National publics, vernacular counterpublics

Ideas about publics and publicness have evolved over the past few decades. In Habermas’s (Reference Habermas1989) account of the historical development of the bourgeois public sphere in Western Europe, a disembodied form of publicness emerged in salons, town squares, and other social spaces in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In this bourgeois public sphere, where existing hierarchies of power were suspended, private individuals came together as communicative equals to debate issues of common concern and reach conclusions based on reason. Building on Habermas’s work, Warner (Reference Warner2002) defines a public as a social form composed of strangers connected to each other through the circulation of discourse. For him, publics are not pre-defined or pre-existing entities with fixed membership; rather, they come into being only through people’s attention to a shared text. Linguistic anthropologists, attuned to the power-laden nature of discourse circulation, have further examined the public as a form of language-based political legitimation that derives its authority from being anonymous (Gal & Woolard Reference Gal and Woolard1995). Ostensibly free from the interests of private individuals, it appears impartial and gives the impression of promoting the common good.

Yet despite its claim to universality, the public sphere has historically been built on a number of significant exclusions, chief among which are women, people of color, and the working class. These marginalized individuals form what Fraser (Reference Fraser1990:67) calls ‘subaltern counterpublics’: ‘parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses, which in turn permit them to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs’. The precise nature of counterpublics has been the subject of intense debate (see e.g. Cody Reference Cody2011). For Warner (Reference Warner2002), a counterpublic must be keenly aware of its subordinate status and display its opposition to a dominant public by intentionally reconfiguring speech genres and modes of address. Similarly, Hirschkind (Reference Hirschkind2006) sees counterpublics as different from publics not just in the oppositional content of their claims, but also in the discursive practices that facilitate their formation. While the Habermasian public sphere privileges rational deliberation, Hirschkind also underscores the importance of affective and expressive modes of discourse in the constitution of counterpublics, thus calling to mind the notion of ‘wild publics’ introduced earlier. As we see in the following sections, the counterpublic brought into being by the subtitling practices discussed in this article is notable for its playful qualities, the emotions it elicits, and the laughter it provokes.

Researchers have taken a close look at the role of language in the formation of (counter)publics. Some have noted the mutually constitutive relationship between national publics and standard languages (Milroy Reference Milroy2000; Silverstein Reference Silverstein and Kroskrity2000; Frekko Reference Frekko2009). In his account of the emergence of nations as imagined communities, Anderson (Reference Anderson1983) argues that the circulation of books, newspapers, and other print materials in vernaculars was instrumental in both the standardization of these languages and the creation of national publics of co-readers. Others, however, have called this relationship into question. Citing the emergence of a ‘trans-standard-language public’ in European media as an example, Gal (Reference Gal2006) contends that publics are often constructed across standard languages, thereby casting doubt on the assumption of isomorphism between language boundaries and the boundaries of publics. This article further unsettles the commonly assumed link between national publics and standard languages: it shows how standard languages can facilitate the formation of not just national publics, but in some cases, vernacular counterpublics as well.

Vernacular publics sometimes emerge as alternatives to national publics constituted through standard languages. The term vernacular public has most often been used to refer to the burgeoning vernacular public spheres (e.g. the Telugu public sphere) that began to take shape in colonial India in the late nineteenth century, partly in response to the growing dominance of English (e.g. Hansen Reference Hansen2018). However, it applies equally well to publics organized around regional vernaculars in other parts of the world. A fundamental question about vernacular publics is whether they are merely alternatives to national publics. At what point do they become counterpublics? Unlike alternative publics, counterpublics are characterized by the indecorous and even hostile nature of their discourse (Warner Reference Warner2002). An example from the Basque Country (Urla Reference Urla1995) can illustrate this distinction. In the years since Franco’s death, language advocates in the Basque nationalist movement have generally been intent on expanding literacy, gaining legitimacy, and normalizing the Basque language within the framework of the Spanish state. They constitute what may be called an alternative public. By contrast, the counterpublic constructed by Basque radical nationalist youth through zines, street graffiti, and low-power radio is decidedly oppositional. Embracing hybridity and playfulness, this counterpublic challenges the control of the Spanish state and the Basque government over the terms of public discourse, as well as the discursive authority of academicians and planners in the language normalization movement. Parody, rude speech, subversive humor, and creative code-mixing are hallmarks of their linguistic style. As discussed below, we also see evidence of these transgressive practices in the pseudo-subtitles that netizens create to make fun of Hong Kong government officials’ Mandarin.

