An Analysis Of English Verbal Humor From The Perspective Of Language Meme

Memetics is a new theory which is based on Darwin’s the evolution theory tointerpret cultural evolution. It interprets the common relationship among things andthe evolutionary law of the spreading culture--the essential characteristics, from thediachronic and synchronic viewpoint.The term “meme” is a core in memetics. Oxford English Dictionary includes thefollowing definition:“an element of culture that may be considered to be passed on bynon-genetic means, esp. by imitation.” It is Richard Dawkins who firstly coined theword “meme” in his book The Selfish Gene (1976), and he suggests that meme is abasic unit as gene which will be constantly replicated and transmitted in the spread ofculture. And the term “meme” is a shortening of the word mimeme from AncientGreek, which means “something imitated”. Gene is propagated via inheritance, andmeme is transmitted by imitation.Meme can be classified into meme complexes and single memes, beneficialmemes and harmful memes, powerful memes and weak memes, according to the form,influence and degree of meme. The four stages of assimilation, retention, expressionand transmission compose a life circle of meme. The stage of assimilation refers tosuccessful memes should be noticed, understood and accepted by a new host. Thestage of retention refers to memes should be kept in a host’s mind as long as possiblefor more chances to infect the host. The stage of expression is that memes shouldcome out of a host’s the memory storage and into entity appearances which can beperceived by other potential hosts during a communication. The stage of transmissionrefers to memes should be spread via some stable and concrete carriers and media.These four stages go through and around all times to generate a recycling process.There will be some memes to be wept out in each stage and only those successfulmemes that survive in the end will be accepted and transmitted. Successful memesshould fit three features: longevity, fecundity, and copying-fidelity. Longevity refers to memes can stay in the memetic storage for a long time, and the longer memes arereplicated and transmitted, the more copies will be produced. Fecundity means thespread speed of meme is quick and the spread range is wide. Copying-fidelity refersto that memes will remain the original essence in the process of replication. Besides,memes should also be practical, reasonable, fashionable and authoritative.Meme, language and culture belong to a complete unity. Meme, as a culturalgene, exists via replication and transmission. Language could act as one kind ofcarriers of meme. The existence of meme is good for the development of language.We human beings are driven to speak by memes, and the function of language isaiming to transmit meme. The replication and transmission of meme are dependent onlanguage at the same time. So the relationship between language and meme isextremely close. From a perspective of language meme, language meme is a unit tospread culture and reveal the laws of utterance spread and language transmission. Fora further step, we can say that language per se is meme. And language memes can bepresented at the level of sounds, words, sentences, and even texts. Memes in naturallanguage are presented from three aspects: education and tutoring knowledge,application of language itself, communication and exchange of language. Memeticvariations may occur in the process of replication and transmission, and languagememes can be classified into two types: memetic genotype and memetic phenotype.Genotype refers to the same contents are transmitted through different forms.Memetic genotype includes two ways. One is the same information transmitteddirectly which means the original content is directly used in different contexts. Theother way is the same information transmitted in different forms, which meansalthough the form of information may be varied in the process of replication andtransmission, the original meaning will not be changed. Memetic phenotype refers tothe same forms of information which are filled with different contents are transmittedlaterally. Memetic phenotype consists of three situations. First one is language memeis transmitted by the same or similar pronunciation with the same structure. Second isthe structure keeps the same but the content is replaced by some different others. Andthe third refers to both the form and content are applied directly in different contextsto generate some associating meanings.Memetic is a relatively new theory in China. Since memetics is introduced inChina in1999, scholars from different areas have attempted to apply memetics intotheir studies. Language meme with memetics as a basis mainly focuses on linguistic researches. Verbal humor mainly refers to using funny language forms and interestingcontents to express particular meanings. Humor, as a multi-disciplinary topic, hasbeen a hot issue, and scholars spread wide exploration aiming to find the triggermechanisms of humor. With the previous studies as a reference, this thesis tries tohave an analysis of English verbal humor by applying language meme as the maintheoretical foundation, aiming to find a new research angle to interpret English verbalhumor. However, memetic researches on verbal humor are not plentiful, researches onEnglish verbal humor from the perspective of language meme are even less. And thiswill be treated as the innovation point of this thesis.The whole thesis is aiming to solve two problems. One is how language meme ismanifested in English verbal humor, and the other is the functions of verbal humorgenerated by language meme. In order to guarantee the validity and reliability of theanalysis results, the basic task is to collect as many English verbal humors as possible.Books, Internet, newspapers, and magazines are the channels available to getmaterials, and English humorous books are the most important source among thesechannels. Then through filtering, with the language meme as the theoreticalfoundation,250items which contains language meme are picked out randomly. Applyqualitative method to classify the250examples into22verbal humors in genotypeand228verbal humors in phenotype. Then from the level of phonetics, vocabularyand grammar, an analysis of English verbal humors which can manifest languagememe is made, and gets the number28,89and133respectively. Through an adequateanalysis of57representative examples, we can get two conclusions: first, the effect ofverbal humor is generated and performed by language meme, and language memeshows its key functions in both expressing and understanding of verbal humor. For afurther step, language meme in verbal humor can be manifested from three levels:phonetics, vocabulary and grammar. Second, with the functions of humor as areference, five functions of English verbal humors which are generated by languagememe are concluded at last. They are activating atmosphere, improving interpersonalcommunication, defending oneself, dissolving embarrassment, and criticizing andexposing evils.Memetic studies are on a developing stage in China by now. Although memeticshas been applied in the research of linguistics, pragmatics, translation and languageteaching and gets some achievements, there also exist some problems and shortages tobe solved and perfected. It is still doubted about the existence of memetics as an independent subject, and the theory of language meme are always restricted withmemetics as a basis. Further studies should focus on setting language meme as asystematical subdiscipline. Memetics is not proposed specially for verbal humor, butit can provide an effective angle to interpret verbal humor. So the significance oflanguage meme to verbal humor may be the same as apples will still fall down theearth before the bringing up of Newton’s law of universal gravitation, memeticsenlightens us a new angle to interpret verbal humor, inspires new thinking ways for us,and makes us taking full advantages of language meme to guide our practice. Theselection and transmission of meme is a complex process, relative problems aboutmeme need to be explored in a further way. The author just has an elementary attemptto the analysis of English verbal humor from the perspective of language meme, and itis hoped to make a little contribution to the future study.