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37PHILOLOGICAL SCIENCES
LEXICO-GRAMMATICAL TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE CHINESE YOUTH INTERNET TEXTS:
A STRUCTURAL CATEGORIZATION
Kravchenko O.,
Assistant Lecturer, Ph.D in Philology, Department of Far East and Southeast Asia Languages and Literature, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine
Golubovska I. Full Professor, Doctor of Philology, Department of General Linguistics, Classical Philology and Neohellenistic Studies
Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine
ABSTRACT
This research aims to study theforms of representation and special aspects of the slang units functioning in the Chinese-speaking segment of cyberspace at such levels of the language organization as lexical-semantic, mor-pho-syntactic and structural-textual. Analysis of the messages of the young authors has revealed a wide variety of non-typical deviation processes of the parts of speech functioning, which led to usual changes of the grammatical norm in the youth communication on the Internet space. In a brief period a "new grammatical form" of the Internet slang not only received acknowledgement among young users of cyberspace, but also determined the vector of transformation of traditional Chinese rules of the Chinese literature language. In wide meaning a certain code for identification of the youth subculture activity in the Internet space is being described.
Keywords: Cyberspace, Chinese-speaking segment, homonymic identity, Internet-texts, young users, slang units.
1. Scientific problem formulation
Language is a unique creation of the mankind, a universal tool for realization and representation of the ideas about the worldby means of the verbal elements of language system belonging to its different levels. The exchange of views in communication can take place both between speakers of the same language and between speakers of different languages. The material world, reflected in language, is unique for thespeakers of different languages, only lingual means of its reflex-tionwithin different linguocultures differ. Diversityin the use of language means depends not only on the territorial and geographical affiliation of native speakers of the particular language, but also on the other ex-tralinguistic factors: social status, occupation, range of interests, belonging to certain industrial, professional or age groups.
The contemporary researcher of the Ukrainian slang Shchur (2001) claims that the environment of people whose profession is related to the use of computers and other communication tools, especially the Internet, is the most prolific source of neologisms. She also adds that the "Internet language" is characterised by all sorts of grammatical, phonetic and graphic innovations, as the "computer jargon" is a virtuoso language game for those who feel tight within the limits of standard language (Shchur 2001, 10).
According to another well-known Ukrainian linguist Stavytska (2005), practically all slang is created by young people, as other age-related language subsystems are non-productive, and what is more, unexplored (i.e. child slang, slang of middle-aged and elderly people) (Stavytska 2005, 163-164). In fact, it is the youth who reacts vividly to any changes in social life, playing in such a way the role of a linguitic trendsetter and architect.
Among the recent works on this issue the research of Zavodna (2014), Ivakhnenko (2015), Martos (2003), Naumenko (2013), Tepla andPetrychenko (2015), Tyshchenko (2010), Shumeiko (2011) (Ukrainian linguistic studies); Denysyuk and Danilova (2014), Mishchuk (2014), Nesterenko (2016), Peretokina (2013) (English linguistic studies); [An Zhiwei] (An
2012),ntMtn[Lu Hengyi] (Lu 2008), ?/J\^[Sun Guozhe] (Sun 2007),^M^ [Zhang Yingwei] (Zhang 2015), [Zhang Yunhui] (Zhang 2010) (Chinese
linguistic studies) deserve particular attention.
Youth is the most active participant of the Chinese-speaking segment of the Internet concerned with the social-political life of the country. Being a virtual platform, blogosphere gives young people an opportunity to freely express and share their thoughts, develop creativity and their own individual style, as well as the innovative and idiosyncratic way of presenting text information.
The topics of youth talks on Internet platforms usually cover not only the communication on personal issues, but also the conversations on key social-political events in China, which are in the focus of the forums, chats and blogs discussions. Such publications in social networks lead to the emergence and spread of slangisms. Consider the following example:
iT^i [da jiangyou] - lit. 'to buy soy sauce'. In youth language the expressionJT^i means 'I was just passing by'. As one of the Guangzhou television companies interviewed passers-by in the street, a correspondent asked a young man about one of the sensational events that happened in the country. The young man replied indifferently: "What does it have to do with me? I went out to buy a sauce." Since then the Chinese youth have used this phrase to express their indifference and disinterest. Later the following expressions
appeared: [jiangyoudang] - lit. 'party of the soy
sauce buyers'; [jiangyouzu] - lit. 'nation of the
soy sauce buyers'. They refer to people who do not want to participate in public events and are not interested in social life of the country (Gorshkov et al. 2014,374375).
