A Comparative Analysis Of Speech Acts In Internet Celebrities' Netspeak Symbols

This thesis attempts to analyze the speech acts based on microblog celebrities' netspeak symbols in the light of Searle's Speech Act Theory.Two hundred and forty blogs of six celebrities—of different ages,ranging from the post-80 s to the post-00s—are selected to be subjects to be analyzed with forty blogs from each celebrity respectively,and this paper employs the quantitative analysis.And those chosen blogs are originated from the top search ranking lists.This paper starts by identifying the most widely used speech act and netspeak symbols of each speech act,followed by a comparison between males and females as well as a contrast among different generations in terms of the functions of their speech acts,and then explore the possible relationship between netspeak symbols and to make recommendations on effectively conveying messages on microblog.The findings show that there is no clear-cut distinction between different genders and generations with regard to the netspeak symbols of speech acts.However,younger people,especially the post-00 s generation,are more likely to use emojis,compared with the post-80 s generation.Additionally,males prefer not to use picture signs when expressing emotion.Another result is that “!” and “~” are two most widely-used punctuation in blogs when performing different speech acts under different circumstances.The study in this thesis shows the netspeak symbols and their corresponding speech acts from two perspectives: the reasons of their popular use and the influence of the public.First,they are easily endowed with new meanings,making them easy for the public to imitate.Second,it is the best platform for microblog celebrities to interact with their followers,so expressive speech acts(like thanking)and directive speech acts(such as suggesting)are widely used.Thirdly,pursuing convenience and efficiency make emojis and pictures widely used.It is hoped that this study can contribute to improve the effectiveness of netspeak communication,and that future studies concerning speech acts and symbols could benefit from the research methods and conclusions in this paper.