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【Abstract】In the recent two decades, the computer industry and internet business have significant development all over the world which provide a cradle for the coming of new Chinese Internet words. Many scholars have studied this new group of word as a whole or just some specific parts of it. This paper will give the term, weblect(网络方言), a definition after it was raised by Professor Hou guojin. Meanwhile it will focus on new Chinese Internet words that come from regional dialects, analyzing the causes of their emerging and popularizing. In addition, this term paper will predict its future after describing the impacts these words brought to mandarin Chinese.
【Key words】new Chinese Internet words; weblect; regional dialect; causes future
I. Introduction
With the development of economy and technology, computer and internet have widely spread all around us. According to the 35th Statistical Report on Internet Development in China released by CNNIC(China Internet Network Information Center), up to December 2014, the number of net citizens has reached 649 million, the penetration rate of Internet amounting to 47.9%, 2.1% higher than the former year. Net citizens, along with the language they use, come into the spotlight. In the recent years, quite a number of new words came into being on the Internet. Some examples are listed: 吃货；女汉子；么么哒；正能量；你妹；卖萌；腹黑；给力；好基友；不差钱；神马都是浮云；坑爹；不作死不会死；图样图森破；伐开心；你行你上；Bia…
Among those Internet new words, there is a special group that derives from regional dialects. Some of them come from dialects that muddle the apical consonants and retroflex consonants, like Sichuan dialect and Hunan dialect, for example, “涨姿势”. Some of them are stemmed from dialects in northeast China, as”银”, while “内什么” is rooted in Beijing or Tianjin dialect. Some of them are imitating northern dialects, for instance, “绳命” is the tone of Hebei dialect and ”肿么了” is the accent of Zaozhuang in Shandong. At the same time, it is worth noticing that many words are based on Minnan dialect, including”灰常”, “稀饭” and “虾米”. And also some of them are inspired by the tone of mandarin in Taiwan, such as “偶” and “不造”, to name just a few.
These new words emerging on the Internet is the superstar of the dialect that Chinese netizens create and use. One term that needs to be pointed out is weblect, coined by Hou(2007). He raised the term weblect, discussed obsolescence, described its generation background and status quo, and predicted its future development. However, he simply defined weblect as the dialect used on the Internet (both on cellphones and on computers) with its own features. Here we would like to make some additions to this statement. Biber (1995) claimed that sociolinguistics is a variety of speech associated with a particular social class or occupational group within a society is known as social dialect or sociolect. As a social dialect, the language that Chinese netizens use on the Internet is named as weblect. Therefore, it is necessary to define this specific group of weblect users. With the assistance of the 35th CNNIC report, we can find the traces of unique labels for this group of people that they are young, educated and living with steady incomes.
In conclusion, we can define weblect as the dialect used by netizens on the Internet who are mostly young and educated with stable incomes. Because of such features of those people, Internet new words are springing up and enriching weblect in its own way.
II. Causes of these words
Being part of the new Chinese Internet words, those words deriving from regional dialects share the common causes with the whole group.
The necessary preconditions are the development of economy and technology. Chinese economy keeps boosting, increasing over 7% yearly in the recent years, ranking 2nd in the world. Technology develops rapidly and cellphones and computers have updated one generation after another at a high speed, which could be seen by the numbers of netizens. Even 27.5% population in rural areas are net citizens up to December 2014. These development provide a solid foundation to the pervasion of Internet and new words. As it has been stated by Zhang Qingrong(2012), it is very convenient for people to copy and imitate on the Internet since the earth has become a global village, in which way their ideas on the Internet could spread all over the world in one second.
