This study examines the use of ungendered third person Chinese pronoun ta in digital first-and-third person voiced discourses (i.e. small stories). The study asks what implications the script choice ta, as opposed to gendered 他 ta ‘he’ and 她 ta ‘she’, has for audience design and the facilitation of character empathy. The study draws on 131 digital texts from celebrity verified accounts on social media platform Sina Weibo in October 2015. From a Discourse Analytical perspective focused on deixis relative to the notion of empathy in storytelling, the study investigates emergent practices which involve the orthographic manipulation of gender. The study proposes that ta is an interpersonal resource whose deictic properties as a non-standard spelling are exploited as a property of audience design to facilitate an appeal to empathy. This facilitation is advanced by the script choice which offers a wider scope of reference, and thus targets a wider audience.

中文翻译：

---

Ta作为CMC受众设计的一种新兴语言实践

本研究探讨了无性别第三人称中文代词 ta 在数字第一和第三人称语音话语（即小故事）中的使用。该研究询问剧本选择ta（相对于性别化的“他”“他”和“她”“她”）对观众设计和促进角色同理心有何影响。该研究利用了 2015 年 10 月社交媒体平台新浪微博上名人验证账户的 131 条数字文本。从话语分析的角度来看，该研究侧重于与讲故事中同理心概念相关的指示语，调查了涉及性别拼写操纵的新兴实践。该研究提出，ta 是一种人际资源，其非标准拼写的指示特性被利用为受众设计的特性，以促进同理心的诉求。这种便利是通过剧本选择来推进的，它提供了更广泛的参考范围，从而针对更广泛的受众。