Matthew Cheung and the oath-taking ceremony

The corpus for this study includes videos and newspaper articles about the Cantonese-accented Mandarin spoken by politicians and other public figures in Hong Kong and Macau. Because of space limitations, I focus in this article on Matthew Cheung (張建宗), a Hong Kong government official who began his career in 1972 when the territory was still a British colony. The official languages of Hong Kong have been English and Chinese since 1974. However, before the reversion of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, the role of Mandarin in the government was rather limited, as ‘Chinese’ was generally taken to mean spoken Cantonese and Standard Written Chinese. Cheung, like many of his contemporaries, probably did not learn to speak Mandarin until fairly late in life. After holding a series of high-profile positions, he served as Chief Secretary for Administration—the second-in-command to the Chief Executive—from 2017 to 2021. His tenure coincided with a tumultuous period in the city’s history, during which anti-mainland sentiments reached a fever pitch, public confidence in the city government hit a nadir, and many citizens took to the streets to voice their discontent.

It is fair to say that no other Hong Kong politician’s Mandarin has captured more media attention than Cheung’s. In 2017, shortly before assuming the post of Chief Secretary, Cheung reportedly mispronounced 制 zhì ‘system’ as 雞 jī ‘chicken’ during a discussion forum commemorating the twentieth anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China. This mistake caused much amusement, as ‘one country, two systems’ (一國兩制) (China’s principle for governing Hong Kong) sounded more like ‘one country, two chickens’ (一國兩雞) in his speech (Cheuk Reference Cheuk2017). Partly because of this incident, Hong Kong media and netizens paid close attention to Cheung’s oath-taking ceremony a few months later, producing a flurry of articles and videos (including the one discussed below) that cast a critical eye on his Mandarin at the event. Public interest and ridicule continued unabated after the ceremony: newspaper articles and netizens’ videos about Cheung’s Mandarin appeared throughout his tenure, documenting and poking fun at his mispronunciations at various events.

The analysis presented in the following sections centers on a remix video of Cheung’s and other principal officials’ oath-taking ceremony in 2017.Footnote ¹ It is supplemented with netizens’ comments on the video, the official footage of the ceremony, and news articles about the event. The creator of the video in question—someone named Jackz, who specializes in video mashups and parodies focusing on local themes—combined segments of the video of the ceremony released by the HKSAR (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region) government, inserted new images, and added pseudo-subtitles to poke fun at Cheung’s and his fellow officials’ Mandarin.Footnote ² The final product appears to be a ‘buffalaxed video’ (Leppänen & Häkkinen Reference Leppänen and Häkkinen2012), in which footage in one language (Mandarin) is subtitled with similar-sounding words in another (Cantonese).Footnote ³ This video sparked interest among netizens and various news outlets in Hong Kong. While some newspaper articles commended Cheung for making progress in speaking Mandarin, others found fault with his pronunciation, cataloging his errors and alluding to the video created by Jackz.Footnote ⁴ I decided to focus on Jackz’s remix video not only because of the considerable attention it received from traditional and social media, but also because of the political significance of the oath-taking ceremony. Most importantly, this video exemplifies how pseudo-subtitles are typically used in this genre of derivative videos to mock Hong Kong public figures’ Mandarin. In line with Geertz’s (Reference Geertz1973:5) dictum that the analysis of culture is ‘not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning’, this study seeks to develop a thick description of Jackz’s remix video by situating it within the political context of Hong Kong at the time and by attending to the layers of meaning emerging from the semiotic elements within the video itself, the interplay of the video with its co-text, its juxtaposition with the official video, and the contrast between the reported event and the reporting event.

