| The meme concept has aroused wide attention of researchers. Susan Blackmore in 1999 published a book named The Meme Machine, which marks the development of the meme theory to a new stage. Other researchers such as Lynch, Dennet, Gathaerer, Gatbora, Deacon furthered the study, respectively, from other aspects: information communication, ideas infection, cultural evolution, symbols, etc. In August 1998, foreign scholars in Belgium held a three-day seminar on Memetics. Memetics is a relatively new academic field for linguists in China. But the recent years have witnessed its rapid development. Scholars have conducted extensive research in this field. Since 2005, there are a total of 83 relevant papers written on this topic. Professor He Ziran, in particular, has made outstanding contributions to the development of this theory. Professor He said, "Memetics is a new theory to interpret the cultural evolution. A meme, invented to suggest a strong analogy with genes, is a unit of cultural imitation. Some of the ideas or concepts are spread through human culture and passed down from generation to generation. Meme actually refers to the cultural gene, which is spread by imitation and survives. Language is one of the vehicles. Memetics reveals the laws of language development, and provides a new perspective for researchers to explore the evolution of language. Successful commercial advertisements are transmitted through imitation of memes, which replicate themselves and spread through the language.Commercial advertising is not only an economic phenomenon, with an intention to reap more profits, but also a cultural phenomenon, with a purpose to spread ideas and values. Many experts have carried out a multi-angle research on advertising. However, there is much less study on commercial advertising language from the perspective of memetics, which is an important reason for the present study. What are the characteristics of successful commercial advertising language? How to create and turn the commercial advertisements into strong memes so that they can become successful commercial slogans? This paper shows that the strength and success of an ad slogan can be greatly enhanced by sloganeers'deliberate choice making to create a strong meme. This paper uses the memetic theory as its theoretical framework and is based on research findings both at home and abroad, attempts to do an analysis of the memes in the commercial advertising language. The paper states the significance of the study of the successful memes in advertising language and theoretically analyzes how these successful memes are transmitted, which from the point of view memes transmission and replication in commercial advertising language.From the horizontal analyses, we can find that some successful commercial advertising imitates or depends on strong meme to express its own meaning. Such so-called"new wine in old bottle"method uses the same or similar form but is required to express a different content. Through the vertical analysis of the commercial advertising language from the lifecycle of a meme, we find that some successful commercial advertising imitates or creates on the basics of a strong meme to enhance its vitality. This type of meme uses the same or similar content but is required to be expressed in a different form. These two ways in fact are the two important ways for meme replication and transmission. It is hoped that our research can draw due attention of some marketers and help them improve the effectiveness of their ad slogans. The replication and transmission of the meme is of great importance in the development of advertising slogans. Its replication and transmission provide a quick and effective way to enrich advertising slogans. It is hoped to enlighten the marketers in practice and create more devices or factors as successful memes to enrich advertising language. |
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