A Study Of Verbal Humor In Zhao Benshan’s Short Comedies From The Memetic Perspective

Memetics is a newly-developed theory on the basis of Darwin’s theory of evolution on the purpose of explaining the law of human culture evolution. Currently in domestic academic circle, it is mainly employed in the fields of linguistics and language teaching to examine related language phenomena. Language is one of the carriers of memes. The replication and transmission of language memes not only provide a fast and effective way for human language enrichment, but also offers a new way of thinking in studying verbal humor. In linguistic studies, some researchers adopt memetics to examine certain language phenomena such as advertising language, network expressions, loan words, and buzzwords, etc. However, few of them have applied this theory to the study of verbal humor, not to mention the study of verbal humor in Zhao Benshan’s short comedies.By utilizing memetics as the theoretical framework, this paper makes comprehensive analyses of the verbal humor in Zhao Benshan’s latest12short comedies performed in the Spring Festival Gala in CCTV. The author aims at answering to the following two questions:(i) how do language memes reflect in the verbal humor of Zhao Benshan’s performances? And (ii) what kinds of performing modes trigger the verbal humor of the shows’? Through qualitative analyses, the following correspondent conclusions are reached:(i) genotype and phenotype language memes are mainly reflected in the verbal humor of Zhao Benshan’s performances in terms of "Transmitting Same Information Directly in the Same Form","Transmitting Same Information in Different Forms",""Transmitting Various Contents through Homophones","Transmitting Various Contents through the Same Expression", and "Transmitting Various Contents through the Same Structure"; and (ii) through the five ways of meme replication and transmission, verbal humor is triggered in Zhao’s sketches through the performing modes of intentional misusages of words, exaggeration, word order inversion, and the direct quotation or modification of idioms or old sayings, advertising languages, catchwords, homophony, heteronym, and dialect. Through detailed analyses of large amount of examples, this paper demonstrates the significant roles that genotype and phenotype language memes play in the formation of verbal humor in Zhao Benshan’s short comedies.