The development and use of slang by netizens in the People’s Republic of China.

The power of the Internet has been demonstrated recently with hacking and the sub sequential

release of the film' the Interview ' by Sony pictures. The idea that hackers could hold a

multimillion dollar company to ransom over political ideology has created a new kind of

technology war that is not restricted by borders, geography and crosses international law. The

cases of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange have demonstrated the potential risk that

hacking can pose to national interests from political and social activists such as

“Cypherpunks” and “Anonymous” who advocated political and social change through

networking and hacking (Kelly, 2012). However, many Governments around the world view

this as cyber terrorism and are now trying to restrict access to the internet and protect

economic, political and ideological interests. One country in particular that has been

successful at maintaining restrictions is the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Chinese

citizens are finding new ways to overcome these measures through language. A new type of

language is being developing online by its ‘netizens’. David Crystal a professor of linguistics

at the University of Bangor said “The internet is an amazing medium for languages,

Language itself changes slowly but the internet has speeded up the process of those changes”

(Kleinman, 2010). The development of internet language has become a means for freedom of

speech in PRC.

The PRC has been successful in restricting its citizens politically and socially but with the

rise of the internet in China, young Chinese ‘netizen’s’ have emerged as a powerful force

and a challenge to the government in maintaining internet control. “Netizen or in Chinese,

wangmin -- a portmanteau that literally means ‘a citizen of the Internet.’” (Fung, 2012). In

2013 China’s online population rose to 519 million users. (Center, China's online population ,

2013). It is becoming increasingly difficult for the Chinese government to monitor ‘netizens’

online activities.
Internet censorship in the PRC is administrated by the Ministry of Information Industry (MII).

In the PRC the internet is licenced by the state to Internet Access Providers. The internet is

then sold to individual Chinese Internet Service Providers who sell it to private citizens

(Center, 2006). These restrictions are controlled at router level. Restrictions such as forbidden

words and Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) are entered in the internet routers at the

Internet Service Provider level (Center, 2006). The next level of censorship uses software

programs which use additional “filtering” of undesirable content. The Chinese government

also holds Internet Service Providers liable for objectionable content. The Internet Content

Providers who provide content to the websites are required to register for a license to operate

and are held liable for all content on their websites. The Internet Content Providers are

expected to monitor and prevent the uploading of unacceptable material. The Ministry of

Information Industry monitors and revokes license for objectionable material and companies

can receive reprimands from the, the State Council Information Office, the Communist

Party’s Propaganda Department and State security.

In 2014, the Chinese government cracked down on Chinese censorship due to concern

around the use of foreign Virtual Private Network (VPN) to access restricted Internet, "Last

year's crackdown has been the most aggressive in the history of Chinese censorship on the

internet. The authorities now not only just target public information sharing (Facebook,

Twitter, YouTube, etc.) they target private communications as well as Gmail, Outlook, IMs,

etc” (Denyer, 2015). Up until now ‘netizen’s’ have enjoyed a certain amount of anonymity.

From March 2015 China will enforce the requirement that people use real names when

registering accounts online. Interesting, to avoid identification a new ‘social dialect’ has

been developed by ‘netizen’s’ to circumnavigate censorship laws that avoid keywords, phrase,

terms and topics that may be restricted.

Netizens sometimes circumvented these censorship rules by using proxy servers. However

Proxy servers are blocked as quickly as they become available. According to a 2000 Chinese

Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) survey of Internet use in five Chinese cities, 10 percent

of users surveyed admitted to regularly using proxy servers and 25 percent admit to

occasionally using proxy servers to circumvent censorship. (Center, 17th Statistical Survey

Report on the Internet Development in China, 2006)

Another method ‘netizens’ use is to develop language euphemism and slang to avoid

censorship. Netizen have developed a whole Chinese internet language called ‘Martian’ or

huo xing wen 火星文, a new kind of slang that is widely used and accepted in China . In a

2008 survey of Chinese teenagers between the ages of 15 to 20, 80 percent indicated that

they regularly use “Martian Script” when communicating online or over text. ‘Martian’ has

become a powerful linguistic movement that has started to alter the language of China.

According to the State Language commission in China “Netizens have become the biggest

grassroots group of language creators of popular new Chinese words”. (China Daily, 2013)

Social Dialects are dialects that stem from social division. Because in China ‘banned

language’ is used for political control ‘netizen’s, use Martian as ‘social dialect’ to discuss

banned or sensitive topic. The widespread use of Martian demonstrates a strong online

culture. Crystal (2001) describes it as “netspeak” which “combines traditional linguistic

forms of language including slang and nonstandard forms that are sometimes used offline as

well”. Netspeak and netizen slang is not considered ‘new’ form of language by all linguists.

Online communication is sometimes classified as Computer-Mediated Discourse which has

unique linguistic features that are characterised in languages (Ko,1996) but are not

considered as a new language rather only as a form of online communication (Herring, 1996).
One of these features is Code switching. “Code switching is the alternative use of language or

dialects within a single discourse of sentence.”(ref) Chinese internet language(Martian)

includes Chinese characters, Chinese pinyins, English letters, English words, images,

symbols and numbers (Li, 2005). Sheng and Zhang (2002) define it as “cyber-pidgin” that

has resulted from the influence of English with the introduction of foreign culture. Code

switching is used to fill linguistic gaps. Netizens switch between codes when a lexical item is

not available in one of the languages. Netizens use of this internet language can serve a

conversational strategy for declaring solidarity and expressing social identity. Netizens are

able to communicate and establish code switching as part of cultural practices for conducting

social relationships. (Kleinman, 2010)

Chinese internet slang is used on online chats, blogs, microblogs and in instant messaging.

