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Memes and Language(s):
a Co-evolutionary Approach
K. Simitopoulou-Kotzamani, N. I. Xirotiris, Laboratory of Anthropology D.U.TH., Greece
simit@he.duth.gr, xirot@he.duth.gr
Abstract
Human evolution could be studied as the result of a continuous interaction of natural and cultural factors.
The biological background constitutes the unquestionable basis on which the various cultural structures
develop, in permanent interaction with their environments.
Recently introduced discussions on the role of memes (i.e. units of transmitted cultural information)
in parallel to genes (i.e. units of transmitted biological information), could contribute in the enlargement
of linguistic debates as well.
Issues like birth, distribution, viability or death of a language could be viewed through a neo-Darwinian
synthetic perspective. Mathematical models of genetic evolution, could be analogously applied in linguistic
fi elds, properly introducing the memes concept. Benefi ts and limits of such approaches are discussed in
this paper.
1. Introduction
It was in the early ‘70s when R. Dawkins originally introduced the term “memes” 1 , in his
challenging book “The selfi sh gene”, defi ning them as “units of cultural information”, (of cultural
transmission, of imitation). Referring to the development of human culture, memes play a role
analogous to the role of genes in biological evolution. Today, the debate on human co-evolution
(the interaction of biological and cultural factors during the integrated evolutionary process of
humankind) constitutes one of the most attractive issues in the cognitive fi elds of Philosophy
and Science.
Nowadays methodologies of reductionism, having created rigid demarcation lines between
scientifi c disciplines, seem to reach a dead-end. A synthetic perspective and a systemic
approach, where the different points of view meet in a holistic synthesis, tend to replace
the fragmentary study of such complex issues as human evolution (including the evolution of
language).
Within this framework, the still fl uid and sometimes overlapping ideas of cultural evolution,
co-evolution and memetics, constitute a fruitful fi eld of thoughts and debates, helping to bridge
the gap between sciences and humanities.
The present communication refers to the issue of memes in the evolution of languages
through time, within various cultural (especially linguistic) environments. Complex systems of
language memes evolve through time undergoing transformations, which could be studied on
the basis of their analogies to natural selection processes.
1.1. Co-evolution: the continuous nature/nurture interaction of humans
In a pure biological context co-evolution is perceived as the interactive co-existence of different
species within a certain ecosystem (e.g. microbes or bacteria in the human body). However,
1 The term is related to the greek “μεμησις” (mimesis) that means imitation.
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