An Analysis Of Netspeak From The Perspective Of Halliday’s Register Theory

Language is constantly evolving and developing; especially in the recent years, as Internet grows up quickly and network communication is gradually frequent and convenient, a new type of language variants—netspeak also comes into being. Internet is one of the greatest inventions in the twentieth century, which has a deep influence on every aspect of people’s lives, especially on language. The revolution of language promotes the production and development of language’s new forms, netspeak is a new kind of language variants. With the emergence and rapid development of Internet, this new type variant differs from our daily communication and written language, which depends on special context—virtual network space. At current, netspeak plays a more and more important role in people’s language communication. The creation and development of netspeak are not only the product of language revolution, but also a result of human society development. It owns its special characteristics and irreplaceable factors.As a variant form of modern Chinese,netspeak makes full use of a new variant,greatly meeting the need of simply,quick and entertainment features in the network communication.It has a special communicative context,which contains the variables of netspeak,namely,field,tenor and mode.Register Theory is important part of systematic-functional grammar,this theory was firstly applied by Reid(1956)and originated in the context of situation of B.Malinowski and J.R.Firth.Later,it is further analyzed and researched by M.A.K.Halliday,R.Hassan,M.Gregory,J.Martin and other foreign scholars.In 1964,Halliday created the first framework of discourse and proposed that discourse contains three variables:field,style and mode.Because the term“style”has broad meanings,it can be translated into“语体”and“风格”,leading to some ambiguities.As a consequence,in 1978,Halliday further improved and developed Register Theory,and borrowed the term“tenor”from M.Gregory to take the place of the term“style”.Meanwhile,he also points out that register is the concrete manifestation of the context of situation.In this thesis,taking the Register Theory of systematic-functional grammar as the basic framework,the author tries to explore the formation of netspeak by analyzing the classical network catchwords.To put in a nutshell,this thesis analyzes and researches the field,tenor and mode of netspeak based on Register Theory,aiming at explaining how this special language variant—netspeak is used,rises and flourishes in this virtual space.This thesis consists of three parts: introduction, main body and conclusion.The first part is the introduction to the thesis. First of all, the author gives a simple introduction to the study background, which includes the three variables of Register Theory, netspeak and the study on netspeak at home and abroad. The reason why the author carries out this study, practical meaning and study methodology which are used also display in this part.The second part is the main body of the thesis, which totally contains four chapters.Chapter One is literature review. The author introduces the definition and the three variables of Halliday’s Register Theory as well as the development, definition, and characteristics of netspeak in detail. Meanwhile, the author also introduces the main corpus source of netspeak, research status and practical meaning, so that the active guide and positive thought for the future of netspeak research will be produced.Chapter Two is the analysis netspeak’s field on the basis of Halliday’s field of discourse. Field of discourse includes technical and non-technical fields. This chapter is further divided into two parts. The first part introduces the definition and features of technical field in netspeak, and searches for some relevant illustrations from Tianya Forum to analyze and study. The second part gives a clear analysis of non-technical field of netspeak by analyzing Taobao style.Chapter Three is the analysis of netspeak’s tenor on the basis of Halliday’s tenor of discourse. Tenor of discourse includes power, solidarity and equality reflected among netizens. In the virtual context, age, gender and educational level are hidden; the real people become network subjects without identities. As a result, each of the netizens is equal, but not absolutely equal under this network context. So there are three parts in this chapter, the power, solidarity and equality of netizens are analyzed respectively by giving examples in the three parts. By illustrating the three variables of register, we can know that netspeak has different relationships among people on the virtual network platform.Chapter Four is the analysis of netspeak’s mode on the basis of Halliday’s mode of discourse. According to Halliday’s Register Theory, mode of discourse mainly includes speaking and writing. This chapter is further divided into two parts, which attaches great importance on analyzing netspeak on lexical level, syntactical level and semiotic level, aiming at researching the unique characteristics and the used situation of netspeak from different aspects of language.The third part is the conclusion. The author makes a summary of the findings of this thesis, which has presented a brand-new angle for the studying on the netspeak production, development and the wide application of Register Theory. Meanwhile, this thesis has certain practical meaning on promoting the innovation, normative research, theoretical perfect, and language teaching. What’s more, it will also be conducive to building and studying network culture, network psychology and other network interdisciplinary. In the upshot, the author also states briefly the limitations of this study, shows the positive and negative value of netspeak and offers some suggestions for further research of netspeak.