A Cognitive Approach To Chinese Internet Neologisms

With the wide spreading of internet and the prevalence of social networkingplatforms (like micro blogs, Facebook, QQ chatting) on the internet, Chinese InternetNeologisms have kept emerging and developing quickly in the whole society. As onespecial "language", Chinese Internet Neologisms have exerted great impact not onlyon the lexical structure of Chinese but also on the daily life of Chinese people.Based on the previous studies, it is found that many scholars have did theirresearches on Chinese Internet Neologisms with different theories or perspectives,such as social linguistics, applied linguistics, communications, cultural theories, etc.In this thesis, the author attempts to analyze this special language phenomenon withConceptual Metaphor and Metonymy Theory.From the cognitive perspective, Chinese Internet Neologisms could be classifiedinto six categories including abbreviation, acronym, extending, homonym, coinage,paronym, which are analyzed with various examples in this thesis. After the detailedanalyses of various examples, it is found that Conceptual Metaphor and MetonymyTheory are of great explanatory power in this special language phenomenon, and thatthe metaphoric and metonymic working mechanisms do play a great role in theformations of Chinese Internet Neologisms.As this thesis focuses on explaining the actual examples of Chinese InternetNeologisms with cognitive theories, it will extend the scope of researches on ChineseInternet Neologisms and be helpful for better comprehension and application ofChinese Internet Neologisms.