Sociolinguistics of Chinese internet slang: Viral buzzwords (2019–2023)

With the development of society, the buzzwords on the Internet continue to produce variations, which reflects the word upsurge in a period of time and is also a different reflection of the society. From the perspective of sociolinguistics, this paper takes the top ten Internet buzzwords from 2019-2023 published by the editorial department of “Wenwenwei” and some of the other popular Internet buzzwords shown in the survey report as examples, expounds the basic concepts of hot words, analyzes their language variation forms, and takes the survey results of existing literature data as data support. The sources, modes, and expressive impacts of popular Internet terms are examined in this research as they along the time axis. Through the analysis of Internet hot words, this research seeks to better understand the traits and values of popular culture in the network era and comprehend the causes behind the frequent substitution of buzzwords.