Show,Don’t Tell and Try Me if You Dare! The Body’s Authoritative Force in Traditional Chinese Martial Arts Organizations

Abstract

What role do body practices play in the communicative accomplishment of authority in traditional Chinese martial arts organizations (TCMAOs)? This article develops the concept of differential authority, building on Fei Xiaotong’s theory of chaxugeju (differential mode of association), to extend communicative constitution of organizations (CCO) research on authority. Differential authority highlights how instructors demonstrate affiliation with authoritative figures through embodied instruction—especially master demo and testing touch—thereby establishing legitimacy as lineage vectors. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at a TCMAO in Zhengzhou, China, this study shows how authority is performed, transmitted, and recognized through corporeal, relational practices. Findings reveal the co-constitutive relationship between individual and organizational authority, and the role of embodied instruction in knowledge transfer and continuity. This research situates authority within a culturally specific framework and expands CCO theorizing beyond Western, credential-based models. It opens new directions for examining body-based authority across sociocultural contexts, especially amid globalization and digital mediation.

For centuries, the concept of authority has offered a vantage point for understanding social relations (Weber, 1947). Over the past decade, research on the communicative constitution of organizations (CCO; see Basque et al., 2022; Brummans et al., 2024) has explored how authority emerges through communication across diverse organizational contexts (Bencherki, Matte, et al., 2019; Benoit-Barné & Cooren, 2009; Bourgoin et al., 2020; Brummans et al., 2013; Caronia & Nasi, 2022; Costantini & Wolfe, 2022; Dawson & Bencherki, 2022; Koschmann & Campbell, 2019; Slager et al., 2024; Smith, 2023). For instance, the concept of vectorization—the communicative act of carrying or conveying what others are saying, doing, thinking, or feeling—has been shown to grant authority to some while displacing it from others (Brummans et al., 2022).

What CCO research has not yet deeply examined is the role of body practices in the accomplishment of authority (see Bourgoin et al., 2020). Body practices refer to routinized ways of moving the body (Reckwitz, 2002) that are specific to particular forms of organizing and vital to their functioning. Think, for example, of how the bodies of U.S. Navy SEALs are “drilled” or how Chinese schoolchildren perform radio gymnastics during breaks. While such practices vary widely, some possess distinctive constitutive force in accomplishing authority. They are able to communicate legitimacy more powerfully than verbal claims or formal credentials. Focusing on these embodied practices invites a shift in CCO research by highlighting how the treatment, regulation, and manipulation of bodies contributes to the enactment of organizations in everyday interactions.

This shift affirms and extends a broader movement within CCO scholarship: recognizing that communicative constitution is symbolic, material, discursive, affective, and embodied. As organizations increasingly grapple with questions of legitimacy, continuity, and leadership across cultural and geopolitical boundaries, it becomes important to understand how authority is not only claimed through language but also enacted and sustained through the body. Exploring how authority flows through these embodied acts contributes to CCO research by revealing the communicative power of the body in maintaining organizational forms over time and across shifting social terrains.

This article theorizes and empirically investigates how engaging in body practices or “doing the body” functions as a communicative mechanism for accomplishing what we term differential authority: a form of authority enacted through demonstrated associations with established authoritative figures, rather than through negotiation among equivalent organizational actors. Drawing on Chinese sociologist Fei Xiaotong’s (1947, 1992) theory of chaxugeju (differential mode of association), we examine how authority moves through elastic networks of relation, sustained by one’s capacity to demonstrate meaningful ties to figures whose influence extends across domains.

We ground this inquiry in traditional Chinese martial arts organizations (TCMAOs), a lineage-based form of organizing. TCMAOs offer a generative site for our article because they foreground embodied performance (gesture, stance, proximity) as a primary mode of transmission and legitimation in Chinese society, a critical cultural context in today’s world yet understudied by organizational communication researchers (for exceptions, see Brummans et al., 2013, 2020; Kang & Long, 2023). Thus, they are vibrant sites for examining how the performance of authority sustains organizational continuity.

As organizations in which “the rights and responsibilities of each member of the lineage are determined by inheritance relations” (Zheng & Szonyi, 2001, p. 71), TCMAOs operate according to Fei’s (1992) chaxugeju mode of association—ego-centric networks that expand and contract elastically based on the “power and authority of each center” (p. 64). Understanding who is able to act and speak on behalf of whom (authoring), and who positions themselves or is positioned as the bearer of expertise and tradition (vectorizing), is important for analyzing how relational authority is produced and sustained through body practices in these organizations.

Our analysis centers on a specific type of body practice we call embodied instruction. In TCMAOs, masters and instructors position themselves as vectors (bearers, carriers, or conveyers; see Brummans et al., 2022) of their martial art by using their bodies to demonstrate, share, and teach. Through such instruction, they claim the right and expertise (authority) to educate regarding how organizational members’ bodies ought to move, think, feel, and function (Reed, 2021).

Existing CCO conceptualizations of vectorization do not fully account for how legitimate vectorial status in TCMAOs arises through embodied instruction, where demonstration, not discursive invocation, carries the decisive weight. Becoming a disciple is only a starting point; legitimacy depends on showing sustained mastery and lineage fidelity. The concept of differential authority provides a valuable foundation for our theorizing. It enables a relational view of authority in which legitimacy is extended through embodied instruction and sustained affiliation with authoritative figures. Drawing on an ethnographic study of a TCMAO in Zhengzhou, China, we explore how this communicative accomplishment unfolds in practice. To conclude, we discuss how our findings enrich CCO theorizing by illuminating the communicative force of embodied lineage and contribute to efforts to decolonize organizational communication, in line with Kang and Long’s (2023) call to engage non-English cultural traditions, surface locally emergent knowledges, and attend to organizing from the margins.

A Relational View of Embodied Authority in TCMAOs

For serious practitioners of traditional Chinese martial arts, a key step is joining a TCMAO and committing to an authoritative master. TCMAOs are martial arts clans grounded in Confucian concepts such as li (rituals of propriety) and ren (humaneness or human excellence). Practitioners invoke family metaphors to cultivate belonging and solidarity within a social collective that often spans generations and diverse backgrounds (Partikova & Jennings, 2018), passing their arts on to future generations. Unlike modern martial arts schools, where teacher-student relationships tend to be formal, contractual, and skill-focused, the master-disciple bond in TCMAOs is ritualistic, exclusive, and lifelong. A disciple typically has only one master within a given martial arts tradition.

