Research on Chinglish in the Internet Buzzwords from the ...
Transcript of Research on Chinglish in the Internet Buzzwords from the ...
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Research on Chinglish in the Internet Buzzwords from 1
the Perspective of Sociolinguistics 2
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The Internet buzzword containing a lot of Chinglish is a new form of 4
language generated in the context of the rapid development and wide spread 5
of the Internet. A large number of Internet buzzwords, which is different from 6
the traditional media language, correspond with the trend of the time as well 7
as meet the satisfaction of people’s language demands. As an academic 8
discipline, the main purpose of sociolinguistic is to study the relationship 9
between people’s language and the social condition. This paper will 10
illustrate the Chinglish in the Internet buzzword from the perspective of 11
sociolinguistics. 12
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Keywords: Chinglish, Internet Buzzword, Sociolinguistics 14
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Introduction 17
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Research Background 19
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With the rapid development of the Internet, communicating with each 21
other online has become a kind of normality for many people. Chatting online 22
means that people‟s use of language can be collected, calculated as well as 23
analyzed, leading to the generation of the buzzword. The buzzword always 24
refers to a word or phrase that becomes very popular for a period of time. As a 25
character that can represent the current social condition, the buzzword has 26
attached more attention from linguist, especially the sociolinguist. Due to the 27
fact that the language use of people from different nations varies significantly, 28
the buzzword always embodies social characters and reflects people‟s 29
psychological condition in different nations. Buzzword with Chinese 30
characteristics used by Chinese netizens is definitely tightly combined with 31
China‟s society, leading to the appearance of some Chinglish buzzword 32
expressions. At the meantime, the usage and wide spread of Chinese buzzword 33
has become the most noticeable social phenomena. As a sub-field of linguistics, 34
sociolinguistics aims to study the relation between language and society in 35
which the users of language live. This paper aims to analyze the Chinglish 36
phenomenon of the Internet buzzword based on the perspective of 37
sociolinguistics. 38
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Significance of the Research 1
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With the development of science and technology, people used to 3
communicate with each other online, giving birth to the Internet buzzword. The 4
buzzword used by Chinese netizens carries Chinese characteristics which can 5
also reflect the current condition of Chinese society. Through analyzing the 6
semantic and linguistic of Chinese annual Internet buzzwords, people can 7
recognize different periods of social presences as well as the current cultural 8
types in society. With more progress achieved in the society, linguists initiate to 9
realize the significance of analyzing annual buzzwords. Although a number of 10
papers have been published in the general area of the relation between 11
sociolinguistics and Internet buzzwords, little work has been carried out in 12
search of the Chinglish phenomena in Internet buzzword from the perspective 13
of sociolinguistics. Some scholars analyzed the relation between buzzword and 14
sociolinguistics while other scholars explored the reason why Internet 15
buzzword always carry Chinglish phenomena. On the basis of existing 16
literature data, this research paper carried out studies in an effort to explore 17
Chinglish in Internet buzzword with the sociolinguistics theory. 18
The study can also help us to understand and know the changes of the 19
society as well as a better prediction towards social and linguistic development 20
in the future. Based on the analysis of the relations among these three factors, 21
people can have a more comprehensive understanding of social and cultural 22
life. 23
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Organization of the research 25
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The first chapter of this paper explains the brief introduction of this 27
research background and the research significance. The second chapter 28
composes of three parts. The first part illustrates the definition of buzzword 29
and the Chinglish phenomena in the Internet buzzword. The following part 30
demonstrates the definition and development of sociolinguistics. The third part 31
is the research in exploring the Chinglish Internet buzzword from the 32
perspective of sociolinguistics. The last part of this paper is the conclusion. 33
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Research on Chinglish in the Internet Catchwords from the Perspective of 1
Sociolinguistics 2
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Internet buzzword 4
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Definition of the Internet buzzword 6
With the rapid development of science and technology, Internet has 7
