Husband (lǎogōng) Beyond Marriage: The Generalization of a Kinship Address Term on Weibo

Abstract

The generalization of kinship terms is a highly active linguistic phenomenon in modern Chinese. However, existing studies have largely focused on consanguineal kinship terms, leaving the generalization of marital kinship terms under-examined. Taking the kinship term laogong (husband) as a case study, this paper draws on 507 Weibo posts collected from January to July 2025 and employs qualitative content analysis to investigate its referents, pragmatic functions, and underlying motivations. The findings show that: (1) laogong has been highly generalized on Weibo, with generalized uses accounting for 73.96% of the data and referring to male idols, female idols, virtual characters, and fellow netizens; (2) the generalized use of laogong serves three main pragmatic functions, including constructing intimacy, conveying positive evaluation, and mitigating face-threatening acts; (3) the generalization is driven not merely by intra-linguistic mechanisms but also by users' emotional needs and communicative strategies, and is continually shaped by platform affordances. This study fills a gap in online address term research concerning marital kinship terms, reveals how address term evolution in the new media era is increasingly embedded in the affective and attention economies of platform society, and offers implications for regulating online language use and community governance.