In modern settings, TCMAOs earn income from martial arts instruction and related services. The term “fist master” traditionally referred to martial artists who earned a living by performing and teaching. Today, however, the term denotes instructors situated within a hierarchical structure that typically includes master, head instructor, instructor, and trainee instructor. A master is a respected senior figure with a community of disciples. While students pay for instruction, disciples have completed a probationary period and formally entered a lineage. This distinction marks a deeper, embodied and relational commitment central to organizational belonging. Masters usually employ only their own disciples as instructors, who may later earn the master title by establishing their own disciples and studio. Although all masters are instructors, we distinguish between the two in this article to emphasize the master’s central role in TCMAOs, many of which revolve around a single master figure.

The authority of both masters and instructors is essential for recruiting and retaining students. In TCMAOs, authority is epistemic, rooted in valued, superior, and exclusive knowledge (Zagzebski, 2015). It also manifests as traditional authority grounded in sacred tradition and the legitimating power of long-held beliefs (Weber, 1947). Masters are widely believed to possess esoteric knowledge of their martial arts, an intangible asset reserved exclusively for their legitimate disciples (Naquin, 1986). The literature identifies several traits associated with authority in martial arts, including affiliation with a well-known lineage, exceptional skill, and virtuous character (Takacs, 2003). Yet, while discipleship under a recognized master remains significant, its symbolic weight diminishes when a master accepts hundreds of disciples, diluting the sense of personal connection and embodied transmission.

Within the chaxugeju structure, differential authority is maintained not simply through initiation, but through visible proximity, embodied legitimacy, and demonstrated lineage recognition, allowing a few disciples to stand out within even large-scale organizations. Moreover, the title does not always reflect actual expertise. Instructors require more than lineage status to establish their authority. In addition, beyond frequently invoking their heritage in verbal discourse, the “self-construction of authority” (Daly, 2012, p. 358) in interactions between martial arts instructors and students remains understudied, particularly the role of body practices.

Rather than relying on a relatively static view grounded in titles or years of experience, studying how authority is accomplished calls for a relational perspective, as advocated by CCO scholars affiliated with the Montréal School (Bencherki et al., 2019; Benoit-Barné & Cooren, 2009; Benoit-Barné & Fox, 2017; Brummans et al., 2013; Dawson & Bencherki, 2022; Slager et al., 2024; Taylor & Van Every, 2014). This view highlights how the “game” of authority unfolds in TCMAO’s daily martial arts instruction. Authority is accomplished through face-to-face and technologically mediated communication, and it is key to establishing sociomaterial order. Drawing on the etymological link between author and authority, both rooted in the Latin auctor and auctoritas, CCO scholars propose that research should focus on who or what is able to affect the authoring of this sociomaterial order in situated interactions (Benoit-Barné & Cooren, 2009; Benoit-Barné & Fox, 2017; Brummans et al., 2013; Taylor & Van Every, 2000).

Following this line of thought, we approach authority in TCMAOs as an ongoing performance enacted through communicative practices that display legitimacy, competence, and expertise. Such practices enable actors to author specific movements and convey specialized knowledge in situ. These performances foster trust, respect, voluntary obedience, and even admiration, but such outcomes depend on how convincingly actors embody their legitimacy and skill in relation to others.

Our aim is to provide deeper insight into this relational game by examining how body practices contribute to the accomplishment of authority in a TCMAO. In doing so, we highlight the dynamic roles various actors play in this performance. These actors are not bodiless or disembodied; they are bodies, or embodied minds (see Varela et al., 1991). We also draw attention to the contextual nuances in the accomplishment of authority across professional, organizational, and cultural contexts by exploring how a relational view of authority aligns with the relational structure of Chinese society (Hwang, 2000), while considering the extent to which this view may be “transferrable” (Lincoln & Guba, 1985, p. 297) to other settings. Thus, it is important to delve deeper into a TCMAO’s local mode of communicative organizing, rooted in traditional Chinese values and beliefs. In what follows, we examine this question by drawing on chaxugeju and embodied instruction to theorize how authority is enacted in TCMAOs.

Differential Authority

In response to Kang and Long’s (2023) call to “decolonize organizational communication from the roots” (p. 598) by privileging local knowledge and incorporating alternative forms of knowing and doing into mainstream organizational communication research, our concept of differential authority draws on Fei’s (1992) theory of chaxugeju, a framework that “gets to grips with the vernacular Chinese theories about Chinese society” (Hamilton & Chang, 2011, p. 20). Fei distinguishes between Western and Chinese societies through two modes of association: tuantigeju (organizational mode of association) and chaxugeju (differential mode of association), which he metaphorically represents as a haystack and a rock-in-a-pond, respectively.

In tuantigeju, individuals form organizations with clear boundaries and defined memberships. In contrast, chaxugeju refers to “person-centered networks based on a multiplicity of individual distinctions of rank and distance (chaxu) … that shape the network of every Chinese individual” (Harrell, 2011, p. 84). These networks take the form of concentric circles radiating outward from each individual, where “everyone stands at the center of the circles produced by his or her own social influence” (Fei, 1992, p. 62). Rooted in “an ideology in which the self is central” (Fei, 1992, p. 67), chaxugeju creates ego-centric networks that extend through tui (self-extension), expanding one’s influence “from the self to the family, from the family to the state, and from the state to the whole world” (p. 66). These networks are “elastic,” expanding or contracting according to the “power and authority of each center” (p. 64), creating differential treatment where how one treats others depends on their position within one’s extended circles.

This relational mode of organizing contrasts with Western CCO perspectives that tend to foreground role-based or text-mediated authority. Whereas Western models often emphasize how authority emerges from position within formal structures or from invoking authoritative texts, chaxugeju illuminates how authority can instead radiate from the self as relational center, flowing through networks shaped by proximity, ritual, and moral cultivation.

Within this ego-centric framework, individuals navigate their positioning across multiple networks to accomplish authority through a dual process: cultivating personal competencies and demonstrating meaningful associations with established authoritative figures who possess high network elasticity, that is, whose networks can expand to encompass many distant relationships due to their wealth, power, social status, legitimacy, and resources. As Fei (1992) explains, one must first “control oneself and conform to rituals” to “cultivate moral character,” and only then can one “extend oneself out into other circles of human relationships” (p. 66). This dual process becomes essential because “people seek connections in higher places” (p. 65) within these “highly elastic social spheres” that respond to “changes in human relationships” (p. 64).

Building on Fei’s framework, we conceptualize differential authority as authority accomplished through demonstrated association with highly elastic authoritative figures. In other words, these individuals’ networks extend to encompass distant ties due to their wealth, power, status, and so on. This mechanism operates through what we call relational vectorization: the process by which individuals appear as legitimate carriers of authority through their demonstrated capacity to embody and extend authoritative knowledge across relationships. Our concept thus extends the concept of vectorization, which refers to the communicative act of carrying or conveying what others are saying, doing, thinking, or feeling (Brummans et al., 2022).

