Different versions of 2020 buzzwords have been released recently-
What buzzwords do you use frequently?
"Retrograde", "Later wave", "Bring goods", "Double cycle", "Yeqinghui", "Oli to"... What buzzwords do you often talk about in 2020?
How many buzzwords do you remember from previous years?
Recently, many institutions have announced the top ten buzzwords of 2020.
As a product of the times, buzzwords reflect the issues, things and phenomena that society generally pays attention to in a certain period of time, record social development and changes, and reflect people's mental state to a certain extent.
Language evolves with the progress of the times and the development of society, and buzzwords are constantly changing.
Every once in a while, some buzzwords become popular, but only those buzzwords with both social and linguistic value can stand the test of time.
"National buzzwords" are increasing
Professor He Weiyu, who has retired from the School of Humanities at Shanghai Normal University for many years, has been following the top ten buzzwords released by various institutions at the end of the year, and this year is no exception.
"Every year's major events are in this buzzword!" He Weiyu said.
Buzzwords are not new, but they bear a distinctive stamp of the times, recording stories from different eras and years.
Compared with previous years, what are the characteristics of this year's buzzwords?
"The main feature is the large quantity." He Weiyu said that this year's new concepts and new words are rich and colorful, and it is the "big year" of the buzzword.
Secondly, affected by the new crown pneumonia epidemic, fighting the epidemic is the annual theme of this year. Many buzzwords will naturally be highly related to major events such as epidemic prevention and control, resumption of work and production.
"For example, among the top ten buzzwords published in "Zhen Wen Che Zi", there are 7 words that are directly or indirectly related to the epidemic."
The reporter noticed that in the multiple versions of "Buzzwords of the Year" published so far, in addition to "Retrograde" and "Houlang", words such as "Cloud Supervisor", "Same Agreement" and "Wuhan Come on" are also on the list. Among the five candidate domestic words announced by the "Chinese Inventory 2020" jointly sponsored by the Resource Monitoring and Research Center and the Commercial Press, 4 words such as "mask", "anti-epidemic", "retrograde" and "health code" are related to the anti-epidemic .
In the context of people all over the country fighting the epidemic, people's concerns are more concentrated.
"In the past few years, the trend of'blocking' buzzwords was obvious. Different age groups, different social groups, and different social backgrounds have different buzzwords. There are relatively few popular'national buzzwords' in the whole society." Editor of "Chew Words" The editor-in-chief Huang Anjing said that this year’s "popular buzzwords" are on the increase, such as "people first, life first", "retrograde", "post-waves", and "live-broadcasting goods", which are well-known to the public and popular in the whole society.
The popularity of buzzwords must be due to the large number of people who use them, but not all words that appear frequently will be on the list.
“When the National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center selects buzzwords, it first extracts the candidate words of the year from the corpus through the vocabulary spatiotemporal movement model and related algorithms.” said Zou Yu, a professor at Communication University of China, and then artificially screened the candidate words , Then organize experts to discuss and discuss.
Social value and linguistic value are becoming important criteria for selecting buzzwords.
"Specifically, it is reflected in the three aspects of reflecting the characteristics of the times, promoting positive energy and guiding Chinese life." He Weiyu believes that the first two aspects have been fully demonstrated in the context of the nation's anti-epidemic this year. The third aspect mainly refers to Whether the selected words are innovative in structure, semantics and usage.
He cited as an example, "Sa" was originally an onomatopoeia to describe the sound of wind, but now it has become a common language to praise female compatriots in all walks of life.
Looking at the annual buzzwords in recent years, there are many kinds and all-inclusive.
Among them, many words have entered the Chinese thesaurus.
"We choose buzzwords to choose words that can be passed down in the society and will enter the Chinese dictionary in the future. If it is a word that is only used for ridicule and is purely funny, talk about it, but it must be selected as a buzzword and promoted to the society , Is far from reaching this standard." Huang Anjing said.
Perceive the pulse of social development
A lot of new buzzwords are produced every year.
In Zou Yu's eyes, buzzwords can be said to be a national language carnival.
So, where do buzzwords come from?
