Chinese Neologisms 20 years later: motivation and pedagogy

Neologisms have been a hot topic within the scientific debate, not only in Chinese applied linguistics and specifically in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (TCFL), but also in all fields of knowledge. In this paper, I have introduced the impact of Chinese Internet Language (CIL) neologies, driven by grassroots netizens, on the discourse of so-cietal change and linguistic evolution. To support this, I show the re-sults of a literature review on the topic, carried out on a time span of around 20 years, spotlighting the most salient and relevant studies, and highlighting the fact that most of the studies dealt with consist-ently remark the potential influence of teaching neologisms on stu-dents’ motivation to learn Chinese. Furthermore, a proposal will be outlined to investigate their potential role in impacting learners’ moti-vation in learning Chinese, which is rooted in the Motivation Studies theories.