Viewed this way, authority is not evenly distributed, negotiated among equals, or embedded in fixed roles; it is differential: dynamic, relational, and contingent on one’s proximity to authoritative figures within social circles. As Fei (1992) notes, “everyone stands at the center of the circles produced by his or her own social influence” (p. 62), and these circles expand or contract based on the “power and authority of each center” (p. 64). The result is a gravitational structure of influence, where authority works like “the North Star, which makes all the other stars surround it” (p. 67). This logic governs who holds authority as well as who can legitimately extend it. Relational authority flows through vectorization: actors serve as conduits through which knowledge, credibility, and legitimacy travel across social space and time.

Unlike organizational authority bounded by formal jurisdictions, differential authority operates through networks that expand or contract based on demonstrated capacity. These networks reflect relational patterns distinct from those emphasized in Western organizational contexts, where influence typically carries a “jurisdictional quality” (Hamilton & Chang, 2011, p. 22) and is exercised within formally prescribed boundaries. Chinese organizations, by contrast, function through “webs woven out of countless personal relationships” (Fei, 1992, p. 78), where ritual matters more than law (Hamilton & Chang, 2011).

To clarify the distinction between these two relational modes further, consider the following contrast. In many modern Western tae kwon do academies, authority is strongly tied to standardized ranks, formal roles, and contractual arrangements. A black-belt coach leads by virtue of certification within a structured hierarchy. While personal relationships still matter, these systems contrast with the relational elasticity of a TCMAO shaped by chaxugeju, where a disciple’s legitimacy stems primarily from embodied proximity to the master, demonstrated lineage fidelity, and long-standing trust. This contrast illustrates how the concept of differential authority enriches CCO research by foregrounding the centrality of self-positioning, moral cultivation, and embodied association within relationally elastic structures of authority.

More specifically, in TCMAOs, lineage-based legitimacy must be demonstrated through body practices rather than credentialism. Masters and instructors validate their authority through bodily enactments that visibly and demonstrably transmit authentic knowledge. The “differential” in differential authority refers to varying degrees of relational closeness and obligation, grounded in cultivated capacity to transmit tradition. Whereas many CCO approaches presume discursive negotiation among equals, differential authority foregrounds asymmetries. Some relationships demand deference and learning, while others confer responsibility to guide. In chaxugeju, individual and organizational authority are therefore co-constituted, with boundaries that blur and shift.

According to this view, individuals in TCMAOs must associate themselves with authoritative figures and make these associations visible through embodied performance, verbal assertions, lineage reinforcement, and public praise (see also Takacs, 2003). Authoritative figures may be anyone or anything perceived as having legitimacy, competency, and expertise to author particular situations: deceased grandmasters, sacred texts, or exclusive knowledge (Wile, 2017). Our perspective highlights that such authority may be extended across domains and actors, coexisting with other forms of authority.

Thus, our view introduces a significant departure from current CCO understandings of authority by showing that authority can flow through demonstrated bodily association with transmissible sources of legitimacy and authority, not through discursive positioning vis-à-vis external texts or structures, moving beyond authority constituted primarily through invocation (Brummans et al., 2013). This invites CCO scholars to look beyond discursive performances, toward embodied, relational, and longitudinal processes through which authority is cultivated and sustained. While differential authority clarifies how legitimacy is cultivated through demonstrated association with authoritative figures, what remains to be explicated is the role of embodied instruction—the quintessential body practice in TCMAOs—in enacting this authority.

Embodied Instruction in TCMAOs

According to Andreas Reckwitz (2002), a practice is “a routinized way in which bodies are moved, objects are handled, subjects are treated, things are described and the world is understood” (p. 250). This definition emphasizes routinized patterns of behavior based on specific skills acquired through socialization and experience, rather than on precise kinetic decoding or technical description. Practices, in this sense, are embodied configurations of knowing and doing, which raises the question: What can bodies do? This often leads researchers to examine bodily (emotional, sensorial, affective) practices, such as how touching clay during sculpting creates a sense of pleasure (see Rouleau, 2022). But because all practices involve the body to some extent, we distinguish between practices where the body functions as a medium (e.g., giving a lecture) and those where it becomes the primary site of transmission (e.g., posture training in flight attendant schools). We refer to the latter as body practices.

In TCMAOs, body practices are routinized ways of behaving that involve intentional cultivation, positioning, and display of the body across key relational moments such as ceremonies, salutes, staged performances, and lineage-affirming photos. These are not merely expressive but function as embodied enactments of authority, performed under the gaze of others to signal affiliation and hierarchical positioning. Body practices are performative: they both say something about the performer and help constitute their identity (Gond et al., 2016). Among body practices, embodied instruction is central to enacting and sustaining authority in TCMAOs. The Western pedagogical literature defines it as using the body in teaching (Nguyen & Larson, 2015), emphasizing how physical actions shape cognitive processes (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). We extend this concept by examining how it functions within traditional Chinese martial arts as a culturally grounded mode of transmitting legitimacy and knowledge.

Fei (1992) noted that in traditional Chinese society, knowledge transfer often occurs through demonstration: “face-to-face communication is direct contact” that conveys meanings “written language cannot fully express” (p. 49). Knowledge is contextual, relational, and experiential. Elders are valued as teachers precisely because they have “have come across the problems” (p.118) that the learner faces. In TCMAOs, this manifests as a holistic mode of instruction that engages mind, body, and heart through verbal, physical, and affective transmission. This is encapsulated in Chinese pedagogical sayings such as “kouchuan shenshou” (“oral transmission and bodily demonstration”) and “erti mianming” (“earnest, face-to-face guidance”).

Rather than adopting a typical “practice as embodiment” view that emphasizes the “lived body” as a locus of practical knowledge (Rouleau, 2022), we view embodied instruction in TCMAOs as routinized ways of moving the body in teaching, where instructors use their bodies to demonstrate and share postures and skills, while also correcting/confronting others’ bodies. It is shaped by years of training, socialization, and shared lineage, with special emphasis on the demonstration aspect of instruction. High-level skill acquisition in TCMAOs requires extended apprenticeship, limiting mastery to those able to commit over time (Shilling, 2017).

A key distinction between traditional martial arts and other combat sports is their various forms. For example, Old Frame One, the foundational routine of Chen-style tai chi, comprises 74 postures. Martial arts knowledge is primarily somatic and tacit, ingrained in the muscles and nervous system through sustained practice (Collins, 2010). Its continuity relies on its embodiment in/through instructors’ bodies. Brown and Jennings (2011) describe martial arts as transmitted via a “body lineage” (p. 61), where disciples must physically embody their masters’ teachings. Thus, martial arts instructors’ bodies are not “raw” but cultivated—attuned martial bodies that materialize lineage techniques and secure organizational continuity. Through embodied instruction, instructors claim the rights and knowledge to guide others. This includes shaping how others’ bodies move, think, feel, and function (Reed, 2021).

