Abstract and Key Words

Abstract: Campus catchwords, one of carriers of campus culture, reflect modern campus living. Campus catchwords have strong characteristics of the campus and clearly reflect college students’ views about the world, their psychological state of mind and social outlook of value. In this thesis, the writer provides some information about the current situation of the use of catchwords on Chinese and American campuses. Through data analysis, the writer tries to find out what kind of, and to what extend that social, cultural factors are relevant to the origin and usage of catchwords, to probe into the cultural difference between Chinese and American.
 
Key words: campus catchwords; psychology; sociology; cultural difference

摘要：作为校园文化的载体之一，大学校园流行语是现代校园生活的反映。校园流行语具有强烈的校园特色，清晰地反映了大学生的世界观、心理状态和社会价值观。在本文中，作者提供了中美大学生的校园流行语使用现状的相关信息，并通过一系列的数据分析，试图探寻与校园流行语的产生和使用息息相关的社会和文化因素，以及这些因素对流行语的影响程度，从而进一步探究中美文化的差异。

关键词：大学校园流行语；心理学；社会学；文化差异

1. Introduction
Catchwords are a kind of common phenomenon both in language and society, which reflect features of politics, economy, science, technology, culture and people’s life. Catchwords have attracted the attention of Chinese scholars since 1980’s and became the hot topic of researchers especially lexicographers and linguists. Up to now, researches on catchwords are mainly concentrated on the collection of catchwords, which results in the appearance of several comprehensive and categorized dictionaries. There are also linguists studying catchwords from the perspectives of rhetoric and sociology or studying catchwords in a certain language community, such as catchwords on campus, catchwords used by the youth. With the reform and open policy coming into the 21st century, more and more catchwords appear on the college campus. They have strong characteristics of the campus and clearly reflect the spiritual and cultural life of the young college students. It is very applicable and well worth the effort to conduct a research and give psychoanalysis on this campus culture. It may help us to understand their ideological trends so that we can train them better. Meanwhile, it is useful for us to help them to develop healthy and civilized college campus culture and serve better for the course of education.