The Analysis Of Generation,Transmission And Degeneration Of Catchword Meme From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

In this information age,catchwords are increasingly demonstrating their strong penetration and influence and more and more people tend to use catchwords.Whether people realize it or not,catchwords have been affecting our way of speaking and become an indispensable part of our lives.Their emergence not only adds luster to our lives but also enriches the language system.Catchwords are transmitted through imitation,which determines that they are a kind of meme in essence.In the process of generation,transmission and degeneration,they have to adapt to various factors constantly.As an important representation and a basic carrier of social culture,catchwords are not only popular among the public,but also attract attentions from professional scholars.But a majority of studies focus on the collection,definition,characteristics and popularization of catchwords,studies on the transmission and degeneration are not enough,especially in the pragmatic field.On this account,the present research attempts to study the catchword memes from a new pragmatic perspective,the linguistic adaptation theory proposed by Jef Verschueren.Theoretically based on linguistic adaptation theory,this research adopts the combined methods of qualitative and quantitative analysis and chooses the "Top Ten Catchwords of the Year(2006-2015)"(a total number of 180)published by National Center for Language Resources Monitoring and Research and Yao Wen Jiao Zi Magazine as linguistic data.With reference to the diachronic circulation curves,this research analyzes the adaption of catchword memes in generation,transmission and degeneration.Through research,it is found that catchwords are a kind of strong linguistic memes.Their generation and degeneration rely on the adaptation to various factors in the mental world,social world and physical world of language users(meme hosts).The transmission of catchwords relies on adaptation to not only factors in communicative context such as the initiative of meme hosts but also the characteristics of meme carriers in meaning,structure and use.The generation of catchword memes depends on meme host's selection of potential catchword memes.Factors to be adapted to mainly include the mental state of meme hosts,such as the psychology of least effort,the psychology of expression and the psychology of seeking novelty;elements in social world,such as progress achieved in each social area;temporal and spatial elements in physical world,such as the event time and interaction space.The transmission of catchword memes should go through four stages,namely,assimilation,retention,transmission and expression.Successful transmission needs to adapt to numerous factors in these four stages.Those factors are classified into three categories:characteristics of catchword memes,initiatives of meme hosts,and the changes of social context.The degeneration of catchword memes means that catchwords have changed from strong memes to weak memes accompanied by the decreasing of copying-fidelity,the declining of replication rate and the narrowing of transmission range.In the process of degeneration,catchwords have to adapt to the psychology of aesthetic fatigue,the social value of catchword memes and the development law of catchword memes.