Unlike athletes or performers who rely on individual prowess, TCMAO instructors must become the embodiment of their lineage, enacting its distinct style to accomplish authority within the differential mode of association. Mere competence is insufficient. Failure to manifest one’s lineage style can render an instructor capable yet unauthoritative, or even result in expulsion, as disciples are expected to transmit their master's style, and only this style. This requirement reflects the ego-centric nature of chaxugeju, where instructors must continuously affirm their associations with their master and lineage through everyday interactions. Such affirmations are essential for establishing and maintaining both individual and organizational authority.

While differential authority explains why authority flows through demonstrated associations with authoritative figures, embodied instruction reveals how this process unfolds through specific body practices—serving as the core communicative mechanism of self-extension. For instance, when a master adjusts a student’s posture, this act conveys layered messages: precise technique replication signals fidelity to tradition; subtle corrections demonstrate deep knowledge; and physical bearing reflects the dignity and authority of their lineage. These embodied performances enable others to assess an instructor’s authority.

Although CCO scholarship has noted the body’s relevance in organizational constitution (see Ashcraft et al., 2009; Kuhn et al., 2017), the TCMAO context highlights its “constitutive force” (Brummans et al., 2020, p. 103). Through embodied instruction, instructors communicate their mastery by authoring specific techniques, postures, and movements, becoming vectors (Brummans et al., 2022) of particular authority within their lineage organization. This instructional mode enables the body to exert agency through physical performance. The etymological connection between authoring and authority (Benoit-Barné & Cooren, 2009) reinforces that those who excel at enacting specific skills implicitly signal their legitimacy. As embodied authors of tradition, these individuals serve as living exemplars, ensuring stylistic consistency, technical continuity, and organizational reproduction. Both masters and disciples function as vectors of a distinct martial art style, lineage, and tradition. As Kuhn et al. (2017) observe, vectors actively shape “trajectories of practice” (p. 32). Each enactment of a form becomes an act of re-creation, a reproduction of tradition “for another next first time” (Garfinkel, 1992, p. 186). In this view, authority is accomplished through relational vectorization, with embodied mastery signaling one’s deep association with their lineage.

What remains to be examined empirically is the following research question:

RQ: How do a master and instructors use embodied instruction to enact differential authority in an actual TCMAO?

Methods

Research Site

The data we analyzed for this article were drawn from a larger ethnographic project on enacting authority through body practices in a TCMAO based in Zhengzhou, China, referred to here by the pseudonym “Duke Tai Chi Research and Training Institute” (“DTC”). Founded in 2009 by Master Duke and his wife Qing (both pseudonyms), DTC specializes in Chen-style tai chi, the original form characterized by its Silk Reeling movements, alternating fast and slow rhythms, and bursts of explosive power. Master Duke boasts over 200 disciples and thousands of global students. By 2022, DTC had expanded to 22 domestic and seven overseas branches. As noted earlier, although such numbers may dilute symbolic exclusivity, authority in the chaxugeju structure remains anchored in visible proximity, lineage recognition, and embodied legitimacy, allowing select disciples to distinguish themselves in larger organizations.

DTC was selected because it exemplifies a TCMAO in which embodied instruction and differential authority are visibly enacted, meeting several criteria central to our research: (1) a hierarchical master-disciple structure with clear lineage succession, (2) an emphasis on authentic transmission of traditional martial arts knowledge, (3) a mixed composition of paying students and formally initiated disciples, (4) the scope of the master’s authority extending beyond martial instruction into personal and moral guidance; and (5) a pattern of internationalization while retaining traditional Chinese organizational patterns. These features reflect the chaxugeju mode of differential association. Some selected disciples adopt modern titles such as “instructor” or “coach” (terms common in sports education) when teaching other teachers. These titles serve a pragmatic function to facilitate interaction with general students, but their authority and legitimacy remain fundamentally rooted in lineage affiliation.

The first author’s position as a senior disciple of Master Duke afforded her close access to how differential authority was enacted and maintained through embodied instruction. This study is therefore situated within the tradition of “at-home ethnography” (Alvesson, 2009; Neyland, 2008), offering unique insights along with particular challenges. The first author’s tai chi expertise allowed her to discern subtle dimensions of embodied instruction that might elude outsiders. At the same time, maintaining rapport in a nationalistic environment required her to manage her speech carefully and avoid political friction. She managed inquiries tactfully, without challenging the master’s authority. To avoid the limitations of immersion in a single perspective, the first author also drew on materials and perspectives from outside the organization. She followed social media posts from disciples in “rival” TCMAOs, listened to external observers, and triangulated narratives using multiple media sources. This helped her remain reflexively attuned to how TCMAOs are perceived from within and beyond their webs of relational authority.

Data Collection

The first author collected ethnographic data through participant observation, interviews, online sources, photographs, videos, and a reflexive journal during three visits to DTC between 2016 and 2019, totaling 97 days (over 400 hours). Data collection focused on capturing three dimensions of differential authority: (1) body practices during formal training and daily interactions; (2) informal interactions where authority extends beyond martial arts; and (3) participants’ interpretations of these authority relationships. Her dual role as a doctoral student at a Canadian university and a senior disciple helped build trust and foster collaboration during her fieldwork, as this community respects intellectuals and senior members alike. Being a native Chinese speaker from Henan province who moved to the United States in her early 30s, she had deep familiarity with local customs, which facilitated full immersion. She strengthened rapport by engaging with instructors and students inside and outside the organization, thereby deepening her insights into the training environment.

Her active participation in training sessions enabled close documentation of how instructors enact self-extension—the process by which they expand their authoritative influence through embodied master/lineage associations—and how participants evaluate these demonstrations. These sessions also sharpened her sensory awareness of how authority was interpreted through subtle cues. Her participant observations produced 266 pages of fieldnotes (Emerson et al., 2011) in Chinese (about 700 pages translated into English), over 60 hours of video recordings, and numerous photos. She also engaged in virtual post-fieldwork as an active member of DTC’s various online groups (Hine, 2000), which provided insights into how differential authority is sustained across time and space, extending the chaxugeju network beyond physical co-presence.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the first author conducted synchronous mediated interviews with 29 DTC participants via WeChat (40 to 168 minutes, averaging 118 minutes). In addition, she conducted 38 follow-up interviews (averaging 53 minutes) between 2019 and 2022 with her key informant Yaoshi (a pseudonym), head coach at DTC. These interviews offered insight into how various stakeholders (including the founder, instructors, and students) understood embodied instruction (Tracy, 2020). Secondary sources, including public content, TV shows, documentaries, and video-sharing posts, provided triangulation by revealing how DTC represents itself publicly and how outsiders perceive its authority (Hine, 2000). Throughout her fieldwork, she kept a reflexive journal to document reflections, thoughts, feelings, and emerging insights (Alvesson, 2009).

