英汉网络语言的对比分析

英汉网络语言的对比分析

Acknowledgments

I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to all who have given me a lot of help and encouragement in my preparation of this thesis.

First and foremost, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Miss Liu Tiantian

for her invaluable suggestions and consistent encouragement. She found time from her heavy schedule to read my thesis and helped me to improve it. Without her kind help, the present dissertation would not have been completed.

Second, I am also greatly indebted to the professors and teachers at the Department of English, Professor Huang Jinhua who has instructed and helped me a lot in the past four years.

Last but not least, my extraordinary gratitude also goes to my family members, the most

important people in my life, especially my mother and my son, whose love and solicitude are always the support of my study and my life.

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Abstract

With the development of network technology and the popularization of computer, network communication has become more frequent and the cyber language develops rapidly and it subjects to the concern of more and more scholars. Network has become an important way of communication for the people worldwide. In order to make the network communication effective, the knowledge and study of the cyber language seems very important. This topic is mainly discusses the similarities and differences between English and Chinese cyber language, contrasting and analyzing from aspect of classification, features and causes of cyber language by citing examples as the main analysis method, and reveals the close relation between them.

Key words: cyber language; comparison; standardization

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摘要

随着网络技术的不断发展和计算机的普及化，网络交际日趋频繁，网络语言迅猛发展，并受到了越来越多专家学者的关注。网络已成为现在世界各国人民交际的重要方式。为了更有效的开展网络交际，对网络语言的认识和研究就显得十分重要。本课题主要是论述了英汉网络语言的相同点和不同之处，以实例分析为主要方法，从分类、网络语言特点、成因的角度对英文网络语言和中文网络语言进行对比分析，揭示了两者的紧密联系。

关键词：网络语言；对比；规范化

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Contents

Acknowledgments ................................................................................................................................. i Abstract ................................................................................................................................................ii 摘要 .....................................................................................................................................................iii Contents............................................................................................................................................... iv 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1 2. Literature Review .......................................................................................................................... 2

2.1 Definition of Cyber Language................................................................................................. 2 2.2 Previous Studies on Cyber Language Abroad and in China ................................................... 2

2.2.1 Cyber Language Study Abroad ..................................................................................... 2 2.2.2 Cyber Language Study in China ................................................................................... 3

3. The Classifications and Features of Cyber Language ................................................................... 4

3.1 The Classifications of Cyber Language .................................................................................. 4

3.1.1 Homophonic Words....................................................................................................... 4 3.1.2 Abbreviation .................................................................................................................. 4 3.1.3 Polysemy ....................................................................................................................... 4 3.2 The Features of Cyber Language ............................................................................................ 5

3.2.1 More Foreign Word and Terminology........................................................................... 5 3.2.2 Simplicity and Economy ............................................................................................... 5 3.2.3 Expressiveness and Humorousness ............................................................................... 6

4. The Similarities and Differences between English and Chinese Cyber Language ....................... 7

4.1 The Similarities between English and Chinese Cyber Language ........................................... 7

4.1.1 Similarities in Word-Formation..................................................................................... 7 4.1.2 Similarities of Semantic Change ................................................................................... 8 4.2 Difference between English and Chinese Cyber Language .................................................... 8

4.2.1 More Redefinition of Word Meaning in Chinese Cyber Language .............................. 9 4.2.2 Unique Clipping in English Cyber Language ............................................................... 9 4.2.3 More Capital Form in English....................................................................................... 9 4.3 Causes of the Similarities and Differences between them ...................................................... 9

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4.3.1Causes of the Similarities ............................................................................................. 10 4.3.2Causes of the Differences............................................................................................. 10

5. The future of Cyber Language .................................................................................................... 12

5.1 Development Tendency of Cyber Language ......................................................................... 12 5.2 Attitude towards Cyber Language......................................................................................... 12 5.3 Standardization of Cyber Language ...................................................................................... 13 6. Conclusion................................................................................................................................... 14 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................................... 15