become the most frequently used in people‟s daily life. As technology develops, 8
people‟s language usage can be recorded, calculated and analyzed, giving 9
buzzword opportunity to emerge. Although buzzword has attracted wide 10
attention from sociolinguists, there is still no explicit definitions of it from the 11
perspective of sociolinguistics. According to the dictionary, buzzword always 12
refers to a word and phrase that has become popular especially relating to a 13
certain subject or activity. The England linguist, David Crystal (2001) defined 14
the network language in his book “Language and the Internet”.1 He indicates 15
that the network language is a media that appear in the entire internet 16
environment and reflect the unique appearance of the internet. However, 17
Chinese scholar Genyuan YU (2001) argues that "network language" itself is a 18
network line and it originally refers to the computer language in the internet, 19
and also refers to the natural language that have their own characteristics in the 20
internet usage. 2Nowadays, it generally refers to the latter. Internet buzzwords 21
are the expressions that are popular on the Internet, which is the most active 22
part of the Internet language as well as a customary way of expression by 23
netizens. 24
Generated from the society, buzzword is the reflection of some certain 25
incidents in the society. As we all know, the emergence of buzzword is based 26
on the current social condition, culture types as well as social changes. The 27
accelerated development of technology gives buzzword an access to spread in a 28
wider range, making it more prominent to illustrate the relation between 29
society and buzzword. Aiming to explore the approach in which did the 30
buzzword reflect the social condition, institutes and scholars initiated to 31
summarize the annual Internet buzzword. 32
Since 2000, the Global Language Institute started to use a computer 33
program to track the frequency of English words used on thousands of media 34
outlets, blogs and social media sites around the world to pick the top words 35
each year. Merriam-Webster also selected the word of the year based on how 36
1Baron, N. S. (2003). Language of the Internet. The Stanford handbook for language engineers,
59-127. 2Genyuan, Y. U. (2010). The History and Development of Chinese Applied Linguistics
[J]. Applied Linguistics, 1.
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often anonymous users look up words in the online dictionary. The UK's Word 1
of the Year was chosen by the Oxford University Press. By tracking changes in 2
the use of words in the English, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and the 3
Oxford American Dictionary (OED) selected the British and American 4
buzzwords and the word of the year which were the perfect expression towards 5
the condition of the year. In addition, CollinsDictionals.com has chosen 12 6
words of the year, based on events of each month. Australia's Macquarie 7
Dictionary has also published its Australian version of the word of the year 8
since 2006.In addition to its word of the year, the Macquarie Dictionary will 9
also rank the selected words by subject category, including agriculture, art, 10
politics, science and technology, Internet, sports, etc. The changes in Internet 11
buzzword demonstrate social and cultural transformations. 12
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The current situation of the Internet buzzword 14
With the flourish of the Internet era, network buzzword has become 15
popular in the society. In the Internet world, netizens hold different 16
interpretations towards each social event, giving them impetus to accept, 17
spread and even create new Internet buzzwords. Buzzwords are created based 18
on netizens‟ meaning interpretation, homophonics, abbreviations and mixture 19
of Chinese and English. All these changes have made huge impact in people‟s 20
daily language use. 21
When the buzzword emerged, it was arduous for people to summarize the 22
logic and principle to constitute a buzzword. With the accumulation of 23
buzzwords, linguists realized that semantics, grammar, vocabulary and 24
pronunciation are the four main elements that constitute a buzzword and once 25
one of these factors were altered, the origin word‟s meaning and function could 26
be totally different, laying foundation for the creation of the network 27
buzzword. 28
With more than 10 years‟ development and changes of buzzword, a 29
conclusion can be withdrawn: the created buzzword is closely related to 30
entertaining atmosphere, which can be simple, fun and straightforward to 31
reflect people‟s emotion, current social condition and people‟s attitude towards 32
certain incidents. Considering the buzzword from the perspective of linguistics, 33
an unified standard and norm does not exist to form the buzzword which can 34
originate from the films, TV series and social incidents. Thanks to the arbitrary 35
of buzzword‟s formation, it is hard for elder people to understand the 36
buzzword‟s deep meaning, accept its unique formation and employ the 37
buzzword in their daily language usage. Taking 蒜泥狠 as an example, which 38
was a classic buzzword generated in 2010 and had been categorized into 2010 39
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Annual Buzzword. This buzzword originated from the Chinese expression 算1
