Social Sciences in China, 2017

Vol. 38, No. 1, 181-198, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02529203.2017.1268398

SPECIAL ISSUE: LANGUAGE STUDIES AND METHODS FROM

THE CROSS-DISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE
Influence of Language Technologies on Language Life and Social
Development*
Li Yuming

Beijing Language and Culture University

在人类语言媒介物由声波到光波再到电波的历史发展中，适应各种语境、各种交
际工具的语言交际变体，以及语言的词汇、语法、语篇表达逐渐丰富，使语言的功能
得到极大发展。语言技术对语言生活乃至社会发展产生重要影响。人类当今已经进入
网络媒体时代，“语言装备”和语言生活也取得了极大进步，这与新媒体语言的发展
一起，对当今的语言学研究提出了新的挑战。

关键词：语言技术 语言媒介 网络语言

In the course of historical development, language media have advanced from sound
waves to light waves to electronic waves, adapted in each case to a diversity of contexts
and a variety of communicative tools. Over time, languages have enriched their vocabulary,
grammar and expression, with resultant progress in language function. Language technology
has exerted a significant influence on language life and even on the development of society.
As humanity steps into the age of online media, “language apparatus” has improved
markedly, as has language life. Taken with the development of new media language, this
presents new challenges to contemporary linguistics.

Keywords: language technology, language media, online language

Variant forms of language communication language have undergone great changes since
antiquity. This process has seen the fruitful development of language and its functions, and
this in turn has helped to expand the scope of linguistic research and improve its methods.
Such advances and developments would be impossible without the help of language

* This study is supported by the key project “Research on China’s Language Standardization in
the New Age” financed by the National Social Science Fund of China (Grant no.: 12&ZD173) and
the National Social Sciences Major Commissioned Project, “Excavating Linguistic Big Data and
Discovering Cultural Values” (Grant no.: 14@ZH036). The author is grateful to the anonymous
reviewers at Social Sciences in China for their valuable comments and suggestions.
© Social Sciences in China Press
182 Social Sciences in China

technology. Of course, we use the term “language technology” in the broad sense, to refer
either to language processing technologies or the technologies that support or handle language
communication (encoding, output, transmission, input, decoding, and storage).
This article presents a summary description of the historical development of language
media from sound waves to light waves to electronic waves, revealing the interaction between
variations in language communication, language functions, and linguistics and thence
interpreting the impact of language technology on language life and even on the development
of society, so as to put forward a new macro-level vision for linguistics and related fields. We
focus on the relationship between online media and linguistics, and the issues emerging in the
era of online media, such as online language life, attitudes towards new media language, and
new media discourse rights.

I. Historical Development of Language Media

Language media have experienced tremendous changes and achieved great progress since
ancient times. In remote antiquity, sound waves were the only vehicle for language until the
invention of writing recruited light waves as a new medium. In the early 20th century, people
discovered the medium of electronic waves. The discovery or invention of these media and
their wide application helped to extend language media from speech to writing and thence to
audio-media and today’s online media. Each development had a great impact upon language
and its functions, and even on human society.
1. Sound waves and spoken language
Using sound waves to signal is not unique to human beings, but it was humans at a
particular evolutionary stage who were able to use sound waves as a medium for language.
Having reviewed the literature in several different fields, Hu Mingyang observes, “Researchers
in several different fields have come to the unanimous conclusion that it was only in the late
Paleolithic period, about forty or fifty thousand years ago, that humans mastered spoken
language; until then, they lived through a long night with no spoken language.”1 Recently,
the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari has stated that humans (homo sapiens) underwent
revolutionary changes in their cognitive ability sometime between 70,000 and 30,000 years
ago, resulting in unprecedented social progress seen in their invention of boats, oil lamps,
bows and arrows, etc. This dramatic progress owed much to “the emergence of a new way of
thinking and communication”; in other words, people had learned to speak.2
Yao Xiaoping has reviewed the discussions on the origin of language from the perspective
of historical linguistics. He points out that the question has a long history. In the 18th
century, it was a topic of heated discussion among European thinkers: in 1769, the Prussian
Royal Academy of Sciences even offered a prize for the best essay on the topic, with entries