As for the psychological reason, it consist two aspects. On the one hand, because of the age structure of this group of people, they are curious and willing to learn new things. Being young, they are curious about these strange pronunciations which drives them to guess or search for their meanings. Being young they are willing to learn different things, different accents, compared to mandarin Chinese. That many people can sing several lyrics of songs in dialects, as Minnan dialects and Cantonese, is a powerful proof of this reason. These lyrics include “爱拼才会赢” in Minnan dialect, “迎接光辉岁月” in Cantonese. On the other hand, this bunch of young people are with strong personalities. They are eager to show their distinctiveness and their significance to others. Thus, they are partial to create and follow something different, isolated from the majority to emphasize their existence and their fashion taste. By originating these Internet new words from regional dialects or popularizing them, these people deem themselves as part of pioneers leading the fashion. Xiao Min(2012) has stated a similar point that the student group has a strong desire for knowledge and communicate with others. In addition, these words tend to invoke certain emotional respond or make the recipient empathize with the agent. Xu Zhongning(2004:184) has illustrated that on the Internet, in most cases, people are communicating with typing on the keyboard without hearing voices or seeing facial expressions. Given this circumstance, certain emotions could not get through screens. As a result, these creative words could make up the defects, acting with a pragmatic advantage. Several emotions could be invoked by these words, such as a sense of closeness, and humour, among others. Let’s take some of them as examples. “粉”, “肿么了”, and some others could shorten the distance between people. They are pretending to be naughty, and childish, like the innocent boy or girl you once have played with when you were a child. “银”, “内什么”, and “介个” could construct a humorous atmosphere and draw a smile face on the agent’s face. As for “偶”, and “不造”, this sort of speaking tone originating from Taiwan, is “dia”, playing the woman, to act in such an over gentle way that others cannot resist feeling charmed or regard you as a cute lady. With the help of these vivid words, the screens seem to be more humane instead of indifferent.
Since the pace of life is hurried up, many new words adhere to the Principle of Least Effort. For typing, “涨姿势”, “骚年”, “筒子们” and some other words have less letters, while “不造” is more concise in speaking than “不知道” with one character shorter, let alone those shortened version of sentences, like “人艰不拆”. As these words have proved, they are born as products of fast economy and the Principle of Least Effort. They are the trend of the times, at least for the moment.
One factor that cannot be neglected is their homophonic to mandarin Chinese. In China, Li Weihong, the vice minister of the Ministry of Education and the director of the State Language Work Committee, claimed that over 70% of Chinese have acquired the ability of using mandarin Chinese. This is to say, the majority of Chinese have no problem of hearing and speaking mandarin. Having similar pronunciation to Chinese, it is easy for people to guess these words’ original appearances and meanings. Ears have received different pronunciations from different dialects whether they like them or not. Thus, everyone has already learned things of different regional dialects, more or less. This is why this group of word seem to be more acceptable. As Haspelmath summarized, “iconicity” can be reduced to economy and distinctiveness. Since “bia” could express the action of sticking things vividly, like it was performed just beside you, there is no doubt why it could be so in vogue. III.Impacts and prospect
As the spreading of this group of new words, they have some influences on mandarin. The basic one is that it expands the vocabulary of mandarin. Taking “吐槽” for an example, it is a very preferable term for people who want to grumble about things they are not satisfied with. Min(2008) summed up that many words from regional dialects found their way into mandarin vocabulary, for example, Cantonese words like “牛市”, and “熊市” became professional mandarin that are related to stock market. However, the most prominent impact is that they have enriched the expression of mandarin on the respects of keeping up with the times, its sense of humour, and expressiveness, as Wang(2012) stated. These words have made up the weakness of mandarin when communicating on cellphones or computers.
Being descendants of regional dialects, they also play an active role of protecting these intangible cultural heritages. Many regional operas live by these dialects. With the generalization of mandarin, many ethnic dialects or regional dialects are ignored by their inheritors. These words arouse the attention on regional dialects, it would benefit the protection and inheritance of them.
Since this group of words is so important, it is inevitable to discuss its future. A lot of scholars have investigated into this aspect, whose results are divided into three different opinions. Years ago, many people argued that weblect, especially new Chinese Internet words, had tarnished the purity of mandarin, and they should be banned, while people tend to be more tolerant of it now. Many famous scholars have stated that mandarin should be modest to learn from other dialects, including Yu and Chen(2005), Qian Nairong and Shen Jiaxuan(Yang, 2008).
One stream suggests guiding its development, discarding those taboos or Chinese four-letter words, especially considering quite a number of teenage students are the users or viewers of the Internet. Yang(2008) has listed many attitudes alike. One group believes that the future of weblect is controlled by its users. The birth of weblect was the result of netizens’ choice, so whether it will has a bright future or not, this is also up to its users. Huang(2013), believes in this point of view. Another party regards weblect as a regular variety of language, and it should be given a free soil to grow on.
