Research On The Words Used With New Meanings In Contemporary Chinese

Since 1990s, China's reform has stepped into a new phase. The soaring development ofpolitics, economy, and culture has stimulated the development of Chinese language. Therehave appeared a large number of words used with new meanings, that is, words that retaintheir original meanings now produce more connotations.By way of comparison and contrast between Modern Chinese Dictionary, 2005 editionand 1996 edition, the writer of this paper has collected 350 words and used the method ofcombination of quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis to reveal the rules of the wordsused with new meanings and provide references for further study of the development andchanging of word meanings.This paper has made a quantitative analysis in vocabulary patterns, syllables, part ofspeech and origin of the 350 words. It has also made an approach to how these words comeinto being and analyzed their historical features by them.Jargon extensively used with new meanings, dialects used with new meanings,loanwords used with new meanings are the historical features of the development of wordmeanings in the last decade. Among the contemporary words with new meanings two-syllablewords are the majority while one-syllable words, three-syllable words and four-syllable wordsare the minority. So far as the part of speech is concerned, the number of nouns and verbs isroughly equal and multicategory words are common. Concerning the origin of the newmeanings, there are three kinds: words used with new meanings referring to a newthing ,substitutive words used with new meanings referring to the same thing and words usedwith new meanings because of change of their part of speech. The second kind constitutes themajority.The way to produce words with new meanings can be divided into two kinds:rhetorically -derived and non-rhetorical derived. Rhetorically–derived way includes metaphor,personification, transferred epithet and euphemism. Non-rhetorical derived way includesspecific reference, generic reference, extension of the original and abbreviation.The historical features of the words used with new meanings can be seen from thefollowing aspects: substitutive words used with new meanings referring to the same thingreflect the psyche that modern people have a desire to seek things that are fashionable;use ofwords rhetorically –derived in large quantity tells the desire for something tasteful;extensiveuse of economic jargon lets out the fact that economic construction has become the mainstream of social life;technical jargon that enter our life reflect the scientific and educationalprogress after the practice of the open-to-the-outside-world policy;import of foreign wordsused with new meanings reflects the increasing cultural exchange with foreign countries.