A Sociolinguistic Study Of The Names Of Micro-blog

In recent years, with the continuous improvement and development of technology, therole of network in people’s life and work is becoming more and more prominent. In additionto access to information and knowledge, the network also greatly promotes thecommunication between people. Thus, in order to meet the needs of people’s communication,more and more Dating Site and software come into being. People are always changing theirdating tools and ways of communication to adapt to the fast pace of modern life. Tencent QQis one of this kind of software. Besides, Renren, MSN and E-mail are also graduallyrecognized and accepted by people. As Sina Micro-blog is the new emergence in recent years,it has certain characteristics of the times and different functions from other communicationtools. If a net citizen intents to successfully register to be one of the Sina Micro-blog users,he or she has to get a name for his or her micro-blog, which is usually called the nickname ofmicro-blog. The nicknames defer from the traditional names. Although they belong to theidentification of people, they have their own features. The traditional name is the recognitionof people’s identity in the real world. However, the network nickname is the symbol ofpeople in the virtual world of internet. It has great flexibility and randomness without thelimitations and specifications which can be found in the people’s real names. Hence, themicro-blog names are quite rich either from the perspective of the name forms or from theview of the name contents. The nickname is the user’s symbol in Sina Micro-blog, and thendifferent names will bring different results to the users. In other words, various micro-blognicknames can contribute to better express their emotions or to achieve certain particularpurpose.The name belongs to the category of language. The relationship between language andsociety has always been the focus of linguists’ research both at home and abroad. Therefore,the relationship between names and society also gets the attention from the scholars. The study of names involves the names of persons, places, streets, branches and so on. Among allthe studies, many scholars of social culture have carried on the thorough research and deepdiscussion on the personal names. These works discussed the social cultural function andcultural connotation of the names mainly from the perspective of relationship between thenames and social culture. Xing Fuyi (2000) systematically expounds the relations betweennames and historical development of culture. Wang Li (2005) holds the opinion that name isthe production of society and then it is inevitably featured by the social culture. Personalname is a kind of language sign which is used to distinguish the human. Influenced by thenational culture, the personal name has an obvious nationality and sociality. In addition to thepersonal names, the research on the screen names is also quite rich. This kind of literaturepapers mainly analyzes the spiritual consciousness including aesthetic values, moral values aswell as the contemporary social cultural psychology, which are revealed by the socialphenomenon of screen names. Based on the investigation of the nicknames in InternetChatting Room, Zhang Li (2004) carried on the meticulous research on this linguisticphenomenon of screen names. In addition to the analysis of semantic, syllable andgrammatical features of the screen names, Zhang also demonstrated the culturalcharacteristics contained in these screen names. Compared with the domestic research status,the study on the screen names is quite rare in abroad. The research mainly explored therelationship between the screen names and the identities of the internet users. The network isa virtual world and the screen name is the extension of people’s identity in the real world.Therefore, foreign scholars tend to classify the screen names into a part of property.According to the above studies by the scholars, it can be said that the screen name is apowerful language tool. Although both domestic and foreign scholars and experts have madegreat achievements in this aspect, as a new emergence, the research on micro-blog names arestill rare, especially from the perspective of sociolinguistics.The research subject of this thesis is the users of Sina Micro-blog, in the form ofquestionnaire for data collection. After setting the collected data, the author classifies themicro-blog names into different groups from different perspectives, that is, the classificationby the forms and the contents of the micro-blog names. Based on the collected personal information of1182Sina Micro-blog users, the author carries on the statistics of varioussocial factors of the users, including gender, age, occupation and education. This thesismainly assorts to the quantitative research and the qualitative research to analyze the data.Making use of the tables and charts, the thesis shows the relationship between the micro-blognames and the four social factors. According to the results shown in the charts, we can get theconclusion that social factors have a great effect even plays a decisive role in the forms andcontent of the micro-blog names. With the variation of the social factors, different socialgroups have different choices of their forms and contents of the micro-blog names.Meanwhile, according to the forms and the contents, the micro-blog names can reflect therelevant information of the users to some extent, that is, the social cultural psychology ofmicro-blog users. Thus it can be seen that society and language are not only closely relatedbut also mutually reinforcing.Through the investigation and studies in this research, the thesis can deepen people’sunderstanding of the relation between the language and social culture. At the same time, it isalso a practical application of sociolinguistics in the real life. On the other hand, the thesiscan provide certain references for the micro-blog users who tend to give a nickname for theirmicro-blog and they may get some ideas and inspirations. With the development of cyberworld and the increasing popularity of micro-blog, the developmental trend of micro-blognames will be gradually improved.