Feature Analysis of The Internet Language

1、1. introduction1.1 rationale of the studywith the development and popularization of the technology of the internet, the civilization spread of human being has started a new timethe time of the internet. the spread is linked with language. the development of the network provides a good chance for lan

2、guage development. with the development of language, the network language comes into being. the network language is a new media language form for sending information on the internet, it is a kind of language used for a special social group. as a language phenomenon emerging with the social developme

3、nt, it belongs to the part of new words and phrases of language. the network language provides a new and important study object for social linguistics, meanwhile, the new words and phrases developing with the network spread provide rich materials for the study of words and phrases of linguistics .th

4、e network language has the following features: vividness, variety, humor, simplification, and strong personality. as language for a special group-net citizen, it can meet the demand of people online, at the same time, it reflects the characteristics of the languages active part as well as diversity.

5、 however, there are also some phenomenon with inferior tastes, such as vulgar words, wrongly written words and coinages resulting from the blending of both chinese and english. the network language reflects peoples mentality and social states. the network is a virtual world as well as a real world.

6、in peoples daily life and work, because of the restriction of social rules, what people said may not totally show their inner world, so the word “internet” becomes a spiritual habitat to express their true feeling. in china today, most people, especially young people are familiar with those words as

7、sociated with internet, such as “get on net”, net citizen”, “off line”, “net literature”, e-commerce”, etc. if you consult the old version of chinese dictionary, those words or phrases may not be found, or even if found, the right meaning they intend to convey may not be listed. it can be concluded

8、that new words have entered into china in the last few years due to much frequent use of internet. language has to adapt to the development of society. the 21st century is an age of information, and the wide use of internet has influenced our chineses life greatly, so does the language. there are va

9、rious kinds of new internet language in china today, with its free forms and lively vivid expression forces. it is quite necessary to examine how internet influences and brings about changes of language in china nowadays. the following sections will give a detailed description of the new internet la

10、nguage. 1.2 classification of the internet language internet language changes in various areas , such as phonology, morphology, lexicon, semantics and syntax. compared with the standard chinese, the change of language in internet age is mainly lexical one, so here we only deal with the classificatio

11、n of those new words or phrases and expressions which have their particular forms and special usages. internet language refers to the language used in the internet communication through computers. it is closely related to the daily activities but also has distinctive features. broadly speaking, (于根源

12、, 2001) it can be dividedly into three groups: (1) the professional terms concerning internet, such as “mouse鼠标” , “hardware硬件”, “software软件”, “virus病毒”, “broad band宽带”, “login登录”, “online在线”, “chat room聊天室”, “firewall防火墙”, “browser浏览器”；（2）the special terms on the use of internet, such as “net citiz

13、en网民”, “bet bar网吧”, “get on net触网”, “hacker黑客”, “the fourth media第四媒体”, “e-commerce电子商务”, “virtual space虚拟空间”, “attention economy注意力经济”, “concept stock概念股”, “information highway信息高速公路”; （3）the frequent used terms and signals employed by the internet users in chatting room and bbs, such as, “mei mei美

14、眉”, “ da xia大侠”, “ban zhu斑竹”. “kong long恐龙”, “cai niao菜鸟”, “gong ji公鸡”, “jiu wu酒屋”, “dong dong东东”, “jiang zi酱紫”, “wen dou si瘟都死”. the internet language in a narraw sense refers to the third group. this kind of language takes only a small portion of the whole internet terms, but it is the most conven

15、tional group. many debates and arguments are aroused on the issue of usage and existence of the net-language. so this paper will discuss this issue in details.2 .the principle of economy of language 2.1 introduction about the principle of economy of languagethe principle of economy of language is al

16、so called the economy of language. the economic tendency of language has been permated in all levels of language different stages of development, so the economy of language is considered as an important aspect of language universality. the simplicity phonomenon of language is usually called the prin

17、ciple of economy. linguists think that the application of human language has the tendency towards the principle of economy and the principle of the least efforts in order to realize the language optimization and transfer much information with the smallest language unit. the economist rubinstein hold

18、s that the economics tries to define the social order as a kind convention which derives from the process of some functions optimization, it also applies to language. the main study object of language economicsis to explain how features of natural language are consistent with some functions optimiza

19、tion. (jiang jinlin, shu zimei, 2006:32) the economics thought of linguistics is reflected in two aspects: saussures theory of language value and theory of effective selection. saussures modern linguistic theory includes six parts: (1) language and parole (2) symbol linguistics (3) synchronic lingui

20、stics and diachronic linguistics (4) the theory of language value (5) exocentric relation and incentric relation (6) concrete units and abstract units of language (liu yaowu, 1992:42). among the six parts, (3), (4) and (5) are influenced by economics. meanwhile, saussuer put forward the theory of le

21、ast effort. (saussure, 1974: 148) the pinciple of effective selection of the least effort principle is reflected in many works of famous linguists. after studying much european language, jesperson came a conclusion that any language has gone through the process from the complexity to the simplicity.

