Investigation into the Reasons for the Use of the Term “Teacher” in the ACG Culture Circle

Abstract

The ACG circle possesses a unique linguistic system and social norms and etiquette. There are multiple forms of address used online and offline, including but not limited to ‘baby, boss, Teacher, madam’ etc, covering both intimate terms and traditional forms of address. The research primarily targets individuals aged 18-24 in the ACG community. Questionnaires were distributed to collect data, which was analyzed using SPSS. To explore the relationship between the use of the term “Teacher” in online interactions and factors such as an individual's platform follower count and video quantity, as well as the reasons for using the term “Teacher” in offline social interactions within the ACG circle. For the online interaction data, the median was used to mitigate the impact of outliers, and correlation analysis was conducted. The findings indicate that within the community, there is a significant consensus that when the number of followers of the other person is higher than that of the evaluator, or when the evaluator acknowledges the other person's cosmetics, it is easier to address them as “Teacher.” In online interactions, the more videos an individual produces, the less likely it is for others to use the term “Teacher” as a form of address.