"Buzzwords exist in every age, and the buzzwords of each generation build a unique memory for each generation." He Weiyu said that before the reform and opening up, the buzzwords spread by word of mouth were mostly related to politics, and later reflected the society. The words of new things and new concepts in the field have gradually increased. Especially after entering the Internet era, a large number of online buzzwords have appeared, and the speed of buzzwords has accelerated, and words that were originally only used within a certain group may instantly become popular.
Language is a mirror that faithfully reflects changes in social life, while buzzwords are the most concise "recorder" of changes.
"Usually its production is related to specific things and phenomena, maybe social events, maybe mental expressions, maybe because the words themselves are interesting and lively, which arouses widespread attention." Director of the National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center for Graphic Media Yang Erhong said.
"Buzzwords play a great role in recording social changes." Zou Yu said, especially in recent years, "Chinese Dream", "New Normal", "Tiger Swatting", "Supply Side", "Double Cycle" and so on. The mainstream cultural vocabulary in the field of criticism and economics has evolved into popular life buzzwords. Sometimes when looking back at major events in the past, you can quickly recall memories by searching for the buzzwords of the year. "This is precisely because buzzwords themselves are closely related to social life."
Language is also a reflection of the soul. To some extent, buzzwords reflect people's mentality and expectations in a certain period of time.
The reason why they are talked about is often the emotional resonance of users.
Whether it’s the “stressful”, “baby”, “I’m too difficult” that appeared in the past few years, or the “beating workers” and “Versailles literature” that have become popular this year, many people have become self-depressing terms for self-ridicule.
"Buzzwords can provide a channel for everyone to release emotions to a certain extent, and provide a flexible carrier for the formation of social consensus and group tolerance." He Weiyu said that such buzzwords are often humorous and joking, showing optimism while self-deprecating. Upward life attitude and yearning for a better life.
According to Huang Chuxin, deputy director and secretary-general of the New Media Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, buzzwords are a direct reflection of social focus issues and emotions. Taking an inventory of annual buzzwords can help us to see new changes and phenomena in social development, and to pulse social development. Form precise perception.
When looking back on the past annual buzzwords, people will find that some buzzwords can still be used today, while others cannot escape the fate of "coming and going in a hurry".
"The production of some new words is related to specific events. When the event passes, the frequency of this word will drop significantly. For example,'Millennium', which is most used around 2000." Yang Erhong believes whether a buzzword can be used. Popularity and long-term retention depend on whether it has a long-term impact on the social life reflected by itself and whether it is irreplaceable in the language system.
Words such as "'positive energy", "great power," and "like" are still in use now, and words such as'sweet horses are floating clouds and blue thin mushrooms' slowly fade out of sight. This is also the process of natural language flow. In the final analysis, changes are due to the progress of society and the development of the country." He Weiyu said that although some words have been popular for a short time, they have left their own "footprints" in life. ".
What settles down is the essence
The Internet age is an era when Internet buzzwords prevail.
Judging from the annual buzzwords released by different institutions each year, the proportion of online terms has shown an obvious upward trend.
In June this year, the Ministry of Education released the "Report on the Chinese Language Life (2020)."
The report points out that Internet language has gone through a development path from "exotic" to "localization"; the way it presents to the public has evolved from the initial "multilingual coding" to the current "multimodality"; it does not In addition, the patents of “niche people” such as Internet masters and “big shrimp” have become language products shared, shared, and shared by the “public” online and offline.
Under the background that online language is fully entering the real language life, many scholars have expressed their concerns.
They believe that while online buzzwords reflect current social life, they also have a significant impact on traditional classic culture and mainstream values.
In particular, in the process of irrational dissemination of some Internet buzzwords, there are obvious rebellious, defaced and other subcultural colors, which can easily affect the development of youth social and cultural psychology and values.
Yang Erhong pointed out that there should be a distinction between Internet buzzwords, some of which are positive, and some tend to be vulgar and vulgar.
Regarding the latter, both citizens and media practitioners should consciously resist, and relevant departments should strengthen supervision and create a clear and clear cyberspace.
"The emergence of Internet buzzwords has indeed enriched our vocabulary objectively." He Weiyu said that it should be viewed with a positive and open attitude.
Generally speaking, vulgar and negative words will disappear with the passage of time, and it is the essence that settles down, and there is a process of scouring the sand.
