Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: The adaptation of Internet memes is an important practice in social media that is an excellent subject of investigation to explain (the instantiation of) multimodal constructions with regard to social-cognitive processes. In this article, we would like to plead for paying more attention to Internet memes as linguistic research object. By using a qualitative-quantitative corpus-pragmatic approach, we worked out the multimodal character of selected constructions being instantiated within adaptations of the so called Merkel-Meme (n=632). We discuss two constructions, which can only be thought of through the interplay of a pictorial component that shows a gesture and varying linguistic elements. This is on the one hand the construction [[so*adjektiv]AdjP+ Ausprägungsgrad anzeigende Armgeste] and on the other the construction [[so*artikel(adjektiv)nomen]NP+ Umfang anzeigende Armgeste]. Therefore, it becomes evident that the pictorial component influences the linguistic part of the Internet meme.
Authors: Lars Bülow, Marie-Luis Merten, Michael Johann
Institutions: University of Salzburg, Paderborn University, University of Passau
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2888923880