The Memetic Analysis On The Prototype Theory

Meme, which was proposed by Dawkins, is considered as one of the necessary elements which can explain the emergence and extinction of the language. Thus, some linguists are engaged in perfecting the linguistic theories from the completely new aspect based on the new interface—meme. In terms of the memetics it gives a new analysis on the prototype theory, one of the important theories in the cognitive linguistics, and explores that meme is the cognitive root of the prototype theory. Besides, employing the memetics the paper has explained the cognitive characteristics of the prototype theory.By comparing the features of prototype theory and memetics, this paper clarified the basic relationship between prototype theory and memetics, i.e. in a certain category, the prototype can be considered as memotype to be transmitted, and peripheral members are the memeteins of this memotype. For the meme is not only the unit of culture transmission but also the least analyzing unit of cognition, some cognitive characteristics of the prototype theory have been explained in the memetic perspective, such as the spreading process and sources of prototype.The methodology in this paper is the deductive and analytic methodology. In deductive research the author proposed assumptions and tried to predict the effective explanation of memetics to the prototype theory. On the other hand, taking an analytic approach means that prototype theory has been analyzed into its constituent parts and one or a cluster of these constituent parts were explained in the view of memetics.In conclusion, although the study of the memetics analysis on the prototype theory is a novel attempt, its significance can be also predicted. The expected achievements are hopefully going to benefit our language learning and teaching, enriching the expatiation of cognitive prototype.