A decade of protests

Jackz’s remix video of the oath-taking ceremony should be understood within the political context of Hong Kong in the 2010s. This decade witnessed escalating unrest over Beijing’s growing influence in the city and mounting concerns about Hong Kong’s fate under the ‘one country, two systems’ framework. In 2012, the government’s proposal to introduce ‘Moral and National Education’ in schools sparked protests from those who saw it as an attempt at political indoctrination. The Umbrella Movement in 2014, triggered by Beijing’s decision to pre-screen candidates for the 2017 Chief Executive election, transformed the city’s streets into sites of mass protest. Its spirit of resistance was carried over into the 2019 Anti-Extradition Bill Movement, which began as demonstrations against the proposed extradition of criminal suspects to mainland China but later expanded to include demands for universal suffrage, police accountability, and amnesty for arrested protesters. This movement concluded with the 2020 enactment of the National Security Law, which criminalizes acts of secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces—effectively bringing an end to Hong Kong’s mass protest era.

The 2014 Umbrella Movement serves as a crucial backdrop to Jackz’s remix video. A large-scale protest demanding genuine universal suffrage, the Umbrella Movement (sometimes also known as ‘Occupy Central’) took place between late September and mid-December 2014. Its name came from the umbrellas that protesters used as shields against police tear gas. On September 28, police fired tear gas at protesters—many of them students—who had been occupying areas near the Central Government Offices in Admiralty, drawing widespread condemnation and fueling public sympathy for the movement. The protests soon spread to the shopping districts of Causeway Bay and Mongkok, with demonstrators occupying major streets and paralyzing large parts of the city for over two months. At its peak, the movement drew tens of thousands of demonstrators, including many from the Hong Kong Federation of Students and the student activist group Scholarism. Although it ultimately failed to achieve electoral reform, it energized a new generation of activists and set the stage for the 2019 protests.

The use of subtitling as a form of political commentary in Jackz’s video can be regarded as an example of the ‘weapons of the weak’ (Scott Reference Scott1985) popular within Hong Kong’s protest culture of the 2010s. Evidence of this culture is also found in other arenas of artistic expression. The Umbrella Movement inspired new protest anthems (e.g. ‘Hold Up the Umbrellas’ 撐起雨傘) as well as creative covers and lyrical adaptations of well-known songs (e.g. ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ from Les Misérables) (Chow Reference Chow, Manabe and Drott2025). It also gave rise to a proliferation of signs, posters, graffiti, stickers, and artworks. Some covered the façades of buildings, roads, and bridges, while others—the more portable ones (e.g. the ubiquitous yellow umbrella icon)—were pinned to clothes and backpacks (Lou & Jaworski Reference Lou and Jaworski2016). Alongside signs, posters, and other textual materials demanding democracy and universal suffrage, caricatures and slogans lampooning politicians and members of the Hong Kong establishment were a common sight in the occupied areas during the movement (Veg Reference Veg2016). Released about two and a half years after the Umbrella Movement, Jackz’s remix video of the oath-taking ceremony in 2017 can be seen as an extension of these caricatures and mocking slogans.

A quintessential national public

It is against the backdrop of a national public organized around Putonghua that a vernacular counterpublic emerges from Jackz’s remix video. The official video of the inauguration ceremony of the fifth-term HKSAR government, which features the swearing-in of Matthew Cheung and other principal officials, projects this quintessential national public.Footnote ⁵ The ceremony was officiated by President Xi Jinping and attended by representatives of the central government, members of the city government, business leaders, and the foreign diplomatic corps. Highlighting the link between national publics and standard languages, all of the speech events in the inauguration ceremony were conducted in Putonghua, the official language of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) but a non-native language for the majority of Hongkongers. The use of Putonghua throughout the ceremony clearly indicates that the significance of this event extends beyond the city to encompass the entire nation.

A ritual par excellence, the swearing-in of Matthew Cheung and the other principal officials at the inauguration ceremony is conventionally structured and tightly choreographed. At the beginning of the event, the announcer invites Carrie Lam, the newly sworn-in HKSAR Chief Executive, to lead the principal officials to the stage to take their oaths of office. Matthew Cheung, followed by the other principal officials, proceeds to the stage and stands directly across from Xi. Leading the other principal officials in taking the oath of office, Cheung recites one line after another, and the other principal officials repeat after him. They then walk up to Xi one by one. As Lam introduces each of them to the President, they shake his hand and take a bow in front of the audience before leaving the stage. These bodily movements clearly demonstrate the principal officials’ deference to the President, putting in relief the political hierarchy of the Chinese state.

