An Analysis of the Top Ten Buzzwords of 2024 from Sociolinguistics Perspective

Driven by the wave of digitization, the rapid development of the Internet has greatly expanded the space for online entertainment, giving rise to a large number of Internet buzzwords. These buzzwords have gradually infiltrated people's daily communication and quietly changed the habits of language expression. In 2024, the editorial board of YAOWEN JIAOZI, the National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Centre, the editorial board of Shanghai YUYAN WENZI ZHOUBAO, and other authoritative institutions announced the top ten buzzwords of the year respectively. These buzzwords come from a wide range of sources, have complex causes, and are used in different scenarios. But all of them reflect the social opinion and reality of the time from different angles. This paper will analyse the linguistic variation of buzzwords and the reasons behind them from the perspective of sociolinguistics.