Research On Culture Transmission: From The Perspective Of Memetics

Culture is an endless research topic, the history and development of human society cannot be discussed without this factor. Besides static research about specific culture, dynamic research about culture transmission is also got concerned by scholars in various fields, and relative theories become more and more mature. This thesis aims to research culture transmission from a relatively new perspective—memetics, based on the analysis on the carrier, way and results of culture transmission.The term meme first appeared in the last chapter of the book The Selfish Gene which is written by Richard Dawkins, who was a famous zoologist and behaviorist in Cambridge University. According to his explanation, meme means the thing which is similar to gene which works in biological evolution, it works in the transmission of language, conception, behavior, and so on. In The Oxford English Dictionary, it is defined as:"An element of culture that may be considered to be passed on by non-genetic means, especially by imitation."This memetic theory is a new theory based on the origin of species by Darwin, it mainly gives a new explanation on culture origin, culture evolution and culture transmission. It holds that human possess the instinct of imitation through which and a great number of memes get transmitted. During the process of transmission, there exists competition among memes, strong memes which possess advantages defeat weak memes and then help building the structure of society and human mentality.After meme was proposed by Richard Dawkins, many scholars such as Susan Blackmore, Richard Brodie, Aaron Lynch, etc, continued his opinion and actively did researches to attempt to build memetics. Through their efforts, a new field about explaining culture evolution with memetics appeared in the end of 20th century. And it generally get concerned from scholars in our country, what they have done on this theory is researches in translation, communication, teaching, etc. with memetics. This thesis aims to do some brief research on the basic topic—culture transmission with the outline below:First, the thesis takes language as the case of carrier in culture transmission to describe the meme quality of language. The memetic explanation of the reason why language can be considered as a good carrier lies in that it dose a big favor to form successful memes in aspects of fidelity, fecundity and longevity; types of language memes and their reflection are discussed in this part too.Second, according to memetics, imitation has a big function in meme transmission. This part mainly discusses the definition of imitation (different from contagion, social learning which are similar to imitation), and describes four stages of meme life circle which a successful imitation should experience: assimilation, retention, expression and transmission, then this part analyses the relationship between strong memes and imitation.Third, based on the adaptation and selection of memes, this part gives memetic explanation to the two results of culture transmission: culture conflict and culture integration. It is because of meme adaptation and selection, and some memes disappear, weaken or survive.Through the analysis above, this thesis gets to a summary of the significance of memetics theoretically and practically, then it objectively point out the limitation of this theory. It aims to be better followed, hoping that more people can concern this potential topic.