Memes, Communities and Continuous Change

“Chinese Internet Vernacular,” a complex of novel language varieties associated with the Chinese internet, is usually thought to consist of an increasing host of linguistic memes currently or once virally spread. Focusing on the vernacular’s most prominent character—meaning change, this book attempts to account for the different dimensions and aspects that contribute to the memes’ meaning and function variations, based on the quantitative and qualitative data meticulously collected by following and recording the various memes’ diffusions on Chinese social media over four years. Through the discussion of four comprehensive case studies, what we experience as noticeable meaning change throughout a viral meme’s diffusion may in fact be indexical to, under different circumstances, interpersonal communicative effects, collective identities, and community affiliations, as well as larger sociocultural values and ideologies, all of which can be reflexively performed, enacted, and calibrated in social media interactions. With such efforts, this book hopes to do justice to the complexities and dynamics of the “Chinese Internet Vernacular” as a holistic sociolinguistic phenomenon.