Feifei Zhou

Feifei Zhou joined the Department of English in 2016. She received her PhD in Linguistics and the History of Ideas from the University of Hong Kong. Her research focuses on theories of language and communication, sociolinguistics, social semiotics, and digital discourse, with particular attention to writing. She has published widely in leading journals, including Social Semiotics, Social Media + Society, and Discourse & Communication. Her research monograph, Scripting China: Technologies of Writing in the Digital Age, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press. She also serves on the editorial board of Language Sciences.

She welcomes prospective PhD applicants interested in joining her funded project on dialect use and writing in the digital age.

• PhD (HKU)
• MA (ECNU)
• BA (SISU)

• Theories of language and communication
• Linguistic landscape studies
• Digital discourse
• Writing practices
• Multimodality

• ENG3202 Language, Society and the Media
• ENG3266 Psycholinguistics
• ENG3272 Intercultural Communication
• ENG4301 Final Year Project

• Convention, Creativity, and Identity: An Interdisciplinary Study of Dialect Writing in the Digital Age. Hong Kong GRF Scheme, HK$570,000 (Jan. 2027 - Dec. 2029)

• Temporality, Embodiment, and Creativity: A Critical Multimodal Study of New Practices on Chinese Social Media. Hong Kong GRF Scheme, HK$ 510,315 (Jan. 2024 - Dec. 2026)

• Personhood, Power and Sense of Place: A Linguistic Landscape Study of Chinese Writing and Place-making in Transitional China. Hong Kong ECS Scheme, HK$ 341,605 (Jan. 2020 - Dec. 2022)

• A Discourse Analytic Study of Health and Risk Communication in Cancer Patients: Evaluating Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Western Scientific Medicine (WSM) Treatment Choices. Lingnan University Faculty Research Grant, HK$50,000 (2016 - 2018)

Books

• Zhou, F. (under contract) Scripting China: Technologies of Writing in the Digital Age. Oxford University Press.

• Zhou, F. (2020) Models of the Human in Twentieth-Century Linguistic Theories: System, Order, Creativity. Springer.

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

• Zhou, F., and Yang L. 2025. Theorizing temporality in multimodal communication: linearity and non-linearity in bullet comments, Language Sciences, Volume 111.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2025.101740

• Zhou, F., Liao C., and Yang L. 2025. Digital writing, recreated orality, and identity: domestication and exoticization of multilingual speech on Chinese social media. Multimodal Communication. https://doi.org/10.1515/mc-2024-0114

• Zhou, F. 2023. Affect in Chinese cyberspace and beyond: Language objects and affective regimes in rural hostels. Language & Communication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2023.07.001

• Zhou, F. 2022. Orality, multimodality and creativity in digital writing: Chinese social media users’ experiences and practices with bullet comments. Social Semiotics. https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2022.2120387

• Zhou, F. and Zhou, X. 2022. ‘Across time and space, I am together with many, many others’: Digital writing and temporality on Chinese social media. Social Media and Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051221117564

• Zhou, F. 2022. Aggressive banners, dialect-shouting village heads, and their online fame: Construction and consumption of rural linguistic landscapes in China’s anti-Covid campaign. Linguistic Landscape: An International Journal. https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/ll.21032.zho

• Zhou, F. 2021. Traditional knowledge, science and China’s pride: How TCM social media account legitimizes TCM treatment of Covid-19. Social Semiotics. DOI: 10.1080/10350330.2021.1926964

• Zhou, F. 2020. Typographic landscape, indexicality and Chinese Writing: a case study of place-making practices in transitional China. Social Semiotics.

• Zhou, F. 2020. Borrowed language and identity practices in a linguistics marketplace: A discourse analytic study of Chinese doctors' journey online. Discourse & Communication, 14(5): 533-552.

• Zhou, F. 2020. "How can Johns Hopkins not be angry?" A discursive case study of Chinese lay expert's science communication in the digital age. Language & Communications, 74: 41-51.

• Zayts, O.A. & Zhou, F. 2020. "Politeness and relational work in novel digital contexts of healthcare communication," in Archer, D., Grainger, K. & Jagodzinski, P. (eds.). Politeness in Professional Contexts. John Benjamins Publishing Company, p.107-126.

• Zhou, F. & Zhou, X. 2018. Was Confucius teaching us how to do things with words? Reflections on ethics in language and communication. Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication, 9 (2): 185-200.

• Zhou, F. 2018. “Is it useful to talk to other cancer patients?” A discourse study of lay perceptions of knowledge and expertise in an online support group. Chinese Semiotic Studies, 14 (3): 309-327.

• Zhou, F. 2017. ‘“Crazy English” and individual English learners: an integrationist critique of English education as a business in China’, in Pablé, Adrian. (ed.). Critical Humanist Perspectives. The Integrational Turn in Philosophy of Language and Communication. London and New York: Routledge.

• 2025, " Evoking sound, distorting meaning: The youth's writing of regional Putonghua in China's digital economy". Approaches to Digital Discourse Analysis conference (ADDA5), Tilburg, the Netherlands, May. 

• 2024, "Technologized body as minor universality: Exploring the unexpected digital ventures of Rural Women in China ". Minor Universality, Cultural Translation, and the Politics of Language after Western Universalism (ERC Project of Saarland University & HKU), Hong Kong, June. 

• 2022, "Beyond the spoken-written binary: Digital writing and users' agency in Chinese social media". Sociolinguistics Symposium 24, Ghent, Belgium, July.

• 2021, "Aggressive banners, dialect-shouting village heads, and their online fame: Construction and consumption of rural linguistic landscapes in China's anti-Covid campaign". Covid-19 Linguistic Landscape Workshop, London, June.

• 2021, "Linguistic Knowledge, Contextual Language Use, and Theories of Competence in Sociolinguistics". Sociolinguistics Symposium 23, Hong Kong, June.

• 2018, “Lay expertise, therapeutic pluralism, and health science communication in the digital age: The case of Chinese cancer patients”. Knowledge Dissemination, Ethics and Ideology in Specialised Communication: Linguistic and Discursive Perspectives, IULM University & the Università degli Studi di Milano Statale, Milan, November 29th.

• 2018 (collaborated with Xiyin Zhou from Paris Diderot University), “Was Confucius teaching us how to do things with words? Reflections on ethics in language and communication”, Philosophies of Communication: East and West, The University of Hong Kong, February 2nd.