Transmission Of Chinese Yi ‘one’-item Idioms: A Linguistic Memetic Perspective

Chinese idioms have been a hot issue in the field of Chinese linguistics since 1970 s.Although linguists cannot propose a unified definition towards Chinese idioms,they make clear the basic characteristics of idioms.Generally speaking,Chinese idioms belong to a kind of fixed phrases habitually used for a long time.A majority of Chinese idioms have four characters,double meanings as well as classical sources.They have stable structures,concise forms,integrated meanings and elegant styles.In recent years,Chinese idioms with yi ‘one’ start to draw the attention of several scholars(Liu Shue(1992),Yang Lijun(2001),Zhang Jinxia(2011),Wei Zaijiang(2015)).They discuss their meanings,functions and collocations.Because the studies on Chinese yi-item idioms tend to be few,this thesis intends to explore how Chinese yi-item idioms spread from pragmatic point of view.The term“linguistic memes”was put forward by Chinese linguist He Ziran(2005).He combined memetics founded by foreign scholars with the Chinese language to establish a new pragmatic theory.Memetics is a theory to explain the law of cultural evolution based on Darwin’s theory of evolution.The core of memetics is“meme”.Memes refer to the thoughts or ideas that are copied and spread among people and passed down between generations in the cultural field.He Ziran translated“meme”into“模因”to make people think that it is a phenomenon of imitation,a similar phenomenon with the gene(Cui Xuexin,2007).Genes are propagated by heredity,while memes are spread by imitation,and meme is the fundamental unit of culture.Only if a meme passes four stages:“assimilation,retention,expression and transmission”(Heylighen,1998:148)can it be replicated.Beyond this,a successful meme must have three qualities:“longevity,fecundity and copying-fidelity”(Dawkins,2016:251).Language is a kind of carriers of memes,and at the same time,the replication and transmission of memes and their variants in the language are useful to enrich and develop the language.Therefore,in the memetic view,the language itself is a kind of memes,which can be embodied in letters,words,phrases,clauses,paragraphs and texts.“A linguistic meme is a representation of information which is widely spread with the intention of the meme’s host,making use of linguistic structure and by means of repeating and analogizing.”(Li Jie and He Ziran,2014: 59).Just as the memes,linguistic memes have the distinction of strong and weak,but their demarcation is relative rather than distinct.Transmission modes of linguistic memes include genotype and phenotype,and they can spread through three channels: “educating and passing on knowledge,language applying,information-communicating and exchanging”(He Ziran,2012: 158-164).Chinese yi-item idioms occupy an indispensable position in Chinese idioms.However,there is little published research on yi-item idioms.Linguistic memetics is an interesting and new pragmatic theory.It is a theory to study the law of speech spread and language replication.Therefore,this thesis aims to study the transmission of Chinese yi-item idioms from linguistic memetic perspective.According to this,this thesis proposes three questions as follows:(1)Are all Chinese yi-item idioms linguistic memes?(2)Can Chinese yi-item idioms be classified into strong linguistic memes and weak linguitic memes?(3)What is the transmission mechanism of Chinese yi-item idioms?Taking 398 Chinese yi-item idioms as the research objects and employing qualitative and observational methods,this thesis makes an in-depth investigation into Chinese yi-item idioms.Findings can be elaborated as below.First,all Chinese yi-item idioms are linguistic memes.Second,they can be classified into strong linguistic memes and weak linguistic memes.Furthermore,Chinese yi-item idioms have their transmission mechanism,including transmission modes of their forms and meanings,disappearance of a part of them and their transmission channels.Concerning their meanings,they belong to the memetic genotype and can be divided into two types,namely “the same content being inherited in various forms”(He Ziran,2005: 64)and the same content being inherited directly.As for their forms,they pertain to the mode of memetic phenotype of “the identical set pattern being followed by different contents”(ibid.).However,due to lack of applicability,a part of Chinese yi-item idioms vanish in modern times while they are spreading.Meanwhile,Chinese yi-item idioms are transmitted through two channels: educating and passing on knowledge,language applying.The study on Chinese yi-item idioms from linguistic memetic point of view provides enlightenment to people for acquiring and exploiting either Chinese yi-item idioms or linguistic memes.For one thing,not only the research gives people a new view about Chinese yi-item idioms,but it broadens the application range of linguistic memetics.For another,this thesis benefits teachers and students at home and abroad to understand and master Chinese yi-item idioms.