Andrew Wong Qing Zhang STANFORD UNIVERSITY The Linguistic Construction of the Tongzhi Community This article studies the use of linguistic resources to construct an "imagined community" in a Chinese gay and lesbian magazine. Four groups of linguistic resources are examined: terminology from gay and lesbian cultures in the West, the women's movement, Chinese revolutionist discourse, and the Chi- nese kinship system. We show that the producers of the magazine draw on resources from various discourses, but they do not adopt them in their entirety. These resources are reworked and combined to construct an imagined Chinese gay community with its own distinctive style. We argue that to understand how social meanings are expressed through style and how style makes one community distinct from another, it is essential to examine a broad range of symbolic resources that are appropriated and combined by individuals or groups. This process of "bricolage" also underscores the agency of language users and the dynamic nature of linguistic practice. In constituting a new discourse of resistance and negotiating community boundaries, language users as social agents act on preexisting linguistic symbols and give them new meanings. Finally, we suggest that, although ideology mediates the manner in which linguistic resources are used, it is also reproduced through language use. There were many such stories: When a missing soldier, who had despaired offindinghis army, heard someone call him tdngzht, his eyesfilledwith tears; when a cadre, who had been persecuted for many years, heard people again call him tdngzhi, he sobbed and could hardlyfinda word to express his feelings; when a comrade-in-arms, who had saved your life but did not want to make his name known, responded "We are tdngzhi" (to your ques- tion, "Who are you?" or "What's your name? ), you felt extremely warm at heart— Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 10(2):248-278. Copyright © 2001, American Anthropological Association.