A Study Of The Construction Of Strong Memes In Business News Headlines: An Adaptation-based Approach

In nowadays, a global information age, people selecting and receiving informationis more and more like taking fast food. Reading news is progressively entering the eraof“scanning the headlines”. Business news as a sub-genre of news has always beenthe object of linguistics study. As the "eyes" of the business news, headlines should bethe focus of linguistic research. Restricted by the reported objects and the objectiveeconomic phenomena, business news always gives an abstract, profound and tediousimpression. To make the business news to be easily accepted and then widelydisseminated, first of all is to pay much attention to the construction and expression ofthe headlines. The refinement of the headlines is the primary step of news writing,which determines whether the news can attract readers’attention or not.Memetics is a new theory which introduces Darwinian biological evolution theoryinto the field of culture study. It focuses on exploring how information spread amongpeople and the pattern of culture evolution. Meme, as a cultural replicator, mainlytransmits by imitation, and language is one of its carriers. Since Richard Dawkinscoined the term“meme”, many scholars have introduced memetics as a newperspective in their researches. Memetics also provides a new perspective to explainlinguistic phenomena. Verschueren points out three properties of language, namely,variability, negotiability and adaptability. These three characteristics are closelyrelated, and adaptability is the core one. The formation, replication and disseminationof memes are accompanied by a series of psychological activities which willdefinitely determine the survival of the memes. Adaptation theory can elaborate thisseries of mental activity from a cognitive point of view.The so-called strong memes in business news headlines are memes ormemeplexes which imitate or copy speeches that have been widely used and spread indaily life. The creation of business news headlines, in fact, is a continuous process ofselecting language structure and dynamically adapting it to the contextual relationswhere memes inhabit. Factors which can influence the adaptability of a meme are very complicated; the most influential factors are the primary contextual correlates ofadaptability for memes which include the cognitive factors, emotional status andcultural factors. Based on the Adaptation Theory and enlightened by Memetics, thepresent study tries to construct a theoretical framework for defining strong memes inbusiness news headlines and their characteristics, and then, for discussing theContextual Adaptation factors in the process of making linguistic choices in businessnews headlines composing.