Abstract

In recent years, a kind of four-character Chinese internet buzzwords like Ren Jian Bu Chai (人艰不拆) appears as a main part of internet language and attracts the attention of the linguistic field. Based on the theory of Memetics, this paper analyzes the motivation, periodicity and mechanism behind the wide imitation and transmission of Ren Jian Bu Chai as a language meme, which highlights the following three major findings: first, the pragmatic functions motivate the wide transmission and imitation of the language meme of Ren Jian Bu Chai; second, the wide spread of Ren Jian Bu Chai as a meme undergoes four stages which are assimilation, retention, expression and transmission; third, the meme of Ren Jian Bu Chai is widely transmitted and copied through two major channels, namely genotype and phenotype.

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