你狠, which was most frequently used in the northeast of China to express 2
people‟s unwillingness towards their rivals while after being altered into 蒜泥3
狠, this expression was used by Chinese netizens to make sarcasm of the 4
extreme high market price of garlic. All these buzzwords spread widely online, 5
while interpreting these expressions is challenging for elderly people who do 6
not use the Internet. The communication gap between the youngster and the 7
elder contributes to the gap in using buzzword. All these aspects combined 8
together formulates the complex current situation of Internet buzzword usage. 9
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Chinglish in the Internet buzzword 11
"Chinglish" is defined as "English with Chinese characteristics" because it 12
is the mixture of half English and half Chinese, and is considered to be the 13
"perfect combination" of Chinese grammar and English words. "Chinglish" is 14
different from "Chinese English", which is usually manifested as the irregular 15
expression methods of English learners when they express their thoughts due to 16
the influence of thinking, culture and other factors. And "Chinese English" 17
refers to the language with Chinese cultural connotation, is China's 18
complement to the world corpus which belongs to a part of the world language. 19
The globalization has made great contributions in closely combining the world 20
together, impelling people to learn other countries‟ language and will finally 21
lead to the mixture between different languages. With the rapid development 22
and wide application of Internet technology, the Internet buzzword goes viral 23
among Chinese netizens, making Chinglish in the Internet buzzword a hot topic 24
in language research discussed by linguists. The Chinglish originates from the 25
social development, which can be understood, comprehended and accepted by 26
people of all ages. 27
Chinglish, possessing a long history of language development, is an 28
unique language form which can be firstly tracked back to Hong Kong in 29
1990s. When communicating with foreigners, local residents used to mix 30
Chinese expressions with English words, such as the usage of long time no see 31
as a greeting. Whenever two kinds of languages were mentioned, translation 32
must exist as the bridge to connect these two languages and Chinglish‟s first 33
appearance is in the process of translating Chinese words and phrases into 34
English with Chinese original word order. Taking mountain people mountain 35
sea as an example, this is a traditional Chinese expression 人山人海, which is 36
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used to describe the crowded people while the Chinglish expression arrange the 1
English word according to the Chinese order. The following phase of Chinglish 2
is the appearance of network buzzwords. As the Internet technology develops, 3
the utilization of the online software to communicate has gained popularity, 4
causing the surge of network Chinglish buzzwords, such as you can you up and 5
no zuo no die. The second category is the combination of pinyin and English 6
word formation, such as gelivable and ungeilivable. This kind of buzzword 7
combines pinyin and affixes of English words together to express people‟s 8
current psychological condition, state and nature. 9
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Sociolinguistics 11
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The background of Sociolinguistics 13
Compared with other linguistics research subjects, sociolinguistics is a 14
relatively nascent subject with the history of over 40 years. According to 15
Frederick J. Newmeyer, the emergence and development of sociolinguistics are 16
closely related to the social conditions after the World War II. 3When the war 17
ended, many countries tried to make the recovery from the devastating 18
damages by carrying out national liberation movements to reopen economy and 19
rejuvenate the whole society. During the process of launching these activities, 20
many scholars and national officials realized that it was a challenging work to 21
determine national language after the establishment of the national regime 22
based on the fact that almost all the people could speak more than two 23
languages thanks to the colonial rule with the long period of time. At the same 24
period of time, some ethnic minority groups dedicated to fight for their equal 25
rights while the language had become the barrier in the communication process. 26
The liberation movements also reinvigorate woman‟s thoughts, giving them 27
more space to consider about their own social identities, giving linguists 28
impetus to consider whether our language perpetuates the gender inequality. 29
Integrated together, all these factors promoted the study of social language, 30
such as African American vernacular English and Chicano Spanish, which can 31
be regarded as the social context in which sociolinguistics comes into being. 32
Frederick J. Newmeyer‟s view illustrate this problem from the perspective of 33
national integration and the changes of the world pattern. 34
However, the debate about the first person proposing the term 35
„sociolinguistics‟ is still up in the air. According to LePage, the term 36
„sociolinguistics‟ first appeared in the second edition of Eugene Nida ' s 1949 37
