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Abstract

This article explores rhotacisation in Beijing Mandarin and its use in the popular 2015 Chinese web series Counterattack! (Nìxí zhi Àishàng Qíngdí), notable for its viral success in China despite overt homosexual representation. Research on sociolinguistic variation among professionals in Beijing has identified Beijing rhotacisation (the r-colouring of syllable codas) as indexing a local male persona historically linked to fluidity of conversation: the ‘Smooth Operator’. The current analysis builds on this claim to suggest that rhotacisation may also be used to evaluate and display sexual knowledge. The use of rhotacisation in Counterattack! stylistically incorporates ‘Smooth Operator’-imbued meanings of conversational dexterity into a new social persona: the ‘Sexual Modern’. The analysis suggests that this variable – previously discussed as indexing a local urban masculinity – has now also become indexical of sexual modernity.