As the youth is discussing social and political events on the Chinese Internet sites more and more frequently, and the number of deliberately misinterpreted and created for fun slang units is increasing rapidly, such situation attracted the attention of the Chinese authorities. The media censorship of the PRC carefully monitors the vocabulary used on the Chinese-speaking Internet sites. Along with the political censorship, the excessively coarse blogs / chats lexis is also under special attention of the competent authorities. Messages that contain forbidden vocabulary are removed from the network, and the webpages of active users of such lexis are deactivated. For this reson, the Chinese youth have created a vocabulary based on the homophonic principle. In such a way, active Internet users may avoid the enhanced monitoring of the PRC authorities. Here are some of the most commonly used slang units in the Chinese blog-osphere based on the principle of homonymic identity:
MS [hexie]- lit. 'river crab'. This expression was created and introduced into the Internet use when the former Chinese leader Hu Jintao announced the ideological course on "the harmonisation of society", which consisted in the extensive media censorship of the electronic and printed editions in the continental China. As the pronunciation of the lexemefni®[hexie] ('harmony') resembles the pronunciationofMS [hexie] ('river crab'), the latter has become widely used as a euphemism for the word 'harmony'(fni®[hexie]) to convey the meaning of "censorship", because the lex-emefni®[hexie] ('harmony') was artificially displaced from active use in the Internet, being perceived as unpleasant and scornful by the Chinese authorities. With time the euphemismMS [hexie] has began to function in the Internet as a verb. Instead of saying "something is censored" (in the normative version - 'was
harmonised'), the creative youth have replaced the lex-emefPi® by the lexemeMSin this passive construction - 'subject to river crab' ('censored' in the blog interpretation). Thus, for the sake of sarcastic resistance to the official discourse and censorship young Internet users have concealed the wordf Pi® [hexie] ('harmony') behind its homophone [hexie] - 'river crab', which in its turn has fostered the semantic convergence of the lexemes.
In addition tohomophony, young people also create nicknames to denote certain social and political events or personalities to conceal certain phenomena related to the China's social-political life: ^ = [Jin San Pang] - 'Fat Man Kim the 3rd' (the nickname of the son of the former Korean dictator Kim Jong II, who held the post of the DPRK Supreme Leader after his father's death in 2011). The Chinese Internet users sneered at Kim Jong Un, the leader of the dynasty's third generation, calling him "Fat Man Kim the 3rd". Such a humiliating nickname is unlikely to cause discontent in Beijing, as the Chinese authorities do not
support the young leader who has repeatedly taken severe measures aimed at executing the North Korean high-ranking officials (the case of the enigmatic poisoning of the Kim Jong Un's elder stepbrother Kim Jong-nam in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport).
However, after some time of the "Fat Man Kim the 3rd" nickname use the messages with the following headlines appeared in the cyperspace (Vision Times 2016).
'Interstate dictatorship! Kim Jong Un demands China to remove the nickname 'Fat Man Kim the 3rd' from the virtual circulation'. This publication indicates the harsh negative reaction of the DPRK Supreme Leader to his ironic Internet nickname.
2. Classification of the lexical and grammatical transformations in the Chinese Internet texts
Numerous violations of the normative grammar of the contemporary Chinese standard language are typical of the Chinese-speaking cyberspace. The need of the young active Interent users to accelerate the process of communication in the network has led to the emergence of new ways to express opinion, which had a significant impact on grammar. At the same time, the de-viational processes also influenced the lexical and semantic levels of the Chinese language, which prompted the semantic transformation of the traditional linguistic and cultural constants that are the most prominent in the Chinese youth Internet slang.
The impetus for acquiring the positive connotation by the structure igX, i^XX was probably the Chinese governement's ban of the annex to the well-known -especially among gamers - computer game " ("World of Warcraft") in 2010 due to the excess of naked bones of the game characters. The authorities claimed that naked bones hinder the development of "healthy and harmonious online community". Therefore, the game operator in China who represented the interests of its authors had nothing left but to "build up flesh" on the characters' skeletons in the Chinese version of the original "World of Warcraft". The game developers have repeatedly warned the authorities about their possible bankrupcy if they fail to sell the game annex. To fully understand the situation consider the following facts: more than 11 million of people, among which about 3 million Chinese, play "World of Warcraft"; the game takes place on the Northskull continent invaded by the King of the Dead; players have to constantly encounter "living" skeletons that rose from their graves, and travel on land covered with dragons bones (Lenta.ru 2009).
