Autonomy-Dependecy Analysis Framework To Linguistic Memes

The concept of ’linguistic memes’ originates from memes applied in language. Richard Dawkins coined the term ’meme’ in The Selfish Gene (1976), and later his student Susan Blackmore (1999:66) defined memes as ’any kind of information, as long as they get replicated and transmitted by imitation’. In2003, the Chinese scholar He Ziran introduced the theory of memetics into the field of pragmatics and explored memetic phenomena in language, which is known as linguistic memes. The application of memetics to language analysis established linguistic memetics, which provides a new perspective for linguists to study the evolution and transmission laws of language. However, this theory is still in its initial stage of development, and many questions remain unanswered; in such questions, the definitions of the methodology or research objects and objectives are not clearly defined. Moreover, the study of linguistic memes is limited to the viewpoint of memetics, from which viewpoint, the formation of linguistic memes depends on their function in the society—practicality, rationality, fashionablity, and authority; language variation is the result of competition among memes. This thesis proposes that the prevailing research on memetics attaches overemphasizes the biological aspects of memetics in the analysis of language. Further, we counter that human cognition is essential for the existence of any language phenomena. Thus, this thesis attempts to analyze linguistic memes from the viewpoint of cognition by using qualitative and abductive methods.The theory incorporated in this thesis is Xu Shenghuan’s Autonomy-Dependency (A-D) Analysis Framework, which develops from the theory of Model-based Pragmatic Reasoning, and uses proximity and similarity as the medium to explore the generation mechanism of language expression form. We attempt to construct a dynamic analytical framework that incorporates A-D Framework. The analytical process is as follows:(1) Intentionality in linguistic memes is the speakers’ original motivation in choosing an imitation that determines which memes they will choose and what kind of methods they will use to ensure the imitated forms are similar to the memes.(2) The imitation of the chosen linguistic meme is carried out through the operation of proximity/similarity and under the constraint of the speaker’s intention.(3) In the process of inferring by using the law of proximity/similarity, people use synesthesia and synperception. Then, the final imitated forms formed are created.From the above analysis, following conclusions are obtained:(1) the formation of linguistic memes depends on the speaker’s intentionality;(2) language variation is the result of cognition; and (3) linguistic memes are a kind of linguistic strategy.By incorporating autonomy-dependency into our analytical framework, we hope that this thesis provides an alternative perspective on linguistic memes, and thus further contributes to the development of linguistic memetics.