Participants were purposefully sampled to align with the broader project’s research question and overall aim (Tracy, 2020). While selected for the larger study, the identity of these participants also supported the specific focus of this article: examining the communicative dimension of embodied instruction in authority building. Sampling ensured variation across roles (instructors, disciples, students), as well as diversity in gender, age, education, experience, geographic location, and social class (see Appendix for detailed participant information). This diversity enabled comparative insights into how embodied instruction was enacted and interpreted across social and organizational positions. Four participants taught tai chi in Australia, France, and Japan, while the others resided across China. Of the 29 participants, 20 were men, reflecting DTC’s male-dominant membership. The average age was 43.5 years (ranging from 25 to 65), with 20 (incl. Master Duke) serving as full- or part-time instructors, including seven branch heads. All names appearing in this article are pseudonyms.

Data Analysis

We adopted an iterative approach to data analysis (see Tracy, 2020; Tracy et al., 2024), moving back and forth between data and emerging interpretations to develop in-depth insights into our research question. During primary-cycle coding, we used the constant comparative method (Charmaz, 2006) to generate descriptive first-level codes, focusing on how embodied instruction is practiced at DTC. This process yielded five types of embodied instruction: skillful display, targeted correction, skill trial, hostile challenge, and teaching the elite with extra care (see Table 1). Because hierarchical selection and mentoring of elite students warranted separate analysis, we deferred its exploration for future research. We therefore focused on the remaining codes, which shared a central feature: they revealed how instructors communicatively perform their proficiency and lineage affiliation through embodied instruction.

Table 1.

Sample Descriptive Codes, Thematic Categories, and Illustrative Examples

Descriptive codes	Thematic categories	Illustrative examples
Skillful display: The master/instructors demonstrate different techniques during training sessions	Master demo: the master/instructors showcase their master/lineage association through demonstrating martial arts routines and skills with good faith	Each session started with the instructor standing at the front and leading the group in Silk Reeling through demonstration
Targeted correction: The master/instructors address specific challenges encountered by students through interactive demonstration		Master Duke observed the first author’s performance, adjusted her posture, and guided her arm movements with his hands
Skill trial: Students ask instructors to try tai chi skills on them	Testing touch: The master/instructors solidify their master/lineage association by creating an embodied experience for people who request testing	A visitor from Jiangsu province politely asked instructor Zuoshi to apply Expansive Force on him
Hostile challenge: Students, non-members of DTC, or fellow disciples challenge the master/instructors to engage in obvious or subtle combat
		A fellow disciple challenged instructor Yaoshi to push hands publicly; Yaoshi acted with a heavy hand, ensuring that this disciple would not challenge him again
Teaching the elite with extra care: the master/instructors put extra effort into teaching or mentoring students who have significant influence or social status	Embodied social climbing [excluded theme]	Instructor Taohong actively publicized how she had taught tai chi to Chinese armed police officers

During secondary-cycle coding, we engaged in hierarchical coding to organize descriptive codes into broader, conceptually coherent categories (Tracy et al., 2024). We merged skillful display and targeted correction into the umbrella code called “master demo” as both typically occur during instruction and are often interwoven. Similarly, we combined skill trial and hostile challenge into a code called “testing touch,” which highlights the use of exploratory contact—whether in good faith or with provocative intent. Both master demo and testing touch involve instructors establishing embodied lineage affiliation to assert legitimacy as lineage vectors, but they differ in origin: master demo is typically initiated by instructors, while testing touch tends to be initiated by students, visitors, or fellow disciples.

Embodied Instruction as a Mode of Enacting Differential Authority at DTC

Drawing on the distinctions identified in our data analysis, we organized our findings into two overarching themes. First, we examine how instructors perform master demos: communicative practices that enact and sustain differential authority. Second, we explore how this authority is challenged and potentially reinforced through testing touch, a category encompassing both exploratory encounters driven by curiosity and adversarial engagements marked by provocation.

Master Demo: Show, Don’t Tell — Enacting Differential Authority Through Demonstrative Embodiment

Master demo is a recurring form of embodied instruction in which instructors display martial techniques, either for general observation or in targeted response to students’ struggles. Yet understanding master demo as mere skill transmission misses its deeper function within the chaxugeju mode of association. Through master demo, instructors display technical competence while signaling their embeddedness in their master’s relational web. This embodied proximity to the central authoritative figure not only reinforces their symbolic standing but forges the meaningful distinctions that constitute differential authority.

Master Duke, shown in the left panel of Figure 1, frequently corrects techniques by physically repositioning students. In the right panel, he demonstrates a tackling maneuver with an assistant to enhance understanding. These master demos function as communicative acts that enact differential authority: they allow students and observers to witness, feel, and affirm the instructor’s legitimate capacity to author specific movements and transmit authoritative knowledge. In doing so, they reinforce Master Duke’s position as a credible vector or carrier of the art. Here, the body operates as message and medium: It illustrates what constitutes proper form and communicates who holds the authority to define and legitimate it. As Figure 1 shows, then, these embodied performances are not merely demonstrations of competence; they are relational acts that enact authority through visible alignment with the center of the chaxugeju network.

Figure 1.

Master Duke’s Master Demo

Teaching martial arts relies on verbal instruction, but it is the master demo that substantively performs and communicates differential authority. As Kuiyong, an experienced martial arts instructor, explained,

When I teach tai chi, I explain the usage of each movement and show them how to do it. For instance, when I teach the move Single Whip, I explain why the posture is like this and demonstrate each movement’s attack and defense usage. (Kuiyong, Interview, 23 October 2021)

This view, shared by other instructors, highlights the necessity of master demos alongside theoretical knowledge. DTC’s teaching philosophy emphasizes integrating know-how with know-why. While verbal explanations establish movement logic, master demos enable students to feel and incorporate the required know-how, validating the instructors’ legitimate knowledge acquisition and enhancing their differential authority.

The communicative power of master demo becomes evident in how practitioners interpret authentic demonstration. Fellow disciples often express pride in embodying and replicating Master Duke’s frame (quanjia), the distinctive, codified postural patterns embedded in tai chi routines. While basic routines follow the lineage’s broader structure, masters often personalize their enactment over time, creating embodied signatures that distinguish their martial identities. Skillful disciples who replicate their master’s frame through careful attention and embodied attunement demonstrate both technical accomplishment and symbolic proximity to the source of authority. This reinforces the hierarchical master-disciple relationship within the chaxugeju logic. Although Master Duke is not a blood descendant of his lineage, his unique and recognizable frame has become a key marker of his authoritative standing—evidence that, in the chaxugeju mode, embodied expression and relational proximity may outweigh formal inheritance.

