The Analysis of Network Nonce Words - Take Beiju and Its Derivatives as an Example

Network nonce words refer to the popular words created by netizens to indicate hot events appeared in the daily life, or new conceptions and feelings that netizens try to express on certain social affairs. From 2009 onward, a new network nonce word Beiju appeared in many forums. Because of the phonetic similarity, tragedy was soon replaced by Beiju on the net. Soon after that a number of Beiju-based derivative words and expressions were created to form a Beiju word-set family. Thus, this paper will take Beiju and Beiju-based derivatives as an example to analyze the word-formation, and pragmatic metaphor use of network nonce words.