What's your hot word of the year?

The feeling of home and country has become a distinct background

"Is there a sequel to The Age of Awakening?" "Your happy life today is the sequel." Throughout the year, this netizen's comment is the deepest network memory of "post-00s" Zhu Hanyue. After watching "The Age of Awakening", she was touched by the heroic deeds of Chen Yannian and Chen Qiaonian: "They are so young but so fearless, we should always remember them." To this end, she and her small partners in the same dormitory deliberately took the high-speed train from Shanghai to Hefei, Anhui Province, on the day of "July 1", and went to Yanqiao Road to "punch in". The grand occasion of that day is still vividly remembered: there is a sea of flowers around the road sign of Yanqiao Road, and the cards and letters are handwritten sentences and phrases "This prosperous world is as you wish" and "We have enjoyed the happiness you have bought through thorns and thorns."

"Let me choose the hot word of the year, the 'age of awakening'." Zhu Hanyue said.

In 2021, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, the hot search related to the great founding spirit of the party runs through the whole year, and the feelings of young people's home and country are also continuous. "The Age of Awakening" and "Revolutionaries" and other main theme film and television works are sought after, netizens search for archetypal characters, quotations, wallpapers, memes, etc., feeling the firm faith of Li Dazhao, Chen Yannian and other revolutionary ancestors.

"It is a very good phenomenon that the content representing the main theme of political life, 'a hundred years since the founding of the party' and 'the era of awakening', have entered the hot words of the Internet." Guo Yuanyuan, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and deputy dean of the School of Culture and Communication of the Capital University of Economics and Business, also voted the first place in her heart for the "awakening era" of the annual hot word in her heart to the "awakening age" of the title of "breaking the circle" and becoming a "hot search", in her opinion, this work has become a hit for fans to watch after the broadcast, because what people read from it is not only a review of the struggle of the revolutionary predecessors, but also the spiritual connection and conscious inheritance of the red gene.

Buzzwords are the footprints of the times, from which people can see the changes of the times, society and culture. Among the top ten popular phrases in 2021 released by the editorial board of "Chewing Words", the word "breaking defense" swept through many lists in the "2021 Top Ten Internet Terms" and "Annual Recommended Words" released by the National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center and the annual bullet screen released by Bilibili... At the turn of the year, many institutions have selected and announced the annual buzzwords and keywords, which reflect the big times, outline the big changes, and freeze the unique annual memory for 2021.

Behind the hot words on the Internet, the feelings of home and country have become a distinct background. Many of the words that have been "fired" in the past year are not just fragmentary feelings that people casually express on the Internet, but also as a collective emotion, an annotation of a common memory.

Recently, Quark App and the Internet Information Research Institute of communication university of China jointly released the "China Z generation intelligent information global research report" shows that "the centenary of the founding of the party", "national style and national tide", "China aerospace", "Olympic Games", "vaccination", "national anti-fraud", "preparation for youth", "breaking defense", "YYDS" and so on have become the annual hot words of "post-95s". The vast number of young people not only care about major social events, but also take the initiative to meet challenges, showing vitality, self-confidence, courage and responsibility.

"If the previous Internet buzzwords reflect that young people pay more attention to personality and popularity, and even have strong entertainment, they will now find that they are resonating with the same frequency of the country and the nation in their own way, activating resonance in the intersection of emotions." Guo Yuanyuan lamented that young people are not only practitioners of the online world, but also promoters of influencing others, and these popular words that condense the annual hot spots show the flow of expression habits of contemporary youth, "behind the uplifting is a kind of cultural self-confidence."

Buzzwords are alive

"Chinese Inventory" began in 2006, is a joint initiative of the National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center and the Commercial Press, the purpose is to let netizens use one word, one word to describe China and the world in the past year, so as to highlight the charm of the Chinese language, record social changes, let people care about China and the world at the same time, experience the rich cultural connotation of Chinese, encourage the whole people to record life in language, describe the social changes and the world under China's vision. Since then, a number of institutions have followed up and participated so far.

Nowadays, the selection of buzzwords and buzzwords of the year is more concerned than ever. Looking back on 2021, "the era of awakening", "the centenary of the founding of the party", "well-off", "double reduction", "lying flat", "YYDS", "breaking defense", "absolutely desperate" and so on have become high-frequency words in the annual buzzwords released by various institutions and media. These hot words not only carry people's memories of social development in the past year, but also convey people's attitudes towards life, and also reflect the latest changes in socio-linguistic culture.

