2020, what is the most memorable buzzword?
However, to answer this question, we must first answer the question “What is a buzzword?
We believe that a buzzword is not just an emerging pattern of discourse or a word used in high frequency, but a “collective speech act” of the general public. It is a “collective speech act” of the general public, which is formed by numerous publics through the continuous forwarding of a discourse event and the continuous “quoting” of a word. It is a “social narrative” formed by countless publics through the continuous forwarding of one discourse and the continuous “quoting” of one word. It is the most profound voice of the people, the collective voice of countless publics.
Thinkers must be able to listen to this voice and confirm it, which is the real meaning of recording, selecting and commenting on the “buzzwords of the year”.
The selection of the “Top Ten Buzzwords of the Year” should not be a linguistic “carnival”, let alone an annual show by a group of “buzzword selection experts” and linguistic institutions.
The “Top Ten Buzzwords of the Year” released by major organizations, from “Biting Words” to Sina.com, have long since ended, and this public website may be the last one to release the “Top Ten Buzzwords of the Year”.
The reason why this is the last one is that when the year is not yet over, what are the “Top 10 Buzzwords of the Year”? No one is a god, and it is impossible to predict whether there will be more noteworthy buzzwords after the annual buzzword is released in early December.
So, what are the most important buzzwords for 2020? Why?
- new coronavirus outbreak (the one word that will most profoundly change the global order of life this year)
The outbreak of novel coronavirus pneumonia (neo-coronavirus epidemic) in 2020 is undoubtedly the health event that has profoundly changed the global social order of life, with the cumulative number of people who have contracted the disease worldwide reaching 83,091,663 and the cumulative number of deaths reaching 181,015 by December 31, 2020. To date, the epidemic continues globally.
Related words such as “lockdown”, “vaccine”, “retrograde” and so on have become one of the most important words of the year.
- Lao-tzu said everywhere (the hottest and most abrupt word in the history of Chinese Internet)
The phrase “Lao-tzu said everywhere” came from an interview with Dr. Ai Fen from the emergency department of Wuhan Central Hospital by People magazine.
Dr. Ai was in the same hospital as Dr. Li, who was “reprimanded” for releasing information about the outbreak, and she was the one who initially sent the picture of the test report to her colleagues, for which she was “interviewed” and reprimanded in an “unprecedented and very harsh way”: so, “there was a feeling of despair”, and almost all the doctors stopped discussing it in their circle of friends and various groups, and the subsequent development was almost universally known: more than 200 people were infected in the hospital, and four medical staff died from the new pneumonia.
Dr. Ai learned the hard way that “if all these doctors could have been alerted in time, perhaps this day would not have come,” “Had I known there was today, I cared whether he criticized or not, the old man said everywhere, did not he? “
The phrase has not only become the richest form of retweeting ever, the most powerful motivation for retweeting, but also marked an important turn in the history of netizens’ “retweeting” behavior.
Related to this are “no-can, don’t understand” and “whistle-blower”.
- Involution (the most important word to watch out for after a group crisis)
Involution, originally a sociological term, refers to the phenomenon of a social or cultural pattern that reaches a definite form at a certain stage of development and then stagnates or cannot be transformed into another advanced pattern. It was first introduced by the American anthropologist Giltz and refers to “the increasing labor input in rice cultivation by farmers under population pressure in order to obtain higher yields. However, the labor-intensive input does not lead to a proportional increase in output, and there is a diminishing marginal reward per unit of labor”. However, in colleges and universities, it is used to refer to the competition of “being volunteered”, for example, the teacher asked for an essay of 5,000 words, and many students wrote 10,000 words or even more for the merit assessment. Everyone exceeds the requirements, but the percentage of merit has not changed.
Nowadays, it refers not only to a kind of “voluntary” competition, but also to irrational competition that turns to internal rivalry in the case of inability and external competition.
