| The advertising is a kind of persuading or convincing art, which is of simplicity, vividness and novelty. Most idioms are usually derived from the old scriptures or people's experiences so that Chinese people are familiar with them. So the advertiser imports idioms into advertising language in order to arouse publics'attention and get great profit for the business. In the light of this phenomenon, adopting qualitative research methodology, this thesis attempts to make a comprehensive study on idioms as memes in Chinese advertisement on the basis of memetics and adaptation theory, such as discussing the memetic transmission mode of idioms in Chinese advertisement, identifying the properties of strong idiom memes in advertising, and exploring the primary contextual correlates of adaptability for idiom memes in Chinese advertisement.Memetics is a new theory for interpreting cultural evolution. As a unit of cultural transmission, meme is an accelerate of language evolution and at the meantime, language is a device to spread memes. Speaking from memetics, the idioms in advertising can be considered as memes, and its replication and transmission is also relevant to the memetic transmission. In the thesis, by analyzing samples of idioms in Chinese advertisement taken from influential mass media, the author proposes the memetic transmission mode of idioms in Chinese advertisement on the basis of He Ziran's (2005) transmission mode for language memes, including vertical-progressional transmission, horizontal-extensional transmission and sequential-changeable transmission.In the world of mass communication, what are the properties of idiom memes that contribute to the strong replication and transmission of the advertising language? In the present study, based on the selection criteria proposed by Heylighen (1998), the author identifies five memetic properties of idioms in Chinese advertisement, i.e. distinctiveness, novelty, simplicity, coherence, and conformity. It is found that such idiom memes which are of the five properties will be replicated and disseminated more popularly and successfully among the public.To justify the memetic properties of idioms, the thesis goes on to explore the primary contextual correlates of adaptability for idiom memes in Chinese advertisement. Within the framework of Verschueren's adaptation theory (2000) and memetics, the author argues that the primary contextual correlates of adaptability for idiom memes in Chinese advertisement contain the cognitive, emotive and cultural factors. For the adaptation to the cognitive factors, working memory and the audiences'way of perceiving and understanding are taken into consideration and it is found that the simplicity, novelty, distinctiveness as well as coherence are the result of the adaptation to the publics'cognitive factors. According to the adaptation to the emotive factors, the author introduces Maslow's (1943) pyramid and makes a discussion on the emotional"buttons"from two aspects, i.e. primary-order feeling buttons and second-order feeling buttons, which are proposed by Brodie in 1996. It is obvious that coherence, together with simplicity, is the result of adaptation to the audiences'emotive factors. As far as the adaptation to the cultural factors, it involves people's national psychology, moral and ethical standards and thinking modes. In the meantime, it is found that conformity, which helps idiom memes in Chinese advertisement be assimilated and remembered widely and chronically, is the consequence of adaptation to the consumers'cultural factors. In a word, it is obvious that the idiom memes are influenced greatly by cognitive, emotive and cultural factors in the process of dissemination, and the five properties of idiom memes in Chinese advertising are just the consequence of adaptation to these three factors.This thesis extends the scope of memetic research, makes a close connection of memetics and idioms in Chinese advertisement, provides broader advertising space for the advertisers, and enhances people's comprehension for Chinese idioms in advertising language, especially for the understanding of idiom variation.
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