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A Comparative Analysis of Cyber Language between English and

Chinese

1. Introduction

Cyber language, as a new language emerging after Internet‟s progress, is great significance of cyber language research. Many experts and scholars have noticed that cyber language study enrich the modern lexicon and provide tremendous materials for the lexical research. It is a vital work for us to identify the characteristics of these new words and expressions to promote lexical study. The research of cyber language can enhance Internet communication. Cyber language is derived from common lexicon. One problem encountering the new comers to the Internet is that they do not understand the meaning of cyber language. Lack of knowledge of cyber words can become a hindrance for them to interact and talk freely and effectively on the Internet, making a waste of time and effort consequently.

Cyber language is exerting influence on every aspect of society for it is the product of the social progress including the progress of Internet technology the appearance of cyber language has put forward new questions to the language teaching and learning. How to ensure that cyber language develop in the right track has become a task of urgency for the whole society.

This study looks into cyber language by collecting new data from new network environment,

analogous to what other researchers are likely to do in the description of natural language. This study is based on a pool of net words in English and Chinese.

The Internet is the most important source. Data collection of natural face-to-face conversation often requires manual recording and transcription, which is comparatively time-consuming and troublesome. But thanks to the development in computer science，the collection of raw data used for Internet environment is comparatively much easier. Most words and expressions are searched out through search engines at home and abroad such as Google and Baidu. Another way to collect the raw data is from the books of cyber language vocabulary collection in China.

The main research method is to discuss with teacher and classmates and then search a great amount of information. This comparative analysis is mainly based on the citing examples.

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2. Literature Review

2.1 Definition of Cyber Language

The term “cyber language” is a noun, and morphologically consists of two parts: “cyber” and “language”, “language” here involves “writing as well as talking”. It is “an alternative to „netlish‟, „weblish‟, „Internet language‟, „cyber speak‟, „electronic discourse‟, „electronic language‟, „interactive written discourse‟, „Computer-Mediated Communication‟ (CMC), and other more cumbersome locutions.” Although the term has many synonyms in English, it is commonly translated into Chinese as“网络语言”.

As the Internet is still very young, cyber language itself is an even younger topic. In fact, cyber language is not yet widely accepted in the circle of linguistics. For example, no linguistic definition has so far been given about cyber language. So it is far from easy to give a simple answer to the question “what is cyber language”.

2.2 Previous Studies on Cyber Language Abroad and in China

Although cyber language is in its initial stage, it has been drawing more and more attention from all circles of the society. The studies on cyber language have become one of the most important topics in linguistics.

2.2.1 Cyber Language Study Abroad

Comparatively speaking, the study on cyber language began earlier abroad. In 1997, University of Hartford held a meeting on “Internet and Language”. Many famous scholars were invited. They discussed the status of English in cyber language, education by Internet and so on. Then after six years, another cyber language study meeting was held in Spain. These two meetings are the landmarks of research on cyber language in linguistic circle. However, most articles about cyber language only give an introduction of the neologisms of cyber language, and few systematic linguistic analyses have been done in this area. David Crystal, one of the world's foremost authorities on language and the editor of Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, published the book titled Language and the Internet in 2001. In this book, David Crystal

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investigated the nature of the impact, which the Internet is making on language. The issues, which the book touches on, are the explanation of cyber language, e-mail, chat groups, virtual worlds, and the web. He admits there are limitations in both quantity and quality, but this book all in all is the representative of cyber language study abroad.

2.2.2 Cyber Language Study in China

In China, cyber language is drawing the attention of more and more scholars and linguistic students. A scholar who studies Chinese cyber language is Liu Haiyan, associate-professor also in Beijing Broadcasting Institute. Basically speaking, she shares a similar view about cyber language with Professor Yu (2001), who wrote a book titled An Introduction to cyber language. In this book, Yu (2001) has conducted a systematic analysis of the notion, general features and lexical features of Chinese cyber language, and he also made the comparison between cyber language and languages of traditional media, such as TV, newspapers and radio broadcasting. The last part of the book is about people‟s attitudes to cyber language and gives his ideas on how to regulate Chinese cyber language.

