A Study Of The Formation Mechanism Of Parody In English Proverbs From The Perspective Of Memetics

Proverbs are generally regarded as repositories of folk wisdom. They reflect thecommon sense in daily life, including a series of special interest for volume’s focus oncultural models. Proverbs are described as short, pithy sayings in frequent andwidespread use to express a basic truth or practical precept. Therefore, proverbs arecreated by people with concise and vivid words as intellectual achievements in orderto express human understanding of nature and society.Parody was derived from the Greek word parodia which was firstly used todescribe the comic imitation and transformation of an epic verse work by the time ofthe fourth century BC and gradually came to act as a rhetorical device employed inliterature and ordinary speech until today. This phenomenon has aroused sufficientattention among linguistic scholars who focus on the studies of its definition,classification, construction and pragmatic function. However, few researches havebeen conducted on the formation mechanism of parody, and memetics which is putforward by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene can provide a reasonableexplanation for the generation principles of parodying utterances. According tomemetics, any information that is replicated and transmitted can be regarded as ameme. Therefore, language is a kind of meme, and it can be called the term linguisticmeme. However, imitation and replication are two main methods for the formation ofparodying utterances. The characteristics of parodying utterances are brevity,creativity, identity and uniformity, which are akin to the selection criteria of linguisticmemes. In addition, the formation process of parodying utterances can be divided intofour stages, including perception and assimilation, abstraction and retention,association and expression as well as generation and transmission, which areconsistent with the formation process of linguistic memes. Therefore, memeticsprovides a more scientific perspective for the research on the formation mechanism ofparodying utterances.In this study, qualitative analysis is the main method and meanwhile methods of description and explanation are also adopted. In addition, a large number of examplesare collected from A Dictionary of American Proverbs as well as novels, newspapers,movies and advertisements. After deeply analyzing those examples, the majorfindings in this thesis are as follows. Firstly, meme prototypes can be regarded asparodied utterances from the memetic perspective. Secondly, meme variants areunderstood as parodying utterances which are newly generated linguistic forms on thebasis of their corresponding parodied utterances. Memes improve the replicationfeatures of longevity, fecundity and copying-fidelity by way of language transmission.Moreover, parody, as a positive rhetorical device to improve language communicativeeffects, is formed under the influence of memes. Thirdly, according to memetics, thetwo results of genotype and phenotype which are produced in the process of memereplication and transmission are consistent with the two results of parodyingutterances which are produced in the process of imitation and transmission. Thisindicates that parodying utterances are actually the meme variants.This thesis attempts to explain the mechanism in the formation of parody fromthe perspective of memetics, thus contributing to a better understanding of theconstruction of parody, and in the meantime opening up a new field of the research onparody as well.