2. Literature Review

2.1 Definition of Neologism

Since the 1990s, the booming neologisms have been gaining their weight in English. In noting that neologisms are of immense value to the continued existence of a living language, and that most words are developed as neologisms from root words, Pei stated in The Story of Language:“of all the words that exist in any language only a bare minority are pure, unadulterated, original roots. The majority are ‘coined’ words, forms that have been in one way or another created, augmented, cut down, combined, and recombined to convey new needed meanings, The language mint is more than a mint; it is a great manufacturing center, where all sorts of productive activities go on unceasingly”.(Pei, 1949: 45)

According to Bloomfield, neologisms mainly mean new words, and such new words would often directly reflect a special inpidual, publication, period or event. The term neologism was originated around 1800. In linguistics, a neologism refers to a word, term, or phrase which has been newly created to have new concepts, or to refresh older terms in newer language form. 

Another definition of neologism from the New Oxford English-Chinese Dictionary is that “Neologism is a new word or expression”. (Thomson, 2004:1357) According to this definition, one is able to figure out neologism is timely and semantically fresh. What’s more, in Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary, “neologism” is defined as “newly-invented word”, and in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, “a new word or expression, or a new meaning for an older word”.

2.2 Introduction to Internet Neologism文献综述

2.2.1 Background

In recent years, computers have been developed from desktop to laptop and to today’s palmtop. With the internet entering the office, many new words related to the work come into people’s life and people use the internet for browsing, surfing and chatting with friends, or logging on some websites to send E-mails. Netizens can not only enjoy the information of others, but also can share the information of themselves with others. What is more, in order to find an interesting and convenient way to communicate with each other, people create some new cyber languages. Those cyber languages have many characters. Firstly, those cyber languages are vivid and novel, and they can meet people’s needs of communication. Besides, they also reflect the close relationship between language and society, and are easy for understanding and communication. There is no doubt that more and more people begin to communicate through the internet, such as E-mail, E-mail discussion group, QQ, QQ zone, Microblog, Wechat. 

From the above, it can be assumed that the main reason why new internet terms develop so rapidly is that the internet is more and more popular at present day.