An investigation of the formation and pragmatic strategies of “xx-zi”: The case of Chinese internet buzzword juejuezi
JunfangMu,LixinZhang and YuyangChen
Hebei University
Abstract
With the stride of technology, new media and online communication bring innovative language phenomena to the fore, in particular, the spread of internet buzzwords. In 2021, the internet buzzword juejuezi gathered momentum on the internet. Enlightened by this online catchword, this paper investigates the popularity behind “xx-zi” and its three types of word-formation, then takes juejuezi derived from “adj.+zi” as the example, conducting a qualitative encoding and analysis of the posts sourced from Weibo based on NVivo 20. Additionally, the study examines the specific pragmatic strategies, such as, praise, compliant and irony, embedded in the posts for further explicating how individuals employ juejuezi to express a chain of connotations in online communication. Notably, the internet buzzword provides channels to mirror the discourse ecology of the internet era, the public’s attitudes and behaviors regarding to shifts of politics, economy and culture change, thus providing a supplement for further research on internet buzzwords.
Language, as an important carrier of culture and a signifier of social transformation, yields discourse practices and social practices that the public deploys in everyday life. Fowler et al. (1979, 1) in their early research argue that language can be regarded as an instrument of communication since language usage is an indispensable part of the social process that reconstructs “social meanings and social practices”. In the same vein, the diachronic and synchronic evolution of language guide readers to probe into how the shift of society construct, shape and constitute individuals’ discourse practice, particularly the far-reaching influence from promising and digitized media, e.g. the digital news, live-streaming, social platforms, which act as a catalyst for boosting the spread of internet buzzwords and its variant structure with a wide range of public recognition, acceptance and deployment.
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