A Memetic Study Of Parody In Advertisements

As a mass media, advertising is a kind of modern social activity. Actually speaking, advertising has become an important means of promoting products, wining the customers and developing markets. Using rhetoric devices in advertisements can not only promote the products but also can be regarded as a kind of creative writing.Parody is one of the most important rhetorical devices. It is created by imitating some preexisting words, sentences and discourses according to communicative goal. It can make the language humorous, witty, interesting and lively.Meme is a kind of phenomenon which is similar to gene. Gene is reproduced through inheritance, whereas meme is transmitted by imitation. In memeics, meme is a phenomenon which is broadly spread through the imitation behavior. Parody is a typical model of meme phenomenon which produces a new form of language through imitation of available form of language.In previous studies, people focused on studying parody from rhetoric aspects, but this paper mainly researches parody through memetics. First of all, parody is a language phenomenon, which imitates the preexisting expressions to produce novel expressions according to speakers'communicative purposes. Moreover, according to the relationship between meme and culture in advertisements, we analyze some characteristics of good parodies in advertisements. It is helpful for the application of parodies in advertisements.As a typical meme phenomenon, parody has important significance on language inheritance and variation research. However, if we don't follow the characteristics and the rules of language system, don't follow the existing language structures, don't follow language harmony, don't pay attention to the cultural factures, don't pay attention to the relationship between language and culture, don't use this language phenomenon wisely, and just abuse parody, it will not only causes inconvenience of language communication, but also will brings many negative effects on our social life and produces a lot of negative deviations.