Analysis Of Chinese Language Memes From The Perspective Of Syntagmatic Structure

Meme is a unit of cultural information that can be transmitted in a non-genetic way. It propagates in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via imitation. For meme, language is not only its carrier but also a kind of meme itself. Every word, phrase or sentence is a potential meme. But this does not mean that all of them can become memes, for there are some conditions. A successful language meme should have the characteristics of fidelity, fecundity, and longevity. Memes without these three properties will become weaker and weaker and disappear finally.As a newly invented subject, memetics provides a new point of view for the study of cultural evolution. The study of memes, especially language memes, plays an important role in the development of culture even human civilization. But it is still in infancy, and most of the studies focus on the analysis of different language phenomena from the memetic perspective, like network language, second language teaching, commercial advertisements, and so on. Few of them pay attention to the study of the inner structure of language meme itself and the factors that influence the process of transmission.Therefore, the present study attempts to come back to the study of language meme itself. Relying on the preliminary knowledge of memetics, it studies the formation mechanism of Chinese language memes, the analysis of which is based on the theory of syntagmatic structure. Then it analyzes the external factors affecting the transmission of language memes, that is, individual factors, context, culture, and transmission media. Meanwhile, a new model of the process of transmission taking external factors into consideration is given.This study is a tentative research on language memes and discusses the formation and transmission mechanisms by combining theories of linguistics and memetics. It is hoped that the study will be helpful for the further study of language memes.