As instructor Kuiyong remarked about the frame of his Shifu, the respectful term for addressing one’s master:

The famous “Four Grandmasters” of Chen-style tai chi exhibit flawless skills. However, their expertise may seem too intricate for students. In contrast, observing Shifu's practice reveals a clear frame with obvious movements and transitions. His skills are likened to calligraphy script, where each stroke’s strength and ingenuity are evident. Watching his practice facilitates a quick grasp of tai chi’s essence and how to emulate it. (Kuiyong, Interview, 23 October 2021)

This account highlights Master Duke’s dual reputation as both custodian of authentic Chen-style tai chi and innovator of his distinctive personal style. He embodies the traditional martial artist’s path: first inheriting, then innovating.

Early on, instructors often strive to embody and transmit their master’s techniques with fidelity, an act of self-extension that affirms their position within the chaxugeju structure and consolidates differential authority. As instructors’ reputations mature, they may begin to develop their own pedagogical contributions and stylistic signatures, moving from orbiting around the master’s gravitational pull to generating their own relational center, while still situated within the extended lineage. This process enriches the tradition and introduces new vectors of authority. For instance, instructor Yaoshi first established legitimacy by meticulously replicating Master Duke’s routines and later extended his differential authority by creating original tai chi “stick and ball” practices (supplementary routines that use a short stick or soft ball to train coordination, balance, and internal force), which now attract a following of his own.

A successful master demo can captivate and inspire admiration from students, especially those with experience to recognize subtle nuances of skilled performance. In such context, mastery of specific skills becomes an embodied signature through movements that demonstrate technical competence and communicate an authentic association with established authoritative figures. Thus, the communicative impact of a master demo often transcends the immediate context of instruction. Master Duke and his disciples regularly accomplish differential authority through such demonstrations, many of which now circulate via digital media. The following fieldnote illustrates how embodied demonstrations communicate differential authority, even when mediated through technology:

At the training camp today, I met Zhuyu, a student. Curious about her presence, I inquired about her motivation. She explained that despite years of tai chi practice, she struggled with the Hook Hand posture. Then she came across a photo of Shifu demonstrating it on a friend’s phone and was immediately struck by its elegance. Her reaction was: “Wow, this posture feels so right! So beautiful!”, a visceral sense that prompted her to seek more. She had no idea who the master was … After some searching, she discovered it was Master Duke and decided to join his training camp. (First author, Fieldnotes, 7 October 2019)

Zhuyu’s response demonstrates how the master demo functions as a communicative practice that accomplishes differential authority through embodied excellence that “speaks for itself.” Notably, her admiration emerged prior to identifying the demonstrator, emphasizing that recognition of mastery, and the differential authority it conveys, was grounded in her sensory experience of the movement. Her eventual decision to join DTC illustrates how master demos, even when mediated, can constitute powerful events for recruiting and affirming authority across spatial and organizational boundaries.

Master demos also extend beyond martial technique, functioning as sites where instructors enact moral, social, and personal authority. Within the chaxugeju mode, mastery is not confined to bodily movement but includes comportment, discipline, and values. Even during physical corrections, instructors may offer reflections on ethics or life conduct, subtly reinforcing their role as moral exemplars. These moments show how embodied instruction communicates not only how to move, but how to be, enacting differential authority across relational, pedagogical, and ethical domains.

Furthermore, master demo enacts differential authority by addressing technical challenges that require embodied demonstration for resolution. Many practitioners seek out DTC specifically to resolve problems that other instructors cannot address, such as prevalent knee injuries. These injuries can be prevented through proper instruction of hip opening and knee angle control. Instructors who adeptly address these knee problems are often regarded as figures of authority—as vectors of their art. The communicative power of master demos becomes evident in cases like student Luliu’s experience:

I had bleeding during childbirth and had been in poor health afterward … Late in 2007, I met an instructor in the park and began to learn from him. However, his teachings were inauthentic and flawed. I hurt my knees and developed arthritis. Later, I went to DTC and systematically changed my movements. Now, my knee pain is gone and I feel fantastic. I think my body is in better shape than it was. (Luliu, Interview, 8 September 2020)

Luliu’s transformation illustrates how master demos accomplish differential authority through embodied problem-solving that communicates authentic expertise. The DTC instructors’ capacity to address her physical problems through corrective demonstration established their differential authority as legitimate carriers of effective knowledge, while simultaneously discrediting her previous instructor’s claims to authority.

More specifically, Luliu's account highlights how individual and organizational authority are intertwined in students’ lived experience. She affirmed her instructors' personal skill and Master Duke’s influence but also endorsed DTC’s collective authority, grounded in consistent teaching methods and organizational standards. As Bencherki and Cooren (2011) argue, actions of individuals are often attributed to their organization. Luliu's departure from her former instructor and growing loyalty to DTC exemplify how differential authority, enacted through embodied instruction and situated within the chaxugeju relational logic, shapes student learning as well as organizational affiliation and legitimacy. Thus, master demos not only confirm an instructor’s mastery but also publicly affirm their association with a legitimate lineage, thereby establishing their differential authority. In contrast, testing touch introduces more unpredictable, interactive dynamics, posing both challenges and opportunities for instructors at DTC. While master demos serve as structured role models for emulation, testing touch, typically initiated by students, visiting outsiders, or fellow disciples, unfolds in spontaneous, often daring encounters. These moments compel instructors to assert and defend their authority in real time, allowing them to enact differential authority under pressure and in less controlled contexts.

Testing Touch: Try Me if You Dare! — Enacting Differential Authority through Embodied Challenge

Testing touch refers to interactive bodily engagement through which practitioners attempt to feel and assess specific martial arts techniques. While some students readily acknowledge the authority of a master or instructor after observing a master demo, others seek more direct validation, choosing to test instructors or even the master before fully trusting their expertise. At DTC, our analysis identified two recurring forms of testing touch: curious exploration and rivalrous touch. These embodied encounters function as communicative tests: depending on how the master and instructors respond, they may either reinforce or destabilize their differential authority.

