Is the Spreading of Internet Neologisms Netizen-Driven or Meme-driven? Diachronic and Synchronic Study of Chinese Internet Neologism Tuyang Tusen Po

With the development of internet corpus and sophisticated searching engines, it is possible and convenient to apply the linguistic big data to quantitatively conduct research to Chinese internet neologism tuyang tusen po. Based on linguistic big data from the Web Corp Live and Baidu Index, the author has conducted the diachronic and synchronic research to the Chinese internet neologism tuyang tusen po. It is found that: (1) tuyang tusen po is used as noun, adjective and exclamation by Chinese netizens; (2) during using tuyang tusen po, there exist several spreading centres in the macro, middle and micro scope; (3) the spreading of Chinese internet neologism tuyang tusen po is netizen-driven, not the so called meme-driven. The primary conclusion is that there are several spreading centers during the spreading of the Chinese internet neologisms, which is caused by netizen-driven. The findings can not be quantitatively revealed without linguistic big data from the internet.