Abstract:

Both urban and rural areas in China have suffered a lot from smog in recent years. Catchphrases of smog as popular expressions in the virtual public sphere have not only spread public sentiments at multi-levels, but also construct public’s social memories of current China with “covert text” as a “language for resistance”. Following the tradition traced back to the Book of Songs in the pre-Qin period, catchphrases of smog represented by “feeding the people smog” are typical examples of the “weapons of the weak”, which shall be treated seriously. A study of this linguistic fact as well as cultural phenomenon is conducive to our understanding of the variation and development of the folk motif “language and resistance” in the internet age on the one hand, and the social transformation in current China and the folk basis of ideology on the other.

Key words: &ldquo, feeding the people smog&rdquo, , smog, network catchphrases, resistance with language