A Comparative Study Of Chinese And English Metaphors In Netspeak

With the development of internet technology and more and more frequent communication mediated by computers, Netspeak, a new language variety, gradually came into being. Now Netspeak has aroused more and more attention. In order to make the computer mediated communication more efficient, especially the cross-cultural communication, it is very important to do the comparative study between the Chinese and English Netspeak.The thesis takes metaphor in Netspeak as the subject of the research. Based on the theories of metaphor at home and abroad, the author makes a comparative study between Chinese and English Netspeak from several aspects including classification, features, function and the relation to the context. The author tries to find the common features and differences, and explores their reasons.The thesis finds that the common features and differences of metaphors between Chinese and English Netspeak coexist. On the one hand, due to the nature of metaphor, the similar experiences and mutual influences, many common features exist. Metaphor in both Chinese and English Netspeak can be classified into different categories according to the different standards. Metaphor plays an important role in many aspects of Netspeak including the word-formation. Without the special context of internet communication, we cannot fully and correctly understand metaphor in Netspeak. Many English netlingoes enter Chinese Netspeak directly because of the domination of America in economy and internet technology. Metaphors in these words are reserved, so a lot of metaphorical English netlingoes have corresponding ones in Chinese Netspeak. On the other hand, because of the differences in culture, life experience and linguistic features, they differ in the selection of source domain and ways of word-formation etc. In addition, words of Netspeak and those used in daily life influence each other. Many netlingoes come from words used in daily life, while some netlingoes are used metaphorically in the newspapers, magazines, books and daily conversation and so on. The author thinks that we need not worry too much about this phenomenon. It is an inevitable process in the development of the language.