1 Hu Mingyang, Language and Linguistics, p. 21.

2 See Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, pp. 22-26.
 Li Yuming 183

solicited throughout Europe. However, conditions at the time did not allow for a scientific
handling of the issue, which became bogged down in subjective speculation; so much so
that in 1866, the Linguistic Society of Paris decided to reject any further research papers
on the topic.3 The question of the origin of language became a topical issue once again
in the 1930s, catalyzed by advances in biology (especially primate behavior), archeology
(especially paleoanthropology) and psychology (especially in relation to childhood behavior).
The observations of Hu Mingyang and Yuval Noah Harari quoted above embody the new
understanding of the origin of language that has developed over the past 80 years; they are
backed up by solid evidence.
Of course, when and how humans acquired language remains a recondite question to which
we do not as yet have a conclusive answer. What concerns us more at present is what the
difference is between human communication and that of animals. The animal world also has
its own communication techniques, and in some monkeys and chimpanzees these are quite
well-developed. The biggest difference between humans and animals are of two types.
In terms of mechanisms, human utterances can be segmented, that is, they can be
grammatically broken down into smaller components that can be reorganized to form new
segments, allowing people to use a limited number of signs to produce an infinite number of
meanings. By contrast, “animal language” cannot be segmented, reorganized and recombined.
In terms of expressive functions, the higher animals use their “language” only for
immediate responses of anger, fear or affection. Some may have a kind of memory of the
past or feeling about the future, but even so, they are unable to express it in their “language.”
Humans, on the other hand, can use language not just to describe the present world but to
recall the past or think about the future, to make judgments about members of society and
evaluate their social relationships, or to invent stories and advance them as beliefs for the
community. Human language is thus conducive to the exchange of information, accumulation
of experience and development of cognitive ability. It also plays a part in the development of
social institutions, and helps the human spirit find its true home.
Armed with language, man became the most intelligent of all living things and lord of
creation. Of course, at the time only the spoken language existed, and sound waves traveling
through the air were the only medium of transmission. Spoken language was limited by
distance through space. Even if one cried out from a high vantage point, the words would be
lost upon the empty air unless a messenger or a token could be employed to carry the message
further. The spoken language was also limited by time, for sound waves could not be detained
and speech was ephemeral: the words lapsed as soon as they were spoken. The knowledge
of our forefathers had to be transmitted to later generations by word of mouth. Without
dictionaries, words and expressions could exist only in speech, so their meanings were those
of the moment; past meanings could not easily be carried forward. Historical experience was

3 See Yao Xiaoping, History of Western Linguistics, pp. 165-190.

184 Social Sciences in China

passed on mainly by the epics of bards like Homer.

However, humans are creatures not easily subject to restrictions; they inevitably seek to
break the bounds of time and space. Much effort was expended in record-keeping by tying
knots, sending messages via a token, drawing pictures or carving symbols, and so on; but the
most effective breakthroughs were the invention and use of writing and recent technological
advances like broadcasting, television and the Internet.
2. Light waves and written language
First came writing. Mesopotamian nail or wedge writing (cuneiform), the hieroglyphs in
ancient Egypt’s sacred books and the Chinese script are three ancient writing systems. Zhou
Youguang writes that cuneiform was developed by the Sumerians around 5,500 years ago.
The Egyptian script may have developed slightly later; but it was already mature 5,100 years
ago when the Egyptian king Menes united Upper and Lower Egypt.4 Wang Ning states that
“Chinese writing evolved over some six thousand years, and has been ‘carrying decrees and
regulations’ for at least 4,000 years.”5 In fact, the Chinese script would still boast a history
of 3,300 years even if one starts counting from the mature script found on oracle bones.
Huang Jianzhong and Hu Peijun have stated that dozens of geometric symbols incised on
pottery have been excavated in Banpo near Xi’an and Jiangzhai near Lintong—both sites
being representatives of the Yangshao culture of around 5,000 years ago. These symbols are
precursors of the Chinese script.6
As the earliest language technology, writing has had a lasting and significant effect upon
human history ever since its first appearance. Where there is a script, there is written language,
and the medium of written language is the light wave. Thereafter human language had two
media: sound waves and light waves. The birth of the written language was significant in
several respects.
First, it transcended the temporal and spatial limitations of the spoken word. From now on,
writing would allow language to spread far and wide horizontally through space, or recorded
and passed down vertically through time to nourish later generations. Human history thus
passed from the age of legends to the written records of authentic history, bidding farewell to
“barbarism” and inscribing the history of human civilization.
Second, unlike the fleeting spoken language, written language could be modified. Once
written, texts could be repeatedly revised by the authors themselves, or polished by others.
Once this experience had been acquired, it became a kind of knowledge that could be passed
down, thus providing a foundation for language education which could raise the level of
language proficiency among members of society.

4 See Zhou Youguang, A History of Writing, 3rd ed, pp. 49-63.

5 Wang Ning, An Introduction to the Composition of Chinese Characters, p. 24. Wang believes that
Chinese characters were earlier than either cuneiform script or hieroglyphics. He writes: the time from
their gestation to their birth was probably 8,000 to 6,000 years ago. During this time Chinese characters
passed from pictographs to ideographs.
6 See Huang Jiangzhong and Hu Peijing, A Survey of Research on Chinese Characters, pp. 69-73.
 Li Yuming 185

