Kathy
With the increasing popularity of the Internet, internet slang (the language on the Internet) has developed rapidly, especially in the current special period when people are spending more time on work, study, social interaction, and entertainment online. As a new type of language, its appearance has stepped up the fun value, diversity, and efficiency of interpersonal communication, and is thus favored by the majority of netizens, mainly by younger generations.
According to Van Herk (2018), the production and development of language is a reflection and product of social development. Internet slang is a kind of language variation caused by social change, and gradually forms a language phenomenon as the number of users increases. Since the emergence of We Media like TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube, people are not only recipients of information, but also disseminators of information, expressing their opinions and feelings using internet slang.
For example, people use “吃醋” /chī cù/ (eating vinegar) to indicate jealousy in Chinese. In daily conversation, people say “我酸了”/wǒ suān le/ (I’m sour) to mean “I’m jealous.” Then netizens chose one of the sourest fruits, the lemon, to refer to people who get jealous easily. Therefore, internet slang “柠檬精” /níng méng jīng/ (lemon spirit) was created to describe this type of person (Sun, 2019).
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In comparison to language change itself, the variation of internet language happens more quickly. Furthermore, it happens frequently that some internet slang goes viral quickly, but is then soon discarded and substituted by a new one, like a flash in the pan.
Popular trends in internet speak include the use of acronyms, homophony, digital symbols (eg. emojis), excessive punctuation, or lack thereof, mixing with other languages, violating certain grammatical rules in order to express certain meanings, etc. (Magalhães, 2019). Such internet speak is widely used in people’s everyday life and even appears in traditional media such as newspapers. Some argue that language slang hinders children’s language learning and development as they sometimes use internet slang in their compositions and have linguistic errors because of it. Therefore, language slang may have a negative influence on language standardization and language education.
However, others propose that an open and developing attitude should be adopted towards internet slang. MuCulloch (2019) illustrates how internet speak helps users convey their own tone of voice, and further enlivens social communication. Linguist David Crystal (Desta, 2014) believes that internet slang promotes the continuous enrichment of language as society changes:
“Internet speak doesn’t take away anything from modern language — it’s only expanding it.”
Among the languages you know, is there any internet slang that has appeared recently? What is your attitude towards internet slang? Do you agree that internet slang and memes are ruining the language? Why or why not?
References
Desta, Y. (2014, September 25). The evolution of internet speak. Mashable. https://mashable.com/2014/09/25/what-is-internet-speak/?europe=true
Magalhães, R. (2019, November 20). Do you speak internet? How internet slang is changing language. Understanding with Unbabel. https://unbabel.com/blog/speak-internet-slang/
McCulloch, G. (2019). Because internet: understanding the new rules of language. Riverhead Books.
Sun, J. (2019, November 11). Pandian 2019 open for nominations. The world of Chinese. https://www.theworldofchinese.com/2019/11/chinese-pandian-2019/
Van Herk, G.(2018). What is sociolinguistics? (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell.
