On Memetic Theory And The Relationship Between Language And Culture

With the development of intercultural communication, the relationship between language and culture has aroused much more attention than before. Up till now the detailed descriptions of this relationship have already been given from different perspectives: linguistic, sociological, anthropological, etc.. However, with the progress of biological science, people begin to seek such a relationship from biological perspective, and the appearance of Memetic theory might be the most typical case in this approach.This thesis initially makes a brief introduction to Memetic theory, and points out the two advantages of it: (1) Memetic theory selects the cream of other views and defines the relationship between language and culture in a dialectical way; (2) In Memetic theory the biological link between language and culture is put forward for the first time. Because of the two advantages, the exposition of such a relationship in the light of Memetic theory seems more accurate and scientific.Then the thesis examines the relationship between language and culture in Memetic theory in detail. In particular, the originality of Memetic theory on this relationship has been demonstrated theoretically, such as "Language is the production of gene and culture", "Language plays an important role in spreading culture", "Culture causes the mutual competition among languages", and "The selection of culture takeseffects among languages and regional cultures". What's more, the theoretical and practical significance of Memetic theory are discussed precisely. Inspired by this theory, the author raises two hypotheses on "How children acquire their mother tongue", and "Why there is a critical period during children's language acquisition. Besides, several suggestions about foreign language teaching and intercultural communication are made by the author herself, although these suggestions have yet to be proved in practice.An empirical study is made in this thesis: through the analyses of the loanwords in Chinese and the foreign culture acquisition by Chinese students, the author tries to prove the relationship between language and culture as advocated by Memetic theory.