Let time decides. As Professor Hou(2007) described, taboos and vulgar expressions would be eliminated as time went by. There is a reasonable doubt. Every dialect has its own swear words. Since weblect is also a kind of dialect, there is no reason why weblect should be a piece of pure land without taboos. Language is changing all the time and weblect would also keep altering and updating. Some of them might be lucky enough to be enrolled in dictionaries. Whether they could survive during fierce competitions, whether they could last, this depends on the development of the Internet and the choice of netizens. Some may be eliminated while some new will be invented. IV.Conclusion
In this information age, economy and technology increase the pace of people’s lives, and make it possible for people to communicate with each other, to exchange ideas at any time at any place. Out of curiosity and ambition to be recognized, young netizens tend to create and use new words in weblect, illustrating that they are pioneers and they are in fashion. Therefore, some words originated from dialects with similar pronunciation to mandarin become popular and enrich the expression of mandarin. These words polish sentences to be humorous, shortening the distance between agents and recipients. Thus the Internet could be a lively communicating stage instead of being a place filled with indifferent expressions.
Weblect would develop with the Internet. These words may survive the rival or die out, while new words will come out like grass grows when the spring comes. Following the law of survival of the fittest, these new Chinese Internet words will have to face their own fate, including those coming from regional dialects. However, no matter how time changes, there will never be out of this kind of word.
References：
[1]Biber,D.Dimensions of Register Variation[M].New York:Cambridge University Press,1995.
[2]陈星.网络语言:发展中彰显无限魅力[A].江西省语言学会2008年年会论文集[C],2008:1-5.
[3]董洪亮.普通话:让交流更顺畅[N].人民日报,2005.
[4]郭笃凌,郝怀芳.网络语言的类型、特点及其语用学意义[J].现代语文,2006(3):65-67.
[5]侯国金.从“大哥大”的死到“恐龙”的生——“网络方言”刍议[J].燕山大学学报(哲学社会科学版),2007(2):48-53.
[6]黄伦峰.从文言的消亡看网络语言的发展[J].语文学刊,2013 (1):21-22.
[7]闵毅.普通话口语发展趋势[J].中华文化论坛,2008(8):271-272.
[8]肖敏.“给力”还是“伤不起”？——社会语言学视野下的网络潮语盛行现象[J].学术论坛,2012(2):170-173.
[9]许钟宁.网络语言编译的语言文化解析[A].修辞学新视野——汉语修辞与汉文化学术研讨会论文集,2004:174-185.
[10]王妍.网络语言对现代汉语的影响[J].剑南文学(经典教苑),2012:120.
[11]张青荣.网络语言的生态语言学审视[J].河南师范大学学报(哲学社会科学版),2012(4):191-193.
[12]张晓松.网络语言的社会语言学研究[J].语文建设,2012(4):29-31.
【Key words】new Chinese Internet words; weblect; regional dialect; causes future
I. Introduction
With the development of economy and technology, computer and internet have widely spread all around us. According to the 35th Statistical Report on Internet Development in China released by CNNIC(China Internet Network Information Center), up to December 2014, the number of net citizens has reached 649 million, the penetration rate of Internet amounting to 47.9%, 2.1% higher than the former year. Net citizens, along with the language they use, come into the spotlight. In the recent years, quite a number of new words came into being on the Internet. Some examples are listed: 吃货；女汉子；么么哒；正能量；你妹；卖萌；腹黑；给力；好基友；不差钱；神马都是浮云；坑爹；不作死不会死；图样图森破；伐开心；你行你上；Bia…
Among those Internet new words, there is a special group that derives from regional dialects. Some of them come from dialects that muddle the apical consonants and retroflex consonants, like Sichuan dialect and Hunan dialect, for example, “涨姿势”. Some of them are stemmed from dialects in northeast China, as”银”, while “内什么” is rooted in Beijing or Tianjin dialect. Some of them are imitating northern dialects, for instance, “绳命” is the tone of Hebei dialect and ”肿么了” is the accent of Zaozhuang in Shandong. At the same time, it is worth noticing that many words are based on Minnan dialect, including”灰常”, “稀饭” and “虾米”. And also some of them are inspired by the tone of mandarin in Taiwan, such as “偶” and “不造”, to name just a few.
These new words emerging on the Internet is the superstar of the dialect that Chinese netizens create and use. One term that needs to be pointed out is weblect, coined by Hou(2007). He raised the term weblect, discussed obsolescence, described its generation background and status quo, and predicted its future development. However, he simply defined weblect as the dialect used on the Internet (both on cellphones and on computers) with its own features. Here we would like to make some additions to this statement. Biber (1995) claimed that sociolinguistics is a variety of speech associated with a particular social class or occupational group within a society is known as social dialect or sociolect. As a social dialect, the language that Chinese netizens use on the Internet is named as weblect. Therefore, it is necessary to define this specific group of weblect users. With the assistance of the 35th CNNIC report, we can find the traces of unique labels for this group of people that they are young, educated and living with steady incomes.
In conclusion, we can define weblect as the dialect used by netizens on the Internet who are mostly young and educated with stable incomes. Because of such features of those people, Internet new words are springing up and enriching weblect in its own way.
II. Causes of these words
Being part of the new Chinese Internet words, those words deriving from regional dialects share the common causes with the whole group.
The necessary preconditions are the development of economy and technology. Chinese economy keeps boosting, increasing over 7% yearly in the recent years, ranking 2nd in the world. Technology develops rapidly and cellphones and computers have updated one generation after another at a high speed, which could be seen by the numbers of netizens. Even 27.5% population in rural areas are net citizens up to December 2014. These development provide a solid foundation to the pervasion of Internet and new words. As it has been stated by Zhang Qingrong(2012), it is very convenient for people to copy and imitate on the Internet since the earth has become a global village, in which way their ideas on the Internet could spread all over the world in one second.
As for the psychological reason, it consist two aspects. On the one hand, because of the age structure of this group of people, they are curious and willing to learn new things. Being young, they are curious about these strange pronunciations which drives them to guess or search for their meanings. Being young they are willing to learn different things, different accents, compared to mandarin Chinese. That many people can sing several lyrics of songs in dialects, as Minnan dialects and Cantonese, is a powerful proof of this reason. These lyrics include “爱拼才会赢” in Minnan dialect, “迎接光辉岁月” in Cantonese. On the other hand, this bunch of young people are with strong personalities. They are eager to show their distinctiveness and their significance to others. Thus, they are partial to create and follow something different, isolated from the majority to emphasize their existence and their fashion taste. By originating these Internet new words from regional dialects or popularizing them, these people deem themselves as part of pioneers leading the fashion. Xiao Min(2012) has stated a similar point that the student group has a strong desire for knowledge and communicate with others. In addition, these words tend to invoke certain emotional respond or make the recipient empathize with the agent. Xu Zhongning(2004:184) has illustrated that on the Internet, in most cases, people are communicating with typing on the keyboard without hearing voices or seeing facial expressions. Given this circumstance, certain emotions could not get through screens. As a result, these creative words could make up the defects, acting with a pragmatic advantage. Several emotions could be invoked by these words, such as a sense of closeness, and humour, among others. Let’s take some of them as examples. “粉”, “肿么了”, and some others could shorten the distance between people. They are pretending to be naughty, and childish, like the innocent boy or girl you once have played with when you were a child. “银”, “内什么”, and “介个” could construct a humorous atmosphere and draw a smile face on the agent’s face. As for “偶”, and “不造”, this sort of speaking tone originating from Taiwan, is “dia”, playing the woman, to act in such an over gentle way that others cannot resist feeling charmed or regard you as a cute lady. With the help of these vivid words, the screens seem to be more humane instead of indifferent.
Since the pace of life is hurried up, many new words adhere to the Principle of Least Effort. For typing, “涨姿势”, “骚年”, “筒子们” and some other words have less letters, while “不造” is more concise in speaking than “不知道” with one character shorter, let alone those shortened version of sentences, like “人艰不拆”. As these words have proved, they are born as products of fast economy and the Principle of Least Effort. They are the trend of the times, at least for the moment.
One factor that cannot be neglected is their homophonic to mandarin Chinese. In China, Li Weihong, the vice minister of the Ministry of Education and the director of the State Language Work Committee, claimed that over 70% of Chinese have acquired the ability of using mandarin Chinese. This is to say, the majority of Chinese have no problem of hearing and speaking mandarin. Having similar pronunciation to Chinese, it is easy for people to guess these words’ original appearances and meanings. Ears have received different pronunciations from different dialects whether they like them or not. Thus, everyone has already learned things of different regional dialects, more or less. This is why this group of word seem to be more acceptable. As Haspelmath summarized, “iconicity” can be reduced to economy and distinctiveness. Since “bia” could express the action of sticking things vividly, like it was performed just beside you, there is no doubt why it could be so in vogue. III.Impacts and prospect
As the spreading of this group of new words, they have some influences on mandarin. The basic one is that it expands the vocabulary of mandarin. Taking “吐槽” for an example, it is a very preferable term for people who want to grumble about things they are not satisfied with. Min(2008) summed up that many words from regional dialects found their way into mandarin vocabulary, for example, Cantonese words like “牛市”, and “熊市” became professional mandarin that are related to stock market. However, the most prominent impact is that they have enriched the expression of mandarin on the respects of keeping up with the times, its sense of humour, and expressiveness, as Wang(2012) stated. These words have made up the weakness of mandarin when communicating on cellphones or computers.
