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1

Research on Chinglish in the Internet Buzzwords from 1

the Perspective of Sociolinguistics 2

3

The Internet buzzword containing a lot of Chinglish is a new form of 4

language generated in the context of the rapid development and wide spread 5

of the Internet. A large number of Internet buzzwords, which is different from 6

the traditional media language, correspond with the trend of the time as well 7

as meet the satisfaction of people’s language demands. As an academic 8

discipline, the main purpose of sociolinguistic is to study the relationship 9

between people’s language and the social condition. This paper will 10

illustrate the Chinglish in the Internet buzzword from the perspective of 11

sociolinguistics. 12

13

Keywords: Chinglish, Internet Buzzword, Sociolinguistics 14

15

16

Introduction 17

18

Research Background 19

20

With the rapid development of the Internet, communicating with each 21

other online has become a kind of normality for many people. Chatting online 22

means that people‟s use of language can be collected, calculated as well as 23

analyzed, leading to the generation of the buzzword. The buzzword always 24

refers to a word or phrase that becomes very popular for a period of time. As a 25

character that can represent the current social condition, the buzzword has 26

attached more attention from linguist, especially the sociolinguist. Due to the 27

fact that the language use of people from different nations varies significantly, 28

the buzzword always embodies social characters and reflects people‟s 29

psychological condition in different nations. Buzzword with Chinese 30

characteristics used by Chinese netizens is definitely tightly combined with 31

China‟s society, leading to the appearance of some Chinglish buzzword 32

expressions. At the meantime, the usage and wide spread of Chinese buzzword 33

has become the most noticeable social phenomena. As a sub-field of linguistics, 34

sociolinguistics aims to study the relation between language and society in 35

which the users of language live. This paper aims to analyze the Chinglish 36

phenomenon of the Internet buzzword based on the perspective of 37

sociolinguistics. 38

39

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Significance of the Research 1

2

With the development of science and technology, people used to 3

communicate with each other online, giving birth to the Internet buzzword. The 4

buzzword used by Chinese netizens carries Chinese characteristics which can 5

also reflect the current condition of Chinese society. Through analyzing the 6

semantic and linguistic of Chinese annual Internet buzzwords, people can 7

recognize different periods of social presences as well as the current cultural 8

types in society. With more progress achieved in the society, linguists initiate to 9

realize the significance of analyzing annual buzzwords. Although a number of 10

papers have been published in the general area of the relation between 11

sociolinguistics and Internet buzzwords, little work has been carried out in 12

search of the Chinglish phenomena in Internet buzzword from the perspective 13

of sociolinguistics. Some scholars analyzed the relation between buzzword and 14

sociolinguistics while other scholars explored the reason why Internet 15

buzzword always carry Chinglish phenomena. On the basis of existing 16

literature data, this research paper carried out studies in an effort to explore 17

Chinglish in Internet buzzword with the sociolinguistics theory. 18

The study can also help us to understand and know the changes of the 19

society as well as a better prediction towards social and linguistic development 20

in the future. Based on the analysis of the relations among these three factors, 21

people can have a more comprehensive understanding of social and cultural 22

life. 23

24

Organization of the research 25

26

The first chapter of this paper explains the brief introduction of this 27

research background and the research significance. The second chapter 28

composes of three parts. The first part illustrates the definition of buzzword 29

and the Chinglish phenomena in the Internet buzzword. The following part 30

demonstrates the definition and development of sociolinguistics. The third part 31

is the research in exploring the Chinglish Internet buzzword from the 32

perspective of sociolinguistics. The last part of this paper is the conclusion. 33

34

35

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Research on Chinglish in the Internet Catchwords from the Perspective of 1

