A Study On The Transmission Of Memes Of Shop And Brand Names From The Perspective Of Memetics

Shop names are the soul and essence of the information of stores and they are closely related to the interests of businessman.Successful shop names can not only promote the sales of goods and make profits for their owners but also show a certain cultural connotation.Many scholars at home and abroad have studied the shop names from the perspective of linguistics,psychology,translation and lexicology.This thesis attempts to study the propagation mechanism of language memes in shop names from a new perspective of meme theory.The meme theory developed on the basis of Darwin’s theory of evolution.Just as the gene is the basic unit of biological evolution,the meme is the basic unit of cultural evolution.The development of meme theory provides a new perspective for the study of linguistic phenomena.Basing on the meme theory and the selection criteria of strong memes put forward by Heylighen(1998),this thesis analyzes propagation laws of language memes in different kinds of store names by discussing the relationship between name,language and meme.And the thesis mainly discusses three questions:1)What is the relationship among language,shop names and memes?2)How do the strong memes in shop names replicate and transmit from the perspective of language memes?3)What selection criteria do the shop names memes have to meet and what features they should possess in order to propagate widely?This study selects 1271 shop names in four prosperous commercial districts in Dalian as research objects,taking pictures of the shop names and sorting them into different categories,then analyzing these cases by combining the quantitative and qualitative methods.And the research draws the following conclusions:1)Shop names are not only the carriers of language memes,which themselves are a kind of special language memes and they possess the characteristics of heredity,variation,selection and so on.2)Shop name memes transmit themselves in method of genotype and phenotype.3)In order to achieve the purpose of wide propagation,the shop name memes must meet the selection criteria put forward by Heylighen(1998),that is novelty,simplicity,consistency and so on.The language meme provides a new perspective for the study of shop names,this study integrates the language memes with the actual pragmatic phenomena.It is hoped that this study will inspire more researchers to explore the language phenomena from multiple types of perspectives.