The internet terms have spread easily throughout China, “Slang words like 牛 niu meaning

'fierce', 'strong' (originally meaning 'ox' or 'cow'), 酱 jiang meaning 'so' (这么) (originally

meaning 'sauce')” (Thinking Chinese, 2012) all originated on the internet and since then have

become part of everyday language. Other expressions that portray modern China are also

used such as “ 蚁族们 yizumen ('ants', hard-working urban residents) and 裸婚 luohun

('naked marriage', couples who get married without owning any property or assets)”

(Thinking Chinese, 2012). Many of the words have been morphed together to create new

word combinations. In addition to these, expression, abbreviations or emotions are used such

as” '88' (baba) is short for 'bye bye', and express emotion are also used such as , 泪 lei ('tears')

expresses sadness and tears and 囧 (jiong) as a surprised face” are being used across the

internet (Thinking Chinese, 2012). In 2011 alone, five hundred popular new words were

created. One example of this is ‘fashion beggar’ (xili ge). This word emerged from Ningbo

Zhejiang province, Brother Sharp as he was nicknamed was a homeless man who got his
clothes from garbage bins. He was photographed by a ‘netizen’ and as a result his "good

looks and sharp sense of dressing" made him an internet success (China Daily, 2013) coining

the phrase ‘fashion beggar’.

The language used on the internet has been regarded as a different variety of language and

widely examined because of its unique style and linguistic features such as English

morphemes like ‘ing’ that are put after Chinese verbs known as “hybrid creations”. These

combine native and foreign morphemes to present foreign concepts. (Tsai, 2007) Chinese

grammar doesn’t use the inflection affix “ing” by adding to the Chinese verb the netizen is

able to mark the progressive aspect of the verb. An example of this is “ 狂笑 laugh” + “ing”

creating the word laughing. (Tsai, 2007) Another feature that is used is “paraphrasable

translation”, “paraphrasable translation is when a term is made up of existent Chinese

morphemes following the Chinese grammar of word formation such as naiyoufei (naiyou

‘butter’; fei ‘fly’) (Tsai, 2007).Transliteration is also used with foreign elements of similar

phonetic value creating loanwords.

Another undercurrent in Chinese online slang is political. Terms such as Guan er dai - 官二

代 – are used to speak derogatively of public officials. (Thinking Chinese, 2012) It means

‘corrupted landscape’. Rather than directly naming officials the use of slang allows netizens

to abstractly talk about issues such as corruption and political accountability. The Chinese

digital times has gone as far as to publish a book titled “Grass Mud Horse 草泥马”, a

homonym for an obscene Chinese phrase. In March of 2009 Chinese ‘netizens’ received

warning that "any content related with Grass Mud Horse should not be promoted and hyped"

because "the issue has been elevated to a political level ...” (Thinking Chinese, 2012). Online

blogging and forums have given Chinese ‘netizens’ a way to speak out using this new

language. It illustrates ‘netizen’s’ resistance to forced censorship.

The Internet is changing the relationship between netizens and the government of China.

Netizens struggle between issues of censorship, keyword, filtering, and restricted freedom of

speech, and on the other hand wanting to participate in public forums. Internet slang allows

them to voice their opinion while avoiding censorship. A microblog which has become

extremely popular is ’Weiguan’, which translates to ‘Surrounding Gaze’. The meaning

behind this phrase is “public awareness". (Kangliang, 2011) These Chinese netizens

gathering through the Weibo in support or show opposition to important social and political

issues (Kangliang, 2011). It is providing a new and powerful channel of communication for

Chinese people to express themselves and their opinions. Users can discuss current affairs

and discuss local government. However, while such microblogging provides increased scope

for freedom of speech it is still heavily censored.

Netizens are starting to break down traditional barriers in China. The Chinese government is

starting to recognise the online power of Netizens who are a strong force to encourage

progress and justice. In 2009 the General Secretary of the People’s Republic of China, Hu

Jintao visited the Qiangguo (Strong Nation) Forum of People's Daily Online. This marked a

change in how Netizens had previously been viewed. Netizens are also becoming more

openly critical of officials. The internet has become a way to make officials more accountable

and netizens are almost regarded as a public supervision force. One netizen who participated

in the forum said “online speech has become more open, the masses can express their

opinions as well as their supervision and criticism of the government more than they could in

the past, and freedom of speech has increased significantly!” (People's Daily Online, 2009).

Now that official are using the Internet as a way to understand public opinion, listen to public

voices in a way which has not been done before.

The development of the language of the internet has played an important role in promoting

political activities and social progress, For Netizens a way of speaking that was developed

out of necessity to avoid censorship has become an unexpected path to free speech that is

now providing a powerful voice to the Chinese government and revolutionising the Chinese

Language.

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