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Comments on Liu (2006)
Xie, Chaoqun, Ziran He and Blackmore, S
Foreign Language Education
28(3):11-15.
Liu (2006) criticizes meme theory for being lack of
disciplinary independence and theoretical scientificity. This paper
engages in an academic dialogue with Liu in terms of the definition
of the meme notion, meme transmission patterns, and the meme
theory’s disciplinary basis, research scope and scientificity. It is
shown in this article that (1) memes are transmitted by means of
imitation mainly, and anything that is transmitted by imitation can
be regarded as a meme; (2) the life span of a meme can be either
long or short, and whoever is affected by a meme and spreads it is
likely to become the meme’s host; (3) memes and genes are not the
same and cannot be equivalent to each other; (4) meme theory not
only stresses description, but also emphasizes explanation in an
attempt to further understanding of language, culture, thought,
cognition and humanity per se; (5) metaphorical thinking does not
affect the scientificity of meme theory; (6) meme theory not only
bears close relations to but also sheds new light on other
disciplines; (7) both nature and nurture may exercise influence over
meme transmission; (8) meme theory does not exclude the issue of
intentionality; (9) not only does meme theory want to investigate
how people acquire ideas, it also wants to scrutinize how ideas
acquire people, that is, how ideas manipulate people; and (10) the
time for discussing the scientificity of meme theory is not yet
ripe.
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