Sociolinguistics 2

3

Internet buzzword 4

5

Definition of the Internet buzzword 6

With the rapid development of science and technology, Internet has 7

become the most frequently used in people‟s daily life. As technology develops, 8

people‟s language usage can be recorded, calculated and analyzed, giving 9

buzzword opportunity to emerge. Although buzzword has attracted wide 10

attention from sociolinguists, there is still no explicit definitions of it from the 11

perspective of sociolinguistics. According to the dictionary, buzzword always 12

refers to a word and phrase that has become popular especially relating to a 13

certain subject or activity. The England linguist, David Crystal (2001) defined 14

the network language in his book “Language and the Internet”.1 He indicates 15

that the network language is a media that appear in the entire internet 16

environment and reflect the unique appearance of the internet. However, 17

Chinese scholar Genyuan YU (2001) argues that "network language" itself is a 18

network line and it originally refers to the computer language in the internet, 19

and also refers to the natural language that have their own characteristics in the 20

internet usage. 2Nowadays, it generally refers to the latter. Internet buzzwords 21

are the expressions that are popular on the Internet, which is the most active 22

part of the Internet language as well as a customary way of expression by 23

netizens. 24

Generated from the society, buzzword is the reflection of some certain 25

incidents in the society. As we all know, the emergence of buzzword is based 26

on the current social condition, culture types as well as social changes. The 27

accelerated development of technology gives buzzword an access to spread in a 28

wider range, making it more prominent to illustrate the relation between 29

society and buzzword. Aiming to explore the approach in which did the 30

buzzword reflect the social condition, institutes and scholars initiated to 31

summarize the annual Internet buzzword. 32

Since 2000, the Global Language Institute started to use a computer 33

program to track the frequency of English words used on thousands of media 34

outlets, blogs and social media sites around the world to pick the top words 35

each year. Merriam-Webster also selected the word of the year based on how 36

1Baron, N. S. (2003). Language of the Internet. The Stanford handbook for language engineers,

59-127. 2Genyuan, Y. U. (2010). The History and Development of Chinese Applied Linguistics

[J]. Applied Linguistics, 1.

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often anonymous users look up words in the online dictionary. The UK's Word 1

of the Year was chosen by the Oxford University Press. By tracking changes in 2

the use of words in the English, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and the 3

Oxford American Dictionary (OED) selected the British and American 4

buzzwords and the word of the year which were the perfect expression towards 5

the condition of the year. In addition, CollinsDictionals.com has chosen 12 6

words of the year, based on events of each month. Australia's Macquarie 7

Dictionary has also published its Australian version of the word of the year 8

since 2006.In addition to its word of the year, the Macquarie Dictionary will 9

also rank the selected words by subject category, including agriculture, art, 10

politics, science and technology, Internet, sports, etc. The changes in Internet 11

buzzword demonstrate social and cultural transformations. 12

13

The current situation of the Internet buzzword 14

With the flourish of the Internet era, network buzzword has become 15

popular in the society. In the Internet world, netizens hold different 16

interpretations towards each social event, giving them impetus to accept, 17

spread and even create new Internet buzzwords. Buzzwords are created based 18

on netizens‟ meaning interpretation, homophonics, abbreviations and mixture 19

of Chinese and English. All these changes have made huge impact in people‟s 20

daily language use. 21

When the buzzword emerged, it was arduous for people to summarize the 22

logic and principle to constitute a buzzword. With the accumulation of 23

buzzwords, linguists realized that semantics, grammar, vocabulary and 24

pronunciation are the four main elements that constitute a buzzword and once 25

one of these factors were altered, the origin word‟s meaning and function could 26

be totally different, laying foundation for the creation of the network 27

buzzword. 28

With more than 10 years‟ development and changes of buzzword, a 29

conclusion can be withdrawn: the created buzzword is closely related to 30

entertaining atmosphere, which can be simple, fun and straightforward to 31

reflect people‟s emotion, current social condition and people‟s attitude towards 32

certain incidents. Considering the buzzword from the perspective of linguistics, 33

an unified standard and norm does not exist to form the buzzword which can 34

originate from the films, TV series and social incidents. Thanks to the arbitrary 35

of buzzword‟s formation, it is hard for elder people to understand the 36

buzzword‟s deep meaning, accept its unique formation and employ the 37

buzzword in their daily language usage. Taking 蒜泥狠 as an example, which 38

was a classic buzzword generated in 2010 and had been categorized into 2010 39

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Annual Buzzword. This buzzword originated from the Chinese expression 算1

