On The Interpretive Power Of Language Meme To Chinese And English Verbal Humor

Memetics is a new theory based on Darwin's evolutionary theory for interpreting the law of cultural evolution (cited in He Ziran, 2005). The core concept of memetics is "meme", which is first put forward by Richard Dawkins, a zoologist of Oxford University, in his famous book The Selfish Gene (1976). In this book, he says, "As genes are the fundamental replicating units of biological evolution, we could also think of social communicative process as if there were a gene-like unit of replicator selection driving the evolution of culture." He names this unit of replicator a "meme". Meme is similar to gene in that genes propagate themselves through heritage, while memes spread like viruses through imitation.The study of memes, as a newly invented subject, shows its enormous power and appeals to scholars from different fields ever since it was born. It has been approved very enlightening. In linguistic field, many scholars have used memetics as a theoretical tool to analyze different language data, like catch-phrase and net language. However, few of them have chosen verbal humor as the specific analyzing target under memetic researching scope. The related study is not common either. So, it is one characteristic of this study to make verbal humor a specific analyzing target and focus on the interpretive power of language meme to verbal humor.Relying on the preliminary knowledge of memetics, the present study attempts to explore verbal humor with memetics as a theoretical tool, find out language memes contained in humors, analyze and explain their causative force to humor; classify the language memes according to their ways of transmission, upon which we will go on to compare Chinese and English humors produced by the same kind of language meme, reveal the cultural similarity and difference. The main conclusions include:The interpretive power of language meme to verbal humor lies in that: When appears in verbal humors, language meme often becomes a humorous factor. It can either give the reader or audience a feeling of having met it somewhere before, or evoke their association of a familiar expression. But under scrutiny, the language meme can be recognized that it is not exactly the same with what the reader or audience have already met but only an imitation. The difference between the imitated version and the original one in such aspects like form and content, as well as the difference in terms of connotation, implication or emotional color between them can generate unexpected humorizing power. Besides, the humorizing power produced by language memes of the same kind can also be embodied in a different language system.