Study Of Vocabulary Memes In Netspeak From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

With the rapid development of the Internet in the modern society, more and more people communicate on the Internet. A new language variety, which is defined as Netspeak, has come into being. Netspeak belongs to the sociolinguistics and it is a novel, peculiar and special language form. Its appearence has provided a new field for research in linguistics and attracted plenty of linguists and scholars'attention. The current studies on Netspeak are still on the description of some language phenomena. However, so far there is no systematic and comprehensive conceptual framework concerning about it. Most of the past studies are merely on the level of collection, classification and simple description of Netspeak but seldom has been made to find out the rules or logic of Netspeak. There are few researches of Netspeak from the perspective of sociolinguistics. Particularly the study of the contextual correlates of adaptability of the vocabulary meme in Netspeak is still a relatively new perspective in linguistics. In light of this phenomenon, the author attempts to analyze it from the perspective of Linguistic Adaptation Theory.Based on the Linguistic Adaptation Theory proposed by Verschueren, and enlightened by the Theory of Memes, the present thesis attempts to analyze the adaptability of vocabulary memes in Netspeak. According to China's"Netspeak Dictionary"(Yu, 2001),"Cyber Language"(Liu,2002),"Living conditions of Chinese Language Report"(2007), 2008 College BBS, Internet media network table in recent years, the annual top 10 Internet catchphrases and several major domestic network of community forums in the language of popular Netspeak system for finishing, it is suggested that those vocabularies in Netspeak which become successful memes have to be simple, novel and informal. As meme products, like genes, Netspeak must adapt well to their surroundings. Vast and various memes compete for survival in their living environment, and only those which have higher value in fidelity, fecundity and longevity have the chance to win out. In addition, a cognitive framework based on adaptability theories is suggested, which sorts the contextual correlates of adaptability for memes into three categories: cognition, emotion and culture. Analysis of examples of Netspeak proves that the transmission of Netspeak from one generation to another is the adaptation to these three factors.