A Study On The Generation And Transmission Mechanisms Of Internet Buzzwords From The Perspective Of Memetic Adaptation

The Internet is one of the greatest inventions of mankind in the 20 th century,and it has brought sweeping changes to human life.Since 1994,when China opened the first door to the international internet and became the 77 th country with full-function access to the Internet,the Internet has gradually entered people’s daily life and developed rapidly,and the internet language as a carrier has also flourished.Internet buzzwords are the internet language that is widely replicated and transmitted in a certain period and range,taking the Internet as the medium of communication,and has a certain breadth and depth of popularity.In the current internet virtual society and real social settings,the influence of internet buzzwords is extremely wide.Moreover,with the rise of the internet society,its influence is gradually going beyond its language itself.As a hot topic in linguistics research,internet buzzwords are increasingly valued by all aspects of society.However,most of the current studies on internet buzzwords are confined to the concept,classification,communication characteristics,and other aspects,lacking a systematic interpretation of them.In particular,the study of the generation and transmission mechanisms of internet buzzwords from the perspective of memetic adaptation is still a relatively new perspective in the field of linguistics research.Therefore,this study constructs the memetic adaptation model from the perspective of memetic adaptation and adopts the mixed research methods of qualitative and quantitative analysis to systematically analyze the top ten internet buzzwords(a total of110)from 2018 to 2022 announced by “Chinese Inventory” activity,the editorial department of Excessive Wording and Yu Yan Wen Zi Zhou Bao.Moreover,with the help of the diachronic trend graph of internet buzzword search indexes in the big data sharing platform---Baidu Index,the generation and transmission mechanisms of internet buzzwords are explored from the perspective of memetic adaptation.The main findings of this study are as follows.(1)The generation mechanism of internet buzzwords is a process in which meme hosts successfully select potential memes in the meme pool.The memes of internet buzzwords with potential effects are at a certain pragmatic potential before they are replicated and transmitted.Due to their distinct memetic selection criteria and adaptation to the mental as well as social world in the communicative context,they are selected by the hosts and thus generated in the hosts’ brains.The adaptation factors in this process mainly involve the mental factors of the meme hosts,such as the psychology of seeking simplicity,the psychology of seeking novelty and difference,as well as psychological tendencies and expression needs;and the factors in the social world,involving current affairs,hot social events and the development of social culture.(2)The transmission mechanism of internet buzzwords is that internet buzzword memes must go through the process of assimilation,retention,expression,and transmission in order to be transmitted from one host to another.Due to their characteristics of longevity,productivity and replication fidelity and going through four stages of assimilation,retention,expression,and transmission,they are replicated and transmitted to other brains.In addition,internet buzzword memes also show different degrees of variation during this transmission process,mainly involving memetic genotype and memetic phenotype.The successful transmission of internet buzzword memes also requires adaptation to various factors in the four stages mentioned above,which are summarized into three main categories: the subjectivity of the meme host,memetic characteristics of internet buzzwords and the physical world in the communicative context.(3)The above-mentioned internet buzzword memes stand out among many memes,survive and become successful internet buzzword memes,and produce certain pragmatic functions,including the function of efficient information transmission,the function of expressing emotions,the labor-saving function of communication,the function of ridiculing and satirizing social reality.This study,on the one hand,hopes to help people better understand the generation and transmission mechanisms of internet buzzwords in essence,enhancing their normative awareness of internet buzzwords and thus use internet buzzwords correctly.On the other hand,it is hoped that this study can provide new ideas and inspiration for related research in this field.