Sajiao, which has been widely adopted by young women in Chinese-speaking communities, is a speech style considered cute and highly feminine. Since sajiao combines great contemporary popularity with deep roots in cultural traditions, it seems a natural focus for research by Chinese linguists. To date, however, most investigations of sajiao have been conducted by researchers interested in cross-gender differences between men and women. This dissertation adopts the perspective of sociolinguistics to examine how women use the sajiao speech style to construct their gender identity. It takes the original approach of applying theories and frameworks of sociolinguistics to a gender-marked Chinese speech style. According to the third variationist approach, individual speakers construct their identity through variations in speech style. Adopting that approach, this dissertation explores how female speakers adopt sajiao’s distinctive features to display their desired identities in diverse contexts. To achieve the research goal, this dissertation carefully examines sajiao’s characteristic verbal and non-verbal features. As samples of naturalistic speech, data are collected from Chinese television talk shows. To understand how subjects perform sajiao differently according to context, this dissertation examines five different contexts. By comparing sajiao utterances in multiple contexts and employing other methods of analysis, this dissertation reveals how subjects strategically adjust their sajiao performances to suit the role they play in each context. To further understand how sajiao performers choose which characteristic features to vary accordingly to make changes in their identity construction, this dissertation reviews the socially-imbued meanings of sajiao’s various features. The results show that by choosing to adopt particular sajiao features and their social meanings, the sajiao performer actively builds her desired persona. Moreover, the performer takes stances in discourse to show her attitude or emotional state. In the context of Chinese society, women actively build their gender identities through sajiao performances with personae and stances in discourse. 

Yang, S. (2023). Language, Gender, and Identity: The Case of Sajiao Communication Style [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1673017625422442