Thanks to some commentary over on padawan dot info, I’ve been enjoying a French language blog written by a displaced Californian in Lyons. In one entry, Damelon poses the question: what is the French for meme? And since a homographous word même ‘self; same’ already exists in French it’s not a trivial question. (Not to imply that any lexical question in French is.) Laurent, over at Embruns, has provided us anglophones with an answer: mème. He writes:
Le plus amusant est que l’idée même de mème est le mème par excellence. Et cette ‘idée virale’ n’a pas fini de contaminer les esprits.
Besides discussing translations of Douglas Hofstadter and Richard Dawkins, he also points to an interesting article by Francis Heylighen, called: “Evolution of Memes on the Network: from chain-letters to the global brain” (Sticklers, no doubt, will point out that an accent grave is hardly a circumflex, and they’d be right, and that’s just fine by yours truly.)
Posted by jim at May 7, 2004 01:12 PMthanks for the link to the Heylighen article. fascinating stuff, and the best description of memes that I've read. I guess I do worry about the emotional health of the global brain, though...
Posted by: etaoin on May 7, 2004 02:58 PM