The Study On Chinese New "bei-passive" From The Perspective Of Memetics

With the rapid development of technology, the internet, as the fourth media, has becomea main platform in people’s daily communication. Correspondingly a special form of languageon the internet—netspeak comes into being. Chinese new “bei-passive” is just such a case.Since it appeared in2008, its particularity has drawn scholars’ attention. Unlike Chinesetraditional bei-passive, this new sentence pattern, with a novel collocation and conciseconstruction, reflects social reality and conveys people’s strong discontent. This thesis willmake a comprehensive and systematic study on this novel pattern from the perspective ofMemetics so as to reveal the root of the production and development of Chinese new“bei-passive”, then it tends to further predict the future of this new pattern in the end.For Chinese new “bei-passive”, syntactically it inherits the simplest form of traditionalbei-passive; semantically with the meaning of passiveness being stressed, it points to theassociated events. Today studies of this new structure from rhetoric, cognitive and memeticperspectives have been recognized, while the further research on this new structure is still onthe way. One of three pragmatic theories—Memetics is first proposed by a famous Englishscholar Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene. Until now, this theory has been successfullyapplied to sociology, economics, anthropology, psychology as well as linguistics. Accordingto Dawkins, the language itself is a meme. Based on this view, Professor He Ziran putsforward his idea on linguistic meme, the one lies in any word, phrase, sentence, paragraph oreven as long as the discourse which probably becomes a meme through imitation. In theprocess of reproduction and dissemination, the meme refers not only to the language itself,but also to the information it conveys. Due to its unique significance, this thesis sketches thetheoretical frame as variation, periodicity and selectivity in linguistic meme to delve into Chinese new “bei-passive”.Language is not in a static state. On the basis of Memetics, the production anddevelopment of language is a dynamic process of replication. Chinese new “bei-passive” andtraditional bei-passive are closely bonded together syntactically as well as semantically. Fromthe perspective of memetic theory, these two patterns belong to linguistic meme, and Chinesenew “bei-passive” meme is the variant of traditional bei-passive. Through fierce competitionon four stages of assimilation, retention, expression and transmission, this novel patternsurvives as a strong meme, which is the consequence of periodicity and selectivity inlinguistic meme. In the course of development and dissemination of Chinese new bei-passive”meme, factors including context or environment, memetic hosts and linguistic meme itselfplay a key role. Language is one essential branch of culture, whose application cannot beseparated from the socio-pragmatic art. As a novel linguistic meme, Chinese new“bei-passive” imposes great effect as a strong meme on defining certain events in certainfields. Language is developing with time. Rooted in Darwin’s theory of evolution, the memeas one stimulative factor accelerates the development of language, which enlarges memeticcorpus in language, such as special current netspeaks “给力”,“雷人”,“月光族” havingextended into Chinese lexicon. However, whether the novel pattern like Chinese new“bei-passive” can be absorbed into Chinese grammar needs further investigation.In a word, this thesis attempts to conduct the beneficial study on Chinese new“bei-passive” from synchronic and diachronic angles. Strengthening the understanding ofChinese Traditional Bei-passive, it proves the productivity and dynamicity of language andbenefits the application of Memetics from microscopic standpoint.