Analysis Of Strong Memes In Advertising Language:from The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

In modern society with the explosive growth of globalization and commodity production spread worldwide, advertisements have integrated into and influenced every aspect of people’s daily lives. As one of the most powerful tools to transmit information, memes are now attracting more and more linguistic scholars’ eyes. This thesis, as an extension of previous research from other scholars, is researching on the selection criteria of strong advertising memes and the methodology of creating strong advertising memes from the perspective of adaptation theory.The framework of the thesis is mainly constructed by Verschuren’s adaptation theory, Heylighen’s memetic selection criteria and related memetic theory proposed by Dawkins. Obeying the features of strong memes proposed by Dawkins, the author collects a large number of successful advertisements from both home and abroad via television, Internet, newspaper, etc. In this thesis, based on the theoretical theories, the author researches on the process of strong advertising memes’ selection and creation by analyzing the sample advertisements. Firstly, combining with the previous study of memetics, four basic criteria of strong meme selection are pointed out:simplicity, novelty, authority and conformity. More criteria the meme conforms, more powerful it will be. Then, based on Verschuren’s adaptation theory, the author indicates that the strong advertising memes are the result of the contextual adaptation to three worlds of the audience, namely, mental world, social world and physical world. In the end, the author concludes another three suggested methods of designing strong advertising language, i.e. reiteration, abuse of words, in fashion method.On the basis of adaptation theory, the thesis analyzes how the strong advertising memes are created from the perspective of adaptation theory. All skills concluded and pointed out by the author are aiming at providing advertisers theoretical evidence of creating strong memes and helping them make more successful advertising language.