An Analysis On The Generating Mechanism Of Strong Meme Of Buzzwords From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

With the development of the society and technology, new words and expressions are mass-produced incessantly. It‘s inevitable that more and more people are using buzzwords now, thus this linguistic phenomenon are getting more and more attention in the linguistic field. However, the current researches on buzzword are mainly on the description of some language phenomena by collection, classification, analysis on the features of network catchphrase. In fact, however, many network catchphrases have been widely used in the real world. And, though many scholars wrote some articles about buzzwords from the perspective of adaptation theory, most researches focus on the contextual correlates and haven‘t reached other layers.Based on Darwin‘s evolution theory, memetics attaches importance to the changes and developments in cultural domain. It is a newly born and energetic discipline and it shares a lot of thoughts with adaptation theory. Memes are the utmost basic unit of cultural transmission. They get passed from generation to generation in a similar way as gene does, and the way they get propagated is very much like that of viruses. This transmissive attribute of meme subsumes an inherent link with buzzword which bears the same quality.Therefore, the author intends to analyze the buzzwords from the perspectives of memetics and adaptation theory. This thesis aims to analyze the generating mechanism of strong meme, and tries to give a tentative analysis from the adaptation to the contextual factors and language structure. And it applies qualitative method and contains the buzzwords from the high influential sina microblogs and the 50 buzzwords chosen by the Excessive Wording magazine from 2009 to 2013.Based on Memetics and adaptation theory respectively proposed by Dawkins and Verschueren, this thesis intends to answer the following three questions: 1).To turn a word into a strong meme, what contextual correlates must it adapt to? 2).How does the strong meme of a buzzword adapt to the language structure? 3).What is the generating mechanism of the strong meme of buzzword according to adaptation theory and memetic theory? The author gets three findings after the analysis: 1). Because of the adaptation to contextual correlates, which includes the mental world, social world and physical world of the audience, a potential strong meme stands out other expressions with identical meanings and gets chosen by the host. 2). In addition to the adaptation to the contextual factors, the buzzword needs to adjust itself at the phonological or lexical level to comply with different contexts. 3). The generation of a buzzword is a dynamic process of adaptation to the contextual factors and language structure.This research has some theoretical and implications. Theoretically, it constructs a comprehensive framework to illustrate the reasons and process of strong meme creation, which explores the generating mechanism of strong memes from the perspective of memetics. Practically, the research enables readers to gain a deeper understanding of the reasons why nowadays some words and expressions are transmitted and popularized so quickly, and contributes to the development of language and mass communication.