Through its content and form, the oath of office taken by Matthew Cheung and the other principal officials conveys a sense of solemnity and respect for the occasion. The official text of the oath is in Appendix A. The lines are numbered to facilitate discussion. By taking the oath of office, the principal officials assume their respective posts in the government (line 2); pledge to uphold the Basic Law (line 3); swear allegiance to the HKSAR (line 4); and commit themselves to serving the Special Administrative Region (line 4). The text of the oath is replete with formal and literary expressions: for example, 謹此  jǐn cǐ ‘hereby solemnly’ (line 1), 本人 běnrén ‘I/myself’ (line 2), and 定當 dìng dāng ‘will surely’ (line 3). Most notable is the triad of four-character phrases in line 4: 盡忠職守, 遵守法律, 廉潔奉公  jìnzhōng zhíshǒu, zūnshǒu fǎlǜ, liánjié fènggōng. They are translated as ‘conscientiously, dutifully, in full accordance with the law, honestly and with integrity’ in the official English version of the text. The four-character format, which gives the oath an air of conciseness, elegance, and formality, is strongly reminiscent of literary Chinese (文言文 wényánwén). Known for its extreme brevity and telegraphic nature, this classical language was the primary form of writing in China until the early twentieth century. Although it has since been replaced by written vernacular Chinese (白話文 báihuàwén) as the written standard, literary Chinese expressions still occasionally appear in contemporary formal writing. The classical forms in the oath underscore the specialness of the ritual by setting it apart from the quotidian. They also accord power and legitimacy to the ritual by forging connections to tradition, authenticity, and a venerated past.

The emergence of a vernacular counterpublic

Exemplifying the role of rituals in the construction of political power, the swearing-in of Matthew Cheung and the other principal officials delineates the status of Hong Kong within the PRC, creates relations of dominance and subordination, and puts them on display for all to see. However, rituals intended to establish power relations are always vulnerable to counteraction. Unlike the official video released by the HKSAR government, which projects a national public organized around Putonghua, Jackz’s remix video highlights Cheung’s and the other principal officials’ Mandarin at the ceremony and facilitates the emergence of a vernacular counterpublic through its humorous pseudo-subtitles.Footnote ⁶ The table in Appendix B presents in the ‘Transcript’ column the oath of office recited by Matthew Cheung and the other principal officials (lines 2–33). The corresponding pseudo-subtitles that Jackz created are in the ‘Pseudo-subtitles’ column.

Video title and description

Before taking a close look at Jackz’s pseudo-subtitles, we need to examine how the video title and description (the four blocks of text labeled I, II, III, and IV in Figure 1 below) frame the oath-taking ceremony, shape viewers’ perception of the event, and help forge a specific type of public. Both the title and the description indicate that the video is intended to criticize the principal officials’ Mandarin in a sarcastic manner. The video title is reproduced in (1) below.

This title directs viewers to the new team’s Mandarin. The word 再 ‘again’ triggers the presupposition that these officials’ (specifically, Cheung’s) ‘top-notch’ Mandarin has previously appeared and attracted public attention. The modifier 極級 ‘top-notch’ is clearly meant to be ironic. Jackz’s ironic tone is also palpable in this line of the video description:

As this tongue-in-cheek comment implies, the principal officials (or government secretaries) are promoting Cantonese because their ‘accented Mandarin’ shows that it is hopeless for Cantonese speakers to try to learn to speak the national language flawlessly. In other words, the officials are presented as Exhibit A for why Cantonese-speaking Hongkongers should abandon their efforts to learn Putonghua and stick to Cantonese instead.

Figure 1.

Jackz’s video title and description (I: the video title and the uploader’s handle; II: details about the video; III: relevant YouTube videos; IV: the source of the original video).

