An Analysis Of Chinese Internet Buzzwords Within The Theory Of Pragmatic Distance Principle And Politeness Principle

Given that Chinese Internet buzzwords concerning the mainstream values and the cultural trends of the society play such a great and noticeable role in people's daily life,especially the youngsters' and the teenagers',researches on Chinese Internet buzzwords are quite necessary for the domestic academia.During the research on Chinese Internet buzzwords,the author noticed that some of the buzzwords like“?call”,“????????”,“???????????????”,“????”and“????????”comply with the Politeness Principle(PP)by Leech(1983);whereas some other buzzwords like“?????????”,“????????”,“no zuo no die”,“?????XX”and“??????”appear to violate the PP without making the hearer offended.This thesis defines polite and impolite Chinese Internet buzzwords based on Leech's Politeness Principle.Furthermore,these impolite Chinese Internet buzzwords can even make the hearer feel intimate with the speaker.Evidently,PP cannot explain why impolite Internet buzzwords actually make people feel“polite”in their conversations.Considering this phenomenon,this thesis is dedicated to analyzing Chinese Internet buzzwords within the theory of Pragmatic Distance proposed by Wang Jianhua(2001)and the Politeness Principle proposed by Leech(1983).Three research questions are raised by the author:What are the features of Chinese Internet buzzwords? How do we define and classify polite and impolite Chinese Internet buzzwords? How do impolite Internet buzzwords actually make people feel “polite” and how do polite Chinese Internet buzzwords make people feel “impolite”?This thesis consists of seven chapters.Chapter One gives an overall description of the whole thesis.Chapter Two is a review of previous studies on Internet buzzwords.Chapter Three provides a brief introduction of the Politeness Principle and a demonstration of basic concepts and the framework of the Pragmatic Distance Theory.Chapter Four applies a study of the phonological,morphological,syntactic,cognitive and pragmatic features of Chinese Internet buzzwords.Chapter Five is aimed at analyzing the examples of Chinese Internet buzzwords in observance and violation of the six maxims of the Politeness Principle respectively.Finally,based on the previous five chapters,the author manages to find out in Chapter Six that the shortening of the pragmatic distance allows impolite Internet buzzwords to be “polite” and that the lengthening of the pragmatic distance allows polite Internet buzzwords to be “impolite” in practical conversations.Chapter Seven is a conclusion of the thesis to summarize the solutions to the three research questions.