Ritual frames and mimesis: Analysing military training in Chinese universities

In this paper, we examine the phenomenon of mimesis, i.e. the way in which people copy each other's behaviour. We focus on an understudied type of mimesis, which we define as ‘performative mimesis’. This type of mimesis tends to occur in complex participatory settings where the interactants follow a perceived ‘scripted’ form of pre-existing behaviour. Our data consists of transcripts of Chinese university ‘military trainings’, i.e. training courses organised for first year university students in China. In analysing this data we focus on expressions and speech acts through which the trainers in military trainings conventionally realise aggression associated with the script they are mimicking. Our analysis provides a systematic way to examine performative mimesis, hence filling a major knowledge gap in the field.