你狠, which was most frequently used in the northeast of China to express 2

people‟s unwillingness towards their rivals while after being altered into 蒜泥3

狠, this expression was used by Chinese netizens to make sarcasm of the 4

extreme high market price of garlic. All these buzzwords spread widely online, 5

while interpreting these expressions is challenging for elderly people who do 6

not use the Internet. The communication gap between the youngster and the 7

elder contributes to the gap in using buzzword. All these aspects combined 8

together formulates the complex current situation of Internet buzzword usage. 9

10

Chinglish in the Internet buzzword 11

"Chinglish" is defined as "English with Chinese characteristics" because it 12

is the mixture of half English and half Chinese, and is considered to be the 13

"perfect combination" of Chinese grammar and English words. "Chinglish" is 14

different from "Chinese English", which is usually manifested as the irregular 15

expression methods of English learners when they express their thoughts due to 16

the influence of thinking, culture and other factors. And "Chinese English" 17

refers to the language with Chinese cultural connotation, is China's 18

complement to the world corpus which belongs to a part of the world language. 19

The globalization has made great contributions in closely combining the world 20

together, impelling people to learn other countries‟ language and will finally 21

lead to the mixture between different languages. With the rapid development 22

and wide application of Internet technology, the Internet buzzword goes viral 23

among Chinese netizens, making Chinglish in the Internet buzzword a hot topic 24

in language research discussed by linguists. The Chinglish originates from the 25

social development, which can be understood, comprehended and accepted by 26

people of all ages. 27

Chinglish, possessing a long history of language development, is an 28

unique language form which can be firstly tracked back to Hong Kong in 29

1990s. When communicating with foreigners, local residents used to mix 30

Chinese expressions with English words, such as the usage of long time no see 31

as a greeting. Whenever two kinds of languages were mentioned, translation 32

must exist as the bridge to connect these two languages and Chinglish‟s first 33

appearance is in the process of translating Chinese words and phrases into 34

English with Chinese original word order. Taking mountain people mountain 35

sea as an example, this is a traditional Chinese expression 人山人海, which is 36

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used to describe the crowded people while the Chinglish expression arrange the 1

English word according to the Chinese order. The following phase of Chinglish 2

is the appearance of network buzzwords. As the Internet technology develops, 3

the utilization of the online software to communicate has gained popularity, 4

causing the surge of network Chinglish buzzwords, such as you can you up and 5

no zuo no die. The second category is the combination of pinyin and English 6

word formation, such as gelivable and ungeilivable. This kind of buzzword 7

combines pinyin and affixes of English words together to express people‟s 8

current psychological condition, state and nature. 9

10

Sociolinguistics 11

12

The background of Sociolinguistics 13

Compared with other linguistics research subjects, sociolinguistics is a 14

relatively nascent subject with the history of over 40 years. According to 15

Frederick J. Newmeyer, the emergence and development of sociolinguistics are 16

closely related to the social conditions after the World War II. 3When the war 17

ended, many countries tried to make the recovery from the devastating 18

damages by carrying out national liberation movements to reopen economy and 19

rejuvenate the whole society. During the process of launching these activities, 20

many scholars and national officials realized that it was a challenging work to 21

determine national language after the establishment of the national regime 22

based on the fact that almost all the people could speak more than two 23

languages thanks to the colonial rule with the long period of time. At the same 24

period of time, some ethnic minority groups dedicated to fight for their equal 25

rights while the language had become the barrier in the communication process. 26

The liberation movements also reinvigorate woman‟s thoughts, giving them 27

more space to consider about their own social identities, giving linguists 28

impetus to consider whether our language perpetuates the gender inequality. 29

Integrated together, all these factors promoted the study of social language, 30

such as African American vernacular English and Chicano Spanish, which can 31

be regarded as the social context in which sociolinguistics comes into being. 32

Frederick J. Newmeyer‟s view illustrate this problem from the perspective of 33

national integration and the changes of the world pattern. 34

However, the debate about the first person proposing the term 35

„sociolinguistics‟ is still up in the air. According to LePage, the term 36

„sociolinguistics‟ first appeared in the second edition of Eugene Nida ' s 1949 37

