Memetic Interpretation On Cell Phone Message

With the popularity of cell phones, cell phone message(CPM) as a new distinctive language phenomenon has shown its power and attracted the attentions of a great number of scholars in various fields. A large number of studies have been done on it from the perspectives of literature, communications, sociology and stylistics in recent years, as yet little from a memetic view of point. Memetics, based on Darwinian evolutionism, is a theory explaining the principles of cultural evolution. In memetics, meme is considered as a transmission unit of information. It is transmitted like virus and drives the evolution of everything such as culture.In the present paper, based on the theory of Dawkins'three characteristics of a strong meme and Heylighen's selective criteria theory, taking CPM language as the research object, adopting a qualitative research method, the author probes into the evolving principles of cell phone messages from the perspective of memetics, and further puts forward some strategies on how to produce vital and strong cell phone messages.In the paper, the author first demonstrates that cell phone messages are evolving by means of two transmission modes: genotype and phenotype, and argues that most short messages are transmitted in the mode of phenotype, in which the subtype of horizontal engraftment of the same structure with different meanings is the commonest one. Therefore, the author probes into it from three aspects in detail: lexical engraftment, syntactic engraftment and discoursive engraftment. And then the author claims that the process of memes'transmission is the process of its lifecycle. Memes'lifecycle goes through four transmission phases: retention, assimilation, expression and transmission. During this transmission phases, a meme is first encoded in a vector, and then when it is decoded by its potential host, the meme becomes active and further infects the host, who becomes its new host. In the same way, memes keep going around and around to seek for new hosts and drives CPM to be transmitted. In their life, memes compete fiercely to survive. Strong memes win while weak ones lose their chance and die out. Accordingly, the author puts forward some strategies on producing strong CPM memes by associating phenotype with classics, fad culture and popular social events. Through the imitation of the forms or contents of these popular languages, CPM will also be equipped with corresponding language features such as popularity, classic, simplicity, humors or coherence, which are right the properties possessed by a strong meme. This thesis aims to offer some insight into CPM writers for the production of CPM and open a new view to CPM language study.