Novel Lexical Semantic Change in Chinese Social Media

Social media plays a dominant role in everyday life and it has undeniably transformed the way we interact with each other. One of the major effects of social media is that sentences and phrases have become much shorter. Professor LIU Meichun, Professor of CityU’s Department of Linguistics and Translation and her research team has conducted research to explore new lexical semantic changes that demonstrate a tendency of semantic shifts towards highly interactive and socially impactive meanings.

A number of such changes are found in Weibo, which were either motivated by metaphorical or metonymic transfers. For example, as “water” or “ocean” is the metaphor for social media, aquatic activities such as qiánshuǐ 潛水 may refer to social interactions (eg. tā zài qúnlǐ mòmò qiánshuǐ 她在群裡默默潛水 “She is lurking in the group”). A constructional analysis is proposed to account for the form-meaning re-associations in the novel usage patterns that show a consistent tendency of semantic shift from less interactive to more interactive meanings.

As a result, two major constructional changes have been identified based on Weibo data. First, from non-verbal to verbal usage (eg. tā nèihán wǒ le 他內涵我了, “He covertly satirised me”). Second, from intransitive to transitive verbal usage (eg. duòshǒu xīn bāobāo 剁手新包包, “bought a new bag”), which may also incorporate human objects (eg. tǔcáo qiánnányǒu 吐槽前男友 “complain ex-boyfriend”).

The first type of lexical semantic change is evidenced in two cases: the adjective-causative alternation supported by 127 adjectives (eg. xīngchén qīngchèle míshīdeyǎn 星辰清澈了迷失的眼, “The star makes the lost eye clear”), and the noun-transitive V alternation found with eight nominals (eg. yīyèzhījiān píngtái huǒle liúlìlì 一夜之間平台火了劉俐俐, “Overnight, the platform made Liu Lili become popular”). The second type is testified by the case study of emerging VO+N (verb-object plus noun) constructions, such as zhòngcǎo 種草 and bácǎo 拔草.

In sum, this study proposes a new tendency in lexical semantic change, namely, interactivisation, as an underlying motivation and direction for novel usages. The tendency accounts for the recurrent shifts from less interactive to highly interactive usage patterns. The proposal aligns with the theoretical frameworks of interactive linguistics and usage-based approach, attributing the emerging changes to the increasing need for social interaction in new media. The findings contribute to both theoretical and applicational research on lexical semantics by highlighting a potentially cross-linguistic mechanism for semantic changes.