A Pragmatic Study On Network Buzzwords In People’s Daily Official Weibo Based On Memetics

As a special product in internet age,network buzzwords make it possible to reflect the politics,economics,culture and social life of a certain period time.As a relatively new form of language,network buzzwords not only enrich people’s language,but also expand the way of interpersonal communication.For the meme is the unit of cultural transmission and language is an important carrier of inheriting culture,network buzzwords,as a special language meme,have been widely spread and imitated both on the internet and in reality.In the field of linguistics,the exploration and analysis of network buzzwords based on the memetics stands as a new and active academic topic,and the official agencies and media release the top ten network buzzwords of the year annually.Thus,in recent years,under the guidance of the memetics,a lot of scholars have conducted researches on the network buzzwords.However,few studies focus on the buzzwords in official news media.In particular,the official Weibo of People’s Daily has more than 130 million followers which has great value to do research.Based on the previous studies,taking the network buzzwords in People’s Daily official Weibo in 2018 and 2019 as the research corpus,this thesis employs memetics to make an analysis of the characteristics,the replication and transmission process as well as the pragmatic functions of buzzwords in the official Weibo of People’s Daily from the perspective of memetics through qualitative and quantitative research method.This study aims to explore the following three questions:(1)What are the characteristics of the network buzzwords in People’s Daily official Weibo?(2)How do the network buzzwords in People’s Daily official Weibo replicate and transmit?(3)What pragmatic functions are realized in the network buzzwords of People’s Daily official Weibo from the perspective of memetics?The research results show that network buzzwords in People’s Daily official Weibo are featured by simplicity,novelty,fashionability,variability,and authority.The process of network buzzwords’ replication in People’s Daily official Weibo includes the following four stages: assimilation,retention,expression and transmission;the transmission modes of them manifest the following two forms: Genotype meme and Phenotype meme.Through analyzing the process of network buzzwords’ replication and transmission in People’s Daily official Weibo in 2018 and 2019,this thesis points out that the network buzzwords have these pragmatic functions,such as disseminating information,saving efforts,creating humorous effects,expressing emotions and constructing identities.This study broadens the research range of memetics,making us get a deeper understanding of memetics,and enriches the research of language use in the official news media.Moreover,this thesis proves that memetics has a strong explanatory ability for the network buzzwords in People’s Daily official Weibo.In addition,this study tries to provide a practical guidance on how to use network buzzwords correctly to promote the information transmission.