“You are the prettiest man I have ever met”: Subverting femininity through jocular teasing of Chinese females

Abstract

This paper explores how teasing behaviours assist women in expressing intimacy in daily interactions and therefore create different expectations for gender roles under the Chinese context by analysing 379 instances of jocular teasing taken from a Chinese reality TV show. This study identified five strategies, namely jocular deprecation/self-deprecation, jocular criticism, jocular directives, jocular praise/self-praise, and jocular irony. The results indicate that the women incline to using teasing strategies to discursively index power and masculinity via correcting other's behaviours and maintaining a superior position within the group. Additionally, these women use teasing strategies in various combinations to achieve multi-layered communicative goals, including downgrading others and elevating oneself, and defending oneself while attacking others. The women's choices of jocular teasing strategies largely deviate from the traditional views of femininity in the Chinese context.