Third, writing that had been revised and polished to a high standard could be used as a
model or template for contemporaries or future generations to follow. National cultures thus
gained their classics, and their languages acquired norms and standards.
And fourth, after written language was created, an group of “literate” intellectuals appeared,
who produced different modes of expression for a variety of situations, thereby establishing
written genres such as elegant public documents, graceful essays, regulated verse, and so on.
This was an important market of a great increase in language functions.
In his 1982 book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, Walter J. Ong
points out that generations of scholarly research on oral compositions such as Homer’s
epics show that people’s cultural memories and ways of expression, and even cognition and
thought, were very different once writing was introduced. He proposes concepts like the
culture of “primary orality” and “written culture.” If this view is accepted, we must include
under the effects of the written language changes in people’s cultural memory and modes of
expression, as well as improvements in their cognition and the quality of their thought. Luria’s
1930s studies of the remains of oral culture in Central Asia (Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan)
confirmed the differences in expression and thought between the literate and the illiterate.7
Printing brought another great change. Rather than diminishing, even temporarily, their
interest in language technology, writing encouraged people to continue exploring a series
of ways of handling the written word. These included Mesopotamian clay tablets, China’s
earliest shell and bone oracle inscriptions and those on cast bronze vessels, and a more recent
writing toolkit: the brush, inkstick, paper and inkstone. Among the variety of text-processing
technologies, printing has special significance.
First, printing broke the monopoly of knowledge. Prior to its advent, manuscripts had been
the exclusive property of a handful of cultural elites. Now, the reproduction of a text was no
longer reliant on copyists; printing sped up the process of reproduction and reduced costs, so
works could spread rapidly and widely. Knowledge was no longer monopolized by a small
group of people, and “reading” ceased to be a luxury activity; giving ordinary people more
chance to become literate.
Second, printing catalyzed the production of newspapers, which in turn brought about
new styles of writing: news, editorials and modern advertisements, some of which are still in
active use today. These writing styles enriched the language and upgraded its functionality.
Also, newspapers could spread the word about immediate occurrences, allowing even a mere
hawker or peddler to know what was going on in the big world. The flow of news, the spread
of knowledge, information for the masses, and public opinion reflected in the mass media
necessarily delivered great social progress.
Third, printing played a role in the formation of the European nations. Printing technology
was introduced to Europe from China by the Arabs. In the 1450s, a German, Johannes

7 See Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, pp. 38-43.
186 Social Sciences in China

Gutenberg, improved on the Chinese model by devising a printing press that used movable
metal type, a technique that spread throughout Europe. The printing of the alphabetic scripts
in use throughout the European world required fixed alphabetic forms and standardized
orthography. These requirements not only promoted the standardization of language, but
also made evident a clear distinction between different languages. In real life, language is a
continuum, where, for instance, people from neighboring villages can understand each other;
but printing tends to segment this continuum, marking a boundary between one language and
another.
Printing catalyzed the growth of language identity and the identity of different peoples,
and even the establishment of nation-states; it played an important role in shaping the
traditional national consciousness of “one language, one people, one nation.” The research
of Sue Wright et al indicates that printing played a significant role in clarifying Europeans’
previously vague awareness of language, people and nation.8 Of course, the equation of “one
language=one people=one nation” appears rather problematic in both theory and practice
today. Monolingualism is already an outdated view as far as languages, peoples and nations
are concerned; language planning needs to be multilingual rather than monolingual.
3. Electronic waves, audio media and online media
In 1895, radio transmission technology was invented. It was followed shortly thereafter
by equipment for radio transmitting and receiving, which soon became adapted to mass use.
In the 1920s, radio broadcasting stations appeared. In 1923, the American businessman E.G.
Osborn founded China’s first radio station in Shanghai. In 1924, British electronic engineer
John Logie Baird invented television, and four years later, in 1928, RCA broadcast the first
television images. In 1958, China began to build television stations, and produced the first
black-and-white TV set of its own. Subsequently, major technological breakthroughs in
wireless broadcasting occurred in voice and image processing. With technological advances in
radio broadcasting and television production and transmission and the popularization of radio
and television receivers in daily life, man stepped into the era of audio-media.
Radio and television provided language with yet another vehicle—electronic waves that
could transmit pictures as well as sounds. This new development did not drive out sound
waves and light waves; on the contrary, it made the two traditional carriers electronic. It
would be fair to say that with these new media, radio and television served as amplifiers of
the functions of the spoken or written word. The linguistic significance of audio-media can be
summarized as follows.
First, electronic waves make language transmission quicker, easier, more diverse, more
targeted and more extensive, as well as preparing the way for the advent of information age.
Second, radio and television help to spread standard pronunciation. Before their
appearance, standard pronunciation had mainly been spread through teaching, performing

