By Wang Yusu 王玉玊 (March 2024) [With Professor Shao Yanjun 邵燕君, Dr Wang Yusu has produced the book Breaking the Wall – Keywords in Chinese Internet Subcultures 破壁书: 网络文化关键词 (2018).]

(I) Relation between catchwords and keywords

Catchwords (“流行语”) always flow across national and regional boundaries. When we were writing Breaking the Wall 破壁书 we found that many Chinese catchwords originate in Japanese or English. There’s a particularly high proportion of Japanese loanwords. The idea of the book was to break down the barriers between mainstream culture and Internet subcultures. The groups forming Internet subcultures are known as “二次元” (nijigen/ Japanese translation of the English term “two-dimensional”), and those in mainstream culture are called “三次元” (sanjigen/ “three-dimensional”). Both these terms are taken from Japanese. “二次元” (njigen) refers to young people who like Japanese animation, comics, and games, and are the core group that created today's Internet subcultures and catchwords in China. In contrast, “三次元” (sanjigen) refers to the real space outside the Internet, and people who do not understand Internet subculture and catchwords.

When Prof Shao Yanjun 邵燕君 and I were editing Breaking the Wall, we specifically discussed the difference between "keywords" (“关键词”) and "catchwords" (“流行语”), and finally decided on "keywords" instead of "catchwords" for the title of this book. The reasons for this are clearly explained in Prof Shao’s Preface to the book. Let me try to give a simpler explanation here.

In summary, the scope of catchwords is larger than keywords. In the online environment, a large number of new catchwords are produced every day. However, most of them will remain confined to Internet communications. The majority of these will be briefly popular and then forgotten. Such words lack real explanatory power and offer limited insights into social reality and popular cultural psychology. So, we decided to select from a large collection of catchwords only those which have existed for a long time and are likely to continue to be used for a long time. These chosen words have been completely integrated into Chinese everyday discourses. We consider these to be keywords.

These keywords are sufficiently representative of the key characteristics of the subcultural circles that gave birth to them, and at the same time have the ability to spread across subcultural circles and enter the field of public exchanges. In other words, although a catchword is produced in a specific subcultural circle, it somehow resonates with the overall social and socio-psychological structure of the present, so that it becomes typical, representative, and durable.

There are some organizations in China that select annual catchwords every year. For example, the editorial department of "Yaowenjiaozi" “咬文嚼字” selects the top ten buzzwords of the year annually. Breaking the Wall was published in 2018. As of this year, most of the keywords selected in it are still widely used, while many of the top ten catchwords over the years have been forgotten by people.

Of course, keywords (关键词) and catchwords (流行语) are not easily distinguished from each other. What I am describing is the meaning and difference of these two Chinese words in the Chinese context. I'm not sure if these correspond directly to the English terms. For example, the English term “catchwords” captures both "popular vocabulary" and "slogans", but in Chinese these two senses cannot be expressed by the same word. In the book, we use "关键词" and also draw lessons from the usage of "keywords" in Raymond Williams' Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (1976), as well as ideas from the Chinese writer Han Shaogong's 韩少功 “马桥词典” Maqiao Dictionary (1996).

(II) Identifying catchwords and keywords

As a generalization, explanatory power, representativeness, and durability (解释力, 代表性, 持久性), along with their ability to work across communities, cover our understanding of the characteristics of keywords. 

Let me offer a few notes about how “words of the year” are selected in China. As far as I am aware, the selection involves a combination of qualitative and quantitative factors. The staff of institutions making these selections track and observe a range of significant social media for extended periods to select words that are particularly popular and representative in a given year.  [There are some commonly used indicators, such as Weibo (比如微博) hotly searched terms (热搜词条).] At the same time, they rely on big data to capture and enumerate terms from network content and thereby to test and confirm their judgements. For the final list, account is taken of social factors, moral factors, balance between different fields of usage and the like. The bilibili.com “danmu of the year” (“年度弹幕”) is a special case -- “danmu” means “the words of real-time comments from viewers flying across the screen like bullets”. In this instance, the “danmu of the year” is based entirely on data. According to the statistical results, the words or phrases that appear most frequently in a given year's barrage become the “danmu of the year”, and then experts are consulted to explain the meaning and popularity of the "danmu of the year". Because the “danmu of the year” of bilibili.com is a selection from a single website, it is possible to obtain complete statistics.

