PRECONDITIONS FOR USING MEMETICS IN LANGUAGE EVOLUTION STUDIES

Although there are various forms of memetics, its most expansive versions claim to explain all the complexities of culture and the ministrations of mind. This attempt at a broad explanatory framework for memetics therefore also includes the origin and grounding of human language. Memetics may provide some helpful explanatory tools for researchers working on the problem of language evolution. However, before applying a memetic approach, scholars interested in language evolution will need to review the basic theoretical and empirical issues facing the field. To date, the most scientific and scholarly critique of memetics is Aunger et al (2001) where numerous scholars from diverse disciplines outline the problems and potentials with the approach. The following outline summarizes a number of these issues facing memetics. 1) Lack Of Consensus As To What Memetics Actually Is. a) This lack of clarity includes the fact that there is no standard codification of the concept, the distinct "meme as germ " and the "meme as gene " schools, and other areas of disagreement that relate to the issued listed below