Abstract:
English abbreviations have been largely embedded into Chinese since they apply with the “principles of economy” in life, and they are of interest to researchers. By making an investigation into the data of Chinese advertisements embedded with English abbreviations from popular newspapers and based on the theory of memetics, the present paper hopes to find out the English abbreviations frequently used in the ads, discusses how some abbreviations become powerful memes and probes into their pragmatic effects, so as to provide the rationale for the existence of English abbreviations in Chinese from a brand perspective.