A Study on the Cyber Counterattack Language of Tangshan Violence From the Perspective of Memetics

On June 10, 2022, a vicious violence event occurred in Tangshan, which attracted great attention on the Internet, and also caused chain reactions in the society, such as personal safety panic, fierce gender opposition, online reporting boom, and other ripple effect. There was a lot of counter comments against this event on the Internet. According to incomplete statistics, the counterattacks against Tangshan violence generally include five types: accusation, encouragement, empathy, irony, and retrospection. These counterattacks have the same profound impact as the brutal event itself, and the formation and development of this social impact can be explained and analyzed more or less through memetics. From the perspective of memetics, this paper will make a pragmatic analysis of the online counterattack against the Tangshan violence. The language materials are collected from the highly recognized and widely spreading posts and influential comments on social media such as Sina Weibo and Xiaohongshu. The results show that due to the existence of individual differences, different meme hosts have different understandings of the connotation of linguistic memes, and this understanding bias may lead to different meme hosts having completely different subjective attitudes when dealing with the same linguistic memes.

Chen, L. X., & He, Z. R. (2006). Analysis of language memes. Foreign Language Teaching and Research, 50(2), 108-114+160.

Blackmore, S. (1999). The meme machine. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish gene. New York: Oxford University Press.

He, Z. R., & He, X. L. (2003). Memetics and social pragmatics. Modern Foreign Languages, 26(2), 200-209.

He, Z. R. (2005). Memetics in language. Linguistic Sciences, 4(6), 54-64.

He, Z. R. (2008). Language memes and their rhetorical effects. Foreign Language Research, 31(1), 68-73. doi:10.16263/j.cnki.23-1071/h.2008.01.010

He, Z. R. (2014a). A memetics interpretation of popular catchwords. Shandong Foreign Language Teaching, 35(2), 8-13. doi:10.16482/j.sdwy37-1026.2014.02.011

He, Z. R. (2014b). Research column on language memetics. Shandong Foreign Language Teaching, 35(2), 7-8. doi:10.16482/j.sdwy37-1026.2014.02.010

He, Z. R. (2016). Application of language memes and their variants. Journal of Xinjiang Normal University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Academic Edition), 37(2), 132-139+2. doi:10.14100/j.cnki.65-1039/g4.2016.02.016

He, Z. R. (2017). Linguistic memes and the ecological environment of the public domain. Foreign Languages in China, 14(3), 20-27. doi:10.13564/j.cnki.issn.1672-9382.2017.03.009

He, Z. R. (2021). Metapragmatic awareness in language memes. TCSOL Studies, 21(1), 41-47. doi:10.16131/j.cnki.cn44-1669/g4.2021.01.006

Li, J., & He, Z. R. (2014). The subjectivity and contextualization of language memes. Foreign Language Research, 37(2), 59-64. doi:10.16263/j.cnki.23-1071/h.2014.02.016

Zhuang, M. Y., & He, Z. R. (2010). Natural selection, the survival of the fittest: The popular phenomenon of new words and cool words from the perspective of memetic theory. Hubei Social Sciences, 24(7), 115-117. doi:10.13660/j.cnki.42-1112/c.010423