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Hong Ma
ENGL 477
Dec. 18th, 2013
Final Project
Section 1: Introduction
We discussed a lot about the semantic changes in class in terms of how semantic
change is an ongoing process, how it happens for different reasons, why young people are
the biggest innovators and users of these semantic changes, and through what channels
these semantic changes spread out. For me, it always interests me on whether Chinese
live abroad can catch up with the pace of semantic changes in their native language while
they are involved in the communities of another culture and absorbing knowledge of
another language; if they do can catch up with the changes, then how do they achieve it.
So for my research, I’m going to focus on examine whether young Chinese stay
abroad are familiar with the new semantic changes by asking them to explain the original
meanings and the expanded meaning of the ten new Chinese slangs that I listed in my
interview. Without frequent connections to their own communities in their hometown, are
they still comfortable to use these semantic changes in their conversation? Thirdly, by
looking at the frequency of the usage of the original meaning and the expanded meaning,
I want to exam whether there’s a connection of the usage of the expanded meaning to the
usage of the original meaning, whether the new meaning of a certain phrase restrains the
usage of the original meaning, or they don’t affect each other’s usage in conversation.
Finally, I will explore the main channel that the subjects use to grow their knowledge in
terms of semantic change in Chinese.
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Section 2: Experiment
Section 2.1: Subjects
The subjects of my interview are two Chinese that are currently living in
Copenhagen. First subject, Xu, she is a 27-years-old girl studied three year in Stockholm;
she’s working in Copenhagen as a programmer now. The second subject, David, he is 31
years old and he is working on his post-doctoral degree in Copenhagen University; it’s
his eight year studying in Denmark. One similarity between the subjects is that both of
them have been abroad for a long time. Xu stayed for over 4 years in Europe, where as
David has stayed in Denmark for over eight years, and he’s planning to settle down in
Copenhagen.
Section 2.2: Materials
My materials are several commonly used Chinese slangs I found online. The
sources of my materials are gathered from different websites with a concern of newlydated Chinese slangs: One website is called Learning Chinese Slangs; another one is
called Teaching Chinese Online. To find out the correct versions of the original meanings
and expanded meanings of the slangs, I used the online version of Xinhua Dictionary,
which is the official Chinese Dictionary.
Over half of the slangs I chose to use in the questions of the interviews are slangs
popped up in the recent couple of years. A few of them are old slangs that are still being
used; a few of them are sort of out of date. I try to keep my chosen materials from
different groups, so the date I collected later in the interview can reveal more equitable
result.
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The slangs I chose are as follow. The dictionary meaning for every slang is also
listed in the chart:
Slangs
Original
Expanded Meaning
Categories in terms of
Meaning
八卦
popularity period
Eight Diagrams
gossip
Old slang, which is still
popular
备胎
Spare tire
Substitute, backup.
It
normally
refers
New slang, which is
to
the popular now
substitute choice of the current
boyfriend/girlfriend
that
one
person have.
表
watch
not
Old slang, which was
popular a few years ago
草根
Grass root
The broad masses of the people
Old slang, which is still
popular
抽风
Convulsions
Acting crazy
Old popular, which is
still popular
屌丝
original Someone who can’t reach their New slang, which is
(No
meaning)
own expectations, but dream for popular now
perfectness.
二百五
Two
hundred Stupid person; jerk
and fifty
搞基
(no
Old slang, which is still
popular
original Act gay
New slang, which is
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meaning)
给力
Push energy
popular now
Awesome,
cool;
(something) New slang, which is
rocks
重口味
popular now
Heavy taste for Heavy taste for out of ordinary New slang, which is
food
things, such as preference of popular now
violent scenes
Section 2.3: Procedure
I asked the following questions to my subjects using one-by-one interviews; each
interview is held personally, and not interfered by the other subjects, in order to keep the
originality of the outcome of each person’s response. Instead of making the interview in
an enclosed space, where the interviewees can focus entirely on thinking about the
questions, the interviews were actually taken in a casual and relaxing environment, such
as in the kitchen and in the living room, so the interviewees can give nature responses in
such comfortable surroundings.
For each interview, I first introduced the purpose of the interview, which is to
gather data for a linguistic research. Then I told the subjects that they are going to answer
questions for ten different slangs. The questions for each of the slang are the same, for
example, for slang “八卦”, the following questions are presented:
(1) What is the expanded meaning, which is also the popular meaning of slang
“八卦” is?
(2) What is the original meaning of “八卦”?
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(3) Which meaning do you use more often in your daily conversation? The
original meaning of the expanded meaning?
In conclusion, I asked a general question to each of the subject, that applies to all
of the slangs that I listed, which is “where did you learn these slangs? Are they learned in
the same way, or are they learned through different channels?”