Being descendants of regional dialects, they also play an active role of protecting these intangible cultural heritages. Many regional operas live by these dialects. With the generalization of mandarin, many ethnic dialects or regional dialects are ignored by their inheritors. These words arouse the attention on regional dialects, it would benefit the protection and inheritance of them.
Since this group of words is so important, it is inevitable to discuss its future. A lot of scholars have investigated into this aspect, whose results are divided into three different opinions. Years ago, many people argued that weblect, especially new Chinese Internet words, had tarnished the purity of mandarin, and they should be banned, while people tend to be more tolerant of it now. Many famous scholars have stated that mandarin should be modest to learn from other dialects, including Yu and Chen(2005), Qian Nairong and Shen Jiaxuan(Yang, 2008).
One stream suggests guiding its development, discarding those taboos or Chinese four-letter words, especially considering quite a number of teenage students are the users or viewers of the Internet. Yang(2008) has listed many attitudes alike. One group believes that the future of weblect is controlled by its users. The birth of weblect was the result of netizens’ choice, so whether it will has a bright future or not, this is also up to its users. Huang(2013), believes in this point of view. Another party regards weblect as a regular variety of language, and it should be given a free soil to grow on.
Let time decides. As Professor Hou(2007) described, taboos and vulgar expressions would be eliminated as time went by. There is a reasonable doubt. Every dialect has its own swear words. Since weblect is also a kind of dialect, there is no reason why weblect should be a piece of pure land without taboos. Language is changing all the time and weblect would also keep altering and updating. Some of them might be lucky enough to be enrolled in dictionaries. Whether they could survive during fierce competitions, whether they could last, this depends on the development of the Internet and the choice of netizens. Some may be eliminated while some new will be invented. IV.Conclusion
In this information age, economy and technology increase the pace of people’s lives, and make it possible for people to communicate with each other, to exchange ideas at any time at any place. Out of curiosity and ambition to be recognized, young netizens tend to create and use new words in weblect, illustrating that they are pioneers and they are in fashion. Therefore, some words originated from dialects with similar pronunciation to mandarin become popular and enrich the expression of mandarin. These words polish sentences to be humorous, shortening the distance between agents and recipients. Thus the Internet could be a lively communicating stage instead of being a place filled with indifferent expressions.
Weblect would develop with the Internet. These words may survive the rival or die out, while new words will come out like grass grows when the spring comes. Following the law of survival of the fittest, these new Chinese Internet words will have to face their own fate, including those coming from regional dialects. However, no matter how time changes, there will never be out of this kind of word.
References：
[1]Biber,D.Dimensions of Register Variation[M].New York:Cambridge University Press,1995.
[2]陈星.网络语言:发展中彰显无限魅力[A].江西省语言学会2008年年会论文集[C],2008:1-5.
[3]董洪亮.普通话:让交流更顺畅[N].人民日报,2005.
[4]郭笃凌,郝怀芳.网络语言的类型、特点及其语用学意义[J].现代语文,2006(3):65-67.
[5]侯国金.从“大哥大”的死到“恐龙”的生——“网络方言”刍议[J].燕山大学学报(哲学社会科学版),2007(2):48-53.
[6]黄伦峰.从文言的消亡看网络语言的发展[J].语文学刊,2013 (1):21-22.
[7]闵毅.普通话口语发展趋势[J].中华文化论坛,2008(8):271-272.
[8]肖敏.“给力”还是“伤不起”？——社会语言学视野下的网络潮语盛行现象[J].学术论坛,2012(2):170-173.
[9]许钟宁.网络语言编译的语言文化解析[A].修辞学新视野——汉语修辞与汉文化学术研讨会论文集,2004:174-185.
[10]王妍.网络语言对现代汉语的影响[J].剑南文学(经典教苑),2012:120.
[11]张青荣.网络语言的生态语言学审视[J].河南师范大学学报(哲学社会科学版),2012(4):191-193.
[12]张晓松.网络语言的社会语言学研究[J].语文建设,2012(4):29-31.