A Study Of Microblog Language From Perspective Of Register Theory

The microblog, as a new tool of communication, is briskly entering into people's life. It has the epoch-making significance, having exerted great influence on the whole society and people's life. And as time goes by, the microblog will be playing a more and more important role in many aspects of the whole society. Microblog is another type of blog, featuring very short posts. Its content is confined within 140 characters. Someone who keeps a microblog is a microblogger. Microblog can enable microbloggers to provide updates on their activities, observations and something interesting around them, such as posting a topic "what I am doing now". Microblog can also allow microbloggers to share information, exchange ideas and leave comments. With great curiosity and interest in microblog, the author attempts to study the microblog language from the perspective of sociolinguistics.The microblog language differs from other language used on the Internet in that it has a more fixed group of microbloggers, and a more inclusive style of language. As far as the author knows, very few researches are conducted into the language applied on microblog even though the microblog has become so popular so far. The study the microblog language, as a special variety, aims to provide other researchers a new research angle and help microbloggers to have a better knowledge of the microblog language and actively participate in the communication with other microbloggers. So the author thinks it is of great necessity to study the microblog language.The thesis takes the Netspeak on Sina microblog as its research target. According to the announcement of Sina official, the number of microbloggers on Sina microblog had amounted to 50 million by the end of October in 2010, the number of microblogs is more than 25 million per day. Most microbloggers interact with others or participate in the discussion of the same topics which may be the latest news, a popular movie, or public affairs and so on and so forth. Actually, the microblog can be referred to as a virtual speech community. The language used on microblog has its own unique characteristics. In this thesis, Halliday's register theory will be adopted to analyze the properties and characteristics of microblog language in terms of field, tenor and mode.Chapter One is the brief introduction to Netspeak and the microblog, Meanwhile, the research objectives and data collection of the thesis are also briefly introduced. Chapter Two makes a literature review of the previous studies on Netspeak at home and abroad and Halliday's register theory. Chapter Three applies the register theory to explore the unique features of the microblog language in terms of field, tenor and mode. Chapter Four conducts a case study so as to provide readers with a more specific idea about the microblog language. Chapter Five manifests the microbloggers'motivations for using the microblog language. Chapter Six presents the summary of the present study and also points out its limitations and recommendations for the future study of the microblog language.