“Why would I care how much salt you have eaten?” Reconceptualizing ELDER’S AUTHORITY through the Cantonese idiom sik jim do gwo nei sik mai

Honoring age is part of the Chinese cultural values. In traditional social exchanges, an older or elderly party is often empowered with tacit authority because of their seniority in age. The notion of ‘elder’s authority’ has its roots in the Confucian school of thought and is closely related to the virtue of filial piety. Across generations and with the rapid development of Chinese society, ‘elder’s authority’ has undergone a process of reconceptualization. This chapter investigates the reconceptualization of elder’s authority within the framework of Cultural Linguistics and through the Cantonese idiom sik jim do gwo nei sik mai, which has a representative meaning associated with the notion. We trace the conceptual origin of ‘elder’s authority’ by combing through Confucian classical texts on honoring age, and we explicate the foundation of its reconceptualization in the modern age by synthesizing scholarly literature in social sciences on elderly respect and ageism. We deconstruct the contemporary conceptualizations related to ‘elder’s authority’ by analyzing online discourse samples that discuss in-depth the target idiom and its embedded values and decoding semi-structured interview data about the idiom and ‘elder’s authority’ with 22 young Cantonese speakers. It is the aim of this chapter to present how the notion of ‘elder’s authority’ has been re-schematized by the younger generation in China today and achieve an understanding of how young Chinese people reevaluate traditional values in the present era and how they make sense of such reevaluation.