语言与社会

苏州科技大学天平学院 商务英语1721 高梓阳

Language and Society

Tianping College of Suzhou University of Science and Technology

Business English 1721, Gao Ziyang

语言折射社会发展的轨迹，中国历史上每一次大的社会变革，都会涌现出一大批新词语。语言属于社会现象，语言是随着社会的发展而发展的。词汇是语言中最活跃的因素，社会的变革、科技的发展、人们思维的活跃和观念的更新，都会在语言的词汇中很快地反映出来，突出表现是新词新义新用法的大量出现。远的不说，就从上一个世纪来看，“五四”前后、建国初期和改革开放以来，分别是新词语出现的三个高峰。如近年来随着网络这一新事物的出现，跟网络有关的新词语就出现了一大串，像因特网、电子邮件、网站、网校、网址、网页、网络犯罪等，这些是语言与社会共变的最好例证。

Language reflects the trail of the social development and every great revolution to the society in the history of China has brought a number of new words. Language belongs to social phenomenon and changes with the development of the community. Lexis is the most active element of the language, because social changes, scientific and technological developments, people’s thinking concepts and new ideas are quickly reflected in the words. The outstanding performance is the emergence of a large number of new words, new meanings and new usages. Far to say , as can be seen in the last century, there are 3 peaks of the generation of the new terms－the May 4th Movement in1919 ,the beginning of the Peoples Republic of China and reform and opening up respectively. For example, with the coming of the Internet in recent years, some expressions related with the web get into people’s life. Like the Internet, e-mail, website, online school, web pages, cybercrimes and so on. These are the best proofs of the co-evolution of language and society.

语言是社会的一面镜子，社会发生了很大变化，语言不可能是无动于衷的，不可能还是保持原样的。语言还可以帮助强化一种观念，甚至强化一种意识形态，所以无论是保守的还是革命的，都分别以不同方式来利用语言。像法国大革命时期，月份名称都改了，因为他们觉得名称代表了一种传统的力量，代表了一种君王、贵族的象征，所以语言本身也是有力量的。社会变迁无疑会给语言带来变化，社会上猛然接受了很多新的信息，肯定会在语言上有所体现。有时社会变迁带来了很多新的信息，新的信息里的一部分可以用老词汇来体现，但有时我们只能用新词汇来表达部分新信息。因此，可以说，语言与社会是紧密相联的。

Language is a mirror of the society. Language will not maintain the same way or keeps unchanged when the society undergoes great changes. Language can also help strengthen an idea or a kind of awareness, whether it is conservative or revolutionary, it uses its own language in different ways. As during the period of French Revolution, even the names of the months were changed, because they thought that the name represented a kind of traditional force and it was a symbol of sovereignty and aristocracy. So the language itself is powerful. It is no doubt that the social development will bring changes to languages. The community will suddenly be full of new information which will be reflected in the language. Sometimes social transition brings a great deal of new information, in which can be represented by the old phrases, but sometimes we can only use the new expressions to convey some new ideas. Thus, it can be said that language is closely related with the society.