp. 19.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Lin, Jingxia, Shi, Dingxu, Jiang, Manghan and Huang, Chu-Ren (2019), ‘Variations in World Chineses’, in C. Huang, Z. Jing-Schmidt and B. Meisterernst (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Applied Linguistics, Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 196211.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Luke, Carmen and Luke, Haida (1997), ‘Techno-textuality: Representations of femininity and sexuality’, Media International Australia, 84:1, pp. 4658.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Marshall, P. David (2006), The Celebrity Culture Reader, New York: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Marshall, P. David (2010), ‘The promotion and presentation of the self: Celebrity as marker of presentational media’, Celebrity Studies, 1:1, pp. 3548.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Marston, Kendra (2019), ‘Celebrity pedagogy and performative humility: Interrogating history through “quiet charisma”’, Celebrity Studies, 10:2, pp. 29699.
    [Google Scholar]
  27. Mondahl, Margrethe and Razmerita, Liana (2014), ‘Social media, collaboration and social learning: A case-study of foreign language learning’, The Electronic Journal of e-Learning, 12:4, pp. 33952.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. MYBY (2017a), ‘Celebrities speaking Chinese’, YouTube, 7 April, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NifPcpUGXSI. Accessed 22 January 2022.
    [Google Scholar]
  29. MYBY (2017b), ‘Celebrities speaking Chinese part 2’, YouTube, 3 June, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKVuUZNSYkM. Accessed 22 January 2022.
    [Google Scholar]
  30. MYBY (2017c), ‘Foreign celebs singing in Chinese’, YouTube, 30 September, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=figQ8K1VNZ0. Accessed 22 January 2022.
    [Google Scholar]
  31. MYBY (2018), ‘Foreigner’s accents speaking Chinese’, YouTube, 11 May, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geWie7AS_Yw. Accessed 22 January 2022.
    [Google Scholar]
  32. MYBY (2019), ‘Our special tricks & tips to learning a foreign language’, YouTube, 23 February, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0oE5idcWNE. Accessed 22 January 2022.
    [Google Scholar]
  33. Phillipson, Robert (1992), Linguistic Imperialism, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  34. Reid, Alex (2010), ‘Social media, public pedagogy, and the end of private learning’, in J. A. Sandlin, B. D. Schultz and J. Burdick (eds), Handbook of Public Pedagogy: Education and Learning Beyond Schooling, New York: Routledge, pp. 194200.
    [Google Scholar]
  35. Rich, Emma (2011), ‘“I see her being obesed!”: Public pedagogy, reality media and the obesity crisis’, Health, 15:1, pp. 321.
    [Google Scholar]
  36. Sandlin, Jenifer A., Schultz, Brian D. and Burdick, Jake (eds) (2010), ‘Understanding, mapping, and exploring the terrain of public pedagogy’, in J. A. Sandlin, B. D. Schultz and J. Burdick (eds), Handbook of Public Pedagogy: Education and Learning beyond Schooling, New York: Routledge, pp. 16.
    [Google Scholar]
  37. Thompson, Jan D. (2022), ‘Public health pedagogy and digital misinformation: Health professional influencers and the politics of expertise’, Journal of Sociology, online first, https://doi.org/10.1177/14407833221128592. Accessed 20 July 2023.
    [Google Scholar]
  38. Thurlow, Crispin (2017a), ‘Digital discourse: Locating language in new/social media’, in J. Burgess, A. Marwick and T. Poell (eds), Handbook of Social Media, New York: Sage, pp. 13545.
    [Google Scholar]
  39. Thurlow, Crispin (2017b), ‘“Forget about the words?”: Tracking the language, media and semiotic ideologies of digital discourse: The case of sexting’, Discourse, Context & Media, 20:1, pp. 1019.
    [Google Scholar]
  40. Turner, Graeme (2010), ‘Approaching celebrity studies’, Celebrity Studies, 1:1, pp. 1120.
    [Google Scholar]
  41. Turner, Graeme (2014), Understanding Celebrity, London: SAGE Publication.
    [Google Scholar]
  42. Walsh, Olivia (2021), ‘Introduction: In the shadow of the standard. Standard language ideology and attitudes towards “non-standard” varieties and usages’, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 42:9, pp. 77382.
    [Google Scholar]
  43. Weiner, Eric (2001), ‘Making the pedagogical (re)turn: Henry Giroux’s insurgent cultural pedagogy’, Journal of Advanced Composition, 21:2, pp. 43451.
    [Google Scholar]
  44. Wei, Zhezhe and Shao, Kaixiang (2014), ‘Woguo rengyou 30% renkou buhui shuo putonghua’ (‘30% of countrymen cannot speak Putonghua’), China Daily, 24 September, https://cnews.chinadaily.com.cn/guonei/2014-09/24/content_18653006.htm. Accessed 15 February 2022.
    [Google Scholar]
  45. Wilson, Julie (2011), ‘A new kind of star is born: Audrey Hepburn and the global governmentalisation of female stardom’, Celebrity Studies, 2:1, pp. 5668.
    [Google Scholar]
  46. Zhao, Hui and Liu, Hong (2021), ‘(Standard) language ideology and regional Putonghua in Chinese social media: A view from Weibo’, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 4:9, pp. 88296.
    [Google Scholar]
http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/journals/10.1386/eapc_00108_1
Loading
/content/journals/10.1386/eapc_00108_1
Loading

Data & Media loading...

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error