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3. The Classifications and Features of Cyber Language

3.1 The Classifications of Cyber Language

In some cases, the diversity of English and Chinese cyber language will make us confused. Some words look similar but they belong to different family language. Canonical classifications of cyber language can help us to master their characteristic. The major component of cyber language is vocabulary, so to a large extend, methods of word formation influence the classification of cyber language. Now we make some comparative analysis of the several following classifications.

3.1.1 Homophonic Words

“Homophonic” is not use the original word, but use the similar pronunciation words instead. English and Chinese cyber language both have a great amount of homophonic word. For example: C U (see you), OIC (Oh, I see), How r u? (How are you?) , U (you), C (see), and so forth.

Some Chinese homophonic words comes from dialect, such as “美眉”(sister, also refers to the pretty girl). Some netizen in order to save time, they often type the similar pronunciation word as the original word. Such as:“斑竹”,“板斧”,“来乐”,“大虾”,“网技”.

3.1.2 Abbreviation

Abbreviation is very important, especially on the internet. Whether searching information or chatting online, there is one same purpose: saving time. Therefore, some abbreviation arises at the historic moment, becoming one of the social languages gradually.

English abbreviation also called acronym, which is consist of the first letter of word. This kind of words is the largest proportion in English cyber language. Such as: PC (Personal Computer), FE (For Example), AFAIK (As Far As I Know), ASAP (As Soon As Possible).

Chinese pinyin abbreviation imitates the English abbreviation. Some individuals use rhymes or English pronunciation, such as JJ (jiejie), DD (didi), PMP (paimapi), PPMM (piaoliangmeimei).

3.1.3 Polysemy

Polysemy is the common language phenomenon. In English and Chinese, in addition to the

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terms; Single-meaning word is very few. Most of the words are polysemants, the higher the frequency of the word, the more meaning it has, its vitality is stronger. The followings are some examples: Memory, its original meaning is “the mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experience”. But in cyber language, it refers to “a unit of a computer that preserves data for retrieval”. HTML, this acronym stands for hypertext markup language, which is the base of the whole Internet because it is the language used to create documents on the World Wide Web. However, it can also stand for “hurts to make love”, which means that I have a sexually transmitted disease. Here are some examples:“楼上”or“楼下”originally refers to upstairs or downstairs. In cyber language, it means the relationship between two pieces of notes in the forum. “灌水”means“to pour”or“to irrigate” originally, but now it is added to new meaning, it means “to write an article on the Net, especially on the topic put forward by other netizens”. Sometimes it refers to sending articles randomly.

3.2 The Features of Cyber Language

The basic characteristics of the cyber language are mainly reflected in the following aspects.

3.2.1 More Foreign Word and Terminology

Owing to the spring up of Internet technology, a lot of terminologies emerge as the times require, which reflect the changes of the social development of the internet times. Through statistical analysis, we found that the technical terminology use in cyber language mostly. Cyber language is not the language alteration that difficult to understand, and not empty words, but the reflection of development of new technology and update knowledge.

3.2.2 Simplicity and Economy

Simple and easy-to-remember network language makes it possible for cyber citizens to avoid the necessity of remembering the lengthy and tedious terminology and jargon, and improves the speed of imputing the information on the keyboard, making the network information easy to spread. The simplicity of network language is mainly seen in a great amount of abbreviations on the Internet, because this word-formation way is easy to create words and convenient to use. For example: FYI (For your information), IMHO (In my humble opinion), BF (boyfriend), dl (download). Cyber language appears with the widespread of computer and Internet. As cyber

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language is typed through the keyboard, on-line communications is not as quick as our face-to-face communication in the daily life. Therefore, netizens choose to use simple and short words and expressions to convey their meanings. By economy we mean the term of cyber language consists of fewer letters than regular words, and it is easy to type.