Several elements in the video description establish intertextual links to other media content about Cantonese-accented Mandarin. Like many social media posts, Jackz’s description of the video is filled with hashtags. In II and III, the hashtags #普通話 (#Mandarin) and #崔世安 (#Fernando Chui) specify Jackz’s focus on the principal officials’ Mandarin and evoke memories of former Macau Chief Executive Fernando Chui’s ‘funny’ Mandarin at his own oath-taking ceremony. Also noteworthy is this line, whose intended meaning is likely opaque to viewers not familiar with the genre of videos that mock Hong Kong and Macau government officials’ Mandarin:

In this instance, Jackz parodically revoices the opening line of Fernando Chui’s oath of office (本人就任… ‘I assume the office of…’), thereby bringing to mind a viral video that ridicules Chui’s Mandarin at his swearing-in ceremony. The creator of that video uses pseudo-subtitles to suggest that Chui’s pronunciation of 本人 běnrén (a formal way to refer to oneself) in Mandarin sounds like 笨撚 ban⁶ lan² ‘stupid prick’ in Cantonese. Thus, this line further reinforces the indexical link of Jackz’s video to social media content about Chui’s Mandarin.

Jackz appears to position Cantonese-speaking Hongkongers as the target audience of the video, as evidenced by the use of traditional characters, written Cantonese, and Hong Kong slang expressions in the description. The traditional script, as previously mentioned, is commonly used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. While Hong Kong is a predominantly Cantonese-speaking city, Standard Written Chinese (essentially the written equivalent of Putonghua) remains the default written language for Hongkongers in most contexts. Written Cantonese accounts for only a small percentage of texts published in Hong Kong. Parts of the video description that are clearly in Cantonese are underlined in Figure 1. Some of these are reproduced in (4) below.

The hashtag in (4), unlike #普通話 (#Mandarin) and #崔世安 (#Fernando Chui), does not exactly indicate the topic of the video; rather, it links this video to Fernando Chui’s Mandarin once again and offers an assessment of the principal officials’ linguistic performance during the oath-taking ceremony. Evaluative hashtags like this allow users to not only display their stance toward the subject at hand but also negotiate alignment and affiliation (Zappavigna Reference Zappavigna2015).

Pseudo-subtitles

The pseudo-subtitles in the video (shown in the ‘Pseudo-subtitles’ column in Appendix B) further project a public composed mainly of Cantonese-speaking Hongkongers. While publics are not pre-defined entities, they are shaped by ‘the kinds of public address that they privilege, which inevitably presuppose a particular imaginary of circulation, that is, an assumption about to whom one’s public words will circulate’ (Graan Reference Graan2022:9). Like the video description, Jackz’s pseudo-subtitles are notable for the use of traditional characters as well as (Hong Kong) Cantonese words and expressions like the ones in (5).

A product of deliberate mishearing, many of Jackz’s pseudo-subtitles also inspire a sense of ‘faux bivalency’ (Wong Reference Wong2021) by indicating what certain words in Cheung’s (and other principal officials’) Mandarin sound like to Cantonese speakers in their language. They suggest, for instance, that the way Cheung recites in Mandarin the words on the left in (6) reminds viewers of the Cantonese reading of the words on the right, thus highlighting linguistic hybridity by blurring the boundaries between the two languages.

Another aspect of the pseudo-subtitles that merits attention is the Cantonese ‘quotes’ that make up the constructed dialogues between Xi Jinping and Matthew Cheung (lines 35 and 36) and between Xi and his wife (lines 37 and 38). Suffice it to say that these conversations never happened, nor was it likely that the three of them would speak Cantonese to each other. The use of Cantonese in the pseudo-subtitles means that viewers must be somewhat familiar with the language to fully appreciate the humor in the video.

The Cantonese vernacular public emerging from Jackz’s video is more accurately described as a counterpublic than as an alternative public. Keenly aware of its subordinate status, it offers not simply an alternative but an oppositional discourse to that of the national public organized around Putonghua. The conflict between publics and counterpublics, as Warner (Reference Warner2002) reminds us, extends beyond ideas to speech genres and modes of address. The discourse that constitutes counterpublics ‘is not merely a different or alternative idiom, but one that in other contexts would be regarded with hostility or with a sense of indecorousness’ (Warner Reference Warner2002:86). As we see below, the pseudo-subtitles in Jackz’s video radically transform the oath of office recited during the swearing-in ceremony and alter the mode of address from formal and solemn to jocular, sarcastic, and mocking. A potential cause of laughter is the perception of incongruity (a mismatch between expectation and reality that reveals itself in a surprising way) (see e.g. Billig Reference Billig2005:57–85). The vernacular counterpublic that these pseudo-subtitles help forge is characterized by parody, rude speech, and creative translanguaging. In sharp contrast to the solemnity of the occasion and the formality of the oath, these irreverent practices produce a series of incongruities that not only make Jackz’s video funny but also heighten its transgressive and even subversive nature.

