TY - JOUR
T1 - Internet memes as multimodal constructions
AU - Dancygier, Barbara
AU - Vandelanotte, Lieven
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding: The authors gratefully acknowledge the support provided by KU Leuven (Senior Fellowship, SF/16/004) which allowed Barbara Dancygier to carry out research at KU Leuven (September-December 2016) and which greatly facilitated our joint work on this project.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston 2017.
Copyright:
Copyright 2017 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2017/8/28
Y1 - 2017/8/28
N2 - This paper considers a range of so-called image macro Internet memes and describes them as emerging multimodal constructions relying as much on image as on text, and apportioning roles to images much like constructional slots, for instance to fill in a subject role in a subjectless clause, or even to provide the main clause content to a textually given when-clause. In addition to existing or partially altered linguistic constructions, many examples also rely on specific top text/bottom text division of labor, and crucially depend on frame metonymy, with limited formal means quickly cueing richly detailed frames (for instance by using iconic images). The popularity of memes, forming series and cycles of iterations and remixes, and their role in establishing and maintaining discourse communities seems to be driven by a need to express and reconstrue viewpoints, often starting from ideas, affects or stereotypes assumed to be intersubjectively shared with viewers, whose responses they solicit. This paper argues that a proper description of Internet memes of the type considered requires a construction grammar approach, complemented by an understanding of viewpoint dynamics in terms of a Discourse Viewpoint Space regulating the network of spaces and viewpoints.
AB - This paper considers a range of so-called image macro Internet memes and describes them as emerging multimodal constructions relying as much on image as on text, and apportioning roles to images much like constructional slots, for instance to fill in a subject role in a subjectless clause, or even to provide the main clause content to a textually given when-clause. In addition to existing or partially altered linguistic constructions, many examples also rely on specific top text/bottom text division of labor, and crucially depend on frame metonymy, with limited formal means quickly cueing richly detailed frames (for instance by using iconic images). The popularity of memes, forming series and cycles of iterations and remixes, and their role in establishing and maintaining discourse communities seems to be driven by a need to express and reconstrue viewpoints, often starting from ideas, affects or stereotypes assumed to be intersubjectively shared with viewers, whose responses they solicit. This paper argues that a proper description of Internet memes of the type considered requires a construction grammar approach, complemented by an understanding of viewpoint dynamics in terms of a Discourse Viewpoint Space regulating the network of spaces and viewpoints.
KW - constructions
KW - frame metonymy
KW - Internet memes
KW - intersubjectivity
KW - multimodality
KW - viewpoint
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85027863036&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1515/cog-2017-0074
DO - 10.1515/cog-2017-0074
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85027863036
SN - 0936-5907
VL - 28
SP - 565
EP - 598
JO - Cognitive Linguistics
JF - Cognitive Linguistics
IS - 3
ER -