“Are you a Dalao?”: The Use of Dalao in a Chinese Soccer Community

This paper investigates the culture of dalao (Chinese: 大佬; Hong Kong Cantonese: dai-lou with a rising terminal tone) in a group of Chinese soccer players at a large public university in the Southeastern USA. By the culture of dalao, I am referring to the sociolinguistic phenomenon of members of the group using the address term dalao to address each other in both a virtual chatting environment as well as in face-to-face communications. I am taking an ethnographic approach to making sense of this phenomenon by being part of the group as a core member and being conscious and observant of the use of this address term in terms of the relationship between the interlocutors, the contexts, and the illocutionary forces associated with it. Simply put, a dalao is the big shot or the important guy in a certain group. When I explain this research to my peers, one question I get most often is if I am a dalao. While I have the tendency to refrain from acknowledging that I am a dalao, I hereby, on the outset of the paper, recognize my dalao status in the group. It is the observed convention of refusing to be called a dalao, and yet almost everyone is comfortable calling each other dalao, that caught my attention to look into this phenomenon.