Research On Japanese Culture Reflected By Japanese And Chinese Homographs From The Perspective Of Memetics Theory

Kanji(かんじ)in Japanese is a kind of writing symbols evolved from ancient Chinese characters. A great number of Kanji bear close resemblance to Chinese characters in their forms. Such words are called Jap-CN homographs (abbreviation of Japanese and Chinese Homographs), reflecting such word-buildings as borrowing and integration.Jap-CN homographs, based upon imitating the phonetics, morphology and meaning of ancient Chinese characters, process and mold their corresponding language items in terms of Japanese rules, hence promoting the Japanese language. Such language replication and transmission are similar to the evolution of species. For this reason, this thesis, guided by the theory of Memetics, makes a tentative cultural research on Jap-CN homographs from the perspective of biological evolution. With an effort to make a contrastive analysis on Jap-CN homographs in such aspects as phonology, morphology and semantics, this thesis tries to achieve the following objectives. Firstly, it is to explain Japanese imitating mechanism from Chinese characters based upon imitation and transmission of meme, which is reflected in Jap-CN homographs——Kanji. Secondly, Japanese cultural features reflected by Jap-CN homographs will be illustrated through linguistic and cultural perspectives of Memetics. Japanese culture, a kind of mixed culture, constitutes its unique features by absorbing and integrating abundant alien cultures. Thirdly, the distinctive Japanese culture decides upon the heredity, selection and variation of meme in Jap-CN homographs, which leads to its dynamic development.Cultural factors which have exerted an impact upon the interpretation of Jap-CN homographs will be under discussion in the process of linguistic contrastive analysis. Moreover, further exploration on cultural borrowing in Japanese is anticipated to be undertaken based upon Memetics theory. It is expected that it will be helpful to investigate factors which have affected cultural integration and conflicts in Sino-Japanese intercultural communication.