There are many online buzzwords, and there are also many versions of annual buzzwords.
“It’s a good thing that many organizations publish multiple versions of the annual buzzwords. Because of the different databases and algorithms used, the results will definitely be different.” Zou Yu said, but this shows that everyone is very concerned about buzzwords. Presenting and interpreting from different angles forms a state where a hundred schools of thought contend and a hundred flowers bloom, which is a manifestation of the diversity and diversity of society.
Zou Yu also mentioned that although buzzwords represent trends to some extent, they may not be suitable for everyone.
"It is impossible and unnecessary for the public to exhaust all the information. It is normal for everyone to feel strange to some'hot words'."
Buzzwords reflect the changes of the times, not the whole of the times, nor the whole picture of our lives, it only reflects certain aspects.
Experts said that language itself has a reverse shaping effect. When we choose a language, the language itself will in turn shape our thinking, which will subtly affect our cultural connotation and even the depth of our thinking.
Faced with all kinds of buzzwords, you must not blindly follow the trend.
Further reading
Inventory of "hot words" at home and abroad in 2020
China
The editorial department of "Chew Words" released the "Top Ten Buzzwords in 2020": "People First, Life First", Retrograde, Houlang, Sa, Mythical Beast, Live Broadcasting, Double Loop, Beating Workers, Internal Volume, Versailles Literature.
The National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center released the "Top Ten Internet Terms of 2020": Retrograde, the first cup of milk tea in autumn, bringing goods, cloud supervision, CD operations, Oligo, good guys, winning, by appointment, Jimei.
The "Chinese Inventory 2020" co-sponsored by the National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center, the Commercial Press, People's Daily Online, and Tencent Corporation announced the five candidate domestic words and the five international candidates, namely: poverty alleviation, masks, anti-epidemic, and retrograde , Health code; new crown epidemic, herd immunity, circuit breaker, US election, Kobe.
United States
Both the US "Webster's Dictionary" and the American Dictionary Network have named "Pandemic" as the word of the year.
The "Webster's Dictionary" said that according to statistical data, the word "pandemic" has been queried significantly higher this year than in previous years.
On March 11 this year, the World Health Organization announced that the new crown epidemic constituted a "pandemic." On that day, the number of queries for this term surged by 115806% compared with last year. Moreover, the term was close to the top of the most searched terms throughout the year.
United Kingdom
"Cambridge Dictionary" lists "isolation" as the 2020 vocabulary.
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the term "isolation" ranks third in this year's search volume, but if you remove the words "Hello" and "Dictionary" that appear all these years, "isolation" will jump to the top of the list.
According to statistics, the term "isolation" was the most searched during the period from March 18 to 24 this year.
Germany
The German Language Association announced the top ten annual vocabularies for 2020, 8 of which are related to the new crown epidemic.
Peter Schlobinski, president of the German Language Association, said that there are very few hot vocabularies in Germany that revolve around one theme throughout the year. The last time this happened was the international financial crisis that occurred in late 2008.
This year, the German language also gave birth to a number of new vocabularies containing "new crown" in word formation, such as "new crown parade", "new crown number", "new crown isolation", "anti-new crown restriction measures idiot" and so on.
Japan
The "New Words and Buzzwords Award" sponsored by the Japan Freedom National Press was announced recently.
Among them, the slogan "3 sealed (closed, dense, close contact)" for the prevention of the new crown epidemic won the best award.
In order to facilitate people to better understand the essentials of epidemic prevention and control and to facilitate the operation in daily life, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike summarized the opinions of the epidemic experts as strict prevention "3 secrets."
Nowadays, strict prevention of "three secrets" has become a new way of life for Japanese citizens to prevent and control the epidemic.
In addition, the Japanese government implemented the "GO TO Promotion" policy to promote tourism and dining out, and various offline activities affected by the epidemic have been transferred to online "online 〇〇", social networking sites can cure all diseases The little monster "Niyan", the abbreviation "Dongsen" of the simulated business game released by Nintendo, the Korean TV series "Crash Landing of Love", and the super-popular manga "Demon Slayer" were also selected as the top ten buzzwords of the year.
(Compiled by our reporter Shi Zhipeng)