classic 《Morphology》 in the appendix to the Oxford English Dictionary 38
3 Frederick J. Neweyer , The History of Linguistics, the University of Washington.
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published in 1986. 4As an academic discipline, sociolinguistics was first 1
mentioned in T. C. Hodson ' s paper Sociolinguistics in India in 1939. Hudson 2
mentioned that Hasr C. Currie published an article entitled ' Projection of 3
Sociolinguistics: the relationship of speech to social status ' in 1952, which 4
was drafted in 1949 and published in 1952.5Since then Currie has laboriously 5
claimed that he has priority in the establishment of the term „sociolinguistics‟ 6
with constant effort. The following scholars who have made enduring efforts in 7
the development of this academic discipline should be American sociolinguists 8
such as Fishman, Helms and Rabov. 9
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The definition of Sociolinguistics 11
As globalization develops, the communication among the countries is 12
becoming more and more frequent, making language indispensable in the 13
communication process. Being a tool, language plays an essential role in the 14
process of communication. Thanks to its significance, the enduring exploration 15
towards the language has been made, leading to the emergence of many 16
linguistics theories regarding the study of language variation and historical 17
linguistics and sociolinguistics are two perspectives that are most used in the 18
analysis of language variation. The study of linguistics from the perspective of 19
historical development mainly follows the historical changes of language, 20
which constantly changes according to the development of history. While the 21
study of linguistics from the perspective of social context aims to put language 22
into the overall social environment. Regarding linguistics from the perspective 23
from social context, language generates and develops together with social 24
development. 25
According to Holmes and Hudson, sociolinguistics is the study of the 26
relationship between people and society.6 In the view of sociolinguists, 27
language will lack its theoretical basis without being carried out in the social 28
context. The question that perplexes sociolinguists the most is that why 29
people‟s expression varies according to the changes in social context and they 30
have endeavored to explain this phenomena. The traditional linguistics used to 31
make the exploration of the language variation from the historical perspective, 32
neglecting the sociality of language and the emergence of sociolinguistics has 33
compensated the vacancy of the analysis of language usage in society. 34
Being a product in the process of social development, language is 35
inseparable from the social context and due to the fact that people‟s 36
4Le Page, R. B. (1974). Processes of Pidginization and Creolization.
5Hudson, R.A. Sociolinguistics[M]. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press,
2000. 6Holmes, J.An Introd uction to sociolinguistics [M].Harlow Essex: Longman,1999.
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communication rests entirely on the society, endowing the analysis of language 1
variation in social context more prominence in linguistic study. Some linguists 2
state that language change in social context as „incomplete changes‟ while the 3
diachronic language change is „complete change‟ and claim that the complete 4
change deserves more attention compared with uncomplete change. However, 5
the fact is that the incomplete language change lays foundation for complete 6
change and the development of uncomplete language change can stimulate the 7
development of complete language change. The development of technology 8
prompts the birth of new things and the word‟s definition is considered as one 9
of the elementary subjects in the linguistic research. Regarding the relation 10
between people and society, four kinds relations existing in the current 11
linguistics research, the social structure affects and determines the language 12
structure; the social structure affects and determines the social structure; there 13
is no relationship between language and society; admitting the existence of 14
relation between language and society while it is not the perfect time to analyze 15
the relation. 16
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The schools of sociolinguistics 18
When it comes to the discussion of the academic schools of 19
sociolinguistics, scholars are basically categorized into two schools: one is 20
based on dichotomy classification, and is divided into macro sociolinguistics 21
and micro sociolinguistics, and the other is based on the tripartite classification, 22
which the baseline follows the chronic line of main school in the development 23
of sociolinguistics, the development of sociolinguistics, it can be divided into 24
the sociological school of language represented by Fishman, the school of 25
discourse culture represented by Hymes and the school of linguistic variation 26
represented by Labov. This paper will illustrate the sociolinguistics schools 27
based on the tripartite classification. Fishman, the pioneer of sociolinguistics, 28
proposed the Sociological School of Language in his book Sociology of 29
Language, who believed that the language could be divided into two categories, 30
descriptive social language and dynamic social language.7 The sociology of 31
descriptive language refers to the language that explains the language usage 32
phenomenon of the social group which can be accepted by people in the social 33
community. Dynamic sociology of language aims to explain and answer 34
questions such as „what factors contribute to the changes in language use and 35
behavior of social groups‟. Fishman‟s research covers the macro level of 36
language division (including linguistic, ethnic, religious activities), language 37
planning and vocabulary are included. As the representer of school of discourse 38
culture, Hymes pioneered in enlarging the research field of discourse cultural 39
7Fishman, J. A. Advances in the Sociology of Language,Volume I. The Hague:Mouton,1972.