8 See Sue Wright, Language Policy and Language Planning: From Nationalism to Globalisation, pp.
26-35.
 Li Yuming 187

arts and interpersonal communication. At the time, the best teaching tool at one’s disposal
was the phonetic alphabet and the best equipment the phonograph. This “person-to-person”
mode of transmission was necessarily slow and poor quality. By contrast, radio and television
generally use standard pronunciation and thus function as everyone’s phonetics teacher. In
addition to this, universal education promoted an unprecedented increase and improvement in
standard pronunciation.
Third, radio and television raise the level of the spoken language. Unlike natural speech,
broadcast speech is supported by the written language; it either voices the written language
directly, or takes it as a master copy to be transformed, or reconfigures it with captions
and images in a way that far surpasses natural speech. Of course, broadcast language
differs in many ways from written language or natural speech. It has a range of distinctive
linguistic features and uses. Different spoken (written) styles are shaped to meet the needs
of different programs: the formal broadcasting style, the styles of particular program hosts,
sports commentary, etc. As indicated above, different styles make language richer and more
expressive.
The 1960s saw the emergence of networked computers. By the 1990s, the Internet had been
commercialized, and in April 1994, China was formally connected to the Internet, becoming
an online nation. Once commercialized, the Internet achieved progress far beyond anyone’s
imagination. It rapidly left behind purely technical uses and became a part of everyday life,
ushering the human race into the online age.
With the steady progress of computer technology in language processing, a number of new,
Internet-based communications media have grown up since the late 20th century. Traditional
media like hard-copy books and newspapers, together with radio and television, have gone
online. Now, there are two major types of online media: the new media, born online, and the
traditional media that have moved online.
Although they are still carried by electronic waves, online media survive by dependence
on the Internet, and thus are quite different from radio or television although all are borne
on electronic waves. Indeed, the difference is epoch-making. Compared with conventional
media, online media present a number of new features:
First, they are “total media.” If television managed to blend visual and auditory media
into one, then online media would be far more inclusive, recruiting almost all the carriers for
information ever created. This combination has turned the Internet into “hypermedia” or “total
media”: a huge database as well as a platform for all language media.
Second, they lead to fragmentation. Due to space constraints, new Internet-based media
are mostly “micro-media,” such as micro-blogging, SMS text messaging, weixin (WeChat, a
popular smart phone application in China), short video clips, etc. Micro-media are adapted to
the dissemination of information fragments, or clipping larger fragments into smaller ones.
In the Internet age, with the growing popularity of SMS and WeChat, people are getting used
to sending, receiving and processing information in fragmented time. The media’s forms
188 Social Sciences in China

and delivery methods, the information transmitted and habits of media use all present a clear
tendency towards fragmentation, which necessarily affects the way other information is
transmitted: newspapers and magazines start to shorten their stories; make up eye-catching
headlines (even employing special staff or links for the job) or abbreviate their meetings
(introducing a new work style); and young people do not care for long-winded stories or idle
chat, or slow-paced TV dramas. One benefit of fragmentation is the variety of information
sources and immediacy of communication. However, the jury is still out on whether
fragmentation can make a particular contribution to knowledge construction and in-depth
thought.
Third, online media is by its nature “we-media”; it is individualized and divergent.
Publishing houses, magazines, newspapers, and radio or TV stations generally have a larger or
smaller establishment of media workers, a set of arrangements for checking and reviewing the
material they publish or broadcast, and even strict “gatekeeper” procedures. But online media
is different. Messages or blogs or we-chat are mostly improvised, self-edited and posted by
individuals. In the absence of “news gatekeepers,” we-media seems to have brought online
language activities back to the natural state of human communication.

II. Language Technology, Communicative Variations and Linguistics

Every inch of progress in language technology brings changes to the development of language
and its communicative variants and functions. These influence linguistics’ research material,
research fields, research techniques, and research interests. One could say that progress in
language technology and variant forms of language communication have always been a
driving force in language, language use as well as in linguistic research.
1. Language technology
Language technology has enabled language to move from reliance on sound waves alone
to pressing light waves and electronic waves into use as vehicles. At the same time, it has
wrought great changes in our language organs and language apparatus. In the age of speech,
physiological language organs consisted only of speech organs, auditory organs and the part
of the brain that processed spoken language. Later, we developed senses attuned to the written
word, including those for writing and writing recognition, as well as the mental ability to
process written language. In the age of speech, language relied solely on the physiological
organs, with virtually no tangible language apparatus; but once the written language came into
being, these were supplemented by tangible equipment for writing, reading and the storage
of texts. With printing and the electronic media that followed, almost all new developments
involved various kinds of tangible language equipment. Using one’s senses to process sound
and light waves is now combined with processing language through sound waves, light waves
and electronic waves in a “standard language toolkit.”
The history of language technology suggests that it reached its first peak with the creation
 Li Yuming 189

of writing. Thereafter came technologies for processing the written word and the book,
followed by woodblock printing and movable type, which ushered in a glorious era for
language technology—the second peak. Once people knew how to use electronic waves, a
new epoch opened up, with radio and TV marking the third peak and the Internet the fourth.
The main technological advances after the introduction of the medium of electronic waves
can be summarized as follows.
First, there was great progress in voice-processing technology. Electric or electronic
tools for voice processing succeeded one another rapidly: the phonograph, tape recorder,
microphone, amplifier, telephone, radio, film, television, and so on. Armed with writing,
people managed to transcend the limitations of time and space 5,000 years ago; now, they
have once again been transcended through electronic technology.
Second, technological breakthroughs occurred in language transmission. Communication
satellites, undersea optical cables and the Internet can transmit language information instantly
to any terminal around the world.
Third, advanced computer language processing technology is steadily progressing
“intelligentized” or knowledge-based processing of language and script. For instance, laser
phototypesetting has replaced traditional typesetting; speech can be converted automatically
into text and vice versa; and automatic translation software allows speakers from different
groups to “chat freely” in a way that will eventually break down language barriers, lessen the
pressure on individual language learners, and alleviate the burden on society.
Language technology is not only reshaping our language senses but also changing our
language habits, cognitive ability and ways of thought, thus furthering human evolution.
Once writing exists, people feel the need to learn how to read and write, and become
literate. Compared to the illiterate, the literate possess an extra language toolkit made up of
a physiological sense and the equipment for reading and writing. A literate person’s speech,
backed by the written word, is unlike natural speech. Again, modern information technology
and products, like web browsing, keyboard input, emails, etc., are also modifying people’s
language habits. People rarely write anything by hand; they are accustomed to screen reading,
keyboard typing and touchscreen writing. Reading newspapers, listening to broadcasts and
watching TV are giving way to computers and smart phones. With information fragmented, it
is rarer and rarer for people to have the time to sit down in tranquility like Ouyang Xiu’s study
of the Book of Changes while the incense burned,9 though they may have plenty of chances
to seize a spare moment to read or write.10 The young people bent over their smart phones on
public transport read differently from their seniors. While earlier technologies affected only
small groups or particular occupations, the Internet has had a far-reaching influence upon

