“(scream)(wriggle)(dismally crawl)”–parentheses as semiotic resources for translanguaging and trans-semiotic practices on Chinese micro-blogging

While extensive research has explored translanguaging practices online in relation to named languages, written signs, such as punctuation, are under-researched despite their creative, multifunctional, and playful potential. This study investigates the use of parentheses on a Chinese micro-blogging site, Weibo with a translanguaging lens. We explore how online users exploited parentheses for innovative meanings and functions and how creative adoptions of parentheses facilitate the translanguaging practices featured with trans-boundary communication. Data were collected using Python with keywords “parenthesis literature”–a cyberliteracy in which parentheses are often used in ways that deviate from its conventional usages, along with manual data cleaning. We identified four types of trans-semiotic practices, including trans-scenarios, trans-semiotizing for new punctuation marks, trans-modality for stylizing emoticons, and conventionalizing parentheses for indicating speech acts. We argue that online users engage in trans-semiotic practices via fluid controls of parentheses, during which they turn a conventional punctuation into translanguaging cues, rendering extra-linguistic resources important components in meaning-making in digital communication.