Chinese Post80s Generational Resilience: Chengyu (成语) as Communicative Resources for Adaptation and Change

Abstract

The combined forces of China’s reforms, resurgent traditional values, and problematic labor market have led the Chinese Post80s generation to reconstruct their careers. Drawing on 33 in-depth interviews, this study examines how Post80s professionals communicatively constitute resilience as they utilize and transform meanings of chengyu (成语, Chinese four-word idiom encapsulating shared values). Guided by chengyu, Post80s construct resilience processes from temporal (past-present-future), relational (self-other-collective), and introspective perspectives (passion-practice). As discursive cultural resources of resilience, chengyu legitimize choices, frame actions, inspire ways of managing change and expectations, and offer comfort in difficult times. This study expands resilience research to a non-Western context and highlights how cultural and generational discourses can mobilize agency in the constitution of resilience. Findings offer practical implications in promoting and cultivating resilience.

Organizing as Tong (通): Decolonizing Organizational Communication from the Roots

“…This approach further centers local/nonwestern language as a critical intervention to decolonize our Euro-American-centered field. Theorizing organizing from the framework of non-English languages (such as Chinese, Tibetan, and Bengali, see Kang & Krone, 2022; Long et al, 2021; Pal, 2016) has been one of the most pivotal decolonial strategies to challenge the linguistic privilege of the English language in academia (Makoni & Masters, 2021). Rather than simply drawing from local language to revise theories developed in English-speaking global north contexts, we reconceptualize defining features of organizing by privileging the historical and contemporary cultural value frames of a non-English language.…”