9 All his life, the Song reformer and writer Ouyang Xiu debated and interpreted the Book of Changes
(Yi Jing), thus making a major contribution to Song study of this classic.
10 Ouyang Xiu writes “Most of the pieces I’ve composed were done on the ‘three ons’: on horseback,
on my bed and on the lavatory.”
190 Social Sciences in China

human society as a whole, reshaping language use.

The development and application of language technology have also catalyzed the
emergence of a number of language industries, modernizing their traditional forerunners and
creating new language occupations. Many of these technologies can be used to process sounds
and images in other areas. Language technologies and language industries have become an
important economic driver; in today’s society, their profits account for a large share of the
economy. We believe that as informatization develops, language technologies will continue to
contribute to the progress of society.
2. Development of language
Ever since its emergence, language has been changing and developing, changes that are first
of all reflected in its use. The value of language lies in its meeting a diversity of expressive
needs, which result in numerous linguistic variations arising from different social positions or
communicative situations and purposes, or even different communication tools. These variants
can be broken down into the social, the communicative and the instrumental, or generally
subsumed under “linguistic communication variants.” What we used to speak of as dialects,
styles (written or spoken) or genres are all communicative variants that enrich language use.
Of these, style is the most important, as it best reflects the development of language function.
Language also has historical and geographical variants. “Historical variants” refer to the
variations in a language over time. Chinese, for example, has had at least three variations:
ancient Chinese, Chinese as used in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and
contemporary Chinese. Different historical variants used synchronously may produce
distinctive effects in linguistic expression; in solemn formal ceremonies, for instance, it is
appropriate to use the classical language. “Geographical variants” refer to different regional
dialects. The appropriate introduction of dialect in a literary work in the common national
language can help depict character, create atmosphere, expound local culture, etc. In this
regard, both historical and geographical variants are, like other variants, indicators of healthy
language development. They can be taken as communicative variations in the broader sense.
The increase in the practical functions of language must inevitably lead to the enrichment
of language itself. To meet different communicative needs or express the ever-changing
life of society, we must constantly create new words and expressions, including numerous
synonyms or homonyms expressing shades of meaning. In ancient Chinese, most words were
monosyllables; disyllabic words were few, made up largely of onomatopoeia or alliterative
words, like gudong for a splash, youyu for shilly-shallying, etc. As this ancient model of
word-formation could not meet surging demand for increased vocabulary, Chinese began
its historic transition from a monosyllabic to a polysyllabic vocabulary. From the Eastern
Han dynasty (25-220 AD) and the Wei and Jin dynasties (220-420 AD) to the Northern and
Southern dynasties (420-589 AD), disyllabic words flourished until eventually newly-coined
dissyllables vastly outnumbered new monosyllables. Then, as the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming
and Qing dynasties succeeded one another, the Chinese of the late Qing and the Republican
 Li Yuming 191

era developed into modern Chinese, in which disyllabic words constituted the main body of
Chinese vocabulary. It is interesting to note that there are further changes in this “polysyllabic”
trend even today. According to the statistics for recent word formation in Chinese, not only
have monosyllables virtually lost the capacity to form new words, but the number of three-
syllable words is larger than the number of two-syllable and four-syllable words combined.
Hou Min has stated that his research team extracted 5,264 new words from the corpus in
2006-2014, of which three-syllable words accounted for 46.26 percent and two-syllable and
four-syllable words represented 21.56 percnet and 22.89 percnet respectively.11
Its rapidly increased vocabulary has made the Chinese lexicon more polysyllabic and
enriched its morphology. Monosyllables have no internal grammatical structure. Most
disyllables (excluding onomatopoeic and alliterative disyllabic words) are derivatives
or compound words. Among the latter, various morphological patterns can be identified:
conjunctions, the modifier-modified pattern, the subject-verb pattern, the verb-object pattern,
the supplementary pattern, etc. Three-syllable words present more complex morphological
features; some words like congyoubing (fried scallion pancake) or tuoniaodan (ostrich bird’s
egg) show a hierarchical pattern in which the first two syllables form a unit to which the third
syllable is affixed. These hierarchical constructions may integrate compounds and derivatives,
as in the three-syllable shurufa (input method), where shuru (input) is a compound and fa
(method) is a derivative.
Grammatical development is of course expressed not only in morphology but also, very
clearly, in syntactic changes. Wang Li used the 1875 edition of the mid-Qing novel A Dream
of Red Mansions as the research material for his grammatical study of modern Chinese, but
from today’s point of view, it is grammatically very different from the Chinese of today. Such
differences can be considerable in different styles of writing, such as scientific theses, political
treatises, fiction, poetry, etc., furnishing yet another indicator of grammatical enrichment.
Layout and formatting are also linguistic adaptations to different communicative situations.
The “regulated verse” of classical Chinese had certain metrical patterns, and essayists were
supposed to write in accordance with rules for the introduction, interpretation, transition
and conclusion of their topic; again, this could be considered an indication of rich linguistic
development (unfortunately, little research has so far been undertaken on the subject).
Language development is closely related to the development of language technology and
the methods of communication that technology produces. In particular, the development of
the mass media—newspapers, radio and television—have totally changed the way people
communicate through language. Communicative variants have multiplied; different dialects
and languages interact more frequently in greater depth; and linguistic change operates faster
and over a wider area. In particular, the Internet affords language greater propulsive force
and more favorable conditions for development. Language data from all over the world and