First of all, the ‘subtitles’ in Jackz’s remix video of the oath-taking ceremony create a sense of incongruity by defying viewers’ expectations about the typical purpose of these on-screen texts. Traditional subtitles, essentially transcriptions or translations of speech, are usually displayed in regular font at the bottom of the screen, and they are intended to facilitate viewers’ comprehension of the audio in films and other media productions. Jackz’s pseudo-subtitles, though appearing in the area normally reserved for traditional subtitles (see Figure 2), do not fulfill this expected function. This is evident in the pseudo-subtitles that correspond to the official name of Hong Kong, given in (7) below.

Traditional subtitles in Chinese television programs often serve to promote standard language ideology by erasing pronunciation differences and transcribing nonstandard speech into Standard Written Chinese (Wong Reference Wong2024). By contrast, Jackz’s pseudo-subtitles, which make as little sense as their English translations, highlight these differences, thereby obfuscating rather than elucidating what is said. In doing so, they subvert the usual purpose of subtitles, make the principal officials appear ridiculous, and enhance the comic effect of the remix video.

Figure 2.

‘Go fishy-talking about special criminal certificates’.

A sharp contrast in register further contributes to the incongruity that gives rise to the humorous nature of Jackz’s remix video. Ornate and serious-sounding expressions in the oath, many of which appear only in formal registers, are replaced in the corresponding pseudo-subtitles with quotidian words that sound absurd in this context. Take, for example, 定當 ‘will most certainly’ in lines 12 and 16. Rarely used in everyday speech, this expression is reduced to 叮噹 ‘Doraemon’, the name of a robotic earless cat in a popular Japanese cartoon series, in the corresponding pseudo-subtitles. As (8) shows, a sense of incongruity sometimes stems from the register contrast between different elements within a pseudo-subtitle rather than between the original discourse (the oath of office) and its representation (the pseudo-subtitles).

A rather formal way to refer to oneself, 本人 connotes humility, respect, and/or seriousness. Often appearing in pronouncements and other public addresses, this term tends to co-occur with verbs like 聲明 ‘to declare, announce’ and 承諾 ‘to pledge, promise’. In the first example in (8), however, it is followed by the rather prosaic 走音 ‘to sing out of tune’. This odd combination gives the impression of Cheung and the other principal officials formally admitting that they are singing off-key. In the second example, 展翅 ‘to spread one’s wings’ replaces 謹此 ‘hereby solemnly’ in the pseudo-subtitle. This expression is most commonly found in such collocations as 展翅飛翔 ‘to spread one’s wings and fly’, evoking the image of someone who has become independent and confident enough to realize their full potential. Yet, in the pseudo-subtitles, 徇私 ‘favoritism’, a word with unmistakable negative connotations, comes after this clearly positive expression. The incongruous juxtaposition creates a jarring effect, suggesting that the oath-takers are spreading their wings not to pursue lofty goals but to practice favoritism. The absurdity of pseudo-subtitles like these clashes with the solemnity conveyed by the highly formal language of the oath, thus trivializing the ceremony and making a mockery of Cheung and the other principal officials.

What is also ingenious about Jackz’s pseudo-subtitles is that they straddle the line between utter gibberish and political satire. Many of them, like the ones that correspond to the official name of Hong Kong (see (7) above), are nonsensical. These pseudo-subtitles make Cheung’s and other principal officials’ Mandarin sound (or rather, look) unintelligible, thereby suggesting their linguistic incompetence and by extension, their inadequacy for office. Other pseudo-subtitles, while comprehensible, carry anti-government overtones: they undermine the officials’ authority and reference the tense political situation in Hong Kong at the time. In line 32, 宣誓人張建宗 ‘the oath-taker Matthew Cheung’ becomes 宣誓人將佔中 ‘the oath-taker will occupy Central’ in the corresponding pseudo-subtitle. The name ‘Occupy Central’, as previously mentioned, refers to the 2014 protests that demanded universal suffrage and paralyzed the city’s central business district for over two months. Similarly, the two pseudo-subtitles in (9), which correspond to ‘conscientiously and dutifully’ in the oath, are imbued with political meaning.

