| The term meme was coined by Richard Dawkins in his well-known book The Selfish Gene in 1976.Richard Dawkins regarded meme as a unit of cultural transmission.Afterwards,Susan Blackmore proposed that the term meme can be considered as a unit of information transmission.The memetic theory aims at probing into the mechanism of meme replication and transmission.Chinese scholar He Ziran applies the memetic theory to the field of pragmatics,thus opening a new perspective for pragmatic researches.Within the theoretical framework of memetic theory,this thesis attempts to analyze and summarize the formal manifestation,modes of replication,trigger mechanism and pragmatic functions of political terms as strong meme in news headlines.Drawing on the data from the influential news websites,such as paper.people.com.cn,www.xinhuanet.com,news.sohu.com,and news.163.com,this thesis makes a qualitative analysis of the representative examples of political terms as strong memes in news headlines.The analysis shows that political terms as strong memes in news headlines are characterized by their copying-fidelity,fecundity and high value in longevity.Political terms as strong memes play an important role in the construction of news headlines through the way of antithesis,metaphor and the tactful use of the political terms as strong memes in news headlines will not only highlight the news topic but also make the news headlines appear novel and concise.In the ways of replication and transmission,political terms as strong memes in news headlines can be divided into memetic genotype and memetic phenotype.Memetic genotype of political terms are mainly replicated and transmitted through the way of same information being transmitted directly,while when memetic phenotype of political terms are replicated and transmitted,the structures and forms of the memes do not change but the contents are replaced by the other words.As far as their trigger mechanism is concerned,political terms as strong memes have been constantly replicated and disseminated because both their contents and forms can keep people's attention.Besides,the propagation of the media to some extent enhances people's recognition of the political terms.At the meantime,the replication and transmission of the political terms as strong meme showscertain features of the times and will also not be successful without the subjective initiative of the meme host.The thesis summarizes the pragmatic functions of political terms as strong memes in news headlines as economic function,information dissemination function and political identification function.By economic function,we mean that political terms as strong meme in news headlines can help News reporters or copy-editors to efficiently scan information and readers to grasp the information of the news headlines quickly.In addition,political terms as strong memes have information dissemination function because they can effectively convey the essence of news headlines.Political identification function refers to people's sense of belongings in their social and political life.Political terms as strong memes enable the political messages to be transmitted in a timely and effective manner,which is conducive to the propagation of national policy.Researches in this thesis,to some extent,will on the one hand facilitate reporters' or copy-editors' efficient writing of news headlines,and enhance readers' concern about the political terms as strong memes in news headlines on the other. |
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