3.2.3 Expressiveness and Humorousness

Network language is very visual and vivid, making it very easy for people to understand its meaning. On the Internet, cyber citizens, by making use of the symbols in the keyboard, create many extremely vivid and humorous figures to express facial impression and actions. In this way, simulation of real life communication is done so as to display their personal emotions. For example, ^^smile, *八make eyes wink, (@@preserve the traces of childishness, :一)happy, :一)) very happy ，:一p stick tongue out, :(o)(o) very surprised.

The humorousness strengthens the expressive force of language. People who have plenty of leisure time are the main group of cyber citizens, in which youth occupy. The rejuvenation of the network makes the network full of vitality and dynamics. They work hard to make up many interesting network languages, creating an easy and relaxed environment.

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4. The Similarities and Differences between English and Chinese Cyber

Language

English and Chinese are two different kinds of family languages. We must know the similarities between them, but also recognize the differences. This helps us to learn English and Chinese cyber language better, promote the communication of international cyber language and improve the system of cyber language.

4.1 The Similarities between English and Chinese Cyber Language

There are many similarities between English and Chinese cyber language, this thesis is mainly discussed from the aspects of word formation and semantic change.

4.1.1 Similarities in Word-Formation

The formation of cyber language is very vast and complicated. The major component of cyber language is vocabulary, so there are many similarities between the content of word formation and classification of cyber language. The most normal methods of Word-Formation are homophonic, abbreviation, neology and Symbol words. The first two methods have been discussed in the third chapter, so this section will make an introduction on neology and symbol words.

Neology is introduction of a new word, or of words or signification, into a language, as the present nomenclature of chemistry is a remarkable instance of neology. Network Language, both in China and in English countries, refers to that gives original words its special meaning on the internet and can be widely accepted by netizens. For instance, originally, Surfing refers to the activity or sport of riding over the waves on a special board. Now it extends to the activity of looking quickly through information on the Internet to find something that interests you. In Chinese, there are also many examples, such as: 喷鼻血（形容一个人很震惊）； 贤惠（闲在家里什么都不会）.

Symbol words include some digit and smiley. Smiley is a graph consists of special character of keyboard. Network users use them in electronic mail and express feelings, but it only exist on the internet. Symbol words has no borders, it is the general language of our world. For examples: :)

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smile , >一<@Oh my god, :-0yell, :一@scream, 一(00)一pig, ._.panda, 二-一cat.

4.1.2 Similarities of Semantic Change

The most prominent feature of cyber language is the emergence of a tremendous number of

new words and large number of existed words being applied with new meaning. More and more new words are created and more and more existed words are given new meanings at an astonishing speed. The development of language is decided by social, political, economic and culture factors. The driving factors behind this linguistic phenomenon can be summarized as follow:

The first one is the emergence of new products, services and behaviors. Internet is developing rapidly. People twenty years ago just cannot imagine that today they can communicate with people all over the word via such a small computer. Within 20 years, all kinds of hardware, software and other programs are designed to meet people‟s need. As a result, a large number of new products, services and behaviors related to Internet appeared. The first problem brought by this phenomenon is how to name them. Therefore, net users not only create new words but also borrow the existed words to describe them in both English cyber language and Chinese cyber language. Accordingly, the meaning of established words in cyber language has changed a lot.

The second is people‟s desire to acquire maximum information within minimum time. They use an existing word to denote more than one meaning. Here are two paragraphs excerpted from the netiquette.

It is a circle that people today seem to have less time than even before, even though we sleep less and have more labor-saving devices than our grandparents did. When you send email or post to a discussion group, you're taking up other people‟s time. It‟s your responsibility to ensure that the time they spend reading your posting isn't wasted.

