A Sociolinguistic Study Of Top Ten Chinese Catchwords In 2015: Generation Differences In Use And Attitude

With the development of society,new media emerged and developed in response to the proper time and conditions.People started to use catchwords in daily life.Catchwords are the popular words that are used most widely in a certain group and they are the words used most frequently through a certain period of time and the words whose numbers of users are the largest.Relevant magazines and media also select the most popular ones among annual catchwords.Among them,Excessive Wording is one of the authorities.People research from many aspects,which mainly focus on static and dynamic aspects.Static aspect concentrates on analyzing certain system of catchwords.Dynamic aspect focuses on diachronic study on catchwords.There are two aspects in content:one is concerning about language itself,including vocabulary,phonetics,word class,etc;the other aspect is from catchwords'social application.The target vocabulary is from Excessive Wording,which selects top ten catchwords annually.The top ten catchwords in 2015 are as follows:“Internet+”(???+)“Creator”(??)“Sense of Getting”(???)“Appearance Value”(??)“As I Like”(??)“Cutting Hand Party”(???)“Internet Popular”(??)“Opening Mind”(????)“Judge Mainly by Temperament”(?????)“Baby”(??).In order to deeply study the difference and connection of catchwords' use and attitudes from different generation,this thesis is based on Jilin University students and their parents.Based on Labov's variation theory,this thesis analyzes the collected questionnaire in qualitative and quantitative ways.The point of this study is through comparing the using condition and attitudes of students and their parents at Jilin University towards the Top Ten Selected Catchwords by Excessive Wording,considering generation as a variable,trying to figure out if this variable has some influence on the using and attitudes of catchwords and how much the degree is.In order to ensure validity and reliability,the author distributed questionnaires at random in six Jilin University districts.The subjects cover students from different colleges and majors.Each questionnaire contains three parts which has the same questions.Students will hand over the questionnaire to their father and mother after their finishing answering students' part.The author distributed 140 questionnaires.126 questionnaires were received back in the end,and only 100 of them are valid.The author used Questionnaire Star software and Excel software to analyze the effective questionnaires and find out the conclusion.The comparative aspects are as follows: First,the variable is generation,which is to compare the using condition of students and their parents and find the similarities or difference.Second,the author still considers generation as a variable,through comparing the attitudes of students and parents to find out the influence of generation to attitudes.The studying and analyzing of this thesis can be generalized through the following questions,which are also the research questions of this thesis:Whether there is a generation difference towards the awareness and frequency of usage of the catchwords? If so,what's the reason that caused this generation difference?Whether there is a generation difference towards the attitudes of catchwords? If so,what's the reason that caused this generation difference?The results are as follows: there is a generation difference in the aspect of catchword awareness and usage: parents are more familiar with the 2015 top ten catchwords and they use them more often;there is also a generation difference in catchword attitude that parents like these catchwords more.The reasons for the above results maybe the different communicational environments,due to occupation reasons and parents' working environment.Parents have more chance to get in touch with different groups of people who are from different fields.However,students' communicating environment is pure.Thus,parents have more chance to hear and use catchwords.College students' parents are in middle ages.They are on the top of their life and understand the whole society from a high visual angle.Parents are more interactive with society and their younger mentality makes them become more active and open towards catchwords.Thus,there are more parents who like and use top ten catchwords in 2015.