-
石河子大学毕业论文
课题名称：
语用学视域下的网络语言研究
Research of
Cyber Language in the
Perspective of Pragmatism
学生姓名：
王
琳
学
号：
2011501266
学
院：
师范学院
专业、年级：
英语专业
20111
指导教师：
李
蕾
职
称：
副
教
授
毕业论文
(
设计
)
完成
时间：
2015
年
6
月
9
日
Abstract
Cyber
language,
with
the
explosion
of
the
Internet,
is
fundamentally
transforming
the
way
we
communicate.
In
recent
years,
various
App
softwares
on
computer and smart phone have become an
increasingly frequent part of our daily life.
So
properly
understanding
the
new
language
carries
a
significance
to
our
life.
Pragmatics
studies
the
way
context
contributes
to
the
meaning.
So
in
the
context
Internet communication, which is
different from the face-to-face communication and
standard written Chinese and English,
cyber language acquisition and use
gradually
call for
researches and studies. So in this paper, we will
analyze, explain, sort out the
language
people
use
online
for
the
benefit
of
our
social
and
economic
life.
By
collecting written texts generated in
a specific situation and analyzing the
meaning,
grammar,
sentence
structure
and
culture
differences
of
these
materials,
this
paper
attempts to find a
better way to understand and use cyber language.
Key
words:
pragmatics; cyber language;
Internet
摘
要
网络语言，
随着网络时代的爆发，
正在从根
本上改变我们的交流方式。
最近
几年，各式各样的手机电脑软件
以逐渐成为我们日常生活中不可或缺的一部分。
因此，
正确理解
网络语对我们的生活意义重大。
而语用学研究的是在具体的语境
中理解句子含义。
网络作为一种语境，
不同于面对面交流，
也不同于标准中文与
标准英文，
所以为了我
们更好的融入社交与经济生活，
网络语境的习得与运用也
需要逐
渐得投入调查与研究。
因此本文通过搜集网上的语言语料，
并对
它们进行
分类，分析并解释网络语与日常语言在语意，语法，结构与文化的差异，以期找
到一种更好的方法来理解与运用网络语言。
关键词
：
语用学；
网络语言；
因特网
Contents
I. Introduction
............
..................................................
.............................
1
II. Literature
Review
................................
..................................................
.......................
1
A. Theroy origin
...........
..................................................
..................................................
..
1
B. Foreign
related researches
.
< br>............................................... ..............................
2
C. Demestic
related researches
....................
..................................................
....
4
III.
Special cyber language analysis
..............................................
..........
5
A. Deixis
......
..................................................
.........................................
5
1. Person
deixis
.
.........
..................................................
......................
6
2. Social deixis
..................................................
.................................
7
B. Cyber
interjections
.........................
..................................................
...
8
1.
Onomatopoeia
..........................
..................................................
...
9
2. Tone
words
.................................
.................................................
1
0
ons
.......................................
..................................................
................
11
IV
.
Conversational analysis
.
..........................................
.........................
1
2
A.
Purpose of conversation
....
..................................................
...............
1
3
B.
Turn-taking system
...................
..................................................
.....
1
3
C.
Cooperative
and politeness principles
.................................................
1
3
V.
Conclusion........................................
..................................................
.
1
4
Works Cited
.
...........................................
.................................................
1
5
I. Introduction
The explosion of the Internet is
fundamentally transforming the world in which
we live, work, govern, and communicate.
In recent years, various App softwares on
computer and smart phone have become an
increasingly frequent part of our daily life.
People not only chat and blog online,
nowadays as E-commerce grows, people even
shop online. As a result, a new kind of
language come into being---cyber language.
Cyber language in this paper refers to
a wide range of language form , including text
messages via cell phones and computer-
mediated communication. In China, the most
popular
software
are
QQ
（腾讯）
and
Wechat
(
微信
),
while
in
English
speaking
countries, they
have Facebook and Whatsapp. These softwares have
created ha whole
new social world for
people. We can not ignore the fact that until July
of 2014, the
number of
cyber
citizen in
China hit 632 million,
which accounts
for 46.9% of
the
whole population. And this number
is growing!
Aside from the
real life, social life supported by these software
partially explains
a
person
?
s personality
and popularity in
virtual
world.
So proper
understanding
and
using
cyber language will help people to fit in online
world.