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communication. 8In his book, Foundations of Sociolinguistics, Hymes states 1
that the main aim of the sociolinguistics is to analyze the language‟s culture 2
and communication function. According to Hymes, the main research target of 3
sociolinguistics is to illustrate human culture and people‟s social 4
communication phenomena rather than language itself. In the book, Hymes 5
proposed three targets of sociolinguistics research, which are sociolinguistics 6
deals with the social problems and language usage, sociolinguistics studies the 7
linguistic reality in the social context, and sociolinguistics is also the linguistics 8
formed in social communication. According to Hymes, sociolinguistics focuses 9
on the penetration between language forms and language social functions that 10
produce different forms of expression of language in society. The main 11
contribution of the school of linguistic variation represented by Labov is his 12
research on the variation and quantification of Massa‟s Vineyard and New York 13
urban dialects with sociolinguistics methods. 14
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Research on Chinglish in the Internet Buzzwords from the Perspective of 16
Sociolinguistics 17
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With the rapid development of Internet technology, the access towards the 19
Internet becomes even more facilitate, making people more addicted to the 20
Internet which gives the linguist opportunity to collect the language data which 21
can be viewed as the basis to analyze people‟s language behavior under 22
different social context. Once being collected, the most frequently used words 23
by netizens online can be obtained, among which the top ten words are defined 24
as the annual buzzwords. All these words root in Chinese Internet environment 25
and is utilized by Chinese netizens to demonstrate their opinion and attitude 26
towards social current condition. As a subject primarily aiming to illuminate 27
the relation between language and social condition, sociolinguistics should be 28
employed in analyzing the Chinglish in the Internet buzzwords. 29
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The relation between the network buzzword and the society 31
Since 2003, China‟s mainstream newspaper began to select the top ten 32
buzzwords annually and authoritative language institutions will jointly release 33
the list of annual top ten buzzwords. Thanks to the media‟s attention, the 34
widespread of buzzword has attracted social attention. Through the analysis of 35
buzzword, the overall condition regarding the development of economy, 36
politics and culture can be comprehended. The buzzword can be viewed as the 37
most direct indicator which can embody the changes in economy, society and 38
8Hymes, D. H. Foundations of Sociolinguistics: Anethnographic approach[M]. Philadelphia:
University of Pensyllvania Press, 1974.
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culture. Compared with other normal vocabulary, buzzwords can reflect the 1
characteristics of the current cultural and social changes, making it essential to 2
conduct research in buzzword. Taking 蒜泥狠、糖高宗 and 姜你军 as the 3
example, all these three expressions are the alternation of 算你狠、唐高宗 and 4
将你一军, which are used to express the depressing attitude with the defiant 5
tone towards their rivals. These three altered expressions generate from the 6
surging market price of garlic, sugar and ginger, which raised the heat 7
discussion among the Chinese netizens and a huge amount of people satirized 8
that the price was too high to make the purchase of these vegetables. Bearing 9
this sarcasm in mind, people innovated these expressions to reflect the social 10
condition of 2010, which can be used as evidence for the latter generation to 11
analyze the social condition at that period of time. Considering the buzzword 12
summarized from the last year, the top ten to one are 人民至上、逆行者、飒、13
后浪、神兽、直播带货、双循环、打工人、内卷、凡尔赛文学 and the English 14
translated version are Put people and life first, heroes in harm’s way, dashing, 15
younger generation, godbeast, live streaming, dual-cycle economic model, 16
dagongren(laborer), involution, Versailles literature respectively. All these 17
buzzwords epitomize the social condition in 2021, put people and life first was 18
proposed in the speech of President Xi jinping to combat the spread of the 19
COVID 19 with joint efforts. The heroes in harm’s way is the expression used 20
by Premier Li Keqiang to show respect to those healthcare workers from across 21
the nation to support epidemic control. The word dashing used to describe 22
people who is lively and spirited and the Chinese netizens borrowed the word 23
to represent the female who have made great contributions in combating the 24
COVID 19. During the process of fighting against the epidemic, the younger 25
Chinese generation showed their spirit and dedication by participating actively 26
in the fight, giving the whole nation an access to reidentify the younger 27
