Internet Language: The Revolutionizer Or The Magnifier?

The century we are now living in is called "the information age".Actually,it's the advent of the information technology.And the most out-standing fruit of this field is the Internet.The application of Internet has been broadened to such an extent that we cannot imagine our lives without it.As in the real world,in the cyber world,language holds the central position. However,language on the Net is not simply natural language online,but has features of its own.And these peculiar features are influencing the natural language in every possible way,flooding our everyday life,and giving us no choice but to take a close look at them.The thesis aims at figuring out the differences between the Net language and the natural language in the semiotic aspect,through which a better understanding of the nature of the Net language may be achieved.Besides conclusion,there are seven chapters in total.Chapter 1,the introduction, gives a general picture of the development and the influences of the Net,and people's concern about these influences,especially those on the language.Chapter2 gives the definition and classification of the Net language.The classification is carried out according to David Crystal's classification of Internet situations.Features of the language in each situation are also given in this chapter.Chapter 3 focuses on the research approach.The first part is a general introduction to the science of semiotics,and the set of theory used herein;the second part explains why the semiotic approach is picked to do this comparison;and the last part presents the semiotic angles taken.Chapter 4 is the comparison based on the signifier of signs.The first part gives the definition of signifier and the second part talks about the difference between the Net language and the natural language on the signifier.The last part is the conclusion of the chapter.Chapter 5 and chapter 6 focuses respectively on the comparison based on the signified of signs and that based on the syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations of signs.They structures are the same as chapter 4,part 1 being the definition,part 2 the comparison,and part 3 the conclusion.The last part is the conclusion.It gives the conclusion of the thesis that although we can see,through the analysis,that Net language signs turn out to be quite different from the natural language signs,the difference are not essential ones,The features that Net language carries,can also be found in natural language,though they are not as obvious.The Net language,thus,just magnified some features of,instead of being a revolution on,the natural language.