An Analysis Of Children's Imitation In English Learning--From The Perspective Of Memetics

Memetics is a theory of cultural transmission. The term"meme"is coined by Richard Dawkins which is considered as the cultural counterpart of gene. A meme is a cultural unit which includes a belief, idea, value, pattern of behaving, or language, etc. passed from one person to another by non-genetic means. It assumes that the human beings are able to make copies of memes by the imitation. Recently, Memetics has been applied into different academic fields such as philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and interdisciplinary studies on meme are getting to take shape.The core principle of Memetics that memes sustain the evolutionary process of three requisites as genes: heredity, selection and variation reveals the models of human's imitation and creativity. In Memetics,"memetic socio-cognitive mechanisms"explain that human's imitation is purposive; and"four stages of meme selection"explain that human's imitation is involved in cognitive process. With emphasis on these two theoretical points, this thesis sets out to analyze children's imitation behaviors in English learning in order to find out why children are inclined to imitate peers'words and how imitation affects children's English learning. It finally comes to a conclusion that from the perspective of Memetics, children's imitation is not just the physical coping of movement of other people, but a cognitive reflection and interpretation of the meaning of action witnessed, so children's imitation is the process of active learning from others under certain motives, which is helpful for them to learn English. Meme theory provides an explanation for children's imitation behaviors from a unique perspective and sheds lights on primary English teaching and learning.