11 See Hou Min, “Ten Years of Monitoring the Chinese Language.”

192 Social Sciences in China

all periods of history are gathered together to “ferment,” integrating into the Internet the
linguistic wisdom of the whole of society. The rate of language development is likely to keep
accelerating in days to come.
3. Developments in linguistics
Advances in language technology, along with the healthy development of language, are
driving language development and with it the development of linguistics. The progress of
linguistics is reflected in several ways, the most striking of which is the expansion of research
fields and the progress of research techniques.
The scope of linguistics is constantly enlarging. In the days of the spoken word, there was
no true linguistics. It was not until writing was created that people began to study language
and script, using the classics, newspapers and magazines, colloquial speech and dialects as
their raw materials. Sound media opened up a new landscape: linguists could focus on the
particular language of broadcasting, on language education for announcers and program
hosts, on the dialectical relationship between standard Chinese or putonghua and dialects in
audio-media, or on how to construct a language database from audio-media. And now, online
media have further broadened the horizons of linguistic research. Linguists can investigate
newly-coined expressions in online space, study the features of online language transmission,
explore the growth and standardization of new language media, study the monitoring of public
opinion in the new media age, research online language policy, etc.
Techniques for language research have also made constant progress. In the age of writing,
language study was carried out mainly through listening and taking notes, examining stone
tablets and rubbings, gathering citations from books, making index cards, etc. In the electronic
age, a technological revolution occurred in the study of the spoken language: audio- and
video-recording was used to process sounds and texts. But a second and far greater revolution
in language research arrived with the Internet. Now, linguists have access to all kinds of
databases; they can take up new modes of research, start a crowd-financed project, participate
in online publishing or academic discussions; carry out remote or virtual studies online, etc.
All this is practicable or at least thinkable. Joint multidisciplinary discussion of linguistic
issues and the coordinated solving of linguistic problems indicate that language study is
becoming a “great science” or a “great discipline.”
The broadening of research scope and progress in research techniques are only the
visible effects this technology has had on linguistics; other effects, both profound and wide-
ranging, can be seen in linguistic concepts, directions in linguistics, and the formation of
linguistic schools. Following linguistic research on language corpora, people have begun to
talk about the question of the effectiveness of statistics and rules. The statistical method has
always dominated the operational practice of computer language processing, and, with the
introduction of big data, linguists are looking at the question of data and causal relationships.
Some even believe that data can provide everything, making it unnecessary to consider cause
and effect; this too is a position that will affect computational linguistics.
 Li Yuming 193

I once thought that problems in language life were the main force driving progress in
linguistics.12 Now one can go further and say precisely that the impulse behind linguistics
lies in the language problems encountered in the course of social progress. The series of
questions arising from language technology, communicative variants and language functions
all need to be studied and resolved through linguistics. At the same time, every technology
that can assist linguistic research or facilitate the application of its findings should be taken
into consideration and utilized in linguistics. Admittedly, current linguistic research still draws
upon print media for its data, and indeed its mode of thought basically seems to be confined to
that source; the linguistic community does not show as much interest as it might in language
technology. There are plenty of technologies and products from the age of sound and online
media that await development and utilization by linguistic techniques.

III. Issues in the Online Media Era

Why are online media such a hot topic today? It is because they have a powerful information
capacity that is bringing new ways of living and opening up new horizons and because
they have triggered a lively debate about pros and cons of new media and how it should be
managed and used. Here, in addition to my comments above, I will expand a little on online
language life, addressing attitudes to new media language, winning discourse rights in the
new media, etc.
1. Online language life
The flourishing of online media has brought linguistic communication into a new era. To
think about online media is to think about a new era of communication, the most striking
feature of which is that unlike before, people now conduct their language life in both real and
virtual space.
A few years ago, the “virtuality” of online space was emphasized to distinguish it from
the real world, as if the real and the virtual belonged to separate worlds. People in the real
world are “real people,” but once they step into the virtual space, they tend to give themselves
an online name, as if they have become a different, “virtual” person. Thanks to the rapid
development of online media, especially online new media, people are becoming more and
more aware of the close connection between the “real” and the virtual world, even going so
far as to consider the Internet as an extension of physical reality. In particular, the idea and
application of “Internet plus” blends the life of physical reality with virtual life, “shifting” real
life into virtual space as much as possible. A situation is gradually coming into being in which
the virtual contains the real and the real the virtual; the virtual brings on the real, and the real
grasps the virtual.
On August 3, 2016, China Internet Online Information Center (CNNIC) released its 38th

