A Study On Netspeak Vagueness From The Perspective Of Sociolinguistics

This dissertation makes a comprehensive study on the fuzziness of netspeak fromthe perspective of sociolinguistics.With the rapid development of Internet, the network language has attracted moreand more attention of scholars. Considering the various definitions of netspeak, thepresent study focuses on the language that netizens create, exchange and use throughinternet, which is different from the physical language in pronunciation, spelling,semantic meaning, grammar even register and layout, and incorporates suchinnovation as E-mail, BBS article, the mobile phone short message, blog, as well ason-line chatting records.The research mainly consists of three parts, namely the generative mechanism, theforms of expression, and the functions of the fuzzy netspeak.As far as the semantic fuzziness is concerned, a mode of fuzzy languageconfiguration is summed up based on the previous studies: at the construction stage,the speaker thinks about what is to convey; at the transformation stage, the speakertransforms the idea or thoughts into utterance; at the prearticulatory edit stage, thespeaker filters inappropriate content, and chooses appropriate language forms,including vague words, sentence structure, and pronunciation. In the end, at thearticulation stage, the speaker outputs information in an appropriate form. In thisprocess, the third stage, which is the key node for the generation of vague speech, issynchronized with the second stage.The distinctive and vital factor in generative mechanism of netspeak semanticvagueness is netspeak’s variability, which is endowed in the course of its evolvingand configurating, not only because it is generated through language mutation, but themetamorphosis pervades each level of netspeak, including lexical, grammar, semantic,spelling, register, discourse and so on.When it comes to the taxonomy of pragmatic vagueness, what has beendiscovered so far is a complicated and dynamic assortment of linguistic phenomenonin speech communication. It falls into three categories: the pragmatic vagueness occurs at the formative stage; the pragmatic vagueness occurs at the stage ofutilization and the pragmatic vagueness at the stage of playing effect.An important indication of semantic fuzziness is the use of vague words, whichcontain continuum vagueness, categorical vagueness, evaluation vagueness and vaguequantifiers. According to the statistical data, the vague words are more frequentlyused in network language than in physical language. As a result, network languageshows more obvious fuzziness.Meanwhile the pragmatic vagueness of netspeak also shows uniqueness, the firsttype can be generated by Economy Principle of language and some other socialfactors such as netizen’s behavioral, psychological and sexual characteristics, whichis mainly indicated by vague qualifiers and figures of speech, especially metaphors;the second type can be generated by either observing or flouting the maxims ofGrice’s Cooperation Principle and Leech’s Politeness Principle; the third type can bedistinguished by the pragmatic functions it produced, including positive and passivepragmatic vagueness. As a result, the pragmatic fuzziness in network languagedisplays special pragmatic functions such as entertainment, implication, andhumorous style.The correlation between the fuzziness of netspeak and the cyber-context isexplored in Chapter Seven. The two are complementary to each other. To be specific,it is found that the features of the cyber-context induce the configuration of fuzzynetspeak, and the inference of fuzzy netspeak’s implication is completely based onthe cyber-context.In conclusion, this study offers a comprehensive interpretation of network fuzzylanguage by means of qualitative and quantitative analysis, which will inviting andprovoking further research on the topic.