A Study Of The Economy Of Netspeak

Internet is one of the most remarkable inventions human beings have ever made. It has exerted great influences on every aspect of our lives. The Internet brings us not only a technological revolution, but also a cultural and linguistic revolution. With the popularization of the Internet and the increasing number of netizens, Netspeak came into being as a new language phenomenon. As a variety of language, Netspeak has its own characteristics compared with traditional language. It has attracted the attention of people in many fields, and there have been some research achievements in recent years. However, most of those researches focus on analyzing the features of Netspeak from the perspective of sociolinguistics, while few specific studies have been done.This thesis aims at an overall analysis of the Economy of Netspeak. The economy intrinsic to human language has long been recognized and led to a crop of studies on it. Rooted in the traditional language, the simple and concise Netspeak fully demonstrates its Economy. Based on the theories of Principle of Economy, this thesis makes a tentative study of the exemplifications of the Economy of Netspeak at different levels and its motives and influences.Starting with the brief introduction to the Internet and Netspeak in Chapter One, Chapter Two is the literature review about the study on Netspeak. The theoretical background of this thesis is introduced in Chapter Three, including Zipf's"Principle of Least Effort", Martinet's"Principle of Economy", Grice's"Cooperative Principle", Leech's"Economy Principle"in his theory of textual rhetoric about language output, Horn's"Q-and-R-principles", and Xiang Mingyou's"Neo-economy Principle", etc. Chapter Four analyzes the exemplifications of the Economy of Netspeak at phonological, lexical, syntactical, and graphological levels. Chapter Five is a discussion on the motives of the Economy of Netspeak. Then the influences of the Economy of Netspeak are presented from both positive and negative angles. In the author's opinion, the Economy of Netspeak is a reflection of language change. A balance between economy and clarity should be kept and netiquette is needed in the use of Netspeak. Finally, the conclusion part includes the retrospect of the whole study and implications and limitations of the study. This thesis is expected to be beneficial and conducive to the overall understanding and evaluation of the Netspeak.