An Inter-disciplinary Study On Chinese Online Buzzwords

With the development of computer and the Internet in China at a whopping speed, online buzzwordhas become an integral part of human life. Along with the progress of information technology in China,Chinese online language has been springing up rapidly. It has benefited the exchange of informationamong the netizens, providing them with a multi-dimensional space in which they are capable of realizingself-presentation, emotional release and completely free rights to express their ideas. Ever since the birthof the Internet, researches about online language have become a heated field and a prosperous issue in theacademic cycle of linguistics. There have been considerable scholars conducting the researches on itsformation, development, and especially on its characteristics. However, only quite a few of scholars haveconcentrated on an inter-disciplinary research on domestic online buzzword. The current thesis aims toconduct a study on Internet buzzwords, a trans-disciplinary language phenomenon, from multipleperspectives. The purpose of the research lies in connecting the social hot issues with popular buzzwordsso as to probe into the relationship between the mechanism of online buzzword, the changing character itplays and its impact on the human society.The author mainly applied qualitative analysis in the present research. Besides, the author hasspecially selected some of the online buzzwords, most of which are those descriptions from the year of2007to2011particularly concerning the livelihood of Chinese people. The present thesis is composed offive chapters. The first chapter briefly introduces research background, research questions, purpose andsignificance of the research and the structure of the research. The second chapter is mainly literaturereview, including the relevant studies of online language and online buzzwords home and abroad. In thischapter, the author takes a brief literature review on the progress, function and development of the studiesof online buzzword home and abroad. Additionally, the limitation of the previous researches conducted byother scholars will be briefly pointed out as well. The third chapter mainly contains the theoreticalfoundations, in which there will be theories of metaphor, memetics, semiotics and etc. The fourth chapterserves as the main body of the thesis, where the inter-disciplinary interpretation of online buzzword willbe applied to the research. In this chapter, the author will focus on the features of online buzzword interms of its audience and its communicative competence. Then the author tries to point out that onlinebuzzword is actually a cognitive approach into which netizens can project their own experiences andfeelings. Then the author will demonstrate that most of online buzzwords are the strong memes survivedthe meme selection. Furthermore, in the semiotic interpretation the author points out that the nature of online buzzword is symbolic and through the semiotic triangle the pragmatic meanings and people’sfeelings and opinions hidden between the lines are steadily formed. In the end of this chapter the researchquestions will encounter the answers as well. Chapter five, the last one of the thesis, draws the summaryand conclusion of the research and the limitation of the present research is also included, plus some of thesuggestions for further studies will be put forward at the very end of the research.