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‘I am very emo’

Innovative use of emo in everyday communication among Chinese youngsters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2023

Ying Qi Wu Open the ORCID record for Ying Qi Wu [Opens in a new window]  and
Qi Sun
Ying Qi Wu*
Affiliation:
School of Foreign Languages, Hebei Normal University for Nationalities, Chengde, China
Qi Sun
Affiliation:
University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
*
Corresponding author: Ying Qi Wu, email: yingqiwu@outlook.com
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Extract

The contemporary expansion of English is becoming remarkably rapid and exceptionally global (Ostler, 2011). In present-day China, English has gained unprecedented popularity, fueled by the nation's current political and social development (Bolton & Graddol, 2012). There is a notable trend of bilingual education using English as a medium of instruction in Chinese schools (Wei, 2013). Therefore, an increasing number of Chinese are enthusiastic about learning and using English in communication. With the active participation of youths, ‘Internet English’ has been used widely in social networking spaces. The practice of ‘English mixing’ in various Chinese homegrown social networking sites has become the most remarkable intranational use of English in today's mainland China (Zhang, 2012). Interestingly, youngsters1 often create novel meanings when using languages on the Internet as ‘teenagers are well-known for introducing innovations into language, and indeed are generally regarded as prime agents of language change’ (Palacios Martínez, 2018: 363). Many linguistic studies have dealt with the mechanisms of the evolution of word meanings in past decades (Kachru, 1983; Qin & Guo, 2020; Tan, 2009; Yang, 2005). Much evidence indicates that meanings and usages of words are variable and composite, and may turn out differently depending on how words are used in contexts.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Today , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , March 2024 , pp. 40 - 50
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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