generation. The phrase younger generation is adopted by Chinese netizens to 28
show their appreciation towards Chinese young people. The godbeast is the 29
result of the epidemic, which is used to refer the children who could not go to 30
school thanks to the epidemic, making their parents insane by spending nearly 31
whole day at home. All these expressions above are the result of epidemic, 32
which is the most direct reflection of the social condition at that period of time. 33
By analyzing the definition of these expressions, people can have an overall 34
understanding towards the social condition under the spread of COVID19. 35
Versailles literature is a kind of literature used to describe the behavior of 36
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mocking online with humblebrag. The most essential of this literature is that 1
the celebrity often disguise their boasts as complaints or seemingly modest 2
statements. Chinese netizens imitate the Versailles literature‟s typical 3
expression so as to satirize the celebrities, which can unveil people‟s sarcasm 4
towards the Versailles literature. 5
From the comparison between the network buzzword in 2010 and 2020, 6
the relation between network buzzword and society can be easily recognized. 7
With the analysis of the buzzword in 2010, the current market condition with 8
the surging price of vegetable can be comprehended by the latter generation 9
while the analysis of the top ten network buzzwords can reveal the social 10
condition under the spread of COVID 19, making following generation 11
available to outline the general social condition and giving foreigners a better 12
understanding towards the Chinese real social condition under the influence of 13
the coronavirus. With the characteristic of reflecting the social condition, it is 14
even more crucial to illustrate the Chinglish in the Internet buzzword from the 15
perspective of sociolinguistics. 16
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The reason of Chinglish’s emergence from the perspective of sociolinguistics 18
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1)The internal language causes 20
In search for the reason of the Chinglish in the network buzzword, the 21
internal language reason stands as a powerful contributor to the popularity of 22
Chinglish on the Internet. From the linguistic perspective, many Chinese words 23
and expressions have no equivalence in English, which will lead to the 24
inaccurate translation. Concerning this linguistic gap between Chinese and 25
English, Chinese netizens created some Chinglish expressions to give an 26
accurate description about Chinese unique social condition, such as 作 and 给27
力 with no equivalence in English, promoting Chinese people to create the no 28
zuo no die and geilivable were used to picture Chinese social condition with a 29
more accurate meaning. Chinese scholars also combined the Chinglish with 30
English grammar, by adding the negative prefixes in front of the geilivable and 31
change it into negeilivable, extending the meaning of this expression. 32
With the facilitate communication between the countries, people from 33
different nations can exchange their ideas through the Internet, giving the 34
Chinglish expression more access to transfer around the world. The language 35
exchange between different language groups will produce the mutual influence 36
and finally alter the expression‟s original meaning. Being spread to other 37
English-speaking countries, the Chinglish expression gained popularity, 38
making the expression lose its original language characteristics, which leads to 39
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the result that the application of the Chinglish become the more appropriate 1
one to describe the social condition. As a Chinglish expression, people 2
mountain people sea means that there are a lot of people in some place, very 3
crowded, usually used to describe a big event or place which was used mostly 4
by Chinese netizens while gained popularity in foreign countries and was 5
included in the Oxford Dictionary. According to the statistics, the number of 6
new Chinglish terms included in the Oxford Dictionary is 245, which counts 7
more than 5% in the total number of new terms. In 2014, you can you up and 8
no can no bb have been added into the Urban Dictionary, a satirical 9
crowdsourced online dictionary of slang words and phrases. The popularity of 10
Chinglish reveals that this unique expression has become a certain approach to 11
observe the whole nation as well as demonstrates the increasing strength of 12
China. 13
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(2) The sociocultural causes 15
The sociocultural changes also pose great impacts on the network 16
buzzword. As the globalization develops in depth, the communication between 17
countries has been linked closely, giving Chinese and English a more extensive 18
application in people‟s daily language use. With the increasing number of 19
