On Street Names In Guangzhou City From Memetic Perspective

Toponymy is a rapidly-developed subject. Toponyms are languagerepresentatives for districts, with varied connotations, and they root deeply in theoverlapping part of geographic, social and linguistic properties. Since the ChineseToponyms Committee was founded in1977, the researches on Chinese toponymshave been progressing with a substantial pace, prospering a series of influential papers,works and collections. Meanwhile, at the end of last century, more and more foreignscholars tend to connect toponymy with linguistics, and some even regard toponymyas a newly-developed linguistic branch.This thesis makes an audacious attempt to explore street names, a branch intoponomy, in Guangzhou City by combining them with memetics so as to summarizethe models of successful street-name memes and deduce the street-naming principlesin that city, which might be significant to have a thorough understanding of the cityculture and predict feasible street-naming rules both in Guangzhou and other cities.This thesis can be divided into six parts:Chapter One is a brief introduction, in which the rationales, goals, significance,data collection and research methodology of the thesis are on display.Chapter Two presents memetics abroad as well as in China, and thedevelopment of Chinese toponymy is brought up.Chapter Three illustrates the theoretical framework of memetics by introducingsome core terms in it.Chapter Four accounts for the linguistic analysis of the street names inGuangzhou City to lay a solid foundation for the following memetic analysis. Thelinguistic analysis of the street names in Guangzhou City is carried out in thefollowing aspects: structural properties, phonetic properties, semantic properties, andthe development of those street names. Chapter Five combines memetics with the street names. The memetic analysisconcludes strong street-name memes in Guangzhou City, analyzes the development ofstreet names and advocates street-naming principles.Chapter Six, the last part of the thesis, draws a conclusion and presents majorfindings in the thesis. Besides, it also points out the limitations and gives suggestionsfor further study.