Section 2.4: Results
Subject 1: Xu’s Answer
Slangs
Original
Expanded Meaning
Meaning
The frequency of the usage of the original
meaning (OM) in comparison to the usage
of the expanded meaning (EM)
八卦
Eight
gossip
OM < EM
Diagrams
备胎
Car’s
fifth Back up of another person
OM < EM
wheel
表
watch
草根
The root of Poor people
not
OM > EM
OM=EM(both are barely used by her)
the grass
抽风
Air-extractor
屌丝
(No original A
Abnormal
person
OM < EM
behaviors EM is used with high frequency in her
meaning)
different than normal
conversation
二百五
250
thoughtless
OM<EM
搞基
(No original Man- man love
EM is used with high frequency in her
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meaning)
conversation
给力
Use strength
重口味
Heavy taste Heavy taste for out of OM<EM
for food
Great
OM<EM
ordinary things, such as
preference
of
violent
scenes
Subject 2: David’s Answer
Slangs
Original
Expanded Meaning
Meaning
The frequency of the usage of the original
meaning (OM) in comparison to the usage
of the expanded meaning (EM)
八卦
Ying
and gossip
OM < EM
Yang
备胎
Auto tire
Alternative choice
OM > EM
表
watch
not
OM > EM
草根
The root of Ordinary people
OM<EM
the plant
抽风
covulsions
Negative word for acting OM < EM
strange
屌丝
(No original An ordinary person trying EM is used with high frequency in his
meaning)
to
exceed
personal conversation
limitation, but always fail.
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二百五
250
搞基
(No original gay
Although he knows this phrase, he barely
meaning)
uses it.
foolish
给力
Use strength
重口味
Heavy taste Heavy
for food
OM<EM
supportive
preference
OM<EM
for OM<EM
sexual and violent scenes.
Section 2.5: Discussion
The results are in my expectations, as I’m the same generation with the subjects,
that I expect they would answer these questions in a way that is close to what I would
answer the questions. As can be seen from the results, both of the subjects are quite
familiar with the listed slangs: they know both the original meaning and the expanded
meaning of those slangs. They give varied interpretations to only a few of the slangs,
such as the slang “屌丝” and “草根”. Other than these two slangs, most of the definitions
they gave for the listed slangs are very close to what is offered in the online dictionary.
The results show that, even the subjects are studying abroad and away from their own
country, they are able to learn these newly developed semantic changes.
One thing that interested me to investigate in this research is how the frequency of
the usage of new meanings might affect the original meanings. As can be seen from the
subjects’ answers, on most of the cases, they both use the newly expanded meanings
more often than the original meanings. I think this could be caused by several reasons:
The expanded meaning is a sign of their generation, is the marks of their existence and
their cognitive process, they have their access to these semantic changes even they are far
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away from home. (2) Some of the original meanings are rarely occur in a modern
conversation, or gradually die out from the need of conversation for the modern society.
Such as the slang “八卦”, originally, it refers to a method of fortune telling, it was very
popular in the ancient time. However, with the development of the science and related
knowledge, most of the people in China no longer believe in this method, and it is
gradually abandoned. Therefore, the original meaning is less and less needed in people’s
conversations. (3) The expanded meaning, as a newly created identity, is often used in
different media. The fast expansion of these slangs should give thanks to the broadcasting
from the social media and the internet. This point is also proved as both of the subjects
claims that they learned most of the listed slangs through internet and media. Both of
them have stay abroad for a long time; they don’t have much access to such knowledge
through school or communities, except through media and internet.
However, there’s limitation of the analysis of my research, as the results can only
be applied to certain group of people, because both of my subjects are living in Denmark,
which is a very small European country, and they are in the same age group. If asking
the same questions to students staying in United States, they might give different
feedback in terms of the understanding of these semantic changes. Or if asking these
questions to elder people living abroad, who could be uncomfortable with the using of the
new media and internet, they might be more familiar with the original meanings, instead
of the expanded meanings.
Section 3: Summary
Talking about the defects of this research:
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First of all, if I can investigate into this topic again, I would like to choose my
subjects from a broader age group with a more diverse background, instead of focusing
on a specific age group from a specific country. In that way, I can better understand the
acceptability of the semantic changes in a certain age group, how the acceptability varies
from different regions. By contrast and compare people from different age group and
different background, I can therefore prove whether the new generation is the corn force
of the developing and usage of new meanings of certain semantic changes, and whether
the conclusion I draw can be applied equally onto people living in different countries.
Also, I will need to get many more subjects involved into the research.
Secondly, this research is only based on the analysis of ten slangs. Therefore, it is
kind of difficult to reach a conclusion that the emergences of new meanings of different
phrases predict the descending of the old meanings. For more thoroughly analysis, a way
bigger corpus of slangs would need to be used in data analyzing, in order to come into a
more confirmed conclusion. For example, there is corpus of the commonly used Chinese
slangs for a given year that can be found through Chinese literatures.