Study on Internet Absurdist Language Proliferation: Analysis from the Youth Subculture Perspective

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-378-8_24How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Internet Absurdist Language; Online Vernacular; Live Streamers; Youth Groups

Abstract

This paper studies the Absurdist language of the Internet (Internet-Chinese: ‘Chouxiang Hua’) present in Chinese cyberspace. We systematically examined language usage through major social platforms, employing participatory observation on Weibo, Bilibili, and Baidu Tieba. Our results demonstrated that online vernacular was constructing collective discourses by marked, distinctive linguistic variations, predominantly propelled by the generational need of young people for stress relief and affirmation of identity. In the new media environment, it was recommended by algorithms and accelerated by user interactions to make its way from live-streaming platforms to the rest of the media—landscape thus becoming one of the major significant online subculture phenomena. Although it has diversified the modes of online expression, this linguistic fashion has given rise to other issues—for instance, only negative emotions are expressed and communication barriers increase—as well. The results obtained not only fill the theoretical gap on language evolution in the Internet age but also supplement the theory and practice of creating a healthy online linguistic ecology. They also enrich our youth cultural psychology.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Zirui Huang
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/03/31
TI  - Study on Internet Absurdist Language Proliferation: Analysis from the Youth Subculture Perspective
BT  - Proceedings of the 2024 4th International Conference on Public Art and Human Development (ICPAHD 2024)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 200
EP  - 205
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-378-8_24
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-378-8_24
ID  - Huang2025
ER  -