III. Cloze (Questions 21-30) The word “meme” has been used in the New York Times Crossword 60 times since the puzzle’sinception in the 1940s, according to XWordInfo. __21__ it’s difficult to identify the first meme ever,the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins is credited with introducing the term in his 1976book, “The Selfish Gene.” In Mr. Dawkins’s original conception, a “meme” was analogous __22__a “phoneme,” the smallest unit of sound in speech, or a “morpheme,” the smallest meaningful subunitof a word. Kirby Conrod, a professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College, said. “I would explain theconcept of __23__ — a self-replicating chunk of information — by asking someone about an insidejoke they had with friends or an advertising jingle that’s been stuck in their head for 20 years,”Professor Conrod said. “That chunk of information, the joke or the jingle, self-replicates because wehumans like to share and repeat stuff. When we repeat the joke, or sing the jingle, that’s an instanceof the meme reproducing __24__ .” The word “meme” first appeared in the New York TimesCrossword in 1953 with the clue “Same: French.” Its __25__ recent appearance was on Dec. 24, 2021,with the clue “Something that gets passed around a lot.” Humans have used memes to communicatefor as long as they have used any symbolic system, Professor Conrod said. D. Andrew Price, the headof content at Memes.com, agreed. Mr. Dawkins merely “coined the term for something that’s existedliterally forever,” he said. “A meme is just an idea that rips through the public consciousness.”
【題組】21.
(A) After
(B) Although
(C) Because
(D) Before