A Study Of Domestic Network Catchwords With Appraisal Theory

Computer is an important invention of the20thcentury. And the emergency of it makes agreat effect on human-beings. Network catchwords are one of the most important products oreffects of computer and internet. Especially in recent years, with the improvement of internettechnology and the wide use of internet, network catchwords continue appearing andbecoming popular. As a result, they attract more and more attention. To network catchwords,different people have different attitudes, but generally those people can be divided into twogroups: opposition group and support group. The opposition group thinks that networkcatchwords challenge or even disrupt the traditional language, while the support grouprecognizes network catchwords as the inevitable products of internet and thinks that networkcatchwords enrich the traditional language. As for network catchwords, researchers do a lot ofresearches on them. But on the whole, those researches are mainly on the development ofnetwork catchwords, language features, types of network catchwords, the norm of language,situation, rhetoric and the impacts on the traditional language, etc.Positive discourse analysis (PDA), which is the complementary discourse analysismethod of critical discourse analysis (CDA), was first proposed by J. R. Martin in1999.Compared with critical discourse analysis, it is still a new kind discourse analysis method andis mainly used to analyze those discourses that contain political factors, such as, discourses ofdiplomacy, mediation, negotiation, conference, consultation, and so on. And appraisal theoryis its main theory basis.Through analyzing those studies of appraisal theory and those of network catchwords,we can get the conclusion that till now there are still few researches that are made on networkcatchwords with appraisal theory from the perspective of PDA. This thesis uses appraisaltheory to do PDA on the top ten domestic network catchwords from the year2000to the year2011(totally99ones. See appendixⅠ). Through this thesis readers may have an objective andproper understanding of domestic network catchwords and get the implied positive meaningshidden in them. Besides, the author hopes to broaden the research scope of PDA and tocomplete its theory basis.Through analyzing all those domestic network catchwords with appraisal theory, we can see that:(1) Because of the various sources, network catchwords are various and numerous.And they are the results of many reasons, such as, the popularity of internet and computer, thefree social culture environment, the improvement of humans’ speaking right, the need forconvenient communications on the internet, etc. And since appearing, network catchwordshave been loved and widely used by netizens for their simplicity, convenience, vividness, andmeaningfulness.(2) Some of the domestic network catchwords literally seem nonsense ormeaningless, but in fact they express some good wishes of the speakers--improving generalsocial conduct, correcting wrong behavior or thoughts, constructing a harmonious society, etc.The thesis mainly consists of6chapters. Chapter one mainly introduces the researchbackground, the research questions, the research purposes and significance, methodology anddata collection. Chapter two reviews the emergence and studies of PDA, forums involvingPDA and does a contrast between PDA and CDA. Chapter three introduces appraisal theoryfrom its three main branches, the application, and the studies of it. Chapter four introducesdomestic network catchwords from the definition, classifications and the sources of them,studies on network catchwords both abroad and at home; Chapter five mainly uses appraisaltheory to do PDA on domestic network catchwords (the domestic network catchwords fromthe year2000to the year2011, totally99ones. See appendixⅠ). Chapter six summarizes thecontent of the whole thesis. It describes the findings of this research, discusses the limitationsof this study, and gives suggestions for further studies.