Community Identity and Peoples Perception and Production of Internet Slang Written in Acronyms

Internet slang has been a subject that has attracted researchers in the field of linguistics in recent years. In this paper, a quantitative and qualitative method is presented to study the relationship between community identity and people's perception and production of Internet slang written in acronyms, taking the community of fans in China, for example, and the phenomenon of the subculture incorporation in the aspect of the acronyms. It is demonstrated that there is no direct correlation between community identity and how people perceive and create acronyms. The influence of mass media and the Internet, government/official intervention, and people's propensity to follow trends may contribute to the subculture's incorporation in this aspect. The features of the most popular and the least popular acronyms outside the fan community are also presented in the paper.