The pseudo-subtitle in line 24, 賤種舉手 ‘bastards, raise your hands!’, seems to criticize the principal officials, who are all raising their hands as this pseudo-subtitle appears on the screen. Occupy Central makes another appearance in the pseudo-subtitle in line 25. Inserted into the video at this point is a picture of a woman raising her hand, suggesting that she participated in the 2014 protests. Precisely because many of the pseudo-subtitles in the video are nonsensical, Jackz is able to distance himself from and deny responsibility for the more political ones by claiming that the whole thing is ‘just a joke’ that no reasonable person should take seriously.

Another incongruity is evident in the constructed dialogues between Cheung and Xi (lines 35 and 36) and between Xi and his wife (lines 37 and 38). The pseudo-subtitles do not correspond to any audio in the video, and it is highly unlikely—if not impossible—that Cheung, Xi, and Xi’s wife would speak Cantonese to each other. Performing an act of ventriloquism, Jackz criticizes Cheung’s Mandarin and the length of the ceremony by disguising his own opinions as direct quotations attributed to others. In Hong Kong publications (e.g. newspapers), non-Cantonese speakers are rarely quoted in this language. Cantonese, like other minoritized varieties, derives its linguistic authority from the ‘ideology of authenticity’ (Woolard Reference Woolard2016). Because of its indexical ties to Hong Kong and other Cantonese-speaking communities, quoting a non-Cantonese speaker in written Cantonese feels somewhat odd and inauthentic. By contrast, Standard Written Chinese (or Putonghua) gains its authority through the ‘ideology of anonymity’ (Woolard Reference Woolard2016). With its geographical origins erased, it is presented as a neutral vehicle of communication that is available to everyone and capable of representing everyone. In this case, the Cantonese subtitles attributed to Xi and his wife may be perceived as transgressive precisely because they normalize the use of this ‘dialect’ as an ‘anonymous language’ that belongs to Cantonese and non-Cantonese speakers alike.

The genius of Jackz’s video ultimately lies in the juxtaposition of a national public organized around Putonghua and a vernacular counterpublic constituted through Jackz’s pseudo-subtitles. While the official video of the oath-taking ceremony evokes a sense of solemnity and projects a Putonghua-based national public, the vernacular counterpublic emerging from Jackz’s remix video appears to be composed primarily of Cantonese-speaking Hongkongers and is characterized by irreverent discursive practices that encourage viewers to take pleasure in Cheung’s linguistic blunders. Their juxtaposition is heightened by the tension between two competing texts in Jackz’s video. Much like a palimpsest, Jackz’s remix video of the ceremony consists of two layers of text, with the new layer (Jackz’s commentary in the form of pseudo-subtitles) superimposed on the old (the official video of the ceremony). Unlike in a palimpsest, however, the original text is prominently featured in Jackz’s video, providing the context and material for the humor that the video is intended to provoke. To underscore the humorous nature of the video, Jackz plays with the simultaneous presence of the two texts and exploits the contrast between them. By widening the intertextual gap between what is said and what is reported, he distances himself from Cheung and marks his recontextualizations as parody. In doing so, he invites viewers to align with him and join in on the laughter.

Conclusion

This study offers new insights into the nature of subtitling practices in participatory media and their role in the formation of counterpublics. It is clear from the preceding analysis that the power to use on-screen text to shape viewers’ perception of what they see and hear no longer resides solely within the purview of traditional media institutions. Thanks to the emergence of digital technologies that facilitate users’ communication, interaction, and content creation, subtitling practices that legacy media have long deployed to regiment language and project authority are now available to ordinary netizens. One could indeed argue that linguistic authority has become less institutionalized and more dispersed. While it may be true that traditional media institutions must now find new ways to buttress their authority (Heyd & Schneider Reference Heyd and Schneider2019), netizens do not necessarily challenge hegemonic structures of power. Rather, in some cases, they work in parallel with traditional media institutions to perpetuate dominant ideologies.

