Realia of dystopian world as a source of cultural memes

Abstract

The article analyzes the mechanisms through which fictional realia, also known as quasi-realia or irrealia (special lexical units that describe various aspects of a fictional world: its geography, ethnography, social political structure, material culture, etc.), create new cultural memes. Despite the controversial status of memetics, the concept of meme as a sustainable and self-replicating unit of information became widespread among various researchers. However, very little research has been carried out to draw connections between memes and fictional realia. Furthermore, few researchers pay attention to the study of fictional realia as a whole. We choose the genre of dystopia due to its prognostic and preventive functions. Trying to warn the reader about a future that is both undesirable and frightening to the vast majority of humanity, the author “infects” the reader with different ideas, which proliferate from the host’s mind and “infect” more and more people. «1984» by George Orwell, one of the most prominent dystopian novels of the twentieth century, is a perfect example of such proliferation of ideas: the concepts introduced by George Orwell became an integral part of various cultures and languages. The analysis of various headlines and quotes from English articles demonstrates how fictional realia propagate and assimilate in real culture and real language.

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