classic 《Morphology》 in the appendix to the Oxford English Dictionary 38

3 Frederick J. Neweyer , The History of Linguistics, the University of Washington.

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published in 1986. 4As an academic discipline, sociolinguistics was first 1

mentioned in T. C. Hodson ' s paper Sociolinguistics in India in 1939. Hudson 2

mentioned that Hasr C. Currie published an article entitled ' Projection of 3

Sociolinguistics: the relationship of speech to social status ' in 1952, which 4

was drafted in 1949 and published in 1952.5Since then Currie has laboriously 5

claimed that he has priority in the establishment of the term „sociolinguistics‟ 6

with constant effort. The following scholars who have made enduring efforts in 7

the development of this academic discipline should be American sociolinguists 8

such as Fishman, Helms and Rabov. 9

10

The definition of Sociolinguistics 11

As globalization develops, the communication among the countries is 12

becoming more and more frequent, making language indispensable in the 13

communication process. Being a tool, language plays an essential role in the 14

process of communication. Thanks to its significance, the enduring exploration 15

towards the language has been made, leading to the emergence of many 16

linguistics theories regarding the study of language variation and historical 17

linguistics and sociolinguistics are two perspectives that are most used in the 18

analysis of language variation. The study of linguistics from the perspective of 19

historical development mainly follows the historical changes of language, 20

which constantly changes according to the development of history. While the 21

study of linguistics from the perspective of social context aims to put language 22

into the overall social environment. Regarding linguistics from the perspective 23

from social context, language generates and develops together with social 24

development. 25

According to Holmes and Hudson, sociolinguistics is the study of the 26

relationship between people and society.6 In the view of sociolinguists, 27

language will lack its theoretical basis without being carried out in the social 28

context. The question that perplexes sociolinguists the most is that why 29

people‟s expression varies according to the changes in social context and they 30

have endeavored to explain this phenomena. The traditional linguistics used to 31

make the exploration of the language variation from the historical perspective, 32

neglecting the sociality of language and the emergence of sociolinguistics has 33

compensated the vacancy of the analysis of language usage in society. 34

Being a product in the process of social development, language is 35

inseparable from the social context and due to the fact that people‟s 36

4Le Page, R. B. (1974). Processes of Pidginization and Creolization.

5Hudson, R.A. Sociolinguistics[M]. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press,

2000. 6Holmes, J.An Introd uction to sociolinguistics [M].Harlow Essex: Longman,1999.

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communication rests entirely on the society, endowing the analysis of language 1

variation in social context more prominence in linguistic study. Some linguists 2

state that language change in social context as „incomplete changes‟ while the 3

diachronic language change is „complete change‟ and claim that the complete 4

change deserves more attention compared with uncomplete change. However, 5

the fact is that the incomplete language change lays foundation for complete 6

change and the development of uncomplete language change can stimulate the 7

development of complete language change. The development of technology 8

prompts the birth of new things and the word‟s definition is considered as one 9

of the elementary subjects in the linguistic research. Regarding the relation 10

between people and society, four kinds relations existing in the current 11

linguistics research, the social structure affects and determines the language 12

structure; the social structure affects and determines the social structure; there 13

is no relationship between language and society; admitting the existence of 14

relation between language and society while it is not the perfect time to analyze 15

the relation. 16

17

The schools of sociolinguistics 18

When it comes to the discussion of the academic schools of 19

sociolinguistics, scholars are basically categorized into two schools: one is 20

based on dichotomy classification, and is divided into macro sociolinguistics 21

and micro sociolinguistics, and the other is based on the tripartite classification, 22

which the baseline follows the chronic line of main school in the development 23

of sociolinguistics, the development of sociolinguistics, it can be divided into 24

the sociological school of language represented by Fishman, the school of 25

discourse culture represented by Hymes and the school of linguistic variation 26

represented by Labov. This paper will illustrate the sociolinguistics schools 27

based on the tripartite classification. Fishman, the pioneer of sociolinguistics, 28

proposed the Sociological School of Language in his book Sociology of 29

Language, who believed that the language could be divided into two categories, 30

descriptive social language and dynamic social language.7 The sociology of 31

descriptive language refers to the language that explains the language usage 32

phenomenon of the social group which can be accepted by people in the social 33

community. Dynamic sociology of language aims to explain and answer 34

questions such as „what factors contribute to the changes in language use and 35

behavior of social groups‟. Fishman‟s research covers the macro level of 36

language division (including linguistic, ethnic, religious activities), language 37

planning and vocabulary are included. As the representer of school of discourse 38

culture, Hymes pioneered in enlarging the research field of discourse cultural 39

7Fishman, J. A. Advances in the Sociology of Language,Volume I. The Hague:Mouton,1972.

