Blogs often replace traditionally handwritten diaries. Photo: TUCHONG

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In the digital age, the digitalization of language life provides rich data, research topics, and innovation opportunities for linguistics. Language use in virtual spaces has become an important issue in sociolinguistics, as well as language policy and planning.

Language usage encompasses both non-digital and digital forms, each serving distinct functions. The language systems formed by the former exhibit transferability and serve as the basis for the development of the latter. In the digital age, traditional means of communication such as face-to-face interaction, paper correspondence, and reading and writing via print media remain important, just as walking and cycling have not been abandoned despite the widespread use of motor vehicles.

Digital language life refers to language life enabled by digital technology, including activities such as video calls, online chatting, reading e-books, blogging, and emailing using smart devices connected to the internet. In today’s society, characterized by comprehensive digital transformation, online language is increasingly integrating into real-world language life, replacing many traditional forms of interpersonal interactions. 

Regarding participants, digital language life can be classified into two types: passive participation, such as receiving information, browsing the internet, and digital management, and active participation, such as sending messages, leaving comments, and online entertainment. The degree of participation in digital language life varies among users and is affected by various factors such as internet access, socioeconomic status, age, health, educational level, occupation, and living conditions. Rapid advances in intelligent technology put pressure on economically disadvantaged individuals, educationally disadvantaged individuals, the elderly, and persons with disabilities.

The participants, the language itself, and language use in digital language life possess several characteristics. First, participants in language life within the same digital space are diverse, with changing group dynamics, which gives rise to language differentiation and mutual estrangement. Second, the complexity and variability of digital language life leads to further refinement of its semantics and pragmatics. Third, the spaces and fields of language use have been considerably expanded due to the infinite nature of virtual spaces, the dynamic nature of language domains, and the anonymity of language users. Fourth, digital language life reflects the development of digital industries, accompanied by the evolution of numerous professions and the emergence of new forms of work and life.

Digital language life enhances traceability of discourse due to digital storage and the rapid dissemination of language by active internet users. However, verbal venting and rumor spreading are far more common in virtual spaces than in real life, where anonymity is hardly possible. Language innovation is ubiquitous in the virtual world. Dialects, vernaculars, and foreign languages are mixed, Chinese characters, Pinyin, and foreign letters are combined, and emojis abound, embodying the co-existence of norms and deviations. In summary, traditional language life is declining while digital language life is growing, and language differentiation and mutual estrangement in virtual spaces are catalyzing the evolution of language in the real world.

Evolving language life in the digital age exerts an immeasurable influence on language use, development, and standardization. Research on language life and language governance faces numerous new challenges, such as how the development of the official language in virtual spaces where different linguistic symbols are mixed arbitrarily can be ensured, how linguistic disadvantages experienced by certain demographic groups can be eliminated, and how language behavior should be regulated.

While research on digital language life can draw upon the topics, methods, and perspectives of research on non-digital language life, it is necessary to examine the similarities and differences between the two. Firstly, internet users constitute a virtual community, and it is far more challenging to determine the homogeneity of online language groups compared to traditional speech or dialect communities. Secondly, the variability, diversity, and vitality of language itself pose challenges for deriving fundamental principles. Thirdly, the highly dynamic nature of virtual communities and the constant evolution of online language require optimizing traditional research methods.

Research on digital language life should develop sociolinguistic theories distinct from those applied to traditional language life, incorporating factors such as the flatness of space, the hidden nature of pragmatic information, the dynamic nature and diversity of identity, the hybrid nature of language forms, and information asymmetry. This serves to fully demonstrate the characteristics of language life in virtual spaces and lays the foundations for language governance.

Dai Manchun is a professor from the School of Chinese Language and Literature at Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Edited by WANG YOURAN