“Bang Bang Bang” – Nonsense or an Alternative Language? The Lingualscape in the Chinese Remake of I Am a Singer

Abstract

Through examining the Chinese remake of the Korean television program I Am a Singer, I explore the questions of how a Chinese musical television reality show performs and represents the newly rising aesthetic demands for de-territorialising what I term the "lingualscape," the shifting landscape of languages intermingled with and liberated from standardised national languages; and how it interplays with affective negotiation in the practices of translation or transplantation within the context of cultural de-territorialisation. This Sino-Korean musical TV program demonstrates nonethnic-centred imaginings across national and state-sanctioned ideological boundaries. The lingualscape performs affective negotiation and rises above the official lingual system, a process through which sincere communication becomes possible in a digital time.