A Socio-Linguistic Study On Fans Club Names And Fans Club Identity

The relationship between naming and identity has been a consistent subject during the history of identity study. Nelson Foote (1955), one of the most influential scholars in the early stage of identity study, holds that identity is an on-going process realized by naming. However, not many researches have been conducted on this specific subject in recent years, especially in China.Since the year 2005 when the Super Girl Talent TV Show began to catch on all around china, the unprecedented popularization and popularity of Super Girl fans clubs has captured intensive attention from some famous Chinese scholars in the field of linguistics. Inspired by the previous studies on fans club names, this thesis is a socio-linguistic research on the relationship between fans club names and fans club identity.Then this thesis examines all the 30 fans club names since 2005 and after careful observation and calculation, comes up with some features in the lexical formation of most fans club names: 1) A typical fans club name consists of at least one character in the name of the contestant the fans club is established for or of at least one character with the same or similar pronunciation with at least one character in the name of the contestant the fans club is established for. 2) A typical fans club name sets up a metonymical link between the fans club and the super girl contestant the club is established for. 3) Most of the fans club names derive from names for things popular among Super girl fans.Based on the above observation and generalization, the following part of the thesis demonstrates that as metonymical links between fans clubs and super girl contestant, fans club names is one of the important devices for fans club members to establish their fans club identity by participating throughout the three stages of self-formation, the role performances of fans club members and the three stages of the fans club identity establishment. Through these demonstrations, this thesis finally finds that fans club names is a metonymical devices for fans club members to establish their fans club identity.This thesis also examines some social issues caused to some extent by inappropriate naming of certain social groups, such as the references for African Americans during the American history, the official naming for Taiwan aboriginals and finally the controversial names for Chinese migrant workers nowadays. The examination of these cases indicates the social value of the current thesis: understanding the relationship between community naming and community identity can enhance our ability to understand and predict certain social phenomenon.