Pragmatics
studies
the
way context contributes to the
meaning. So in the context of communication
online,
which is different from the
face-to-face communication and standard written
Chinese
and
English,
cyber
language
acquisition
and
use
gradually
call
for
researches
and
studies. It is very clear we need to
analyze, explain, sort out the language people use
online
for
the
benefit
of
our
social
and
economic
life.
By
collecting
written
texts
generated
in
a
specific
situation
and
analyzing
the
meaning,
grammar,
sentence
structure and
culture differences of these materials, this paper
attempts to find a better
way to
understand and use cyber language.
II. Literature
Review
A. Theory Origin
China
joined
the
Internet
during
90s
of
last
century,
and
cyber
language
has
become
a
novel
discipline
in
language
study.
The
advent
of
cyber
language
has
attracted attention from
linguists from home and abroad. According to
Zhangyunhui ,
since 1994 to
2009, there are in
total
596 articles
searched by the
key word
“
cyber
language
”
in
online academic journals in China (5). These
researches mainly involve
such
aspects
as
cyber
words,
rules
of
cyber
language,
social
reasons
and
cultures.
With
more
and
more
people
using
cyber
language
to
communicate,
pragmatic
researches starts to begin.
Cyber language is a new subject and
different scholars has different definitions .
Jinsong
and
Qike
think
that
Cyber
language
in
broad
sense
refers
to
the
novel
language
related
to
Internet
and
electronics
technology;
Cyber
language
in
narrow
sense
refers
to
language
that
net
citizen
uses
(11).
Zhouhongbo
thinks
that
cyber
language
is
a
form
of
language
people
use
to
communication
online,
and
can
be
divided into three kinds, professional
terms related to cyber technology, special words
about Internet and the staple language
net citizens use in a chat room or forum (354).
American linguist David Crystal
analyzes the burgeoning language variety of the
Internet by classifying it into five
broad
“
Internet-using
situations
”
, namely,
electronic
mails,
chatgroups
(both
synchronous
and
asynchronous),
virtual
worlds,
and
world
wide
web (2069).
Later,
Hehongfeng
points
out
the
origin
of
cyber
language.
The
main
body
of
cyber language comes from current
standard Chinese, because cyber language still use
those stock words and grammar of
traditional Chinese (2). Wangzhijuan also says
that
cyber language expands traditional
words bank and had new words that
doesn?t
exist
in
daily life (92).
And the
following is the researches related to this
subject.
B.
Foreign related researches
1. Special cyber words and emoticons
David
Gelernter
thinks
abbreviations
and
derivations
are
a
language's
normal
response to
stress (17).
For example,
the one who blog is
a
blogger, who hack is
a
hacker. And other simplified words like
PLZ(pleas), BTW ( by the way). Because of
the convenience of Internet, digital
words are easy to write, change, send and forget.
David Gelernter also said,
“When you are forced to compress your
message into
fewer
words,
each
word
works
harder,
carries
more
meaning
on
its
shoulders
and,
accordingly, becomes
more important and interesting. Digital English is
no good for
poetry or novels, but on
balan
ce it's refreshing”
(18).
David
Crystal
summarizes
the
formal
properties
of
Netspeak
(cyber
language)
such as prosody and paralanguage (e.g.
aaaaahhhhh, whohe????), smiley or emoticons
(e.g. :-) for pleasure and -( for
crying) and verbal glosses (e.g.
&r>
for ??grinning,
ducking and running??
and
big
grin??) that have the role of avoiding
ambiguities
and
misconceptions
make
it
akin
to
speech,
while
at
the
same
time
remaining some distance from speech
(2071).
But
Smiley-faces
are
another
story.
Painfully
cute
hieroglyphics
(happy-face,
sad-face) have littered email for
years; they are the empty beer bottles in the
literary
flower garden. Anything that
can't be pronounced stops the verbal music, makes
the
reader stumble and marks the writer
as a nitwit. These pictograms are for sloppy and
lazy writers: E.B. White never felt the
need to draw little faces in the margin to make
his meaning clear.
More
recent
work,
however,
has
shown
that
emoticons
can
provide
this
information and enhance CMC .
Walther and D?Addario defined emoticons
as graphic
representations of facial
expressions that are embedded in electronic
messages. These
often include
punctuation marks and letters to create
expressions such as happy, sad,
or
frustrated
(which
appear
:),
:(,
and
:/
respectively).
Many
researchers
have
suggested these cues enhance written
communication in the same way visual or body
language supports verbal communication
(Derks et al. 389).
2.
