[Language Forum]
Author: Wang Lei (Professor of the School of Chinese Studies, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies)
Editor's note
With the rapid development of the Internet, the Internet language came into being, and since then it started the development process from "imported products" to "localization", from virtual space to real life. Nowadays, many vivid, humorous and interesting online languages have penetrated into people's daily language life, and "powerful" and "like" have even entered the discourse system of traditional mainstream media. Obviously, the Internet language has moved from niche to popular. In this issue, we specially invited three scholars to write an article to explore the development path, generation mechanism and social impact of online languages. We look forward to your attention.
Looking at the history of world science and technology, the Internet is undoubtedly one of the greatest inventions of mankind in the 20th century. It not only changes and is still changing our lifestyle, survival and even cognitive methods, but also has had different degrees of impact on our language. Now for us, online language is no longer an unfamiliar noun. Those familiar and unfamiliar words gather on our screens in various forms and from various platforms, and then fly out of our fingers and mouths. This has become a unique landscape in our current life: if you see, or if you don’t see, it is there, the waves wash away the sand; if you love, or if you don’t love, it is there, emerging endlessly.
Bright Picture/Visual China
1. Where to get the Internet language
Across the Great Wall we can reach every corner in the world. (Cross the Great Wall and go to the world.) This is a seemingly ordinary email sent overseas from Beijing on September 20, 1987, but it not only indicates that the curtain of the Chinese Internet era is slowly opening, but also destined from the beginning that the technological attributes of Internet language communication and the diverse cultural attributes of foreign languages are doomed.
Bright Picture/Visual China
Network language, as the name suggests, is a language phenomenon emerging with the application and popularity of the Internet, and is an online variant of the real language. As a high-tech product, online languages use keyboard input and screen reading to write-in communication to vision, changing the language communication method that humans have been passed down from their birth, as well as the "black and black" language writing method that has been produced and continued to this day by human civilization. At the same time, the technological attributes of the Internet also determine that online language was originally just a niche language phenomenon, and it is a discourse form of communication between those who often use computers.
For example, the first network emoji :-) was born on the keyboard of Scott Falman, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University in the United States. This "Little Gift to the World" which was launched on September 19, 1982 is based on the ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Exchange) code known to professionals, and was originally defined as "the speaker is joking." He is known as the author of the first best-selling Chinese online novel "First Intimate Contact" and the web name pixie Cai . When he uploaded his work in 1998, he was a Ph.D. in water conservancy engineering from Taiwan Chenggong University.
In 1994, my country achieved full-functional connection with the Internet (Internet). The Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences launched the first set of web pages in my country. The National Intelligent Computer Research and Development Center opened the first BBS station in the mainland. In November 1997, my country released the "Statistical Report on the Development of China's Internet" for the first time: 299,000 computers were connected to the Internet, and 620,000 users were connected to the Internet; the number of people online in the three major fields of computer, scientific research and education accounted for more than 40%.
Therefore, when the modem (modem), which is essential to the Internet, is called "cat" by netizens; more people are familiar with and enjoy using online languages such as "dinosaurs, frogs, death in the light, and crashing", as well as emojis such as ":) and: (" when surfing the Internet, the Internet language that gradually appears in front of the public with "disfamiliar" and "non-mainstream" faces was once regarded as "black words", believing that it undermines the purity of Chinese, "will cause great damage to Chinese norms", and calling for "don't leave evil promises for future generations".
However, language has its own development trajectory and rules, and the Internet language has not weakened its momentum at all.With the rapid development of my country's Internet industry, the penetration rate reached 22.6% at the end of 2008, exceeding the global average; the number of netizens reached 298 million, which increased by nearly 480 times in ten years. It can be said that the growth rate of its users is difficult for any media to compare with before. Especially with the further popularization of smart terminals and mobile Internet, just a few years later, by June 2014, the Internet penetration rate was close to 50%, and the mobile phone usage rate also reached 83.4%, surpassing traditional PCs for the first time to become the largest Internet terminal, and my country has also fully welcomed the media era. This also makes the Internet platform, which was originally interactive and open, more popular, active and popular, and the Internet language is like "the swallow in the old days, flying into the homes of ordinary people" and becomes the discourse of the public and the whole people.
2. Internet Languages and All living beings
In recent years, the selection of various Internet buzzwords at the end of the year and the beginning of the year, as well as the "Chinese Inventory" activity that began in 2006 and continues to this day, have gradually become the new "language custom" in the Internet era, which has allowed more people to appreciate the colorful Internet language, recognize, accept and be happy to use Internet language.
In 1997, in the earliest introduction to "New Languages in Online Culture", only 37 Internet languages were listed, such as: B4, BTW, CU, IC, OIC, U, Ur, etc. "Basically derived from the abbreviation of English, some developed from the simple language used in telegraphs." The characteristics of foreign cultures in Internet language are self-evident. After 20 years of development and evolution, today's online language has perfectly reflected the inclusiveness of Chinese language in the process of "localization", but also fully stimulated the language wisdom and infinite creativity of Chinese netizens. The Internet industry has become an incubator, testing ground and distribution center for various new expression methods.
