The Linguistic Features Of Netspeak In Internet Chatrooms

This thesis aims to explore the linguistic features of a new language form-netspeak in Internet chatrooms. The Internet is one of the most remarkable things human being have ever made. It has exerted great impact on various aspects of people's lives, among which the change of language is obvious. The Internet has revolutionized language, as David Crystal states in the preface of his book Language and the Internet, "if the Internet is a revolution, therefore, it is likely to be a linguistic revolution" (David Crystal,2001). In fact, this linguistic revolution results in the birth of a new member in the language family-Netspeak, which is active in various Internet situations-e-mail , virtual world (such as Mud), world wide web and especially in the Internet chatrooms. This new language variety has its particular field of discourse, mode of discourse and tenor of discourse in which Netspeak displays its contextual features. Furthermore, Netspeak is a young topic, so it is necessary for us to have a systematic analysis, which will meet the need of the development to Netspeak. Inspired by some existing references, the author of this thesis has conducted this project, aiming to probe the linguistic features of this new language form as well as the new means of interpersonal communication existing in Internet chatrooms from perspectives of sociolinguistics, lexicology, stylistics and conversation analysis, etc. It is hoped that this study will be helpful and beneficial to the evaluation of netspeak and the development of online-learning. Based on the raw data the author has downloaded from several sessions of Internet chatting in different chatrooms under different topics in various famous websites such as ICQ, Yahoo, sina, MSN, netease, biliao etc, the author has analyzed the linguistic features of Netspeak from five levels, namely, phonological, lexical, syntactic, graphological and discoursal levels. The thesis firstly has a brief sketch of three terms: the Internet, Netspeak and Chatroom, and then reveals itsfield of discourse (non-topic-specific chat), mode of discourse (interactive written speech), and tenor of discourse (users known by nicknames) by applying Halliday's Register Theory. Then one chapter is devoted to literature review, how netspeak study develops both abroad and in China, and then introduces the method of data collection and points out the purpose of this thesis. The main body of this thesis is from chapter three to chapter seven, in which phonological, lexical, syntactic, graphological and discoursal features are analyzed and revealed respectively. These features include:Phonological features: frequent use of onomatopoeias, the use of original homophones and sound repetition.Lexical features: frequent occurrence of neologisms, common use of acronyms, the use of colloquial items, slang and taboo words, abundant use of stylistically humorous words.Syntactic features: preference of short and simple sentences; common use of elliptical and incomplete sentences, frequent use of interrogative sentences.Graphological features: tolerance of spelling errors; unconventional use of punctuation marks; frequent use of emoticons; reduced use of capitalization.Discoursal features: intertwining streams of conversation; frequent use of addressitivity in turn-taking; adjacency pairs seldom or never adjacent.Finally, the thesis points out the implication of the study and forecasts the future of netspeak, then points out the limitations of the study and gives suggestions on topics in future research.Due to the unsteadiness and creativeness of netspeak, and due to the limits of references and research competence, this thesis still has many inaccuracies and defects, but further researches are worthy of being done in this new and challenging field.