A Study Of Weibo Language From The Perspective Of Ecolinguistics

Weibo language is very important to maintain a harmonious network ecological environment.Most of the existing research on Weibo language focuses on language features,language styles,and communicative strategies.Yet few studies are on the network ecological environment.The study is mainly to explore Weibo language’s linguistic manifestations,the stories that Weibo language tells,and the ecosophy that Weibo language reflects under the theoretical framework of Stibbe’s ecolinguistics,which is conducted in terms of the following three research questions.(1)What are the manifestations of Weibo language?(2)What kind of stories does the Weibo language tell?(3)What kind of ecosophy do different linguistic manifestations reflect?This study adopts 1700 pieces of Weibo comments collected from the Society interface from August to October in 2019 as the research objects.In the study,based on the features of stories,the collected corpora are categorized and the high word frequency is analyzed to figure out the linguistic manifestations,story and ecosophy of Weibo language.By carefully categorizing and analyzing the corpora collected both qualitatively and quantitatively,conclusions are reached as follows.(1)Different Weibo language takes on different linguistic manifestations.The Weibo language with expressions of identity shows its linguistic manifestation by means of exclusive pronouns like “you”,“we”,“she”,“their” to alienate the identity of a female or an orphan from other identities.As for Weibo language with expression of metaphor,its linguistic manifestation is revealed by mapping animals’ certain elements onto people with such language patterns as “possessive pronouns + animals or animals’ body part”,“verb + animals” and “comparative degree or superlative degree + animals”.With regard to Weibo language with expression of evaluation,its linguistic manifestation can be found in terms of appraisal items of the combination of adjectives and adverbs like “most terrible”,“really retarded” and nouns like“psychosis”,and “fool”.Also,by the description of basic level,naming and personalization of “keyboard man” and “bar sperm”,the linguistic manifestation of Weibo language with salience is presented.The Weibo language with expression oferasure is manifested by erasing word expression partly or entirely with the expression replaced by emoji and marks.(2)Different categories of Weibo language with their own linguistic manifestations tell different stories.The story of Weibo language with expression of identity is that other identities are superior to the identity of a female or an orphan.Then the story that Weibo language with expression of metaphor indicates is that people are animals.Weibo language with expression of evaluation forms an appraisal pattern and tells the story that being disabled or illness is bad.Weibo language constructs a story that a keyboard man or a bar sperm is unwelcome.Weibo language with expression of erasure tells a story that some word expressions are unimportant or unworthy of considering.(3)Through different linguistic manifestations and stories,different ecosophy is revealed.Weibo language with expression of identity violates the ecosophy of care.Weibo language with expression of metaphor runs in the opposite direction to the ecosophy of valuing living and wellbeing.Weibo language with expression of evaluation is against the ecosophy of valuing living and care.Also,the story of Weibo language with expression of salience doesn’t conform to the ecosophy of valuing living.However,Weibo language with expression of erasure meets the agreement with the ecosophy of valuing living,care and now and future.