On The Loanword Meme In The Process Of Language Contact

Vocabulary is a mirror of the social development and life. The loan words which areformed in the process of language contact are not only the important parts of chinesevocabulary, but also the important carrier of human cultrue. Memetics is a new theory, whichis based on Darwin’s theory of evolution and aims to explain the evolution of culture,provides a new perspective and a thought for the study of loan words. Analysing the loanwords with the guidance of the memetics and we will discover that the formation of loanwords needs to experience some processes:selection,replication,transmition, variation and soon.In the selection process, the loan word memes are maily influnced by seven factors:thedamond of social development,the damond of language systerm itself,the demond oflinguistic ecomomics,social and cultural needs,cognitive needs,emotional needs,psychologicalneeds.The loan word memes can be transmitted longitudinally from one generation toanother,and laterally through the whole society.In the process of replication andtransmition,loan word memes can be devided for genotype and phenotype.The replication ofloan words includes speech sound replication,semantic replication,word form replication andmixed replication.In the whole process of loan word meme formation, variation accompaniesall the while. In the process of replication and transmition,some loan words which are gottenthe indentification from the language users are widely replicated and become strongmemes,which consolidates the position in the language system.However,some loan wordmemes which don’t conform to language habits of the language users will lost the opportunityof replicating to become disadvantaged and disappear gradually from the language system. Atthe same time there are advantages and disadvantages of the loan word memes.The loan wordmemes that have advantages enrich the vocabulary of Chinese language because of somecharacters such as the productive character,the fashional character and enlarging Chinesesemantics. We can find the holographic relationship between language and culture manycultural traces in vocabulary memes,although some negative influences are also inevitable.