12 See Li Yuming, “Some Language Issues in Contemporary China.”

194 Social Sciences in China

Statistical Report on Internet Development in China. To date, China has 710 million Internet
users, including 656 million mobile phone netizens. The Internet penetration rate has reached
51.7 percent, 3.1 percent higher than the world average. The statistics indicate that more
than half of Chinese residents are Internet users, and that online language life has become
an important component of language life for modern Chinese. Chinese net users can be
categorized into four groups:
The first group could be called the “aboriginals” or original denizens of cyberspace. Born in
the 1990s and after, most came into contact with society via the Internet. Being online is their
mode of existence; for them, online space is not just their existential space, or even a mental
sense; keyboard, mouse and touch screen are their key tools for interacting with the external
world, and they prefer to carry out many activities online.
The second group is the “immigrants.” This group was originally accustomed to print and
audio media; books, newspapers, radio and television were their main sources of information.
However, they believe in keeping abreast of the times and have followed the development
of cyberspace. Gradually, use of the Internet has become a habit. Following the principle of
“When in Rome, do as Romans do,” they have migrated onto the net.
The third group is the “tourists.” They are used to print and audio media, but do know of
the richness and diversity of the Internet, and given the chance will have a look around online.
For them, the Internet is just a tool or a supplement to daily life.
The fourth group is the “outsiders.” These people seldom or never get themselves online;
they use only print and audio media, or not even those. They do not know the first thing about
online technology, and have no wish to surf on the net. They are wholly marginalized in terms
of Internet use.
This kind of division is not only interesting but also meaningful. Linguists studying online
language are actually studying online language life, examining the online language behavior
of these groups. What should be particularly noted is the needs of the marginalized group.
Information equality is today an important element of social equality, involving the right to
access information, channels and technology for acquiring information, etc. In the information
age, the gap in information equality is comparable to the gap between rich and poor; the
unequal distribution of information resources is a new expression of the unequal distribution
of society’s resources. We need to be particularly concerned about marginalized groups or
regions: retirees, housewives, ethnic minorities, the western region of China, the countryside,
etc. Bridging the information gap that disadvantages these people is the duty of the holders of
public power.
2. Attitudes towards new media language
Novelties always court controversy; some hail them, others revile them, and so is it with
new media: Not a few praise them warmly; others treat them as part of print media, and look
at the “aboriginals” and “immigrants” from the perspective of tourists or outsiders.
It is indeed the common obligation of all Chinese, including netizens, to defend the
 Li Yuming 195

standards and dignity of the mother tongue. The Internet is a platform where a variety of
media and languages converge, and the wisdom of net users accumulates. It is also a place
where new words and expressions are created and spread. For this reason, online language
is dazzlingly colorful, and full of explosive energy. Online language use is now an important
part of language life, so online language needs to be managed, regulated and guided in a
more professional way. Undesirable phenomena need to be criticized or corrected. However,
management and regulation does not mean “using the old to regulate the new,” still less is it
necessary to use the “pure language” approach and excoriate online language. For thousands
of years, the Chinese have followed the teaching of the Confucian classic, The Great
Learning, “If you once correct your faults and renew yourself, then renew yourself every day,
never flag.” Living in a country that upholds innovation as its national development strategy,
we should steadfastly uphold the new. Only in this way can we look squarely at the new
media, adapt to the new media, master and own the new media.
Language itself is a system, a set of rules. Language use has to bear the rules in mind. Since
the media (we-media included) proffer their information to the general public or particular
“narrowcast” audiences, the language they use has a great influence on society, so norms
or rules are needed to ensure effective delivery of information and provide a model. Print,
audio and online media are essentially different; they all need to be regulated, but the specific
regulatory standards or measures should differ for each.
It should be noted that for the media or any other language user, the aim of language
regulation is not “pure language,” but harmony in language life. “Pure language” is
impossible. Language users from all walks of life and educational backgrounds are using
language in a variety of situations through a variety of media. Language is constantly
changing. Given that new words and usages may well conflict with the old language rules, and
even with society’s rules, how can one demand that language be kept “pure”? Language has
a strong self-organizing capacity: it can always separate the gold from the dross or the wheat
from the chaff. How then can it be other than pure?
The “pure language” approach has no theoretical support, nor is it practical. Of course,
to reject the idea of “pure language” does not mean turning a blind eye to undisciplined
language. Language teaching, dictionary making and language planning consolidate the
correct use of the spoken and written language and help strengthen its self-organizing function
of selecting the good and eliminating the bad. What I wish to stress here is the concept that
one should not be obsessed with language “purity,” and in particular should not try to fit new
media and new media language into the Procrustean bed of print media thinking.
3. Discourse rights in the new media
New media, print media and audio media are blending into a hybrid media force in which
the three forms jointly transmit their message. In this hybrid, new media is a detachment
armed with “special equipment.” Its growth is promising, playful, even perverse, but full of
vitality and energy. New media are the key media for online aboriginals and immigrants, who
196 Social Sciences in China

