A Research On Memetic Phenomenon And Rhetorical Effect Of Chinese Catchwords In The Recent Five Years

Memetics is a new interpretation of the cultural evolution theory based onDarwinian evolution theory. From the viewpoint of meme theory, the language memeis the unit of cultural transmission, which reveals the rule of the words spread andlanguage communication. Many scholars have tried to make researches combining thememe theory with the subjects in order to obtain a new revelation, such as biology,psychology, sociology, linguistics and other disciplines. In the field of linguistics,some researchers use meme theory or language memes to analyze some languagephenomena, such as advertising, Internet language and loan words, phrase, etc. Fromthe meme theory perspective, however, researches relating to catchword memesphenomenon rhetoric effect are rare, which is the innovation and characteristic pointsof this thesis.Based on the memetics as theoretical framework, this thesis will present acomprehensive systematic analysis of the catchwords in the process of theirreplication and transmission of language memes and the characteristics and therhetorical effects. This thesis will mainly answer the following two research questions:how the language memes phenomenon is embodied in the catchwords of copying andspreading; and what rhetorical effects are produced in the process of transmission.The thesis collects250catchwords of annual top ten catchwords of China’smainstream media in recent five years, and of which80catchwords containinglanguage memes are made qualitative analysis. Through analysis, it comes to thefollowing conclusions: firstly, the language meme phenomenon can be embodied inthe process of replication and transmission. Secondly, some rhetorical effects arerevealed in the analysis. In the rhetoric effect analysis, in order to promote the innovation of traditional rhetoric and development provides a new train of thought.Because from the perspectives of language memes rhetoric effect research are veryfew, and the author’s theoretical level and research experience is limited, there stillexist some deficiencies and needs to constantly enrich and perfect. The author hopesthat this article from the perspective of language memes catchwords replication andpropagation of memes phenomenon will provide some beneficial reference to theresearch on the rhetoric effect.