4.2 Difference between English and Chinese Cyber Language

Although those two kinds of cyber language were generated under the same social background, as two different family languages, there are idiomatical features of their own in vocabulary, grammar and meaning.

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4.2.1 More Redefinition of Word Meaning in Chinese Cyber Language

Sometimes, netizens explain an original word or phrase in a distorted way in order to create

the effect of fun or novelty. Here are some typical examples in Chinese:神童(神经病儿童), 耐看(耐着性子看), 不错(长成这个样子真的不是你的错), 天生丽质(天生没有什么可以利用的价值), 贤惠(闲在家里什么都不会).

This type is peculiar to Chinese and the properties of Chinese itself allow the coinage of such words, the Chinese language consists of ideographic characters so that we can explain a phrase from the surface meaning of every Chinese character. This method of explaining of a word is not commonly used or accepted in natural language, but in virtual world, when the language is presented in written form, the netizens are readily to accept it.

4.2.2 Unique Clipping in English Cyber Language

Clipping is the formation of new words by deleting a part of the original and using what remains instead. It is also called shortening. In English cyber language, clipping is also an important way of word formation, which accounts for 15%, and it stems from the fact that people tend to be economical in writing and speech to keep up with the tempo of the new life style. English net words coined by clipping fall into four types: back clipping, front clipping, middle clipping and Clipping which alters spelling. For example: Com =commerce, Site=website, Bot =robot, B/c = because, Thank X =thanks.

4.2.3 More Capital Form in English

If all words are in capital form, it is often said that the speaker is shouting. If you ever see

someone TYPING AN ENTIRE SENTENCE IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS that means SHOUTING! It is not proper netiquette to TYPE IN ALL CAPS (even in e-mail), in fact, it‟s annoying. If you‟re in a hurry (or want to do what many people online already do), then type in all Lower case, unless you want to imply that YOU ARE SHOUTING! So it is not suitable to use the capital form while chatting online, it will make people disgusted with you, unless you want to shout.

4.3 Causes of the Similarities and Differences between them

English and Chinese cyber language as part of the world's language, therefore their causes are

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complicated. They have many similar causes under the same international background. However, as two different kinds of languages, they also have some respective causes.

4.3.1Causes of the Similarities

With the development of Internet, the concept of Internet entertainment is increasingly popular, more and more people feel the strong function of Internet entertainment. Music and instant correspond become the netizen‟s utilization rate network applications, a large number of less-educated Internet users were attract by the function of Internet entertainment. It is the wide spread of the Internet provide the foundation for the emergence and development of the cyber language.

The keyboard is based on English, so it is very easy and convenient to English directly. The input of Chinese characters involves transfer of input type, thus it causes certain inconveniency. That is why netizens who know English would probably choose English to communicate. When using the input type of Chinese character, in order to save time, netizens prefer convenient and rapid typing，so the occurrence of homophones such as“在”(再)、“这”(着)、“斑竹”(版主)are quite common. In addition, CMC (Computer-Mediated Communication) is a kind of oral communication through written words. With the help of “sounds”, netizens can understand each other and achieve successful communication.

4.3.2Causes of the Differences

Regarding the aspect of word-formation methods, English cyber language and Chinese cyber language have their specialties.

The main reason is that the two languages have their own distinctive features. On one hand, English is the most widely-used spelling language, which is simply composed and easy to memorize. Therefore, the formation of English words is based on English letters or morphemes. Because of English imposing position on the Internet, English exerts great impact on Chinese cyber language. Therefore, quite a number of Chinese net words are formed on the basis of English traditional methods. English cyber language and Chinese cyber language share some similarities in word formation. However there are still some traditional English word-formation methods, such as compound, clipping and blending, which cannot help to form Chinese cyber language. And they are peculiar to English.

