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- Volume 3, Issue 2, 2020
Internet Pragmatics - Volume 3, Issue 2, 2020
Volume 3, Issue 2, 2020
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Internet memes we live by (and die by)
Author(s): Chaoqun Xiepp.: 145–173 (29)More LessAbstractIn the internet age, memes are at once products and driving forces of social practices. A meme contains a memetic message and a meme output, and boasts, if guided by a pragmatic way of thinking, several features, including but not limited to salience, frequency, adaptability, argumentativity, sociality, embeddedness, embodiedness, locality, relativity, emotionality and dynamicity. The current global COVID-19 pandemic serves as a fitting and timely touchstone to testify how human beings are surrounded by numerous good and evil memes in the online world, and how internet memes, as can be seen from the illustration of two specific memes, namely, the ‘stay home, stay safe’ meme and the ‘wear a mask’ meme, are impacting human life-worlds, online and offline, with their transformative power, be it constructive or destructive. Moreover, researching how memes plays a decisive part in internet-mediated interaction provides a lens of insight through which ‘deep states’ of human nature of both self and others can be uncovered and through which what Nietzsche called “a revaluation of values” is possible.
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Stylistic humor across modalities
Author(s): Anna Piatapp.: 174–201 (28)More LessAbstractThis paper is concerned with ‘Classical Art Memes’, a category of internet memes that distinctively derives its visual input from classical and medieval art. I specifically show that humor in Classical Art Memes arises from incongruity among different stylistic varieties, namely a colloquial linguistic expression in the text and a classical-style artwork in the image. Given that stylistic incongruity cross-cuts modalities, I further argue that Classical Art Memes make a case for what I call ‘multimodal stylistic humor’. The analysis is based on a small corpus of when-memes, whereby the image complements a when-clause. The findings of the study suggest that humor in Classical Art Memes serves to convey affective meanings that emerge from the embodied affect in the image that is textually recontextualized in contemporary terms. Such meanings ultimately convey a critical commentary on knowable features of modern life.
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Memes and the media narrative
Author(s): Bradley E. Wigginspp.: 202–222 (21)More LessAbstractThis article presents the results of a critical discourse analysis of internet memes. This analysis considers the highly visual nature of internet memes situated in a context of meme-as-utterance prompting other remixed versions as memes-as-responses. Prior to the analysis an orientation to pragmatics as related to internet memes is presented. Following this is an overview of memes research and a necessary discussion of the role of media narratives in the construction and dissemination of internet memes. Finally, a series of memes tweeted in response to Nike’s inclusion of former National Football League player, Colin Kaepernick, in its Just Do It anniversary campaign, serves as the corpus of analysis.
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On the interaction of core and emergent common ground in Internet memes
Author(s): Elke Diedrichsenpp.: 223–259 (37)More LessAbstractInternet memes are meaningful objects of diverse shapes that spread across networks of mediated participation (term from Milner 2012: 10). The distribution and reception of memes bears aspects of communicative interaction, because memes establish usage conventions. This paper will be concerned with the pragmatics of Internet memes. Given that flexibility, novelty and originality are driving forces in meme culture, the question arises how traditional pragmatic notions like recipient design and common ground can be said to apply for the interaction with memes. Kecskes’ (2008, 2010, 2012, 2014; Kecskes and Zhang 2009) distinction between core common ground and emergent common ground will be discussed and put to use for an explanation of the complex interactive dynamics of Internet communication. This modern form of communication oscillates between reference to shared cultural contents and the establishment and perpetuation of conventions on the one hand, and the pursuit of originality on the other hand. This paper will demonstrate how memes can vary with respect to the degree to which they require core common ground or the generation of emergent common ground for their proper usage. The scale presented as a result of the discussion represents a continuum of the prevalence of semantics versus pragmatics involved in the usage and interpretation of memes.
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Exploring local meaning-making resources
Author(s): Yaqian Jiang and Camilla Vásquezpp.: 260–282 (23)More LessAbstractThis study examines various combinations of visual and textual meaning-making resources in a popular Chinese meme. The meme features an exogenous image – the grinning facial expression of a U.S. wrestler, D’Angelo Dinero – that has been recontextualized into numerous other visual texts, to create semiotic ensembles with local meanings, which are then distributed across Chinese social media platforms. We analyzed 60 of these image macros, and our findings show that local meanings are created when Dinero’s facial expression is blended with visual references to Chinese digital culture, Chinese popular culture, Chinese social class issues, Chinese politics, and Chinese institutions. The majority of textual elements in the image macros are Chinese; however, the handful of examples that also include other languages typically involve multilingual wordplay and carnivalesque themes. We argue that although the multivalency of the wrestlers’ facial expression invites interpretations of a wide range of affective meanings, an overarching rebellious or transgressive stance is consistent across individual texts.
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Internet memes as multilayered re-contextualization vehicles in lay-political online discourse
Author(s): Monika Kirner-Ludwigpp.: 283–320 (38)More LessAbstractIt is well established that the internet meme has come to represent a highly creative discursive device used to “facilitate the […] communication of one’s own political beliefs, attitudes and orientations” (Ross and Rivers 2017: 1). Although internet memes and political internet memes in particular have been addressed to many communicative situations such as participatory culture (e.g., Jenkins 2006; Shifman 2014; Theocharis 2015), one aspect that has not been paid enough attention to concerns the forms in which users refer to individual political figures and events in political memes. This being said, the present paper focuses on referring strategies (see Kirner-Ludwig and Zimmermann 2015; Kirner-Ludwig 2020) as employed in political internet memes on Reddit, including direct and indirect quotes, citations and allusions. A specific focus is going to be on such political internet memes that employ pop cultural and telecinematic reference points and recontextualize them from their original into new target contexts (see Bublitz 2015; Gruber 2019). As shall be shown, practices such as combining constructed speech elements into recontextualized elements in political internet memes create multiple intertextual references that may enhance visibility, saliency and, thus, the ‘lifetime’ of a political meme.
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Bradley E. Wiggins. The discursive power of memes in digital culture: Ideology, semiotics and intertextuality
Author(s): Elke Diedrichsenpp.: 321–326 (6)More LessThis article reviews The Discursive Power of Memes in Digital Culture: Ideology, Semiotics and Intertextuality
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Anastasia Denisova. Internet Memes and Society: Social, Cultural and Political Contexts
Author(s): Guangmin Lipp.: 327–331 (5)More LessThis article reviews Internet Memes and Society: Social, Cultural and Political Contexts
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