Curious Exploration

Curious exploration typically involves students, often new or less experienced, who approach testing with motivation and skepticism, shaped by limited knowledge of tai chi. Despite knowing the master or instructors’ reputation, they may harbor doubts about their actual competence and tai chi’s practical efficacy. These interactions offer instructors the chance to enact differential authority by demonstrating technical control, guiding students with skill and care, and embodying their lineage’s knowledge. For instance, on June 29, 2016, Linglong, a tai chi beginner, visited DTC. Master Duke, who was present that day, agreed to honor her request to “try him out.” The first author observed this interaction and recorded the following fieldnote:

Linglong asked Master Duke if she could try, and he responded with a laugh, encouraging her to try her best to move him. Despite her full effort, Master Duke neutralized her with ease, using only his right hand. While he remained mountain-solid, her body swayed like a willow in the wind. The scene felt lighthearted, like watching a tiger playfully test a cub’s strength. After about three minutes, still smiling, Master Duke asked if she had enough. She laughed and nodded. When I asked how she felt, she said: “Impressed! OMG … he had total control over me and easily dissolved all of my power. I know he is famous, but I had no idea how good he was. Now I have felt it! … Oh, it didn’t hurt. He controlled his force very well.” (First author, Fieldnotes, 29 June 2016)

Figure 2 depicts Master Duke maintaining a relaxed, stable posture while Linglong loses her balance, her left foot lifted off the ground. While such encounters carry risk, Linglong was unharmed, underscoring Master Duke’s skillful and ethical use of embodied power. This moment illustrates how curious exploration functions as a communicative practice that enacts differential authority through embodied interaction. His controlled demonstration conveyed multiple layers of authority: technical mastery, ethical restraint, and a legitimate role as conveyor of the art.

Figure 2.

Linglong Losing Her Balance

Such ethical restraint is not a given. Linglong was aware that the first author had once suffered two ribs broken at the hands of an instructor who prioritized showing off over student safety during a similar moment of curious exploration. The contrast underscores that martial virtue is essential: without ethical restraint, even skillful technique erodes trust. The first author never trained with that instructor again.

Linglong’s shift, from acknowledging Master Duke’s reputation (“I know he is famous”) to feeling his mastery firsthand (“Now I have felt it!”), reveals how testing touch can communicate differential authority more persuasively than abstract credentials. After this encounter, Linglong transformed from a curious outsider to a dedicated student. Here again, Master Duke’s technique spoke for itself.

As this example shows, curious exploration serves as a pivotal communicative practice through which instructors in TCMAOs like DTC enact differential authority. By inviting students to feel their skill, instructors communicate legitimacy more powerfully than verbal claims or secondhand stories. These embodied encounters validate the instructors’ deep association with their art and position them as authentic vectors of Chen-style tai chi. At the same time, instructors must discern between curious exploration and rivalrous touch, which can affirm or destabilize their standing within the chaxugeju network.

Rivalrous Touch

Rivalrous touch refers to competitive physical encounters where individuals, often motivated by ego, hostility, or inter-institutional rivalry, seek to challenge another’s authority while asserting their own. Such confrontations function as high-stakes communicative events: defeating a respected practitioner can symbolically assert dominance and potentially undermine both personal and organizational legitimacy. At DTC, instructors approach such engagements with caution. Victories offer limited benefits, whereas losses can inflict enduring reputational damage. Accomplished figures like Master Duke engage selectively, aware that their actions reflect broader organizational authority. While upholding a professional ethos of non-harm, Master Duke intervenes decisively when necessary to safeguard both his own and DTC’s differential authority. This dynamic is vividly illustrated by senior instructor Feng:

When Shifu and I returned from a trip, we heard that a man from Uzbekistan had visited the day before. He claimed to have practiced tai chi for over ten years and asked to practice Push Hands [a two-person practice for developing sensitivity and leverage in tai chi] with our instructors. Two young trainee instructors accepted but lost. We thought it was over, but the man returned and practiced in our space as if we didn’t exist. So, I stepped in. I knocked him down, and when I offered him a hand, he arrogantly pushed it away and came at me again. I escalated, and soon he was flying. He tried to hold on with his hands before landing on his back, resulting in crushing fractures … Shifu sat nearby, pretending to read, but he clearly noticed. When the man hit the ground with a loud bang, Shifu's face said, “He brought this upon himself,” though he didn’t intervene. (Feng, Interview, 25 October 2021)

This episode illustrates how rivalrous touch becomes a communicative contest. The challenger undermined DTC’s space, dismissed its junior instructors, and implicitly questioned the organization’s transmission of authentic Chen-style tai chi. Feng’s embodied response reclaimed DTC’s authority. Meanwhile, Master Duke’s performative neutrality, disengaged on the surface, but subtly communicative, reinforced his seniority and strategic discretion.

Such encounters impact not only individual but also organizational authority. Had the challenger succeeded, students’ confidence in DTC could have eroded. Feng’s intervention reaffirmed that even if junior instructors falter, senior figures can defend the organization’s authority. These interactions underscore the uneven capacities of instructors to act as lineage vectors: junior instructors need time to develop their embodied authority, while seasoned ones like Feng or Xinxi act as guardians. As Xinxi put it, “If someone comes to kick in the door, I fight back and make sure I win” (Xinxi, Interview, 20 September 2020). Winning rivalrous engagements bolsters both personal and organizational differential authority, deterring future challenges and publicly affirming an instructor’s capacity to act as a vector of their lineage. However, the risks are substantial: a loss can diminish the authority of the instructor, their master, and the organization, especially given the tightly woven relational networks of TCMAOs. Instructors’ performances are entwined with the broader identity of their lineage. As such, responses to rivalrous touch carry symbolic weight: they can either elevate or damage collective authority.

Our analysis, then, reveals a graded hierarchy of communicative practices for accomplishing authority, from least to most embodied: (1) verbal claims, (2) visual demonstrations (e.g., images or videos), (3) master demos, and (4) testing touch. Rivalrous touch is the most intense form, where authority is publicly challenged through live, unpredictable interaction. Here, again, the fight is supposed to “speak for itself”: outcomes are viscerally felt and interpreted as reflections not only of individual skill but of the style, lineage, and organization they represent. In contrast, master demos focus on instruction and ideal form, inviting students to evaluate and emulate rather than confront. Visual demonstrations can signal posture or style but lack the embodied communicative force of live engagement. Verbal claims offer the weakest proof.

Ultimately, a legitimate instructor must do more than perform tai chi; they must transmit it. In TCMAOs, transmission is more than pedagogical; it is performative. Like stones cast into still water, true masters and instructors extend their influence in widening circles, sustaining the continuity of style, organization, and lineage as living vectors of their art. In this embodied logic, mastery becomes credible only when it is felt by those testing, observing, and receiving instruction. This embodiment functions as an assertion that establishes differential authority “for another next first time” (Garfinkel, 1992, p. 186).

Discussion

Despite their global appeal, traditional Chinese martial arts organizations remain underexplored in CCO scholarship and organizational communication research more broadly, particularly in terms of how authority is accomplished through body practices. To address this question, we developed the concept of differential authority. Drawing on ethnographic research at DTC, a TCMAO in China, our study shows how this form of authority is enacted through master demos and testing touch in embodied instruction. In doing so, our study foregrounds the relational, performative, and corporeal dimensions of legitimacy in lineage-based organizations. It also contributes to root-level decolonization (Kang & Long, 2023) by treating Chinese relationality as a generative root of theorizing, rather than a cultural backdrop.