"The emergence of new words and new words and new meanings is inevitable, because society is constantly changing and innovating, and words must keep up with the times and society, and timely reflect changes in society and social psychology." Li Lan, a well-known linguist, a member of the 11th and 12th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and a chair professor at southern University of Science and Technology, was deeply impressed by several popular words that have basically entered the vocabulary of the whole people, "'inner volume' and 'lying flat' are two very creative new words, which are likely to enter the vocabulary of the whole people."

He explained that the "inner volume" derived from the masterpiece of a translator, the original English word "involution", which the translator translated as "inner volume", referring to the phenomenon that a social or cultural model stagnates or cannot be transformed into another advanced model after reaching a definite form at a certain stage of development. "Inner volume" was first popular in colleges and universities, and can be used to describe both the competition between professors and the competition between students. Now a common social term, the meaning has begun to change to "inefficient competition", "vicious competition" or "fierce competition".

The term "lying flat" is said to have first appeared in an online post called "lying flat is justice." The author shares his own "lying flat" life: living on extremely low consumption and "having a ride without a ride" for two years.

"It's a very vivid word. Using a body lying flat action as a metaphor for an indifferent and indifferent state of mind, describing a psychological state and attitude of life that does not take any reaction or resistance to external competition and external pressure, and uses this attitude of life to buffer external pressure, so as to dissolve the mandatory rules of the external environment for individuals. The word is likely to last a long time, because there is not a word in the existing Chinese vocabulary that can express this state. Li Lan said.

Buzzwords are alive. Li Lan believes that the vitality of a word mainly depends on two factors: one is that the original words have ideographic meanings, but the newly emerged words have better effects and are more eye-catching; the other is to fill in the blanks of words or meanings. "In any case, language is a social product. Network communication is actually a way of social communication of language. Language is always changing and innovating, both ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign. However, in the Internet age, a hot word is likely to spread throughout the country or even the world within a few hours. He said.

"To believe in the natural self-purifying function of this river of language"

The great popularity of the Internet and the rapid development of self-media have made the present an era of rapid emergence and rapid demise of buzzwords. For a time, our society even entered the era of "sentence making for the whole people". But it's worth noting that the hot word of the year is not just a "popular" selection. For example, in the "Top Ten Buzzwords of 2021" released by the editorial board of Chewing Words magazine, "YYDS" and "Absolute Son" are excluded. Huang Anjing, the magazine's editor-in-chief, explained the selection criteria and said that it involved "sociological value" and "linguistic value."

In recent years, a large number of newly coined words in online language have occupied the popular position, and some people have worried that the Chinese language will be polluted. Earlier in 2021, an article that caused a lot of discussion conveyed a similar attitude towards online language. The article, titled "What to Save the "Word Aphasia" Who Is Trapped by the "Stem"", calls "Except for 'YYDS' who can't find any other words of praise, everything can be 'absolutely a child'" and who can't speak without the stem" as "word aphasia patients" and prescribes them for the symptoms.

"The idea that the advent of new words and phrases will make the Chinese language rough and impoverished is completely unnecessary." Li Lan told reporters that there is a metaphor in the field of linguistics that is very vivid: "Language is a river", this river carries the whole society and all life. In his view, as a language with a long history, a large population, a wide geographical distribution and a deep cultural heritage, Chinese is a particularly huge river.

Li Lan firmly believes that our Chinese language has both the leisure and elegance of "the willow bank and the wind and the moon", as well as the rapids and dangerous shoals of "flying down three thousand feet", and there must also be words such as "no evil and no action" to describe some evil deeds of human beings. "We can't just observe the individual phenomena, but also pay attention to the flow and history of the whole river." In his view, the emergence of any new linguistic phenomenon will only enrich and nourish the river. Online language rises and falls, as does the phenomenon of non-networked language, "so any worry and anxiety about this language is superfluous."

"Chinese and Chinese characters have been used for thousands of years and are now more vibrant." In Li Lan's view, language and writing need to be properly regulated, but when formulating norms, we must fully consider the characteristics of language and writing, "we must believe in the final choice of the public, and we must believe in the natural self-purification function of this river of language."

Reporter: Wang Huifeng

EDIT: Mo Shuo

Review: Jiajia Zhou