Unpacking translanguaging in refusals on Chinese social media: strategies, distribution, and functions

Abstract Translanguaging has been documented to be frequently adopted in day-to-day online interaction. To date, except for Ren and Guo’s (2022. Translanguaging in self-praise on Chinese social media. Applied Linguistics Review 169. 1–22) pioneering study examining translanguaging practices in online self-praise, there has been scanty focus on how translanguaging is manifested in the realisation of specific speech acts, particularly the face-threatening speech act of refusing. To fill this research gap, the study explores the strategies, distributional patterns, and functions of translanguaging practices in digital refusals through the analysis of naturally occurring data collected on WeChat over five months. The findings indicate that online interlocutors utilized a wide range of translanguaging strategies from multimodal, multilingual, and multi-semiotic resources. Four turn positions are identified in decreasing order of frequency: single turn, turn final, turn medial, and turn initial. Furthermore, translanguaging in refusals denotes interpersonal, expressive, textual, and operational functions, with the first two constituting the majority. Based on these findings, three types of refusals shaped by translanguaging are identified, namely, refusals with translanguaging as a redressive strategy, refusals with translanguaging as a marker of mock impoliteness, and refusals with translanguaging as a facilitator of smooth online communication. The study concludes by highlighting that the nature of the speech act, digital genres and platforms, and the relationship existing between interlocutors contribute to translanguaging practices in online refusals.