From: Philip Jonkers (ephilution@attbi.com)
Date: Thu 24 Oct 2002 - 04:29:41 GMT
Grant:
> Words are not memes themselves because they can mean anything depending on
> the circumstances in which they are received. They carry information but
are
> not the information being carried. The meanings they carry are arbitrary
and
> any word can stand for anything. For example:
>
> I am a man.
> I am A man.
> I am a MAN
> I AM a man.
>
> The mere shift in emphasis changes the sentence above so it transmits
four
> different meanings. The first emphasizes the word "I" and that points to
who
> is a man. The second emphasizes the word "A" and points to the fact that
the
> speaker is one of many men. The third emphasizes the word "man" and points
> to the idea of manliness as part of the speaker's essence. The fourth,
> emphasizes the word "am" and is used to confirm that the speaker is indeed
a
> man.
Okay, the sentences by way of different articulation carry different and
separate meanings. So each sentence could pass for a separate meme.
But the separate words still carry the same meaning, it is the shift
of emphasis that adds a unique semantic flavor to it. So each word,
having a unique conceptual meaning and which obviously can be replicated,
are memes in their own right still. I acknowledge, however, that some words
can have more than one meaning depending on the relevant context but that
doesn't change the fact that those words have stand-alone meaning and thus
are separate memetic carriers of information. You can experience this
yourself by teaching a new word
to a 5-year old.
Phil
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu 24 Oct 2002 - 04:37:13 GMT