Constructing a Transnational Chronotope: Indexicality of “White People Food” Among Chinese International Students

ABSTRACT

Food operates as a semiotic system intertwined with language, shaping social meanings, power relations, and identity practices in transnational contexts. This paper examines the indexical field around the internet catchphrase 白人饭 (“white people food,” or WPF) as used by Chinese international students in the United States to articulate cultural encounters and negotiate identity. Drawing on interview data and online posts from 18 graduate students, I analyze how foodways function as chronotopic frameworks through which students position themselves in relation to race, class, and gender. I introduce the concept of the transnational chronotope as a higher‐order configuration in which multiple food chronotopes are dynamically negotiated, offering sociolinguists an analytical lens for tracing how transnational individuals agentively mobilize intersecting time–space frameworks to perform layered identities across contexts. The analysis shows how WPF indexes shifting meanings from cultural otherness to health, class aspiration, and white feminized lifestyle, which participants agentively (dis)align with to construct multidimensional identities.