By mocking Matthew Cheung’s perceived incompetence in the national language to provoke laughter, the pseudo-subtitles in Jackz’s remix video of the oath-taking ceremony certainly appear to promote standard language ideology—a set of beliefs that posit one variety of a language (often referred to as the ‘standard’) as inherently superior to the others (Lippi-Green Reference Lippi-Green1997). To enhance the humorous nature of Cheung’s Gangpu, they highlight the nonstandardness of his speech by widening the intertextual gap between the original discourse and its representation. Many pseudo-subtitles are gibberish, giving the impression that Cheung’s Mandarin is indecipherable and completely ridiculous. Others do make sense, but they bear little relevance to what Cheung intends to say. Relying on the kind of crude humor often associated with ‘wild publics’, these pseudo-subtitles replace elegant-sounding expressions in the oath with quotidian and even vulgar words. Jackz’s video shows that subtitling practices in participatory media can at once be both norm-reinforcing and norm-challenging, exemplifying what Billig (Reference Billig2005) calls ‘disciplinary humor’ and ‘rebellious humor’.Footnote ⁷ While disciplinary humor ‘mocks those who break social rules, and thus can be seen to aid the maintenance of those rules’, rebellious humor ‘mocks the social rules, and, in its turn, can be seen to challenge, or rebel against the rules’ (Billig Reference Billig2005:202). Jackz’s subtitling practices poke fun at Cheung’s failure to adhere to standard language norms (disciplinary humor). At the same time, they come across as crass and inappropriate, as they violate social conventions that define acceptable behavior in polite company (rebellious humor).

Yet there is more to the story. Subtitling practices in participatory media function as potential sites where ideological reproduction intersects with political resistance. Jackz’s subtitling, though bolstering the superiority of Putonghua over nonstandard varieties of Mandarin, appears to criticize what this standard variety represents for many Hongkongers: the imposition of state power, the diminished status of their city vis-à-vis mainland China, and the erosion of its cultural distinctiveness—all of which are on full display at the oath-taking ceremony. To understand the effect of the pseudo-subtitles in Jackz’s video, we need to consider whose speech is being ridiculed, in what context, and how. These pseudo-subtitles do not focus on just anyone’s Mandarin; rather, they make fun of the Mandarin spoken by the second highest-ranking government official in Hong Kong at the time. The swearing-in of principal officials, which establishes relations of political dominance and subordination, is marked by grandeur and gravity. Nevertheless, Jackz’s irreverent and facetious pseudo-subtitles contrast sharply with its formality and solemnity, thus making a mockery of the oath-taking ceremony itself. Some pseudo-subtitles (e.g. ‘Occupy Central’) even make explicit reference to the political situation in Hong Kong at the time while others (e.g. ‘Secretary for Stepping Right into Shit’) are clearly intended to humiliate the officials at the ceremony. As a tool of political critique, Jackz’s pseudo-subtitles contribute to the delegitimation of Matthew Cheung and other principal officials by portraying them as incompetent, powerless, and worthy of derision. Thus, it is not only non-normative speech that is being mocked, but also this particular class of sociopolitical subjects themselves.

The analysis of Jackz’s subtitling practices presented in this article also calls into question the presumed direct relationship between standard languages and national publics. As previously discussed, standard languages are often believed to be instrumental in the formation of national publics. In this case, however, the standard language facilitates the emergence of a vernacular counterpublic rather than a national public. A crucial point about Jackz’s derivative work is that it is built upon the official video of the oath-taking ceremony released by the HKSAR government, the significance of which largely lies in the fact that it projects a quintessential national public constituted through Putonghua. Despite the apparent focus of Jackz’s video on Matthew Cheung’s inability to speak standard Mandarin, what emerges from the pseudo-subtitles is a Cantonese-speaking public that stands in opposition to the national public projected by the official video. Thus, Putonghua, the standard language in this case, inadvertently brings into being a vernacular counterpublic organized around Cantonese, and the parodic subtitles in Jackz’s video play a mediating role in its formation. In the carnivalesque, where normative values are suspended and social hierarchies are turned upside down, ordinary people temporarily appropriate the tools of the powerful for their own purposes. In the topsy-turvy world conjured by Jackz’s remix video, the standard language becomes a resource for constituting a vernacular counterpublic, and it is precisely the authority attached to this language that allows the disenchanted to creatively express their dissatisfaction with those who are typically most invested in its promotion.