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On the other hand, Chinese is used by the largest population. And Chinese consists of ideographic characters instead of alphabetic spelling, which is archaic and unique, comprising the most information. Compared to Chinese, an English letter is equal to a Chinese stroke and a single English word is equal to a Chinese character, thus, English phrases equal Chinese character-clusters. Therefore, we can see clearly that Chinese gain the upper hand in expressing and conveying information. The word formation of Chinese language depends primarily on the sense of the word. So besides traditional English word formation, Chinese net words are built based on their own characteristics.

All in all, Chinese cyber language has been influenced by English cyber language. At the same time, Chinese cyber language is also promising and vigorous.

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5. The future of Cyber Language

5.1 Development Tendency of Cyber Language

The reform and opening-up policy of China is implemented at an increasingly greater depth and the trend towards globalization is developing at an irresistible speed and popularity. Under this situation, namely, under the impact of globalization at all levels, the spread of information by means of Internet has further strengthened the cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries in an all-round manner at different levels.

It is necessary and reasonable for cyber language to exist for the time being. According to the sociolinguistic theory, language changes with the development of society. Language reflects the real physical world and culture. As the development of high technology is accelerating, there is no doubt that cyber language will change in its form of expressing or the way of communicating in the future.

As we know cyber language emerges in a certain period of time in history due to the development of Internet, it is likely that cyber language will disappear or be replaced by other form of language expressing with the development of new technology in the future. Now with the popularity of video chatting online by mobile phone, netizens might drop keyboard and short message sent turn to other way of communication which is more convenient and efficient. However, some cyber lexicons which have already entered people's daily communication may be compiled into English and Chinese dictionary.

5.2 Attitude towards Cyber Language

There has always been controversy over the emergence and usage of web language. Both assenters and dissenters exist. The reasons for approval: web language, based on the development of the times, is the expression requirement of certain communication groups, representing the spirit of the age; it is the need of the new media and development tendency toward network media, manifesting itself in the web culture; it belongs to a new type of social dialect and develops Chinese in some sense, nurturing the Chinese communication and evolution; web language proves that language is live, dynamic and in progress; it advocates the diversity of language practice and enriches the language life of people.

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Language is always changing in terms of content as well as form. The constant enrichment and evolution of life language account for the ever-lasting vitality of language itself. In the history of more than thousands of years, Chinese has been subject to foreign interference for numerous times. However, the Chinese survives and remains attractive and charming all the time because our language possesses great and strong vitality.

5.3 Standardization of Cyber Language

It can be seen that there are some difference between cyber language and traditional language through the comparison of English and Chinese cyber language. The present situation of English and Chinese network language has its advantage and disadvantage, these two kinds of features are not separate, but connect together. Therefore, the demand of the standardization of cyber language is increasing.

Internet users have presented the explosive growth tendency, it indicates that network communication has been gradually become an important part of modern life, and the emerging of cyber language also become new words appear the tendency of the centralized embodiment in recent years. As a special language and its “online product, office popular” trend, t is necessary to study the normative.

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6. Conclusion

Cyber language has been always developing rapidly and spreading widely since the day of its own emergency. Its range of application has spread to different network fields, regions and even countries. The cyber language has exerted great influence on the whole society and the influence has penetrated into every aspect of society such as life, education and business. It is undeniable that it has imposed certain impact on the traditional language and social culture. However, the generation and usage of it suffer from instability since its emergence; cyber language has provoked great and broad controversy, the center of which rests with the regulation and supervision issues.

This thesis is mainly to facilitate the communication of cyber language. The author believes that it can guide the cyber language fans to learn cyber language better. In the aspect of vocabulary, classification, causes, and so forth, there are many similarities and differences. Only know those similarities and differences well, can we make tactics for the standardization of cyber language and establish excellent system of cyber language.

In a word, everything has its own form and reason. Language is in the continuous change and development all the time. We should hold the attitude of tolerance and understanding toward the cyber language, which will be greatly beneficial to the development of social language if active guidance and supervision could be implemented.

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