A Multidimensional Study Of Pet Phrases

On the basis of questionnaire survey and corpus analysis and under the theoretical framework of language variation, grammaticalization, pragmaticalization, and subjectification, this research combines quantitative and qualitative methods to implement a comprehensive and multidimensional linguistic study of pet phrases. The study focuses on formal features of pet phrases, origins and developing processes of pet phrases, social distribution of pet phrases and lastly pragmatic evaluation of pet phrases.Pet phrases are those highly frequently re-occurring expressions blurted out in verbal communication, which are highly attached to the mechanism of parole after human beings’ cognition, attitude and stance towards themselves and outside world have been psychologically processed and subjectified into structural forms. Pet phrases are common in daily conversation but meanwhile quite a unique language phenomenon, which is Morse code of human mind and an effective tool for exploring humans’ inner world.This study collects759subjects’ pet phrases by means of questionnaire survey, and through formal analysis of pet phrases, it is found that pet phrases used have diversified linguistic forms, which also reflect central tendency at the same time; most of the pet phrases are composed of two to five characters, short but powerful; pet phrases are mainly in the forms of phrases, words next, sentences third, and fixed patterns the least; a large number of pet phrases contain personal pronouns especiallyWo(我)or Ni(你),and also in some pet phrases Wo(我)and Ni(你)co-exist; relative words such as Ma(妈),Mei(妹),Ye(爷)are commonly found in pet phrases; there are also some pet phrases consisting of expressions from foreign languages, and among them, English ones are the most common, Japanese, while Korean and English-Chinese mixed ones are used by some people.Pet phrases in Chinese and English daily conversation have quite diverse origins, which include cursing expressions, discourse markers, religious terms, and catchwords. From the perspective of data collected in the present study, the number of pet phrases originating from cursing expressions is the largest, discourse markers the second, catchwords the third, and religious terms the smallest.The linguistic mechanism of developing cursing expressions, religious terms and catchwords into pet phrases is pragmaticalization, while grammaticalization is the mechanism for the development of discourse markers into pet phrases.The oral output of pet phrases is influenced by a series of factors, which mainly include gender, age, educational background, profession, and area. Under the influence of those factors, the social distribution of pet phrases has following features:(1) Gender differences of pet phrase output:compared with females, males use pet phrases more in quantity and higher in frequency; males’ pet phrases are shorter in forms; males use pet phrases of cursing expression more frequently; males use pet phrases of discourse marker less in quantity and lower in frequency.(2) Age differences of pet phrase output:among people of childhood, juvenile, youth, middle age and old age, the phenomenon of young people using pet phrases of foreign languages and pet phrases of catchwords is the most significant; young people and middle-aged people use more pet phrases of discourse marker than people of other age groups; it is common that old people’s pet phrases consist of dialect words.(3) Educational level differences of pet phrase output:among people of low, middle and high educational levels, half of the former two groups’ pet phrases are in the forms of cursing expressions, for the latter one group only about one fifth; there are no significant differences in the numbers of pet phrases of discourse marker used among the three groups, but they are inclined to choose different forms of pet phrases of this type; pet phrases of catchwords are more noticeably used by people of high educational level.(4) Profession differences of pet phrase output:secondary school students use pet phrases in various forms, but at the same time the group similarity is also obvious, e.g. they use many coarse cursing expressions and pet phrases with foreign language words; college students commonly use pet phrases of catchwords, with some typical examples such as Beicui(悲催),Yumen(郁闷),Jiujie(纠结),and Woyun(我晕)；teachers seldom use pet phrases of cursing expressions, but they often use pet phrases of discourse markers, with some typical ones such as Shibushi(是不是),Duibudui(对不对),and Ranhou(然后)；professional words becoming pet phrases happens sometimes in some professional fields.(5) Regional differences of pet phrase output:popular pet phrases in Northeast China include Aiyamaya(哎呀妈呀), Shawanyier(啥玩意儿),Najiahuo(那家伙)；pet phrases such as Chuizi(锤子),Maoxian(毛线),Laozi(老子),Guierzi(龟儿子) are commonly used in Sichuan and Chongqing; in Guangdong Province the pet phrase Wodingnigefei(我顶你个肺)is very prevalently used.Pet phrases are not necessarily useless nonsense, redundant information and an excrescence. On the contrary, pet phrases are positive to some extent, e.g. pet phrases can serve the discourse functions of launching verbal communication, promoting discourse coherence, filling up verbal gaps, taking and capturing turns, relieving hearers’ pressure of comprehension and processing, venting emotions, highlighting speakers’personalities and attitude. Therefore, proper use of pet phrases can help enhance expressive effect.However, the improper use of pet phrases is certain to exert negative impact, e.g. pet phrases would destroy the coherence between internal elements of discourse, cause language pollution, annoy people by becoming cliches, and harm interpersonal relationship.After analyzing the expressive effects of pet phrases, the dissertation puts forward three tips on how to use pet phrases, i.e. moderately using positive pet phrases, regulating highly frequent pet phrases and eradicating vicious pet phrases.