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communication. 8In his book, Foundations of Sociolinguistics, Hymes states 1

that the main aim of the sociolinguistics is to analyze the language‟s culture 2

and communication function. According to Hymes, the main research target of 3

sociolinguistics is to illustrate human culture and people‟s social 4

communication phenomena rather than language itself. In the book, Hymes 5

proposed three targets of sociolinguistics research, which are sociolinguistics 6

deals with the social problems and language usage, sociolinguistics studies the 7

linguistic reality in the social context, and sociolinguistics is also the linguistics 8

formed in social communication. According to Hymes, sociolinguistics focuses 9

on the penetration between language forms and language social functions that 10

produce different forms of expression of language in society. The main 11

contribution of the school of linguistic variation represented by Labov is his 12

research on the variation and quantification of Massa‟s Vineyard and New York 13

urban dialects with sociolinguistics methods. 14

15

Research on Chinglish in the Internet Buzzwords from the Perspective of 16

Sociolinguistics 17

18

With the rapid development of Internet technology, the access towards the 19

Internet becomes even more facilitate, making people more addicted to the 20

Internet which gives the linguist opportunity to collect the language data which 21

can be viewed as the basis to analyze people‟s language behavior under 22

different social context. Once being collected, the most frequently used words 23

by netizens online can be obtained, among which the top ten words are defined 24

as the annual buzzwords. All these words root in Chinese Internet environment 25

and is utilized by Chinese netizens to demonstrate their opinion and attitude 26

towards social current condition. As a subject primarily aiming to illuminate 27

the relation between language and social condition, sociolinguistics should be 28

employed in analyzing the Chinglish in the Internet buzzwords. 29

30

The relation between the network buzzword and the society 31

Since 2003, China‟s mainstream newspaper began to select the top ten 32

buzzwords annually and authoritative language institutions will jointly release 33

the list of annual top ten buzzwords. Thanks to the media‟s attention, the 34

widespread of buzzword has attracted social attention. Through the analysis of 35

buzzword, the overall condition regarding the development of economy, 36

politics and culture can be comprehended. The buzzword can be viewed as the 37

most direct indicator which can embody the changes in economy, society and 38

8Hymes, D. H. Foundations of Sociolinguistics: Anethnographic approach[M]. Philadelphia:

University of Pensyllvania Press, 1974.

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culture. Compared with other normal vocabulary, buzzwords can reflect the 1

characteristics of the current cultural and social changes, making it essential to 2

conduct research in buzzword. Taking 蒜泥狠、糖高宗 and 姜你军 as the 3

example, all these three expressions are the alternation of 算你狠、唐高宗 and 4

将你一军, which are used to express the depressing attitude with the defiant 5

tone towards their rivals. These three altered expressions generate from the 6

surging market price of garlic, sugar and ginger, which raised the heat 7

discussion among the Chinese netizens and a huge amount of people satirized 8

that the price was too high to make the purchase of these vegetables. Bearing 9

this sarcasm in mind, people innovated these expressions to reflect the social 10

condition of 2010, which can be used as evidence for the latter generation to 11

analyze the social condition at that period of time. Considering the buzzword 12

summarized from the last year, the top ten to one are 人民至上、逆行者、飒、13

后浪、神兽、直播带货、双循环、打工人、内卷、凡尔赛文学 and the English 14

translated version are Put people and life first, heroes in harm’s way, dashing, 15

younger generation, godbeast, live streaming, dual-cycle economic model, 16

dagongren(laborer), involution, Versailles literature respectively. All these 17

buzzwords epitomize the social condition in 2021, put people and life first was 18