22、 andrel martinet advanced the principle of economy and the principle of the least effort in the principle of economy pf languge evolution. the principle of economy is not the simple effort-saving, but the combination of forces. there are two forces in the process of language development: the require

23、ment of human communication and expression the innate laziness of human being. the first force has been changing and spurs human to invent new and complicated language units which have certain function, while humans laziness requires people to reduce the effort consumption and use the expression tha

24、t can save effort. the contradiction results in the balance state of langugae. the principle of economy is also called the principle of the least effort which means gaining the best results with the least effort. gk zipf from american harward university is the first person to expatiate on the theory

25、 of the least effort. he used considerable statistics and cases to explain the principle of the least effort in human behavior and the principle of the least effort published in 1949. he holds that when people speak or write articles, on one hand, in order to save time, they use only one word to exp

26、ress the idea, on the other hand, the speaker must make sure that the listener can understand with the least effort. american psychological linguist grice holds that during the language communication, people must follow the four cooperation principles: 1 maximum of quality which makes the speech hav

27、e the largest possible information. 2 maximum of quantity which makes the speech have the best quality. 3 maximum of relation which makes the speech have close relation with the subject. 4 maximum of manner which means choosing the best way to express the idea. to sum up, what grice emphasize is the

28、 high efficiency of language. therefore, the principle of economy of language in a broad sense has two features: decrease the quantity and improve the quality. during the information transmission, the principle of economy requires to reduce the redundant information and make the new information prom

29、inent. the principle of economy is much used in the study of generative grammar, especially in chomskeys minimalist program. the principle of ecomomy is one of the key content of the universal grammar. it includes the study program of language and economy of detivation as well as the optimization an

30、d simplicity of economy of representation. the economy of represention requies that expression forms language have no redundant words and the grammar is simple and brief. chomskey also put forward the standards of evaluation for language theories: sufficiency and simplicity. chomskeys thought indica

31、tes that the language acquisition mechanism of human behavior forms in the most simple and effective way. besides, the maximum of quantity in the cooperative principle of grice (1975), the principle of economy of leech (1983), the rational principle of kasher (1986) and jespersens ease theory or eco

32、nomy of effort (jespersen, 1994: 263) are all the reflections of the principle of economy. to sum up, the principle of economy is applied to language and language study, and speed up the simplification of language because human being likes using the simple expression forms which are easy to understa

33、nd, study and use. hong baote thinks that during the process of the actual application of language, if the pratical tendency takes the upper hand, various abbreviations and simplified forms will be imposed on language, (1997:278) so does the net-language. with the popularization of the internet tech

34、nology, the net-language has become a new media language for human communication, the net-language is not only a challenge to the traditional language, but also development and complemention to it. (chai lei, 2006:37) the net-language is a “wind vane” of language development, as a new language pheno

35、menon, it proves with a completely new way that both the language itself and its dynamic development follow the principle of economy. (liu nian, 2004:93) the net-language is rooted in the traditional language, the traditional language has four rationals to follow the principle of economy: 1) the sim

36、ple and abbreviated language forms can transfer peoples thought and feeling more rapidly than the complicated and redundant forms. 2) it is the result of logic thinking 3) the innate laziness of human being. 4) the requirement of rhetorical devices. the above four points are also the reasons that th

37、e net-language follow the principle of economy. according to the study, the simplification and ellipsis are very popular in the net-language. (lu xiaoyan, 2006:72) in next chapter, the focus is to analyse how the principle of economy is applied to the net-language from the perspective of features of

38、 the net-language.3. lexical featuresas an informal language style, the network language has a partiality for some informal words, such as abbreviation, coinages, homophones and slang. surfing on the net is charged according to the time, so the network communication must be fast and high efficient.