That explains how catchwords are identified but does not explain how keywords are identified from catchwords. How do we know that keywords are indeed keywords?

To begin with, I should say that I think there is no foolproof way of knowing this. We must maintain a certain degree of trust in researchers in the field and their academic judgement. But there are strong justifications for considering certain words as keywords.

First, durability is the easiest to determine. Through the facilities provided by search engines such as Baidu (百度), we can find out when a word (or phrase) first appeared on the Internet and how frequently it appeared in different time periods. Such data can help us to intuitively determine whether a word is new, whether it has been used frequently after its first appearance, and for how long it maintained high-frequency usage. These help us to determine whether it is "persistent" or not.

The keyword’s ability to cross communities can also be intuitively grasped. For example, “ 人设 ” (character) seems to have no direct corresponding word in English. It comes from the Japanese word "キャラSET", and "キャラ" is the abbreviation of "character", which means animation, comics, etc. (in the work, those indicate the appearance, personality, and other features of the characters). The word "人设" originally came from the Japanese animation and comic fan community in China, but now almost everyone uses this word. People refer to the behaviour of managing their self-image through social media as managing "人设".

A catchword's durability and ability to cross communities has already proven to a certain extent that it has explanatory power and representativeness. In other words, when we try to explain the former, the latter are cited as the causes. Representativeness and explanatory power may be difficult to prove in a quantitative way.

(III) Metaphors

In English, there are the metaphors of “key” in keywords and “catch” in catchwords. The corresponding Chinese words “关键词” and “ 流行语” are also metaphorical. Considering that the Chinese characters are logograms, this metaphorical nature seems natural. Rather, Chinese words are usually more or less metaphorical. The “关键" in "关键词" originally means “door bolt”. If you open the door bolt, you can get to everything in the house, so the door bolt is essential to secure the house. The original meaning of "流行" in "流行语" is "spreading like an overflowing river". If you explain it more concretely, you will find that the original meaning of each of these words can be derived from the shape of the Chinese characters. But this is a bit complicated to explain, so I’ll skip it here. In the process of the evolution of word meaning, "关键" lost the meaning of "door bolt" and acquired the meaning of "essential", while "流行" changed from a phrase to a fixed word with the meaning “popular”. Then "关键" is combined with "词" (word) to form the compound word "关键词" (keyword), and "流行"" is combined with "语” (language, expression) to form the compound word “流行语” (catchword).  关键词 consist only of words, but 流行语 can include words, phrases, sentences, sentence patterns, etc. Correspondingly, there is also the term “流行词” which corresponds well to "buzzword" and also consists only of words. The logic of the word formation in English is similar.

I do not think there is an equivalent word in Chinese with the metaphor of ‘catch’ as in the English term ‘catchword’. I checked the English dictionary, and it seems that all words that suddenly become well-known and have a surge in usage can be called catchwords. So, it seems okay to translate “流行语”as “catchwords”.  In the Chinese context, 流行语 have relatively strong folk attributes. Nowadays “流行语” are more or less equivalent to “Internet 流行语”. They have a particular affinity with the digital medium. Traditional media lack enough influence, and it is difficult to create 流行语 through them.

We generally do not count slogans as "流行语", although they are also suddenly created and can be seen in various places.

(IV) Disciplinary approaches

I have addressed this area in terms of the methods of the discipline of Chinese literature, which has never paid much attention to quantitative methods. With the growing popularity of Digital Humanities (数字人文) methods in mainland China, humanities researchers have also had more discussions on the limits and effectiveness of quantitative methods.