proposed in the speech of President Xi jinping to combat the spread of the 19

COVID 19 with joint efforts. The heroes in harm’s way is the expression used 20

by Premier Li Keqiang to show respect to those healthcare workers from across 21

the nation to support epidemic control. The word dashing used to describe 22

people who is lively and spirited and the Chinese netizens borrowed the word 23

to represent the female who have made great contributions in combating the 24

COVID 19. During the process of fighting against the epidemic, the younger 25

Chinese generation showed their spirit and dedication by participating actively 26

in the fight, giving the whole nation an access to reidentify the younger 27

generation. The phrase younger generation is adopted by Chinese netizens to 28

show their appreciation towards Chinese young people. The godbeast is the 29

result of the epidemic, which is used to refer the children who could not go to 30

school thanks to the epidemic, making their parents insane by spending nearly 31

whole day at home. All these expressions above are the result of epidemic, 32

which is the most direct reflection of the social condition at that period of time. 33

By analyzing the definition of these expressions, people can have an overall 34

understanding towards the social condition under the spread of COVID19. 35

Versailles literature is a kind of literature used to describe the behavior of 36

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mocking online with humblebrag. The most essential of this literature is that 1

the celebrity often disguise their boasts as complaints or seemingly modest 2

statements. Chinese netizens imitate the Versailles literature‟s typical 3

expression so as to satirize the celebrities, which can unveil people‟s sarcasm 4

towards the Versailles literature. 5

From the comparison between the network buzzword in 2010 and 2020, 6

the relation between network buzzword and society can be easily recognized. 7

With the analysis of the buzzword in 2010, the current market condition with 8

the surging price of vegetable can be comprehended by the latter generation 9

while the analysis of the top ten network buzzwords can reveal the social 10

condition under the spread of COVID 19, making following generation 11

available to outline the general social condition and giving foreigners a better 12

understanding towards the Chinese real social condition under the influence of 13

the coronavirus. With the characteristic of reflecting the social condition, it is 14

even more crucial to illustrate the Chinglish in the Internet buzzword from the 15

perspective of sociolinguistics. 16

17

The reason of Chinglish’s emergence from the perspective of sociolinguistics 18

19

1)The internal language causes 20

In search for the reason of the Chinglish in the network buzzword, the 21

internal language reason stands as a powerful contributor to the popularity of 22

Chinglish on the Internet. From the linguistic perspective, many Chinese words 23

and expressions have no equivalence in English, which will lead to the 24

inaccurate translation. Concerning this linguistic gap between Chinese and 25

English, Chinese netizens created some Chinglish expressions to give an 26

accurate description about Chinese unique social condition, such as 作 and 给27

力 with no equivalence in English, promoting Chinese people to create the no 28

zuo no die and geilivable were used to picture Chinese social condition with a 29

more accurate meaning. Chinese scholars also combined the Chinglish with 30

English grammar, by adding the negative prefixes in front of the geilivable and 31

change it into negeilivable, extending the meaning of this expression. 32

With the facilitate communication between the countries, people from 33

different nations can exchange their ideas through the Internet, giving the 34

Chinglish expression more access to transfer around the world. The language 35

exchange between different language groups will produce the mutual influence 36

and finally alter the expression‟s original meaning. Being spread to other 37

English-speaking countries, the Chinglish expression gained popularity, 38

making the expression lose its original language characteristics, which leads to 39

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the result that the application of the Chinglish become the more appropriate 1

one to describe the social condition. As a Chinglish expression, people 2

mountain people sea means that there are a lot of people in some place, very 3

crowded, usually used to describe a big event or place which was used mostly 4

by Chinese netizens while gained popularity in foreign countries and was 5

included in the Oxford Dictionary. According to the statistics, the number of 6

new Chinglish terms included in the Oxford Dictionary is 245, which counts 7

more than 5% in the total number of new terms. In 2014, you can you up and 8

no can no bb have been added into the Urban Dictionary, a satirical 9

crowdsourced online dictionary of slang words and phrases. The popularity of 10

Chinglish reveals that this unique expression has become a certain approach to 11