Cyber conversations and cyber language user
To
characterize
Netspeak
(cyber
language),
David
Crystal
introduces
H.P.
Grice
?
s
four
maxims
of
conversation,
namely,
the
maxims
of
quality,
relevance,
quantity
and
manner.
He
discusses
the
four
maxims
and
said
the
very
nature
of
Internet compounds the task of applying
Grice
?
s maxims to the
Internet situations. H.P.
Grice
?
s
four
maxims
give
us
rules
of
cooperation,
and
in
some
way
to
help
us
to
understand and make
successful conversations online. However, he also
detects that
Netspeak differs from
face-to-face conversation in terms of feedback and
turn-taking
(2073).
Linguistic
politeness
also
is
a
major
research
area
in
cyber
conversations.
Morand and
Ocker
reviewed politeness
theory and stated that face-threatening acts
are inevitable in interaction across
various computer-mediated-communications.
People
?
s habits
of sending online messages also can affect the
pragmatic effect of
a
conversation.
As
Thurlow
and
Brown
noted
for
SMSes
written
in
English,
text
messages have various functions that
can be classified according to two orientations:
informative-transactional
and
relational.
In
order
to
test
these
two
functions,
Josie
conducts
a
experiment
on
adolescents
to
see
the
factors
of
SMSes.
Josie
Bernnicot
thinks
that
the
novel
linguistic
material
found
in
SMSes
is
particularly
useful
in
pragmatic studies, which attempt to
relate linguistic productions to be communicative
situation
in
which
they
are
produced.
And
he
finds
out
the
characteristics
of
text
messages from the point
of view of length, structural and function. His
study enables
us to show that the SMS
writers
?
characteristics
(age, gender, and SMS experience)
played a role in the length, structure,
and function of the text messages they wrote.
Long messages were mainly produced by
15-16-year-old girls, whose messages were
also
largely
relational.
The
experienced
15-16-year-old
boys
generally
wrote
messages
without
and
opening
or
a
closing
and
produced
few
traditional
messages
with an opening-messaged-closing
structure (1701).
C. Domestic related researches
1. Pragmatic phenomenon in special
cyber words and emoticons
Zhangyunhui
says derivation and abbreviation are not only
important method of
standard
Chinese
word
formation,
but
also
of
Chinese
cyber
words
(106).
Liuting
thinks the cyber environment has two
features. One is intermediary. It is a new way of
communicative
modes
that
needs
a
media
to
connect
the
two
sides.
So
non-verbal
signs
will
be
partially
absent.
The
other
one
is
virtuality
(108).
Wangxiaoman
specifically
analyzes
the
emoticons
in
cyber
environment.
She
summarizes
three
characteristics of
emotions:
1)
Assistant annotation. Emoticons assist text to
express meanings and to fill
the blank
that absence of non-linguistic symbols creates.
2)
Cross-border
transmission.
Emoticons
can
cross
the
border
of
nationality
and still function well.
3) Strengthen
the transmission ability.
Emoticons
?
expressive and
vivid nature
strengthen the meaning and
enrich the language (26).
In
cyber
environment,
Chinese
experts
Liuting
says
cyber
language
becomes
more
emotive
and
expressive
because
body
language
and
expressions
are
absent
in
cyber
context, people need to invent similar emoticons
to substitute them (107).
2. Cyber conversations and cyber
language users
Levinson
puts
up
Face-theory
in
order
to
explain
the
phenomenon
that
people
avoid
talking directly
(8) . Based
Levinson
?
s face-
theory ,
Liulijuan probes into the
politeness strategies in Internet chat
room conversation based on a pragmatic theory.
The
results
show
Net
friends
often
employ
four
politeness
strategies:
positive
politeness
strategy,
negative
politeness
strategy,
off
record
politeness
strategy,
and
emoticon politeness
strategy (154).
Zhangyunhui
analyzes
the
turn-taking
systems
in
online
communication
and
pointed
out
that,
in
online
world,
turn
do
exit
and
is
playing
an
important
role
of
showing politeness. Once
a turn begins, if the other side take the turn to
respond, that
could make this
conversation go smoothly (174).
Internet
is
an
open
world.
Different
people
have
different
purposes
when
they
start
a
online
conversation.
The
success
of
a
conversation
also
depends
on
the
participants?
purposes.
According
to
an
opinion
poll
aiming
at
college
students
conducted by Beijing Jiangyu
Consultative company, when asked their favorite
topics
online, personal interests, life
and emotion problems rank high on the list. But
there
are
9.15%
of
the
participants
say
their
purposes
are
to
argue
with
people
online,
12.67% of the
participants
claim
they
don
?
t
have a
specific purposes
(Zhangyunhui
171) .
To
sum
up,
former
experts
all
notice
the
importance
and
necessity
of
cyber
language,
although
their
focuses
vary
from
cyber
context
to
strategies
used
in
chat
rooms.
According
to
their
results,
cyber
language
comes
from
current
standard
Chinese and English, which gives us
insight on how to study cyber language by the
current
pragmatics
theories.
Researches
have
been
done
on
Grice
?
s
cooperative
principle
，
Leech
?
s
politeness
principle
and
Levinson
?
s
face-keeping
theory,
but
compared to the mass
population of net citizen, it is not enough.
Especially, detailed
analysis
on
real
situation
text
materials
are
fewer.
So
this
paper
will
try
to
add
the
latest
phenomenon
in
cyber
language
and
by
collecting
real
Internet-situation
conversations to analyze the semantic
and pragmatic meaning , grammar and culture
phenomenon
under
the
politeness
and
cooperative
principle,
in
attempt
to
find
a
better
understanding and using cyber language.
III. Special cyber language
analysis
Language is a system of arbitrary vocal
symbols used for human communication.
Cyber language also
has the
design features
of a language.
It
involves morphology,
syntax, semantics and so on. In order
to study pragmatics meaning of cyber language,
we
?
d better start
from deixis,
because deix is on the
simple word level and was the
earliest
subject of pragmatics and is still a very
important part after several decades of
studying (Zhangyunhui 88).
A. Deixis
Deixis originated
from Greece, meaning “pointing” and “indicating”.
It is a very
normal
phenomenon
in
language
use
because
it
shows
the
relation
between
the
language
structure
and
the
people,
things,
time
and
places
involved
in
the
conversation (Heziran 24). Indexicality
is one of the intrinsic property and common
phenomenon
of
natural
language.
The
use
of
indexical
expressions
improves
the
efficiency
of
communication
and
avoids
unnecessary
repetition.
According
to
Fillmore and Levinson,
Deixis can be classified into five categories,
namely person
deixis, time deixis,
place deixis, discourse deixis and social
dexis(Levinson 68). As
for
cyber
language
use,
person
deixis
and
social
dexis
are
of
more
importance
and
influence, so this paper
will focus on these two aspects.
1.
Person deixis
Person deixis can be
divided into three kinds----first person deixis,
second person
deixis and third person
deixis. Different from real life communication,
online chat has
different words of
addressing and greeting.
For first
person deixis, younger people online used
to
use the character “ou”
(
偶
)
instead of
“wo”(
我
) to mean
himself/herself (Zhangyunhui 89). Here is an
example,
“
偶爱偶家
” (
I love my family). “
偶的相亲记
”
（
my blind dates). But this
character
was
popular
many
years
ago.
And
the
reason
it
got
popular
is
because
it
had
entertainment
functions
and
most
importantly,
it
tells
people
your
identity
as
a
qualified net citizen.
Nowadays, young people, especially post-90s
generation online
use
other
words
like
“
哥
”
(big
brother)
for
male,
“
姐
”
(big
sister)
for
female
to
address
hi
mself/ herself. Here are some
examples, “
哥今天请客
”
(it is my treat today),
“
姐明天
没有空
”
(I am not free
tomorrow). It is definitely impolite and
inappropriate
to
address
oneself
as
seniors
in
face-
to-face
conversation,
except
for
very
familiar
friends.
However,
it
is
acceptable
to
use
these
words
online.
Because
as
we
said
before,
online
environment
is
without
social
class
discriminations
and
complicated
etiquette in real life. Also the use of
“
哥
” and
“
姐
” can show your sense of
humor and
can actually make the two
closer.
People
online
like
to
self-
deprecate.
As
is
known
to
all,
“
狗
”
(dog)
is
used
to
insult someone in real
life. But now people use this word to address
themselves. Here
are
some
examples,
“
考研
狗一
只
”,
“
热成
狗
”.
When
you
see
someone
call
themselves this word, you could imagine
how relaxed they are online.
The most
common second person deixis is
“
你
” in real life. But people
use “
你
丫
”,
“
嫩
” and
“
侬
” in online environment.
Those words mostly come from different
dialects.
“
你丫
”
comes
from
Beijing
dialect.