Chinese people learning English and more foreigners choose to learn Chinese, 20
the integration of two languages has been realized, providing a favorable 21
environment for Chinese netizens to create new network buzzwords. 22
The appearance of Internet buzzword is a phenomenon combined with 23
linguistic and cultural characteristics. The generation and development of 24
buzzword has been greatly influenced by social changes in political, economic 25
and cultural aspects. The political element not only defines the nature of the 26
buzzword but also renders the political characteristic to the buzzword, making 27
it distinctive from other buzzwords. The last few years have witnessed the birth 28
of the network buzzword with political traits such as targeted poverty 29
alleviation, Beijign-tianjin-hebei integration and the new norm are three 30
buzzwords summarized from 2014, 2015 and 2016 respectively. The linguistic 31
variation diverts according to the changes in political aspect of the society, 32
demonstrating the fact that the buzzword can reflect the political condition in 33
the society. The economic aspect in the society can be regarded as the second 34
sociocultural cause which contributes to the emergence of the Chinglish in 35
Internet buzzword. As the economy develops, China has now become as the 36
world‟s second largest economic power, which can greatly increase people‟s 37
living standards. Through reform and opening up, China has gained more 38
momentum in economic development, with which Chinese people have plenty 39
time to experience lives in all rounds. The buzzword such as the economic 40
downturn, mass entrepreneurship and mobile payment are the response to the 41
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rapid economic development as well as people‟s improving living standard. 1
The cultural changes also make promotions to the emergence of buzzword. 2
With the slack policies together with the development of Internet, the 3
restriction for people to connect with people from other countries has alleviated. 4
The language creation has been stimulated with the basis of the obscure 5
boundary between country and the birth of new ideas and viewpoints. The 6
cultural exchanges among countries have been deepened which give people 7
passion to create new things, resulting the emergence of a large number of 8
network buzzwords. The expression like go die, online celebrity and MOOC 9
are the reflection of sociocultural condition. 10
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Conclusion 13
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As the product of the social change, the function of Internet buzzword has 15
both sides. On the one side, through the analysis of the Internet buzzword, the 16
current social condition can be revealed. With the use of Internet buzzword, 17
people‟s communication efficiency can be simplified. Being one of the main 18
users of these Internet buzzword, teenagers who prefer to chase for fashion can 19
build their culture confidence and realize their own national identities. With 20
these exchanges in language, Chinese and English can gain improvements so as 21
to strengthen the communication capability. 22
While on the other hand, the use of the Internet buzzword also has some 23
shortcomings in the real application of language. The wide use of buzzword in 24
people‟s daily life may enlarge the language gap between the younger 25
generation and the elder one. The Internet buzzwords often gain their roots 26
from the Internet, which is unfamiliar for the Chinese elder generation. If 27
teenagers apply the Internet buzzwords frequently in daily communication with 28
their parents, Chinglish will impose negative impacts on the intergenerational 29
communication. What‟s more, the buzzword is created by Chinese netizen with 30
no formal shapes and most of these expressions are not being verified by the 31
language institutions, enlightening people to be cautious when encountering the 32
formal text. In addition, it is challenging for teenagers to make selection 33
between formal expressions and Internet buzzwords. 34
Chinglish is an emerging language form generated under the background 35
of the extensive application of Internet together with the deep linguistic and 36
cultural integration of Chinese and English. The Internet buzzword reflects 37
social condition which have not been examined and verified by formal 38
linguistic organizations. With all these factors combined together, the Chinglish 39
in the Internet buzzword should be treated dialectically. From the perspective 40
of sociolinguistic, the emergence of Chinglish in the Internet buzzword has 41
2021-4310-AJP-LNG – 11 JUN 2021
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both advantage and disadvantage. Therefore, during the process of treating 1
these expressions, more attention should be paid to distinguish the right 2
approach by avoiding the weakness of the emerging language form so as to 3
achieve a healthy and sustainable development. 4
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