As we showed, Fei's (1992) model of chaxugeju illuminates how social relationships in Chinese society ripple outward from the self through concentric circles of association (see also Fei, 1947). Building on this insight, we conceptualized differential authority as a relational accomplishment achieved through demonstrated associations with recognized authoritative figures. In TCMAOs, authority is not granted through institutional position or personal charisma alone, as in Max Weber’s (1947) typology. It must be enacted through repeatable practices that authenticate one’s status as a legitimate vector—a conveyor of lineage knowledge.

While differential authority shares affinities with Weber’s notion of traditional authority, it differs in key respects. It is not inherited through roles or bloodlines alone, but earned and reaffirmed through continuous embodied instruction and demonstrable affiliation with legitimate figures. Nor is it reducible to discursive positioning or charismatic appeal. Rather, it hinges on one’s ongoing capacity to transmit lineage knowledge through one's body, a dynamic that redefines legitimacy as an emergent communicative accomplishment. This view extends CCO research on authority as positioning and invocation (e.g., Benoit-Barné & Cooren, 2009; Brummans et al., 2013) by introducing the idea of relational vectorization. Prior studies suggest that actors and texts can act as vectors by conveying the words, actions, and feelings of others (Brummans et al., 2022). We deepen this insight by showing that in certain contexts like TCMAOs vectorial legitimacy must be earned through embodied instruction, where demonstration, not discursive invocation, is the decisive act.

This study therefore enriches research on the communicative constitution of authority (Bencherki et al., 2019; Benoit-Barné & Cooren, 2009; Brummans et al., 2013; Slager et al., 2024). It does so by connecting it with research on how relational fields are formed through vectorization (see Brummans et al., 2022; Cooren et al., 2024). Once body practices enable actors to become organizational vectors, our research shows, their success enhances organizational authority, creating a field of relation where legitimacy depends on embodied performance, not formal credentials.

Moreover, our research shows that individual and organizational authority are co-constitutive. At DTC, Master Duke embodies and exceeds the organization (cf. Brummans et al., 2013, 2020). His legitimacy depends on the performative competence of his disciples, just as their standing is amplified or diminished by his pedagogical lineage. In this sense, instructors function as active vectors whose bodily practices reaffirm the master’s authority. Failures in public instruction risk damaging the lineage’s legitimacy, while successful demonstrations help contain reputational harm. Thus, the communicative accomplishment of authority in TCMAOs invites a reconsideration of how communication is conceptualized and empirically investigated within CCO scholarship. Rather than treating communication as primarily symbolic, discursive, or textual, our findings underscore its expressive, corporeal, and affective dimensions (see Ashcraft et al., 2009; Brummans & Vézy, 2022). Instructors “speak” authority through movement, touch, rhythm, and posture; that is, through forms of communication that exceed verbal language yet are no less constitutive. This perspective invites CCO scholars to extend their focus beyond discursive enactments to include how the body itself becomes a communicative medium of legitimacy and continuity.

Yet while differential authority anchors legitimacy in relational vectorization, it coexists with other forms, particularly those associated with innovation and authorship. Distinguished masters like Master Duke must embody both continuity and creativity: as legitimate carriers of traditional knowledge and as stylists whose embodied expression shapes martial evolution. Such dual roles generate tension. Recognition as a vector confirms one’s legitimacy within the lineage but may obscure individual authorship. Conversely, recognition as an innovator foregrounds originality but risks severing ties to tradition. Instead of being mutually exclusive, these roles are dynamically negotiated. Authenticity and innovation, in this context, are relationally evaluated through performance, peer recognition, and continuity of embodied instruction. In this way, instructors’ bodies become living repositories of lineage-specific skills and values, carrying and renewing tacit knowledge through their gestures, routines, and relations. These forms of tacit knowledge resist codification and have traditionally required face-to-face transmission (Brown & Jennings, 2011). Repetitive embodied instruction functions as ritualized reaffirmation of authority relations through pedagogy. However, such body-bound processes constrain scalability. The lineage can only grow as fast as new instructors can embody its pedagogy. Recruitment from outside often fails unless accompanied by prolonged immersion and demonstrated commitment, reinforcing the tight coupling between embodiment and organizational continuity.

The concept of differential authority, then, offers a broader heuristic for exploring embodied relationality in organizational contexts where knowledge, legitimacy, or influence are not abstract but transmitted through contact, proximity, and sustained co-presence. This may help illuminate practices of authority in professions like traditional medicine, religious communities, or craft lineages where transmission is rooted in demonstrated affiliation and embodied repetition rather than formal hierarchy or generalized expertise.

Furthermore, our study highlights how TCMAOs are adapting to contemporary conditions. Body practices once confined to in-person ritual are now extended through digital platforms. While this shift increases reach, it raises important questions about whether digital instruction can reproduce the constitutive force of embodied co-presence (Brummans et al., 2020).

Last, but perhaps first, by incorporating indigenous theory into CCO scholarship, this article responds to calls for decolonizing organizational communication (Kang & Long, 2023). Beyond offering a culturally specific model of association, Fei’s theory of chaxugeju provides a theoretical resource with translatable value. While rooted in Chinese contexts, differential authority may resonate across other high-context cultures (Hall, 1989) and in Western professions where legitimacy is relationally performed and extended (Latour, 1986). The central question is not whether association matters, but how its communicative enactment confers legitimacy in different sociocultural settings. Our concept of differential authority thus provides a flexible yet grounded lens for analyzing authority in family businesses, craft guilds, traditional medicine, and other lineage-based domains where legitimacy is shaped through sustained bodily engagement and relational continuity.

This study has several limitations that open avenues for future research. First, its focus on a single TCMAO limits transferability (Lincoln & Guba, 1985), though, as just mentioned, the conceptual insights may apply to other lineage- and skill-based organizations. Second, the dynamic interplay between individual and organizational authority warrants further exploration, particularly in contexts where generational, commercial, or political pressures disrupt vectorial legitimacy. Third, our findings invite deeper investigation into how bodies become sites where such legitimacy is cultivated, regulated, or resisted—potentially drawing on a Foucauldian perspective of power and the disciplined body (see Foucault, 1978; cf. Tracy, 2000). Fourth, as suggested, future research should explore how digital technologies mediate differential authority, and whether they transform the affective, performative, and ritual aspects of lineage transmission. Finally, the enactment of differential authority is rarely without friction. Studying breakdowns, contestation, or intersections with race, class, gender, or age could further illuminate the politics of its moment-to-moment accomplishment in everyday interactions.