A Study Of Netspeak From The Perspective Of Memetics

The internet is one of the most remarkable things ever created by human beings in the 20th century.It has exerted great impact on various aspects of our lives.The internet brings people not only an unprecedented technological revolution,but also a cultural and linguistic revolution.Researches on the internet are not only limited to the exploration and development of internet technologically,but also focus on how to use the internet to serve the people better.Under such circumstances,netspeak-a new linguistic medium,has drawn attention from all circles.So study on netspeak is a new field and also an urgent demand.At the present time,researches of international linguistic field are increasingly concerned with netspeak.The researches are mainly about the collection,simple explanation,and features of netspeak.However,people who have touched upon the problem of how netspeak is generated and transmitted are not many.This thesis is a tentative study that intends to analyze the generation,transmission and development of netspeak from a brand new perspective—memetics on the basis of previous research.It is a qualitative study based on the collected corpus from the internet,and internet dictionaries.Memetics is a theory originated from Darwin's biological evolution theory.The meme as a unit of cultural information is of great importance in the development of human languages.Its replication and transmission provide a quick and an effective way to enrich human languages.As a kind of meme,language meme is a transmission unit of language information that replicates and transmits by non-genetic means and consequently language develops and evolves in this way.Netspeak,as a new language variation,has a close relationship with memes.A meme,invented to suggest a strong analogy with genes,is a self-propagating idea much like a computer virus.Vast and various memes of netspeak compete for survival in their living environment in order to spread from one host to another.In this process,netspeak memes are chosen through selection criteria.Some netspeak memes can survive in the competition and then gain the opportunity to widely spread.The author combines netspeak and memetics to discuss how netspeak adapt to those selections in order to survive through its generation,transmission and development in detail.Moreover,the thesis can also provide some valuable suggestions on standardization and predication of netspeak through the analysis of strong memes and weak memes.This study suggests netspeak is produced by replication and transmission and its life cycle and development is a dynamic process of language representing the rules of culture evolvement.A systematic research can provide both theoretical and practical values in linguistics.This study is a tentative research which is conducted by observing and analyzing the collected data.However,it is hoped that the study will be helpful and beneficial to the study of netspeak and language meme.