Pragmatic Iconicity and Sociolinguistic Analysis on the Popular Word “囧”
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Pragmatic Iconicity and sociolinguistic analysis on the popular word “囧”
Abstract: through the analysis of the data from an online survey and the words shape and pronunciation, the essay try to find out how an obscure word obtain various acceptance in society and what is the social background, the social mental state underlying it.
Key words: 囧, pragmatic iconicity, sociolinguistics
Content
1, introduction
As one of the coolest internet word in China, 囧 is the best example for the ancient uncommon Chinese word given new meaning by netizens. There are a lot of brilliant scholars and intelligent student who have already studied it in the perspective of social linguistics and cognitive linguistics, such as Wangwei, a teaching assistant in Shaanxi railway engineering vocational and technical college and Liu Yueyue, a student of Wuhan University of Technology. Here, I am going to dig out how this word came into use in this way from the point of pragmatic iconicity and the social background and social mental state lying behind its popularity based on the linguistic principles and some data of the online survey.
2,the popularly used “囧”
Before the year of 2008, almost 99.99% of the Chinese people had never met the word “囧”. But now this sparkling internet word has already stormed every aspect of our daily life. You can walk on a street and find a milky tea store with “囧饮” standing still on its signboard. And maybe you have a friend happen to wear Lingning shoes that have a lot of cute designed “囧” pictures. Or if you are a girl, you can wear rings with a bold “囧” on them. Whats more, the utterance with a “囧” is hanging on our lips everyday, such as:
—-今天过得怎么样？
—-哎，别提了。今天发生了一件囧事。
3, the iconicitic analysis on the new use of “囧”
囧, in Chinese it means a brightly lit window, and its extended meanings include light and brightness. The new meanings given by netizens include upset, shocked, helpless, confused and embarrassed. As I mentioned above, actually most of people dont know it until it became a popular net word.
Then what is the reason for its changes in meaning and how such an obscure word is so favorably received? How many people know how to pronounce it and its original meaning? Lets first see the data based on an online survey. About 29% of the 108 people know how to pronounce it and only 3% of them know its original meaning. Around 20% of them even think it was not a Chinese word. But still people soon received it with pleasure. That seems weird, but it we can figure out some reasons from the word itself on an iconicitic perspective.
In functional-cognitive linguistics, as well as in semiotics, iconicity is the conceived similarity or analogy between the form of a sign (linguistic or otherwise) and its meaning, as opposed to arbitrariness.
One of the significant principles of the iconicity is that the form of the word is an important carrier of its meaning, though not the only one. The form includes the shape and the pronunciation.
Lets see: the word “囧” is just like a peoples face. The “口” is the head, with 八look like a peoples unhappy eyebrows. And the small “口” in it looks like peoples big open mouth when they feel resigned or shocked. Therefore, 囧 is an vivid expression of ones feeling like shocked, upset or helpless. The data shows that nearly 80% of the persons under inquiry admit that the first time they encountered 囧, they immediately think of mans face. Given the main meaning of 囧 online, such as upset, helpless and awkward, we can say the shape of the word is an key aspect that made its new use come into this world.
In addition, the pronunciation of the word also makes sense to the derivations of its meaning. We know that 囧 should be pronounced as “Jiong” in pinyin. It is the same as 窘, which means awkward, discontent and embarrassed. Those three meanings are also broadly uttered by 囧 nowadays.
4, the motivations underlie such new utterances
From the above analysis, we can find that a words shape and pronounce can both influence its meaning. But they dont work in the same way in the different context.
On our survey, we find that 92% of 囧were found in the internet. And we can see the new use of 囧 first appeared online. The main forms of uttering online are words and pictures. That is to say, we communicate with each other online mainly by visual sense.
To conclude, when people use visual sense to communicate with each other, they already set a preconditions of the new use of the word like 囧, which can deliver some information merely through its shape. What we can predict is that as people wont give up the internet-pattern communication, there will be more and more words find its new meaning come into use just because its funny shape.
While the shape of the word gave a great push for its new use, the pronunciation of it made its meaning more diversified. In Chinese, the pronunciation and shape are both indispensable aspects. The time people see a word, he will unconsciously pronounce it in his mind. Therefore, a words pronunciation can also give us some associating meanings.
5, the sociolinguistic analysis on the new use of 囧.
Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and the effects of