observe the whole nation as well as demonstrates the increasing strength of 12

China. 13

14

(2) The sociocultural causes 15

The sociocultural changes also pose great impacts on the network 16

buzzword. As the globalization develops in depth, the communication between 17

countries has been linked closely, giving Chinese and English a more extensive 18

application in people‟s daily language use. With the increasing number of 19

Chinese people learning English and more foreigners choose to learn Chinese, 20

the integration of two languages has been realized, providing a favorable 21

environment for Chinese netizens to create new network buzzwords. 22

The appearance of Internet buzzword is a phenomenon combined with 23

linguistic and cultural characteristics. The generation and development of 24

buzzword has been greatly influenced by social changes in political, economic 25

and cultural aspects. The political element not only defines the nature of the 26

buzzword but also renders the political characteristic to the buzzword, making 27

it distinctive from other buzzwords. The last few years have witnessed the birth 28

of the network buzzword with political traits such as targeted poverty 29

alleviation, Beijign-tianjin-hebei integration and the new norm are three 30

buzzwords summarized from 2014, 2015 and 2016 respectively. The linguistic 31

variation diverts according to the changes in political aspect of the society, 32

demonstrating the fact that the buzzword can reflect the political condition in 33

the society. The economic aspect in the society can be regarded as the second 34

sociocultural cause which contributes to the emergence of the Chinglish in 35

Internet buzzword. As the economy develops, China has now become as the 36

world‟s second largest economic power, which can greatly increase people‟s 37

living standards. Through reform and opening up, China has gained more 38

momentum in economic development, with which Chinese people have plenty 39

time to experience lives in all rounds. The buzzword such as the economic 40

downturn, mass entrepreneurship and mobile payment are the response to the 41

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rapid economic development as well as people‟s improving living standard. 1

The cultural changes also make promotions to the emergence of buzzword. 2

With the slack policies together with the development of Internet, the 3

restriction for people to connect with people from other countries has alleviated. 4

The language creation has been stimulated with the basis of the obscure 5

boundary between country and the birth of new ideas and viewpoints. The 6

cultural exchanges among countries have been deepened which give people 7

passion to create new things, resulting the emergence of a large number of 8

network buzzwords. The expression like go die, online celebrity and MOOC 9

are the reflection of sociocultural condition. 10

11

12

Conclusion 13

14

As the product of the social change, the function of Internet buzzword has 15

both sides. On the one side, through the analysis of the Internet buzzword, the 16

current social condition can be revealed. With the use of Internet buzzword, 17

people‟s communication efficiency can be simplified. Being one of the main 18

users of these Internet buzzword, teenagers who prefer to chase for fashion can 19

build their culture confidence and realize their own national identities. With 20

these exchanges in language, Chinese and English can gain improvements so as 21

to strengthen the communication capability. 22

While on the other hand, the use of the Internet buzzword also has some 23

shortcomings in the real application of language. The wide use of buzzword in 24

people‟s daily life may enlarge the language gap between the younger 25

generation and the elder one. The Internet buzzwords often gain their roots 26

from the Internet, which is unfamiliar for the Chinese elder generation. If 27

teenagers apply the Internet buzzwords frequently in daily communication with 28

their parents, Chinglish will impose negative impacts on the intergenerational 29

communication. What‟s more, the buzzword is created by Chinese netizen with 30

no formal shapes and most of these expressions are not being verified by the 31

language institutions, enlightening people to be cautious when encountering the 32

formal text. In addition, it is challenging for teenagers to make selection 33

between formal expressions and Internet buzzwords. 34

Chinglish is an emerging language form generated under the background 35

of the extensive application of Internet together with the deep linguistic and 36

cultural integration of Chinese and English. The Internet buzzword reflects 37

social condition which have not been examined and verified by formal 38

linguistic organizations. With all these factors combined together, the Chinglish 39

in the Internet buzzword should be treated dialectically. From the perspective 40

of sociolinguistic, the emergence of Chinglish in the Internet buzzword has 41

2021-4310-AJP-LNG – 11 JUN 2021

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both advantage and disadvantage. Therefore, during the process of treating 1

these expressions, more attention should be paid to distinguish the right 2

approach by avoiding the weakness of the emerging language form so as to 3

achieve a healthy and sustainable development. 4

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