- No martial arts virtues (a word that authority needs to be careful of)
The “martial arts master” Ma Baoguo has always been pretentious, but once in a competition with a young man, Wang Qingmin, but only 30 seconds, was knocked to the ground three times. After the incident, the Internet spread its black and blue eyelids of the defense video: “young people do not talk about martial arts virtues, sneak attack me, a 69-year-old man, traditional kung fu is ‘point to point ‘, ‘point to point’ he lost, if I this punch force, a punch to break his nose. “
Thus, “young people do not speak of martial arts”, it becomes a sarcastic pretence of the pretentious after the embarrassment or flirt with the inferior position of those who do not know the “rules”, so that the authority to lose face “fierce” state.
- Workers (a word used by the “elite” to regain their self-awareness)
It comes from a netizen named “abstract with basket”, who deliberately touted his status as a worker, security guard or college student with black humor, and gradually became the self-proclaimed name of many office workers.
The term “laborer” originally referred to people engaged in manual labor, usually migrant workers.
In the circulation, the term “laborer” has not only become a generic term for workers from all walks of life, but also a self-deprecating term for those who originally thought they were “social elites” and later found themselves to be “social animals”.
Related to this is the term “tailor”.
- Social death (a term that shifts from self-flagellation to social anger)
Social death, which mostly means making a fool of oneself in front of the public, is so humiliating that one can’t face others and only wants to have a crack in the ground to get in.
In November, a 2019 “sister” from Tsinghua Academy of Fine Arts blindly suspected a freshman student of sexually harassing herself and posted the boy’s personal information on the Internet without permission, threatening to have the student “socially dead”, leading to a social debate.
- divine beast (one of the most complimentary and annoying words)
The term “divine beast” originally refers to an animal from ancient Chinese folklore and mythology, and is used as a proxy for children who are at home during the epidemic.
In the first half of 2020, due to the impact of the new epidemic, the opening of primary and secondary schools across the country was postponed, and children had to attend online classes at home, and parents had to accompany them for a long time.
- Versailles literature (a word transformed from bragging to self-flagellation)
The name “Versailles literature” comes from The Japanese comic “Versailles Rose”, a work that meticulously portrays the flamboyant and extravagant life of the French nobility in Versailles at the end of the 18th century, so initially “Versailles” was used to refer to the high-class and luxurious life.
At the beginning of November, a netizen, certified as a writer on Weibo, used “plain” words to record her The “affluent” life. The result is a kind of “low-key way to show off”. The “Versailles literature” language pattern, that is, first depressing and then praising, explicitly depreciating and implicitly praising, talking about herself, pretending to show off herself in a distressed and unhappy tone.
However, most of the “Vanology” works nowadays are no longer bragging, but merely a kind of self-flagellation.
Related to this are the “Shanghai celebrities”.
- Backwave (a term that has changed the most from the broadest group to the very few)
後浪, semantic meaning from “the back wave of the Yangtze River pushes the front wave” “, referring to the younger generation. But one of the discourse events that became popular was the speech video “Later Waves” launched by bilibili on the eve of May 4 this year. In the video, actor He Bing uses very pompous language to “send a message” to the very “You are fortunate to meet such an era, but the era is even more fortunate to meet such a you “.
The phrase is used by the Internet to refer to those young people who have strong family resources, and it is used to satirize the discourse model that treats the young people who are well-clothed and well-fed as the majority of the youth in China.
- Get out of poverty (the Chinese word most likely to be permanently withdrawn from the buzzword)
To get out of poverty is just a common Chinese word that means to get rid of poverty. But in 2020, this word has taken on an unprecedented and historic significance. on November 23, 2020, all 832 poverty-stricken counties in the country identified by the State Council’s Poverty Alleviation Office were removed from poverty, and the national target task of poverty eradication was completed.
For the first time, the Oxford English Dictionary chose not to select a word of the year to indicate that 2020 is “a year that cannot be cleverly summarized in one word.” What do you think?
What are your “top ten buzzwords” for 2020?
Let’s go, 2020
Let’s go, New Crown Epidemic
Let’s go, all man-made and natural disasters
Let’s welcome 2021
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