Chatting Language Online In English: From The Aspect Of Lexicology

The 21^st century is an information age. With the rapid development of computer technology and network, the Internet, as a communication medium, has attracted worldwide users' attention. Because of its convenience and efficiency, more and more people have accesses to the Internet, which now has penetrated into many aspects of people's lives, and brought about many changes, among which the changes of languages are obvious. Some of the changes are so drastic that they have drawn great attention from linguistics. As David Crystal (2001) says, "if the Internet is a revolution, therefore, it is likely to be a linguistic revolution".This linguistic revolution is reflected in various Internet situations such as e-mails, web pages, chat rooms, etc. Among them, virtual communication in the chat rooms is foregrounded, and it is necessary and valuable for us to have a systematic analysis on the new deviated ways of language communication by applying established linguistic theories. It is hoped that the study will enable people to have a better understanding of the chatting languages online, so that they can communicate more smoothly and skillful in the chat rooms.Since a large number of new English words and expressions are emerging in the Internet chat rooms on the Internet, this dissertation is aimed at exploring and probing the linguistic features of Chatting language online in English from the perspective of lexical variation and formation. It is hoped that the study will be helpful and beneficial to the development of computer-mediated communication.The study is conducted by observing and analyzing the data downloaded from the Internet chat rooms in various famous websites such as: yahoo, ICQ, etc.