Interactivization in Recent Lexical Semantic Changes

Abstract

This thesis investigates novel lexical semantic changes within the realm of Chinese internet language, using a usage-based, interactional linguistics approach. It explores semantic shifts, grammatical category transfers, and functional motivations stemming from constructional, cognitive, and discourse considerations, based on the usage patterns of the top-ranked internet buzzwords on Sina Weibo. The core finding of this research is the prevailing trend of ‘interactivization’ underlying the observed lexical semantic changes. This trend mirrors the high frequency and intensity of interpersonal interactions on social media platforms.

The research provides in-depth analyses of the different facets of the emerging lexical usage patterns. First, it probes into semantic extensions involved in the novel lexical changes, providing a corpus-driven distributional analysis of the meaning shifts across different semantic domains in Chapter 3. The study examined verbs, nouns, adjectives, and newly emerging interjections, revealing subjective, interpersonal, and interactive dimensions that highlight the dynamic nature of internet language. The semantic shifts include transitions within 1) verb usages, mainly from physical to social action, personal to interpersonal interaction, and physical to emotional affect; 2) nominal usages that undergo shifts from referring physical entity to abstract concept, natural substance to human referent, physical to emotion-inducing entity, and attributive feature to human referent; and 3) adjectival usages involving shifts from perceptional to emotional attributes and a semantic generalization of non-social attributes to highly interactive attributes.

In addition to semantic extensions, the grammatical shifts in novel lexical changes are explored in Chapter 4. It examines categorial shifts in the representative buzzwords, uncovering a unidirectional pathway, primarily from nouns to adjectives and to verbs. This pathway echoes the semantic trend toward high interactivity, demonstrating the change of lexical patterns from conveying non-interactive nominal uses to interactive verbal uses, from denoting objective entity to subjective evaluations, and from describing non-affective to affective states.

To account for the recurrent usage changes, the thesis probes into the functional motivations for the semantic inclination towards high interactivity in Chapter 5. It highlights the interplay of form, meaning, and discourse pragmatics within constructional associations. The emerging usage patterns exhibit unique features of online communication, embracing form-meaning reassociations driven by linguistic productivity to cater to the need of intensive interaction on social media. The chapter accounts for novel lexical changes through constructional, cognitive, and discourse mechanisms, examining the sources of formal innovations, semantic evolutions, and grammatical derivations. It delves into the cognitive processes of metaphor and metonym, which drive conceptual re-mappings in lexical innovation. This study underlines the collaborative interplay of the cognitive operations of metaphorical and metonymic transfers across experiential domains. Lastly, it discusses the impact of discourse-contextual mechanisms in textual and non-textual contexts, highlighting the crucial role of pragmatic motivation in facilitating functional innovation to meet the diverse demands of social interaction.

In summary, this thesis systematically explores novel lexical semantic changes with emerging usage patterns, which reveals the intricate interplay of form and meaning in the dynamic context of internet communication. It provides a comprehensive overview of the constructional, cognitive, and contextual underpinnings of the recent lexical innovations, demonstrating the high degree of interactivization on social media. The research contributes significantly to our understanding of linguistic adaptability and dynamics in the era of digital communication.

Date of Award	9 Jan 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Meichun LIU (Supervisor) & Xiaoming Xie (External Supervisor)