A Research In The2011Chinese Neologisms Under The Perspective Of Memetics

In1984, the famous linguist Mr Lv Shuxiang proposed:“everybody focuses on theneologism”when he wrote the book Lexicographical Studies，and introduced neologisminto researchers’ vision. From then on, research on neologisms became a new focusedarea for the linguists. Soon afterwards, researches on neologisms became a hot trend indomestic linguistic circle. However, researches back then mainly focused on diachronicstudy of neologism in a long historical period.In recent years, the quantity of neologisms presented a spurt growth state, thepublishment of Chinese Language Life Status Report accelerated the course of Chineseneologisms stepping into annual research phrase. This thesis regards593neologismSgenerated in2011as the object of study, and carries on systematic researches in theseneologisms combining various research methods.This thesis comprises five chapters including the introduction.Chapter one:Introduction. This chapter defines concepts involved in this thesis,summarizes the research status and value of the annual Chinese neologisms under theperspective of memetics and introduces the research methods and corpus sources.Chapter two:Introduction to the Theoretical Background. This chapter gives aintroduction to relevant theoretical background of meme, memetics and meme map.Chapter three:The Characteristics of Chinese Neologisms in2011. This chaptermainly summarizes the characteristics of Chinese neologisms in2011from the angle oflinguistics, sociology and communication. The author makes a conclusion on the basisof quantitative study of neologisms:Section one:The linguistic characteristicsPart one:The phonetic feature: the number of syllable increases, the tendency oftwo syllablized vocabulary weakens gradually, and three syllablized vocabulary replacestwo syllablized vocabulary and occupies the leading position.Part two:The semantic feature: it mainly manifests in two aspects, one is theobvious feature of color meaning, and the other is the instability of semantic content.Part three:The vocabulary feature: firstly, the constitute materials of the new wordsare various and the phenomenon of code-mixing is obvious. Secondly, the generatingtype of vocabulary is diversified.Part four:The grammatical feature: it mainly manifests in three aspects. Firstly,many kinds of affixes occur. Secondly, the way of sentence-making is diversified.Thirdly, compound word account for over85%of the total neologisms.Part five:The pragmatics feature: from a pragmatic perspective, the users ofneologisms are mainly adolescents with higher education and especially young men.From the perspective of the language environment, the network has became animportant language environment for new words.Section two:The characteristics of sociologyThe characteristics of sociology manifest that the substituting speed of new neologisms is faster, neologisms refecting all kinds of groups and hot social events arein the majority.Section three:The characteristics of communicationsThe characteristics of communications embody in two aspects. On one hand, theneologisms mark the springing up of new medias. On the other hand, the timeliness ofneologisms is strong and the propagation speed is fast.Chapter four:The Classification of Chinese Neologisms in2011. This thesisclassified these neologisms from the angle of traditional linguistics and the replicationand spreading of language memes. It emphasizes on proposing a new classifying anglein the angle of meme.Chapter five:Investigation in the “XX style” phenomenon under the perspective ofmemetics. This thesis set about researching from the angle of the event source of “XXstyle”, the evolution of the meaning and the replicating and propagating method, andthen analyzes the motivation of “XX style” becoming strong meme.