A Study Of Internet Buzzwords From The Metaphorical Perspective

With the development of Internet, more and more people can get on line to gain the information they want timely in this information century. Meanwhile, a lot of new words are coming out on the internet with the development of it. These internet buzzwords evoke nettizens’ interests, meet their psychological need of efficiency communication, increase enjoyment and spread widely and quickly. In addition to this, the popularity and use of those buzzwords have attracted linguists’ and cognitive scholars’ attention. Thus, analyzing and studying the characteristics of internet buzzwords gradually become a hot topic in linguistic study.Based on the previous research of other scholars, the author applies Conceptual Metaphor Theory(CMT) and Conceptual Blending Theory(CBT) as principles, combining the static and dynamic study from metaphorical perspective to classify and analyze the internet buzzwords. By the achievements of study before, the author tries to give the definition of internet buzzword. Meanwhile, this thesis bases on theories to discuss the metaphor of buzzwords and its importance in daily life. Through the metaphorical study of internet buzzwords, it reveals the metaphorical characteristics the buzzwords. By studying the internet buzzwords which appear in recent years, it mainly finds out that:(1) novel metaphors take a large proportion in internet buzzwords;(2) conventional metaphors stay longer than novel metaphor in buzzwords;(3) metaphor sources of buzzwords are diverse;(4) the cognitive process of lately buzzword is more complicated than that of early words.In order to support the argument, lots of examples are collected from various aspects. Taking convenient operation into consideration, only Chinese examples are adopted and explained here. Through the analysis of buzzwords under the CMT and CBT, it can help us better understand the complicated and abstract concepts of those buzzwords. The paper points out some limitations of this study. At last, the author hopes that this thesis can make contribution on subsequent study on internet buzzwords.