Language play as resistance: Navigating digital censorship during the COVID-19 pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, increased measures of information control were implemented in China to manage the flow of sensitive information that may contradict the official narrative of national sacrifice, perseverance, and triumph. Building on previous scholarship on the subversive potential of translanguaging practices, the present study analyzes key moments during the initial outbreak of the pandemic, when Chinese netizens creatively combined linguistic and semiotic symbols to circumvent censorship measures. It demonstrates how these practices highlight the innovative and multimodal nature of netizens’ linguistic tactics and illustrate how translanguaging and trans-semiotizing both enabled and profoundly disrupted the process of meaning-making. This article shows that the use of creative code-meshing strategies is a powerful means of challenging the centralized governance of social media spaces in pursuit of freedom of expression. • Information and virus were treated in a similar way during the COVID-19 pandemic. • Illegible texts allow the preservation and circulation of sensitive information. • New meanings can be created by defying linguistic conventions. • Apparently meaningless expressions can have profound political significance.