A Memetic Perspective On Chinese Advertising Slogans

Advertising slogans are propaganda words introducing a certain product or service to the public through media or other channels. Appropriate advertising slogans are the icing on the cake and add the finishing touch to the propaganda of certain products or services. As a result, both producers and sellers pay much attention to advertising slogans for better propaganda effects. Advertising slogans change and develop as society does. Various kinds of advertising slogans including those influenced by memetic effects emerge without end, arousing many scholars’ attention.Based on Darwin’s evolutionary theory, memetics studies the replication and transmission of memes in cultural field. Memes refer to anything that is transmitted through imitation, such as concepts, actions, messages, tunes and lines of songs and so on. And memetic phenomena generated by linguistic transmission are linguistic memes or linguemes, which are information representations that carry the intention of meme hosts and are continuously transmitted by means of repetition and analogy making use of linguistic structures. Advertising linguistic memes are linguistic memes that are formed by continuous replication and transmission of a certain linguistic phenomenon through advertising slogans. These advertising linguistic memes often imitate some famous or popular linguistic forms and create new, context-oriented advertising slogans.Although the development of advertising slogans has already attracted scholars’ attention earlier, most focus on their linguistic features and creation strategies and so on; and studies on advertising linguistic memes mainly concern the replication and transmission ways of memes. And theses and monographs studying advertising linguistic memes systemically from memetics are few and studies of their generation mechanism and pragmatic functions are fewer. Therefore, the generation mechanism and the reasons for advertising linguistic memes all deserve our consideration. Given the research situation, the thesis attempts to analyze the generation means, stages of generation, internal and external factors in the generation mechanism, and pragmatic functions of advertising linguistic memes from the perspective of memetics. Through a thorough analysis of innumerable Chinese advertising linguistic memes, we find that the generation of advertising linguistic memes depends on the internal factors of meme’s linguistic carriers in advertisements as well as external factors. And only by experiencing the four stages of assimilation, retention, expression and transmission, can they become strong and successful advertising linguistic memes. These advertising linguistic memes employ different generation means: genotype of them adopts direct replication and imitation of sound while phenotype of them adopts imitation of structure, reorganization and displacement. And these generation means are respectively in accordance with the subtypes of genotype and phenotype of advertising linguistic memes in terms of their classification. In addition, advertising linguistic memes have pragmatic functions such as being attractive and convincing, which are reflected in the following two ways. On one hand, employing linguistic memes skillfully as advertising slogans can raise the attention to advertising information and the success rate of the transmission of new advertising linguistic memes. On the other hand, in terms of the creation and interpretation process of advertising slogans, advertising linguistic memes generated owing to linguistic memetic effects are more economical, effortless, catchy and perceivable compared with common advertising slogans. Therefore, creators as well as interpreters of advertising slogans can effectively use the form and meaning of the original linguistic memes to create and interpret new advertising linguistic memes. The study could enlighten future researchers on the generation and interpretation of advertising slogans.