A Study Of Netspeak-based Language Variation From The Perspective Of Memetics

As one of the most important things ever created in the20th century, the Internet is not only an unprecedented technological revolution which exerts an incredible influence on people’s lives, but also a revolution of language which creates a new linguistic variety "netspeak". Netspeak is the language netizens use to communicate on the Internet. It breaks the constraints of the traditional language laws and has its own advantages, which makes the communication more quick and convenient. As a new topic, the researches both at home and abroad are mainly about the collection and simple explanation. There are not many scholars touched upon the problem of how netspeak generates, evolves and transmits. Therefore, based on the former researches, this thesis is a tentative study to analyze the generation, transmission and development of netspeak variation from the perspective of memetics. It is a qualitative study based on the collected corpus from the Internet.Memetics develops from Darwin’s biological evolution theory."Meme" is the basic unit of cultural evolution, and it is coined by an analogy to "gene". Based on the characteristic of imitation, a meme inherits like a gene and spreads like a virus. As a transmission unit of language information, language meme enriches human being’s languages by its replication and transmission. As a new language variation, netspeak memes, taking the Internet as a medium, compete for the opportunity to be replicated and transmitted. However, not all netspeak memes can survive in the competition. Only the strong memes can survive through the selection criteria and be replicated and transmitted successfully. Under the theoretical framework of memetics represented by Dawkins, this thesis discusses how netspeak variation generates, its characteristics and factors affecting the variation in detail, so as to provide some valuable suggestions on the standardization of netspeak.According to this research, netspeak is transmitted through imitating, and because of the influence of language memes, language variation in the communication on the Internet becomes a universal phenomenon. The final findings of this research can be summarized into the following three aspects. Firstly, based on the traditional language, the variation of netspeak memes develops from five levels, namely phonological level, lexical level, syntactical level, semantic level, and discourse level. Secondly, netspeak memes have such features as simplicity, fashionability, expressivity and authority, which make netspeak accepted and widespread among netizens. Thirdly, the development of netspeak variation and the development of society are closely related. Therefore, in order to reduce the inevitable negative influence of netspeak, levels of proposals on its regulation are proposed.The author holds that the theory of memetics provides a new method to analyze netspeak. The theoretical significance of this study embodies that it discusses the developing law of language variation and transmission and enriches the theoretical support for the research of social language phenomenon by combining netspeak and memetics. At the same time, the result of the research also has important practical significance. It can guide people to correctly understand the popularity of netspeak and the problems of netspeak then regulate netspeak better. This thesis is a tentative study of netspeak as a result of language variation based on the analysis of the collected data. And the author hopes this thesis can be beneficial to the future study of language variation and the theory of memetics.