A Memetic Study On The Formation Features Of Cyber Catchwords

With the development of Internet technology and the growth of netizens, thecommunication online has played an important role in our daily life, so that cyber catchwordsalso have influenced and penetrated on people’s life. And cyber catchwords is characterizedby arbitrariness, subjectivity, diversity, convenience, which is chasing by netizens. SinceMemetic has been applied to the research, many scholars pay more attention to cybercatchwords from the Memetic perspective, becoming a hot topic. The formation of cybercatchwords use the symbols,images, and figures on the keyboard to create new cybercatchwords, which have vivid and changeable features. However, Memetic can interpret theseformation features of cyber catchwords.The paper mainly analyzes formation features of cyber catchwords deeply from theMemetic perspective, to dig out the motivation and internal mechanism of formation featuresof cyber catchwords, and then understands deeply formation features of cyber catchwordsfrom the Memetic selection and selecting imitation perspective, to point out the relationshipbetween the reason of formation features and Meme.Based on the relevant studies from home and abroad, the paper firstly gives thedefinition of cyber catchwords and reviews previous studies on word-formation of cybercatchwords and cyber catchwords from Memetic perspective. And then the thesis analyzes theformation features,such as the rapidly growth of foreign compound language, the trend ofanalogy and homophonic words, the fashion of mixture of Pinyin, figures and English words.Finally the paper analyzes deeply and comprehensively inner mechanisms of formationfeatures from Memetic based on principle of Memetic Selection (2001)and SelectingImitation(1999).The following conclusions can be drawn from this research. Firstly, strong Meme is theinternal motivation of formation features of cyber catchwords,which is characterized byvariation, productivity, longevity. Secondly, formation features of cyber catchwords isinfluenced by the principle of Memetic Selection,including netizen’s cognitive psychology,emotional expression, social cultural influence, representing the principle of Memetic Selection. Thirdly, formation features of cyber catchwords represent the imitation of Meme,including the imitation of sounds, imitation of semantic analogy, imitation of emoticons. Inconclusion, these thesis mainly dig out the the internal motivation of formation features ofcyber catchwords and reveal he internal development law of caber catchwords from Memeticperspective, so that further expands the extent to the research of formation features of cybercatchwords, which has practical meaning to the development and cultural inheritance of cybercatchwords.