A Study of BBS Language as a Register

1. A Study of BBS Language as a Register Presented by Liu Haiyan

2. 1. Introduction • Development of the Internet • Web language broad sense • narrow sense • BBS : Bulletin Board System • Target: SMTH

3. Register Theory • Field : the purpose and subject-matter of the communication • Tenor: the relations between participants • Mode: the means by which communication takes place—notably, by speech or writing

4. Field of Discourse • It is defined as constituted by social activities, namely, the subject-matter under which social interaction is happening.

6. Tenor of Discourse • Tenor of discourse refers to the relationship between participants • Power • Solidarity

7. Mode of Discourse • Mode of discourse is defined as the linguistic reflection of the relationship the language user has to the medium of transmission

8. Phonetic level • Onomatopoeia • 呵呵” (hehe, laugh) “嘻嘻”(xixi, giggle) for expressing laughter • “呜呜”(wuwu, sob) “哇哇” (wawa, cry) for cries, “啧啧”(zeze) for exclamation • “哼哼” (hengheng, humph)

9. Shift body language into verbal language • Nod: to show agree • Sign: the user gives out a sign • laf: short form of laugh, meaning that the user is laughing, used when he is amused or is being sarcastic • 汗: sweat, meaning the user is sweating all over, usually used when he is shocked or embarrassed.

10. Uses of regional dialects • 我今天灰常灰常不高兴 (huichang for feichang) • 灭有错 (mie for mei)

11. Lexical level • Coinage/ Invention • 灌水(to pour water): to post texts which have less than 50 bites. • 造砖(to make bricks): to post texts which actually have some depth. • 东东(things): things (derived from 东西, which means things) • 楼主(head of the building): the initiator of a topic.

12. Abbreviation and Acronym • mm, gg, jj, bf, gf, OMG, thx, • re reply • ms 貌似(mao si, it seems that) • ft faint • bs 鄙视(bi shi, look down up on) • lz 楼主(lou zhu, head of the building) • bt 变态(biantai, freak) • zt 猪头(zhutou, pig’s head)

13. Blending • 1k , 1w • 7456 • 2morrow • l8ly • K4 • 8g:报告(baogao, to report, on BBS it means to treat someone to dinner) • 8cuo:不错(bucuo, not bad)

14. Chinese being inflectional • Jms: jm(姐妹, sisters)+s(plural ending) sisters • 考虑ing:考虑(kao lv, think)+ing(present participle) thinking

15. Semantic change of words • SEMANTIC EXPANSION • mm (妹妹, sister) younger sister → females • gg (哥哥, brother) elder brother → males that are older than someone, boyfriend

16. MEANING SHIFT • 恐龙 dinosaur → females that are not attractive but very extroverted • 大虾(dà xiā) big shrimp →someone who is skilled in using the Internet and is always ready to help, sound imitation of “大侠(dà xiá, net maven)”,

17. CLASS SHIFT

18. Syntactical level • Omission of subjects • High portion of short and simple sentences • Large amount of questions and exclamatory sentences

19. Graphonological level • Omission and reiteration of punctuation marks • 哼!!!!! (humph!!!) • “平均跳两次收入就翻番????”(The income will double if change jobs twice a year????)

20. Misspelling • huaxue”, “滑雪”(ski), “化学”(chemistry) • “版主” (banzhu, head of the board) → “斑竹” banzhu, a kind of bamboo) • “业主” (yezhu, owner) →“野猪” (yezhu, wild boar) consequently.

21. Utilization of Smileys • :-), : “just kidding” • :-(, : “I’m depressed”