In terms of language form, online languages include simple Chinese characters, letters and numbers, such as "Ou, moderator, powerful, tall, rich and handsome, happy and big, mm, bs, gf, haha, 555, 886, 7456, 5201314", etc., as well as many types of code mixed with Chinese characters and letters, Chinese characters and numbers, letters and numbers, such as "8 mistakes, me2, +U, hold, call", etc.; the Martian text, which was once popular among young people, has brought this code mix to the extreme. It can be used by me for five thousand years, "all of them are included in my slaughter."
As for language units, online language has also expanded from the early verbal level, such as the above examples, to phrases and short sentences, such as "The gods and horses are all floating clouds, Yuan Fang, what do you think of important things? I said three times, and my friends and I were shocked" and so on; and further extended to the discourse, resulting in Internet popular bodies of various forms, such as "pear blossom body, smurf body, dandan body, sweeping old lady body, high-iron body, tongue tip body", etc. Because they are often spread through Weibo, they are also called "Weibo body", among which "Taobao body" is the most famous, and they have derived various Taobao bodies such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, admission notices, police, and traffic propaganda. Their discourse form has also entered the language life of the public along with the online shopping of the whole people.
In terms of symbol types, the non-instant and non-invested nature of online communication has caused the lack of verbal communication modes, which prompted people to constantly seek various expressions to compensate. Therefore, the online emojis of non-verbal characters emerged, and developed from a single expression to a series of expressions and emoji packages, such as the earlier Yanwen (⊙_⊙), Emoji (emoji) expressions from Japan, etc.; then from Tai The expressions provided by the Taiwan system to the expressions and emoticons created by netizens, such as QQ expressions, UC expressions, Tusky expressions, panda expressions, etc.; from simple emoticons to multi-modal expressions that combine text, punctuation and expressions, it is also used in parallel from static, graphic expressions to dynamic, and real-person expressions, such as Yao Ming's face, Hanaze Coriander, Director Jin's "Three Asian Expressions" and various black guy expressions, etc. Images and texts have become an indispensable mode means for online communication, and have even become the winning weapon for fighting pictures.
language and non-verbal symbols jointly create an online language, and memes are an important mechanism for their generation and evolution. Through the replication and dissemination of modal sound, modal meaning, modal shape, modal structure and composite memes, it creates a grand online language life.At the same time, the virtuality, electronic identity and lack of gatekeepers on the Internet have also caused the mud to fall in the process of online language transmission, and the slander and filthy language are moved to the Internet in the variant forms unique to the Internet communication, and the linguistic violence of both soft and hard is endless on the screen.
3. Where does the Internet language go
The emergence of the Internet has enabled us to have both real and virtual world spaces; and with the increasing popularity of network applications and mobile Internet, the Internet, especially WeChat, as a cross-platform communication tool, has become our basic lifestyle. From the real world to the virtual world, it is like the Tai Chi diagram of traditional Chinese cultural symbols. You have me and I have you. Moreover, because the subject of language use is no different, the boundaries between real language life and virtual language life are being dissolved, and the overall direction is fusion and overlapping, and a seamless communication circuit has been formed between the two worlds.
For example, "My Brother is Awesome" first came from a military training in a middle school, and later became popular and became the top ten online terms in 2016. It entered various media and solidified into the word model of "My ×"; in March 2018, the large-scale documentary film "My Country" was released nationwide, setting off a meme climax of "My ×", prompting it to complete its gorgeous turn to solemn and rigorous real political discourse.
online languages such as power, power of the prehistoric times, likes, and withdrawal from groups are "very hard-working" on the way to official media.
Another example is the second volume of the Chinese version of the seventh grade "Chinese" specifically includes the article "Internet Emoticons" to introduce the birth process of the first online emoticon. This is undoubtedly to make education better fit the language life in the Internet era and to enable teenagers to correctly understand and use Internet language and Internet emojis.
At the same time, online languages will still follow the own laws of language communication and development, and will be affected by factors such as the age, gender, and group of netizens. The use of online languages will also be differentiated. The 2018 WeChat annual data report reveals that the expressions they like to use are different from those born in the 2000s to those born in the 1970s. With the comprehensive advancement of Internet technology and artificial intelligence, the applications of online platforms are more diversified and personalized, which has also led to the emergence of various game circles, barrage circles, and fan circles (fan circles). The segmentation of "circle language" will undoubtedly bring a new sense of strangeness to netizens outside the circle, such as sk (fast birth, that is, happy birthday), 271 (iQiyi), zqsg (true feelings), cool guy (cool guy), etc. In fact, this segmentation is very similar to the formation and use trajectory of professional words, industry words, etc. in the development of human society.
The general trend of the world is that long-term separation will be united, and long-term harmony will be united. Integration and focus group are undoubtedly two major trends in the process of network communication and network language development. Virtual language life is the mirroring and mapping of real language life, and online language is the meme of real language; digital and hypertext information dissemination allow pictures, animations, audio and video, etc. to complement traditional language texts, digital symbols, etc., and multimodals have become the basic feature of online language dissemination. Therefore, we should establish a multimodal concept of cognitive and normative concepts of network language, pay attention to the new language application trends and influences brought by the popularization of emerging communication platforms and self-media communication, and scientifically and rationally guide network language to develop towards ecological health and environmentally friendly directions to create a clear cyberspace.
"Guangming Daily" (08th edition, April 6, 2019)
