Survey Of Netspeak Neologism From The Perspective Of Conceptual Integration Theory

As a new variation of language, more and more netspeak neologisms are created andapplied on the internet as well as in our daily life. This special but common languagephenomenon originally appears on the internet, and is then gradually accepted by people andused in our daily life. For example,“特困生” and “土豪”.“特困生” originally refers tostudents who come from extraordinarily poor family, and “土豪” the bad guys who areroughshod by virtue of wealth in the village. But now,“特困生” is considered as studentswho are particularly sleepy in the class, and “土豪” those people with a lot of money and likeshowing off.Linguists and scholars have done considerable work in the studies of netspeakneologisms in different fields, including the characteristic and classification, the grammaticaland semantic features, netspeak neologism’s translation, etc.. But seldom did researchers payattention to the process of meaning construction of netspeak neologisms. Hence, this thesis isintended to study the meaning construction and indispensable factors of netspeak neologismswithin the framework of Fauconnier and Turner’s conceptual integration theory.Conceptual integration theory is based on mental space theory, and mainly describes theonline projection and information integration. The basic operation needs four mental spaces,namely two input spaces, one generic space and one blended space. The elements from twoinput spaces are selectively projected to blended space, and then an emergent structure isgenerated by the process of composition, completion and elaboration. According toFauconnier (1997), there are five types of integration network: mirror network, simplexnetwork, single-scope network, double-scope network and multiple-blend network. This thesis aims to explore the meaning construction of netspeak neologisms from the perspectiveof conceptual integration theory and enrich the study of netspeak neologisms.This thesis adopts the qualitative analysis with the data collected from the internet andthe dictionary edited by Fengjun (2012). To guarantee the full demonstration of the idea, thisthesis also takes case study as a major research method to explain the meaning construction ofnetspeak neologisms with the five types of conceptual integration network.According to the study of netspeak neologisms, the author finds that the conceptualintegration theory has a strong explanatory power for netspeak neologisms. Conceptualintegration is a cognitive process which plays a key role in the meaning construction ofnetspeak neologisms. Then, the author also finds there are some indispensable factors in themeaning construction of netspeak neologisms, namely cognitive ability and backgroundknowledge.This thesis consists of six interrelated chapters.Chapter One is a general introduction，including the scope, the significance and researchquestions of the study. It also introduces the methodology and theoretical basis adopted in thisthesis.Chapter Two gives a brief and general definition of netspeak, neologisms and netspeakneologisms, followed by a brief literature review of netspeak neologisms as well as netspeakfrom different perspectives. This chapter tries to comment on their contributions andlimitations.Chapter Three is the theoretical framework, which includes the theoretical framework ofconceptual integration theory and types of conceptual integration network.Chapter Four and Chapter Five are the most important parts of this thesis. In ChapterFour, the author gives a new classification of netspeak neologisms based on previous studiesand talks about the features of netspeak neologisms from the perspective of rhetorical features and morphological features. And then Chapter Five analyzes some netspeak neologisms toexplain the integration process and the meaning construction process of netspeak neologismswith the five types of integration network.Chapter Six arrives at the conclusion with major findings, limitations and implications forfuture studies.