On China English Lexis From Perspective Of Memetics

English has become an international lingua franca by interacting with various nations and cultures. And China English lexis is the product of English interacting with Chinese culture. China English lexis, as the most significant level of English interacting with Chinese, is not only featured with and transmitting Chinese culture, but also enriches English vocabularies and contributes to the development of English. Memetics is a new theory for explaining cultural evolution and transmission and meme is its core term.This thesis attempts to employ theories of Heylighen and Dawkins as the theoretical framework and the Corpus of Contemporary American English(COCA) as the research tool to investigate the frequency of the forty China English lexis sourced from China Daily Website and related literature. Retrieval results show that twenty four of the forty China English lexis is collected in COCA while sixteen excluded from COCA. Retrieval statistics show that frequencies(per/ mil) of the former are generally high and the lexis is not only balanced in five genres but also gradually increasing in time intervals from 1990 to 2012, which indicates its vitality in COCA. This investigation result is basically consistent with Zhou Yufang’s result obtained in 2012. On this basis, the author regards China English lexis collected in COCA as a strong meme while that excluded from COCA as a weak meme. Then, China English lexis as a strong meme and ones as a weak meme is analyzed from perspective of memetic selection criteria and Chinese cultural traits, which shows the former well satisfies memetic selection criteria of simplicity, invariance, utility, authority, publicity and novelty while the latter fails to satisfy authority and publicity. Due to the significance of China English lexis in cross-cultural communication, the author forecasts the bright prospect of China English lexis as a strong meme based on features of strong memes; meanwhile, the great importance and function of China English lexis as a weak meme cannot be ignored either because it does not only comply with word formation of English lexical memes but also possesses Chinese culture. In terms of this, the author attempts to explore a tentative way to transform China English lexis as a weak meme based on memetic replication stages and to spread China English lexis on the foundation of transmission mechanism of language memes, whose aim is that weak lexical memes of China English can be transformed into strong ones and strong lexical memes of China English can be more prosperous and continue to play its significant role in cross-cultural communication.