A Contrastive Study Of Parody In English And Chinese Advertisements From The Perspective Of Memetics

The use of rhetoric is an important means to enrich the advertising language.The rhetoric of parody is widely used in advertisements according to the needs of expression,it deliberately imitates the people's familiar language to create new sentences so as to make the language lively and vivid.Many scholars at home and abroad have studied the parody from the perspective of linguistics,psychology,translation and lexicology.Only a few scholars have studied parody from the perspective of Memetics,but the research on the contrastive analysis of English and Chinese parodic advertisements is even more blank.The similarity between language meme and parody lies in imitation.Therefore,this paper takes Dawkins' Memetics as the theoretical basis,supplemented by the viewpoints of Heylighen,Blackmore,He Ziran,Xie Chaoqun,Chen Linxia and so on.This study will use Memetics as the theoretical framework to compare the parody phenomena in English and Chinese advertisements.The present study adopts qualitative and quantitative method,it selects 216 pieces of parodic advertisements from books,magazines,newspapers,networks,and televisions based on Memetics.This study mainly answers the following questions:(1)What are the similarities of English and Chinese parodic advertisements in the process of meme's replication and transmission?(2)What are the differences between English and Chinese parodic advertisements from the perspective of Memetics?The results show that the formation of parody both in English and Chinese advertisements experiences the same process of meme's replication and transmission,and has the same characteristics of legibility,vitality,conformity,and provisionality.The English and Chinese advertisements have different meme systems,which are different in homonyms and rhymes.English is an intonation language and spelling text,which is imitated by changing the spelling.While Chinese is a tone language,which is imitated by the distinction of tones and homophones.At the same time,the meme hosts of English and Chinese advertisements are different,which reflect different national characters and ways of thinking.Western people pay attention to individualism and always use extroverted expression.Chinese people pay attention to collectivism and always use introverted expression.This study combines Memetics and parody,and provides helpful suggestions for readers' interpretation of English and Chinese advertisements.It also provides a feasible reference for advertisement designers to use parodic advertisements.