A Study Of English Cyber-neologisms' Features—based On The Linguistic Adaptation Theory

With the rapid development of the modern society and the deep penetration of network technology,great changes have taken place for language on the Internet as a form of social development.The Internet has been one of the greatest remarkable inventions created by human beings in the 20^thcentury.It brings people not only an unprecedented technology revolution,but also a linguistic and cultural revolution.Under such premise,Internet language,a new kind of linguistic form which emerges along with the development of Internet,has been an attractive research field in modern linguistics.When network is transmitting all kinds of information to human beings,new cyber-neologisms are affecting people's expression of daily English.A large number of new cyber-neologisms and phrases,which are different from conventional English,are formed and become so popular in the cyber world.Because the existing research on cyber-neologisms is rare,and it is a brand new research field,the research of cyber-neologism is quite necessary in the Internet Era.Out of curiosity and interest for the network,the author analyzes the cyber-neologisms'features from the aspect of linguistic adaptation theory in order to build bridges to learn English vocabulary and presents how to use the network words correctly in the future.This research enables people to know more about cyber-neologisms,and also helps people fully understand the phenomena of linguistics.The thesis takes cyber-neologisms collected in the www.wordspy.com as research materials,adopts both quantitative and qualitative research methods,and makes analysis on the distribution features,word-formation features and its positive and negative impacts on society of cyber-neologisms.Quantitative method is mainly used for the calculation and statistics of distribution features;qualitative method is mainly used for the analysis and explanation of word-formation features and its social impacts.This thesis mainly attempts to answer the following three questions:1)What distribution features do cyber-neologisms have?2)What word-formation features do cyber-neologisms have on the basis of linguistic adaptation theory?3)What positive and negative effects do cyber-neologisms have on the society?After the collection and analysis of the materials,the following major findings have been obtained:Cyber-neologisms exist widely in every field.Its proportions in each field are different.In culture and sociology categories cyber-neologisms exist most,in language and technology categories the proportions of cyber-neologisms are relatively small.Compounding is the most frequent word-formation feature of cyber-neologisms.Cyber-neologisms have the positive impacts of promoting the translation theory and practice,exhibiting features of natural language and revealing social reality.Meanwhile,cyber-neologisms also have its negative impacts of misleading English learners and hindering interpersonal communications.