From "Worker" To "Da Gong Ren":A Study On The Conceptual History Of Buzzwords

The change of buzzwords is a microcosm of social development.Taking Michel Foucault’s path of intellectual archaeology as a guide,this study revisits the conceptual origin of the annual Internet buzzword "Da Gong Ren" of 2020,and outlines the process from the concept of "worker" in the early days of the founding of New China,the concept of "wage earner" after the reform and opening up,to the discursive practice of the popular concept of "Da Gong Ren" in the current Internet space.The concepts of "worker" "wage earner" and " Da Gong Ren " have developed into social buzzwords at different stages of China’s social development and through different media texts.This study also aims to use the trajectory of these concepts as a prism to consider how the changes in media technology have influenced social buzzwords.From "worker" and "wage earner" to " Da Gong Ren ",there is both an inheritance of discourse units and a break between conceptual meanings in the process of concept walking.The term "worker" was a popular social concept in China at the stage of resuming national economic development and socialist construction,and was also a social class discourse with political tendencies;the term "wage earner" was an intellectual discourse symbolizing changes in the socio-economic system and the household registration system,and was also a popular social concept circulating in the dynamic process of social industrialization and urbanization;The Internet buzzword " Da Gong Ren " is based on the existing discourse unit of "worker" and "wage earner",and accepts multiple narratives of subjects from different occupations,types of work,ages and classes in the society." Da Gong Ren " represents both the struggle for meaning against the existing social class consciousness and labor ethics,and the attempt of social individuals to find their subjectivity in the context of media empowerment.The process of walking through the above concepts is a reflection on the value of work ethics,individual survival status and social identity of young labor groups in different stages of social development and media technology background.The above-mentioned change of popular concepts is in the same direction and isomorphic with the change of social structure and the development of media technology.In the era of mass media,social groups represented by social elites filter and shape popular concepts with ethics and morals,cultural interests and aesthetic preferences,and disseminate them through media texts in films,newspapers and magazines,and popular songs.The transformation of media technology has made possible the transformation of the discourse network that Kittler predicted.The materiality of Internet technology has made the expression of social grassroots no longer obscured,and Internet buzzwords have accepted more diverse conceptual production methods,integrated more diverse social issues,and represented the voices of a wider range of social groups.In the context of technological change,the production of knowledge concepts may be at a critical point in the historical transformation of the knowledge-based and cognitive paradigms proposed by Foucault,as well as in the historical period of the transformation of the discourse network predicted by Kittler.