The release of the "World of Warcraft" updated version with the "built up flesh" prompted heated discussions among game fans, who used the grammatical structure mX, mXX: - 'New
version of the game is 'very wonderful, very powerful'(Forum for playing games2018). It should be noted that forum name contained the above-mentioned structure with characters initially used to convey a negative meaning.
In addition to the example analysed above, in the Internet one can find the examples with a similar negative connotation: jia, hen xuwei] -
'very phony, very fake', 'iWWAW^X [hen huang hen kai cha] - 'very yellow, very revealing (about clothes)', sha, hen tianzhen] - 'very stupid, very naive'. Nevertheless, the last expression may acquire a positive connotation, which is diametrically opposite to other phrases. On this forum the participants had an opportunity to leave posts expressing their personal opinions, wishes and comments on the new version of the game.
3. Conversion in the Chinese Internet texts
Conversion in linguistics means the transition from one part of speech into another. As Chinese is an isolating language, it lacks morphological elements (prefixes and suffixes) that bear certain grammatical meanings. In Chinese it is usually impossible to express the change in the word's grammatical characteristics with the help of flexions. That is why conversion serves as a means of changing the word's operative meaning. The linguistics encyclopedic dictionary defines conversion as a kind of transposition, during which the transition of a word from one part of speech into another occurs in such a way that the nominative form of a word of a certain part of speech (or its stem) is used without any qualitative change in another part of speech (Yartseva 1990). In the Chinese linguistics this phenomenon is called^ffl [huoyong] ('active usage') -the use of parts of speech in their non-typical functions. Noticeably, this grammatical phenomenon is especially widespread in the Chinese-speaking Internet space.
3.1.Nouns in the function of an adjective. MM [pili] - lit. 'thunderbolt, lightning strike': Internet forums and blogs are full of examples of the Chinese characters that are nouns, but are used in the function of an adjective. For example, MM (lit. 'lightning strike') is a noun that is widely used by the Internet community as an adjective. The primary source of such use of this unit is the drama "is^^ffi®^" - "Romance in the Rain" (also known as "Profound love in a heavy rain") - jointly produced by Yi Ren Communications Company in Taiwan and International Television Corporation (^SS^feffl in China.
Having learnt that her lover left her, the heroine of the drama is experiencing a mental trauma. She laments in despair: ^^W^MMW^E1*! - 'How can news be so tragic (lit. striking)!' (Literature City Forum 2009). Notably, a grammatical indicator, particle W, is used in this example, the nounMM performing the function of an adjective. In the contemporary Chinese standard language the particle W is used in the following cases: a) after a pronoun or a noun to indicate the possessive relations; b) in an attribute expressed by a two-syllable adjective and a noun denoting that the attribute relates to the noun. In its semantics this expression is close to the aforementioned neologism in the passive voice meaning 'a person in a state of mental shock' (see Section 2.3). However, the neologismM M indicates the higher degree of astonishment. Both neologisms may be used in the above-mentioned structure iBX, iBXX meaning "very [one-syllable character], very [two-syllable character]": iSW, iSMM -
'very shocking, very astonishing' (Phoenix Fashion Forum 2008;Time Net Forum 2009). This phrase is widely used on forums, where young users discuss a startling, sometimes even shocking appearance of popular female celebrities.
The original meaning of the character^ [cai] in the contemporary Chinese language is 'meals, food, greenery'. However, young Internet users are now using this character with a negative connotation pointing at "sec-ond-ratedness, inferior quality". Thus, in the Internet one can find the following expressions (Zhidao Baidu2019): ifr&XMT^, M^W^-XMl- 'You are so bad, and the food you cooked is awful!' It should be noted that in the Chinese standard language there is a number of lexemes initially meaning "low quality", "second-ratedness". Therefore, in the standard language this phrase would sound in the following way: # X^.1, (ZhidaoBaidu 2019). In the
standard version the character^withtheInternetmean-ing 'bad, awful' was replaced by the standard equivalent^ [cha], one of the meanings of which is 'bad'.
In additon to the analysed character^, the character^ [shui] (lit. - 'water') is also used in the Internet in the meaning of 'bad, awful' pointing at the low level of something. For example, - 'It is also a bit
'bad'. To sum up, having different forms of representation^ characters^ and convey the same pejorative meaning in the analysed sentences found on different Internet platforms.
3.2.Proper names in the function of an adjective. ^#®[kelindun]: in recent years, the proper names adjectivation has become quite common in the Internet (e.g. [kelindun]- 'Clinton' - surname of the
former president of the United States). William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is the 42nd president of the USA (1993-2001), and former governor of Arkansas (held the office for 12 years). Bill Clinton is the third youngest president of the USA after Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. President Clinton has become notoriously famous for the sexual relationship with the White House intern Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office.
