A Cognitive Study Of Netspeak Vocabulary On China-Based Internet

Netspeak vocabulary as the new member of Chinese vocabulary supplies abundant linguistic materials for Chinese lexicology, so how to announce the features of the new materials to enrich the study of Chinese lexicology and how to utilize the new materials to improve existing theory put in our present important task. Till now, the study of Netspeak vocabulary has aroused a lot of linguistic interest, but most of the study is just classifying and explaining the vocabulary. Systematic and comprehensive explanations of motivations are still far from reached, not to speak of the cognitive mechanisms underlying its meaning construction. And nearly no study has been done on multi-pragmatic functions of Netspeak vocabulary.The author holds that Netspeak vocabulary is not only a social phenomenon but a cognitive one and it is an outcome of netizens' interaction with their experience of the world. So from a cognitive perspective, this thesis aims to describe, analyze and explain the characteristics and motivations of Netspeak vocabulary in forms, semantic constructions and pragmatic functions based on Netizens' experience, especially net-culture experience so as to understand the cognitive principles of the development of Netspeak vocabulary. This is also where the originality of the study is.Through a qualitative analysis, we find that Netspeak vocabulary reflects by its unique way netizens' knowledge of language, experience level and way of thinking as follows. The forms of Netspeak vocabulary are divided into three categories: abbreviated forms, Chinese-charactered neologisms and emoticons. Simplicity features the forms of Netspeak vocabulary. The fact that abbreviated forms, which consist of Chinese characters, English letters, Pinyin, numerals or mixture of them, haveswung away from the traditional word-formation of Chinese explains how the most novelty and creativity work in the formation of Netspeak vocabulary;with regard to semantics, based on their special experience or net-cultural model, Chinese netizens create and produce new metaphorical Netspeak concepts, which helps to prove the great explanatory power of cognitive linguistics with Netspeak samples, especially metaphor and metonymy as powerful cognitive tools for netizens. The production of association between two concepts in metaphor and metonymy reflects the unique integrated features of Chinese net-cultural model;with regard to pragmatics, netizens' communicative goal of making prominence of net identity determines the illocutionary force of Netspeak vocabulary and accounts for why Chinese netizens choose and create those Netspeak words with richer expressive effects compared with the original Chinese words. And the illocutionary force is realized by multi-pragmatic functions of Netspeak vocabulary loaded in different forms, i.e. function of economy, emotion, visual and /or auditory vividness, etc.The study on Netspeak vocabulary in this thesis is to some extent valuable both theoretically and practically. Theoretically, a large number of data have been taken to analyze the features and motivations underlying Netspeak vocabulary from a cognitive perspective, thus the study helps to complete modern Chinese lexicology;practically, this may help new users to understand Netspeak better and promote further net communication. What we have done here is just a tentative study on certain aspect of Netspeak vocabulary. There is no doubt that Netspeak as an amazing new linguistic phenomenon is worth more linguistic awareness.