We
can
hear
th
is
often
from
Beijing
locals. But this sounds a little
insulting. In BBS or Baidu tieba, the person who
first
starts a topic is called
“
楼主
”
(the owner)
by people follow his/her topic. Sometimes
“
楼主
” can be
changed to “
版主
”or
“
楼猪
”.
There are all kinds of wo
rds
to
address
the third person.
Old ones are “
大侠
”,
“
菜鸟
”and
“
美眉
”. Nowadays the word bank
has been updated and if you stick to the
old ones, you will be laughed at by
other net citizens. As E-commerce begin to thrive,
“
亲
”
has
become
the
most
popular
word
to
address
customers.
Although
this
word
started
from online shopping,
it can be used
between any one now. “
亲
” is
short for
“
亲爱的
”
(dear).
It
immediately
eliminates
the
distance
between
the
two
speakers,
also without
considering the other person?s gender or
a
ge or social class.
2. Social deixis
Social
deixis
exists
when
the
speaker
choose
a
certain
way
to
make
the
conversation. In the
process of a conversation, people are always
selecting the proper
words,
grammar
or
means
to
perform
an
act
in
order
to
fit
in
the
context
(
Zhangyunhui 95). The best language form that can
tell the context is social deixis
because people can immediately realize
the social identity, connections of
the two
conversers. Social
deixis includes the use of personal pronoun,
addresses and ways of
performance of
acts.
In Chinese
communications, second person addresses are the
most useful social
deixis.
“
你
” and
“
您
” both refer to second
person, but they are different in the degree
of impoliteness,
social class and closeness. But in
cyber communication, net citizens
are
free from these complicated rules. Everyone is
supposed to be equal. So “
您
”
is
seldom
used
in
online
environment.
While
there
are
some
exceptions
that
people
would
use “
您
” as an irony. For
example:
---
你长得好看么？
（
So
are you pretty
？）
---
好像和您无关。
（
It
is none of your business.
）
So the example above is to
show that “
您
” can
be used as an irony instead of
politeness. Here is another exception
about the use of
“
您
”:
---
大侠，您外星人吧？
（
Are you from outer
space?
）
---
总觉得自己很老了，是个老大爷了。
(I always
feel old and feel like an
old grandpa)
---
您老高寿？
( How old are you?)
The examples above is to demonstrate
that “
您
” is used as a way of
teasing and
joking. It literally means
respect, but the tone of it is relaxing and
flippant.
Apart from the two functions
of “
您
” above, there is also
a similar function as
politeness
in
real
life.
But
it
mainly
occurs
in
advertisement
and
some
formal
occasions.
There
are some other addresses functioning as social
deixis, such as
“
亲
”
, and it
has
plural
forms
“
亲们
”.
It
is
the
best
representative
of
cyber
language,
the
fastest
growing
and
mostly
used
cyber
word
(Wu
and
Zhang
95).
It
doesn?t
seem
too
enthusiastic,
nor
too
unfriendly.
It
is
just
at
the
degree
in
which
people
feel
comfortable (Wu and
Zhang 96). The following is a conversation of a
salesman online
and a customer:
---
亲
，欢迎光临，如果有亲看上的一定给亲优惠！
---
亲，包邮么？
---
我
们虽然都是小本生意，但是买够两个就给亲包邮哦！
The
biggest problem of online shopping is that people
can
?
t talk to the salesman
face to face. But the word
“
亲
”
is
full of hospitality and welcome, it takes the
place of
the second person pronoun
“
你
”
and immediately eliminate the distance. And now it
gains so much popularity that people
use it in face-to-face conversation all the time.
B. Cyber
interjections
In
online
communication,
the
use
of
cyber
interjection
is
much
more
than
in
daily
face-to-face
communication.
Fischer
assumes
that
expressing
emotions
in
computer-mediated
communication
(CMC)
and
in
face-to-
face
communication
is
different for two reasons. The first
one is that CMC is slower and less spontaneous, as
all other information
exchange has to
be
typed,
and
the
second
one is
an important
aspect, the nonverbal part, of the
emotional information is not available (976). So
in
order to meet the shortfall of
emotion in CMC and help the listener correctly
decoding
the information conveyed, we
use interjections to enrich our conversation.
1. Onomatopoeia
Words
that
imitate
the
sounds
are
called
onomatopoeia.
The
most
common
onomatopoeias people use in cyber
communication are about laughter, such as
呵呵
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