39、under such circumstance, the combination of english and chinese, various abbreviations and words in simplified forms become the most important features of the network language. now the lexical features will be discussed from the following aspects. 3.1 a large quantity of homophonesin the network lan

40、guage, figures play an important role. because of the relations between homophones and imputing methods, some figure compositions have special meanings. besides, in order to speed up the communication, people just type the words in chinese pinyin and press “enter” without choosing a proper word, as

41、a result, some interesting and strange homophones come into being, which are divided into three categories. 3.1.1 english homophonesthe network was originally a small scale computer network developing with american cold war, and now it has become a worldwide network of information resource, thus mak

42、ing american gain the upper hand in language english becomes universal language for global computers. so many new words on the internet are the transliteration of english, for example:example(1)r = are b =be/beec =see cu =see youur =yourthe english homophones are good examples that reflect the princ

43、iple of economy. instead of the complete forms, the simple and brief english forms save much time and speed up the communication so that people can send much useful information in the shortest time. this is the effect of the principle of economy_ to reduce the quantity and improve the quality. 3.1.2

44、 chinese homophoneschinese homophones are another forms of expression to manifest the principle of economy. because of the limitation of keyboards, when people input the letters, the first word is usually not proper matched, but in order to save effort and send more information, net-citizens just us

45、e the word that first appears on the screen without selection, so chinese homophones come into being, for example: example (2)酱紫：这样子（like this）菌男：俊男（handsome man）霉女：美女（beautiful girl）斑竹：版主 (people managing a website or a forum)幽香：邮箱（email-address）竹叶：主页(frontpage)大虾：大侠(an cyber expert) 哈9：喝酒(drink) 果

46、酱：过奖(over praise)木油：没有(dont have)爱老虎油：i love youfrom the above examples we can see that those words are not proper use in our daily life, and for some words we indeed find in the daily use, but they have changed their original meanings in the new environment. however, they have their unique features

47、 and people may be impressed by these words because of their humor, vividness and creativity. maybe this is the reason that net-citizens use this kind of language form to show their personality.3.1.3 figure homophoneson the cyber space, people like to use arabic numerals which have similar pronuncia

48、tion with chinese character to instead of the words and sentences. because of their convenience and conciseness, the figures are used frequently, for example:example (3) 8147:不要生气(dont be angry)584: 我发誓(i promise) 1314:一生一世(for all ones life) 687:对不起(im sorry)3166: 撒优那拉(bye-bye in japanese) 246:我饿死了

49、(im very hungry) 5871:我不介意(i dont care)56:无聊(boring) 520:我爱你(i love you)51396: 我要睡觉了(im going to sleep)limited by the hardware equipment, the net-language can only input words with keyboards. compared with other language forms, the net-language is comparatively boring and dull, while the figure form

50、s make the net-communication more vivid, colorful and lively. in addition, this form also saves time and effort, making the communication more efficient, this is the requirements of the principle of economy.3.2 all kinds of abbreviationsthe cyber abbreviations have common features with other abbrevi

51、ations, such as conciseness, convenience and much information, so it can improve the communicative efficiency and decrease the cost, besides, it conforms to the tendency to seek fashion and personality. therefore, the abbreviation can be widely accepted. 3.2.1 english abbreviationthere are two kinds

52、 of abbreviations; first, we would like to discuss the english abbreviation. the english abbreviations first are mainly from the simplified symbols of fax or telegraph english, and later, people make some changes with their creativity and imagination, for example:example(4)bf : boyfriend xmas: chris

53、tmas imo: in my opinion tim: thanks in advance ic: i seemorf: male or femalelat: lovely and talentedkiss: keep it simple yoyow: you own your own wordsvc: venture capital 3.2.2 chinese phonetic abbreviationsthis kind abbreviation, especially used for addressing, is warmly human and interesting. it fo

54、rms according to chinese pronunciation and it is usually composed by the first letter of chinese pinyin, for example:example (5)mm means younger sister(妹妹)gg means old brother(哥哥)dd means litter brother(弟弟)bt means abnormal(变态)bd means stupid (笨蛋)plmm means beautiful girl,(漂亮妹妹) wan means i love you

55、(我爱你) we can see from the above examples that the use of abbreviations greatly shorten the typing time and save effort., the most important is that people can speed up the communication and transfer more information in the shortest tine. that means reducing the quantity and improves the quality whic

56、h is the reflection of the maximization of utilization. (jespersen, 1994: 263) 3.3 use of emoticonssince the network is a virtual space, the face-to-face talks havent been realized, so combinations of alphabets, figures and special symbols are used to express all kinds of feelings. these emoticons a

57、re widely accepted and become an important complementary system of the network, for example:example (6):(: unhappy -_-: mysterious smile -(*): nausea:-p: put out ones tongue ;-): wink *: drunk :-q: smokingo:-): angel :-x: seal the mouth :-&: tongue-tied although inputing words with keyboards has som

58、e defects because there are only letters,figures and special symbols in the keyboards. however, the symbols are ised ingeniously to form a new form of expressionemoticons so as to imitate the facial expression in the real situation. meanwhile, it makes up the deficiency of being dull and adds truthfulness, vividness, humor and colorfulness to the net-communication. besides, insteade of words and sentences, the sumple emoticons can express ones feeling with ease, so what the principle of economy emphasize