are usually educated, know foreign languages, and have mastered the technology; they propel
new media’s rapidly growing power. As China’s media join the world’s journey, its new media
will step to the forefront. Therefore, gaining discourse rights for the new media, especially
international discourse rights, is a topical issue that cannot be overlooked or evaded.
To win the discourse rights for the new media, or to promote their acquisition of such
rights, it is necessary to understand the laws of new media development. New media provide
a field that linguistic science and technology can exploit, a new arena for their development
and expansion. This should be of great interest to the linguistic community, and will naturally
enrich linguistic studies.
In recent years, much effort has been devoted to research on online language, including
the use of new methodologies. This shows what a great impetus the new media have given to
linguistic research. Of course, such research is not just a beneficiary of new media, but also
a contributor to their success. Linguists need to explore new language technologies that will
enable them to provide software and hardware support for online media, make interfaces,
input techniques and data retrieval easier and more user-friendly, and make backroom
performance stronger. They need to focus on the various language phenomena of new media,
understand their linguistic patterns and give full play to their capacity to benefit society. In
addition, they need to be more aware of the dynamics of linguistic research in the Internet
era and more active in creating new forms of media and new media ecosystems, as well
supporting rules and norms suited to the laws that govern the new media’s development. This
will be conducive to the new media’s healthy growth and will enable it to serve the people
and the country.

IV. Concluding Remarks

Humanity’s previous reliance on sound waves as the sole language medium has been
supplanted by the “three waves”: sound waves, light waves and electronic waves. Similarly,
the spoken language as the sole means of communication has been supplemented by writing
and audio-media and thence by today’s “hypermedia” or “total media.” Alongside the
evolution of language media and means of language communication, the communicative
variants by which language is adapted to a variety of contexts and communication tools have
multiplied. Language vocabulary, grammar and expression have been enriched, and written
and spoken styles, in particular, have expanded the functions of language.
These changes in language and language life, especially those that have taken place since
writing began over 5,000 years ago, have been driven by language technologies, which have
provided an important impetus for language development and language life. Having gone
through the four high points of the invention of writing, printing, radio and television, and
the Internet, our “language apparatus” and language life have made great progress. People
already have the sensory equipment to hand the spoken and written word, as well as a string
 Li Yuming 197

of material equipment, and their language life takes place in both real and virtual space.
Progress in linguistics has been accompanied by progress in language, language life
and language technologies. These developments have raised new questions for linguistics,
providing new materials, opening up new research areas, helping gain access to new research
tools, and even helping renew views of language and approaches to language research.
Of course, linguistics has itself provided irreplaceable help to the healthy development of
language life and the invention and application of language technologies.
However, there is still much to be done in relation to research on language technologies,
communicative language variants, the development of linguistics, etc. We need further
study of their relationships; what we have so far is simplistic, and some issues have gone
unnoticed or are not on the radar screen. We lack linguistic research that gives a longitudinal
view of language history over thousands of years, and also need a horizontal perspective on
communication means and language life. Research on language technologies and their effects
upon language use is far from adequate. We do not as yet have any systematic treatment of
the history of language technologies. Precisely because linguistics lacks a multidimensional
macro-vision, linguistic findings are seldom discussed at the level of the relationship between
language and social progress; nor have they done much to solve the language problems
encountered in social development. This has in turn affected the development of linguistics
itself.
We have entered the era of online media (the new media and the traditional media that
have shifted online). The relationship between linguistics and online media, especially new
media, is essentially the relationship between linguistics and the Internet age. On one hand,
the use and study of online media and the development of new research tools have become
major concerns of the linguistic community; on the other, the mission of linguistics lies in the
development of new technologies to support online media, making them more accessible to
the public and exploiting their positive influence.

Notes on Contributor

Li Yuming is Professor at Beijing Language and Culture University and President of the International
Society of Chinese Language Studies. He has been Deputy Director of the State Language Commission
and Director of the Language Information Management Division at the Ministry of Education. His
main research areas are linguistics, modern Chinese, psycholinguistics and language planning. He has
published more than ten monographs, including Development of Children’s Language (儿童语言的发展
Wuhan: Central China Normal University Press, 1995 ), The Quantity Category in Chinese (汉语量范
畴研究, Wuhan: Central China Normal University Press, 2000), Grammatical Studies in China (语法研
究录, Beijing: The Commercial Press, 2002), Language Planning in China (中国语言规划论), and 450
articles. He also edited the Global Chinese Dictionary (全球华语词典, Beijing: The Commercial Press,
2010) and Global Great Chinese Dictionary (全球华语大词典, Beijing: The Commercial Press, 2016),
198 Social Sciences in China

and was co-editor of The Language Situation in China (Volumes 1-3) (published jointly by De Gruyter
and the Commercial Press). His research has been translated into several languages, including English,
French, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Mongolian, Tibetan and Uygur. E-mail: liyum@163.net.

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—Translated by Zhang Dachuan

Revised by Sally Borthwick