Let us consider some social and historical facts that may help to shed light on etymology of grammatical transformations. When answering pressing questions on the delicatedetailsofhispersonallife, President Bill Clinton used the strategy of self-defence:
- 'I do not remember'; - 'I cannot re-
call (Netease 2018). This strategy helped the president to avoid reporters' provocations even when answering the questions on his relationships with Monica Lewinsky. For example, the former president tried to avoid direct answers in any possible way: IP^^^^PM^ XS^V - 'Everything depends on the meaning you put iri (SinaBlog 1999). This phrase has become a real aphorism, and is used in the US when it comes to justification and self-defence. Thus, the expression #iii§ - 'Your words are very Clinton-like', where the onym^#® performs the function of an adjective, is widely used in the Internet. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that this expression is used to expose those
Internet users whose manner of communication resembles Clinton's one. Therefore, the emphasis is put on the falsity and insincerity of someone's statements.
[Ha mu laite] ('Hamlet') is one of Shakespeare's most famous works, and the name of the main character Hamlet is widely used in secondary denotation. This onym is adjectivised, and acquired new grammatical semantics in the Internet. The use off^^ in an utterance points at pompousness and sometimes confusion. For example,
- 'What are you saying? Your words are too Hamlet-like!' (Souhu Weibo 2013). In this case the onym emphasises the incomprehensibility of the message for the addressee.
4. Contracted expressions or neo-Chengyu
The expression M^^S drew the attention of young Internet users in 2014 after the publication of the following post: MM, 'I am
so tired. I feel I will never fall in love again'.
After this message the expression M^^S has become the key topic of many forums on the problems of relationships between men and women. In particular, Internet users discussed how to respond to beloved men who use such an expression. The members of the women's forum ironically changed its meaning: M [lei] (E) ^ [jiao] ('sleep' instead of original ^ [jue] 'think, feel'), (^)M (E) S - we get an expression Mi^^ MESliterally meaning 'when tired - sleep, not tired - love\ Thus, the expression M^^S acquired a completely different ironic connotation.
In additon to the love theme, the expressionM^ *S, as well as the previous one^K^i§,has spread on other spheres of youth life. For example,
'I am so tired of Chinese football. I think, I will never love it again' (Souhu Weibo2018).
This construction is quite common in the Chinese-speaking Internet space. It literally means 'to die'. This construction usually marks the end of the utterance in online communication. However, when used in the youth Internet discourse the construction does
not acquire a pejorative connotation, but merely stresses the additional meaning of an utterance. In communication this construction is usually used with a complement verb. The complement is used di-
rectly after the monosyllabic verb, but when following the two-syllable verb, it is preceded by particles!, #, №. For example, - 'I am so tired!' (Sina-
Blog 2015); - 'I am so exhausted/sleepy!'
(Q&A web service 2017); 'I am so hun-
gry!' (Douban Group Forum 2018). As we can see, all verbs used in these sentences are monosyllabic.
5. Conclusion and implications for further investigation
The Chinese Internet language is a non-normative, emotionally colored, functionally limited language subcode of the young people, which has formed a large so-
cio-age group within Chinese society. The Internet language of the youth is a primary medium of identification, consolidation, separation them from theother social groups formingmodern Chinese society.The language of Chinese youth, represented on the Internet, can be considered in two ways: 1) as a "new form of language" and 2) as a process of social adaptation of the language to the globalized world.Today, due to information technology and free access to the Internet, a written communication on the Network acquires new forms that are reflected at such language levels as lexical-semantic, morphological and syntactic.
The formation of a large number of new lingual-formsin the Chinese youth slang as a sublanguage expands the opportunities for young people to choose the most convenient means to transmit and exchange information on the Internet providing the Internet communication with fastness and introducing to it more play element. However, it is also obvious that the replacement of original elements by thr foreign ones, follow-ingWestern-type communication models, vulgarization of traditional word semantics, providing lexemes with new unusual for them functions,might be harmful for lexical and grammatical norms of the Chinese literary language. For the time being it is happening, as it was shown, only on the level of virtual communication within the frames of slang sublanguage used by Chinese youth. Though the tendency might spread and attack the norms of the literary language.All said above has relation not only to the Chinese Internet slang, but to this form of any developed world language. So we see the prospective of this work in the further study of this phenomenon on the material of different national languages.
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