In mainland China, the academic disciplines most likely to do catchword research are Linguistics, Chinese Literature, and Communication. The first two disciplines generally belong to the Department of Language and Literature, and the latter generally belongs to the Department of Journalism and Communication. The curriculum and research methods of these three disciplines are quite different, and even approaches to writing academic papers are different. Communication Studies are closer to the social sciences, Linguistics is closer to the natural sciences, and Chinese Literature is a typical humanities discipline. In the Chinese Literature major, the study of catchwords is principally undertaken in the form of cultural studies, which means that cultural interpretation is foregrounded. In the Communication Studies major, the study of catchwords mainly focuses on discussing propagation rules, such as the usage of "memes". Linguistics study catchwords in terms of the rules of language development. Compared with cultural interpretation, Linguistics pay more attention to the actual usage, word formation, and semantic changes of catchwords.

(V) Sources

In the Chinese context “slang” (“俚语”) has a different sense from the English idea of slang, and slang dictionaries are generally about dialect terms and do not include popular words.

There are some "流行语 encyclopaedias" (catchword encyclopaedias) published by print media, but perhaps Breaking the Wall is the most useful and the least prone to errors. It is more convenient to use the website to look up 流行语. In addition to the well-known Baidu Encyclopaedia (百度百科), there are also:

1. Moegirl Encyclopaedia [萌娘百科], which is an encyclopaedia of all things cute. This website is mainly for nijigen (二次元) fans and specifically collects nijigen catchwords (流行语), including many Japanese animation, comics, game works, and character entries. It is the website with the most nijigen catchwords, and is the most complete and the informative.
2. Chick Dictionary - So many memes! (小鸡词典 - 好多梗啊!). This website specializes in collecting catchwords(流行语). It updates quickly and has comprehensive content. But I just found out that it stopped serving in early 2023 due to some legal disputes, though the team has not been disbanded. I don’t know if it will come back online.
3. Catchword Encyclopaedia (流行语百科). I use this website relatively rarely. It is similar in structure to Baidu Encyclopedia, but only includes popular word entries.

(VI) Final points

The distinction between catchwords (流行语) and keywords (关键词) that I have been making above is not commonly made in Chinese academic circles. It is a distinction that the author team of Breaking the Wall decided to adopt after internal discussions.

China’s research on catchwords still uses them as thematic terms. Everyone chooses the catchwords that they think are important for research, and the selection criteria are not uniform. Some people focus on the frequency of usage, while others focus on the cultural connotations. There may be other criteria that I have not discussed. Frequency of usage and cultural connotations are generally considered at the same time, but with different emphases.

We – the Breaking the Wall author team -- use "keywords" to name catchwords that are more important according to our standards.

In my view, the frequency of the usage of catchwords does not offer an objective measurement of or criterion for identifying them. Researchers choose which data to take into account and which data to exclude. These decisions involve subjective judgements. It is very common for a catchphrase to be well-known in one subculture but unheard of in another, or to be well-known on one social networking site but unheard of on another. In this case, simply comparing their frequencies does not reveal which one is more popular. There is no such thing as purely objective and neutral statistics. Both statistics and cultural interpretation are subjective, although statistics "look" more objective. But without cultural interpretation, I don’t think we can determine which words are catchwords, because the scope and methods of statistics themselves implicate cultural interpretation.

Keywords are not really understood in a well-defined way. Nor are catchwords. I'm not sure whether this is uniquely the case for China. We encounter situations like this every day in our lives. I may think I am contemplating words which are familiar in every household -- catchwords. But it turns out that my parents, teachers, and even my peers have never heard of them. In such a situation, looking for keywords is more important than looking for catchwords, because we need some words to focus on. By explaining these words, we can quickly help each other to understand the cultural logic of different communities. The problems addressed in academic research always come from real-life dilemmas. For young subculture researchers in China today, the biggest practical dilemmas are generation gaps, cultural barriers, communication difficulties, and lack of consensus. Keywords thus serve to enhance communication and understanding.

Image credit: User:Vmenkov, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons