An Exploratory Study on the Transmission of Language Memes: The Case of Chinese Language Memes

Abstract

We did an exploratory investigation of the transmission of language memes using the meme concept. Using 62 Chinese language memes as an example, we mined the emotions of netizens’ posts containing these languages on Weibo, a Chinese social platform and successfully demonstrated language memes’ potential for eliciting both positive and negative emotions. By comparing the features of emotional changes with the features of the four different language meme transmission processes (bursty, continuous expansion, continuous decline and steady) classified in this study, the results of correlation analysis objectively illustrate the existed connection between emotion and language meme transmission. Specifically, we discovered that the positive emotion ‘good’ and the negative emotion ‘disgust’ are the most obvious emotions elicited by language memes. Additionally, 79% of language memes’ transmission processes were correlated with emotions (positive or negative). And most language memes’ transmission process belongs to the bursty type, especially the latency → burst mode.