| Undoubtedly language variation study is the major subject in sociolinguistic discipline,since language is a living thing,it contacts with other language varieties and changes.Nowadays,based on the flourishing information technology,the computer mediated communication(CMC)occurs to be the fashion communication method,meanwhile CMC language,or we can say Netspeak in chat room,BBS or Weblog gradually infuence human beings' daily life,in other words,the language variation of CMC changes with each passing day which attracts sociolinguists' most attention,in China,the sociolinguists focus on the new forms of language,change of word meaning,meaningful semiotics,phonological variation etc.,and some studies concern about netizen' language attitude,some refers to make the plan to normalize the language in CMC,and scholars like Yu Genyuan even compile a dictionary of Chinese internet language.Nevertheless companying with the developing mobile phone technology,the short message service(SMS)stimulates another popular communication way,which indicated as the 'fifth media' besides newspaper,television,broadcasting and internet. Text messaging on mobile phones refers to the activity of composing short character based message(160 Bytes or 70 Chinese characters)and exchanging it between mobile phone subscribers.The first text message is believed to have been sent to a mobile phone in late 1992 in Europe.Teenagers originally started the textual use of the mobile as a form of cheap and accessible social communication. Telecommunications analyst Gartner(http://www.smsfeedback.com/facts.htm)has forecast that the number of mobile phone messages will pass 2.3 trillion messages world widely in 2008,a 19.6 percent increase from the 2007 total of 1.9 trillion messages.Within Australia,Gartner predicts 10.8 billion mobile messages will be sent in 2008,and top 11.2 billion in 2011.Although some researchers have analyzed the language variation of SMS,they just complete certain qualitative study or simple statistic survey which is similar to CMC study.Luckily,this thesis can not only draw more from achieved results,but also find out its original views.Firstly,the thesis selects university students as the research subject,because the youth is of strong ability to create novel words,adapt language change,accept language variation and employ mixture language codes. Obviously,choosing the youth as the research subject is very meaningful.Secondly,it adopts quantitative method to design a questionnaire and face-to-face interview to investigate students,such as students' language attitude,power and solidarity, influence of Wuhan dialect,code-switching in SMS,new types of language variation in SMS.Then,according to data analysis,tables and lists,readers can clearly find out characters of language variation in SMS,the relationship between regional dialect and its social status,the specific university students' language variation in Wuhan district and youth language attitudes towards language norm.Thirdly,the study takes sociolinguistic view to evaluate some approaches of social factors of SMS. Furthermore,according to subjects' language attitudes and practical sense,the study does limited suggestion to language planning.The thesis consists of five chapters.The first chapter defines some related linguistic terminology,i.e.,language variation,social factors,social dialect,speech community and language attitude and other language items like commuter mediated communication,short message service;yet in the literature review,language variation study at home and abroad is introduced;then details review of SMS study are given; moreover,the chapter refers a little bit analysis on language similarities and differences between CMC and SMS;in addition,it tells the thesis' hypothesis.The second chapter shows how to design the face-to-face interview and questionnaire; lists tables or pictures by means of the data to show what kinds of language variation do the university students favorite,Wuhan dialect's status and its influence to the nonnative speakers,youth' attitude towards dialect and so on.Chapter three is the major part,it concludes the characteristics of language variation of SMS,i.e., abbreviation 'OL' means 'office lady',symbol'= =' means 'wait for a moment' and the like;then,the paper spends some words on dialect's influence on language change in Wuhan district,for instance,the phonetic variation.Chapter four describes three major social reasons on language variation of SMS,social attitude towards them and also language planning.The last chapter concludes the achievement and limitation at the end.Also the author expects to inspire the future study on SMS language variation through the combination of quantitative analysis and qualitative description.
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