A Stylistic Study of Netspeak in Internet Chatroom

The Internet is one of the most remarkable things human beings have ever made. It has exerted great impact on various aspects of people’s lives, among which the change of language is obvious.

Netspeak is a young topic, so it is of great necessity for us to have a systematic analysis, which will meet the need of the development to netspeak.

The present descriptions are not able to account for or accommodate chatroom netspeak in an all-round way. Some of the researches are prescriptive rather than descriptive and there is little stylistic analysis on the distinctive features of netspeak. Therefore, some deeper approaches are required.

This thesis provides much-needed descriptions of netspeak in Internet chatroom from the perspective of stylistics. Stylistic theories are then the major theoretical basis for this thesis. The current situation inspired my enthusiasm in this relatively new and unexplored area of netspeak studies.

Research Objectives

The present study is conducted in the hope that it can arouse people’s attention and help people to develop an interest and appreciation for netspeak in Internet chatroom;

It is aimed to reveal the stylistic distinctiveness of netspeak in Internet chatroom;

It is hoped that this study will be helpful and beneficial to the evaluation of netspeak and the development of online-learning or the foreign language learning and teaching;
This paper is also hopeful of having some practical value, and making theoretical contributions to further study of netspeak.

Research Questions

It is the design of this paper to answer the following questions:

1.  What are the stylistic features of netspeak on different levels?

2.  What are the implications for the development of online-learning, and the future of netspeak?

Research Design

The basic methodology adopted involves both qualitative and quantitative study.

There are two main sources used in this study in the collection of samples and materials.  The first resource is from related books, newspapers and magazines.  The second is a group of randomly selected contributions from Internet Chatroom.  The method used is mainly a descriptive approach supported by statistical analysis on the samples selected.

The organization of this thesis will be in two parts: Literature Review and Stylistic Description and Analysis followed by a summary and conclusion.