'Memeingful' Language - Sociolinguistic Analysis on Internet Memes

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‘Memeingful’ Language

Sociolinguistic Analysis on Internet Memes

Mikko Kilpeläinen Master’s Thesis English Language and Culture University of Eastern Finland School of Humanities June 2021

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ITÄ-SUOMEN YLIOPISTO – UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN FINLAND Tiedekunt – Faculty

Philosophical Faculty

Osasto – School School of Humanities Tekijä – Author

Mikko Kilpeläinen Työn nimi – Title

‘Memeingful’ Language – Sociolinguistic Analysis on Internet Memes

Pääaine – Main subject Työn laji – Level Date Number of pages

English Language and Culture 8 June 2021 vii +88 Progradu -tutkielma X

Abstract

This thesis endeavours to categorise linguistic attributes utilised on contemporary internet memes. The objective is to examine a small-scale meme corpus gathered from various social media platforms between 2017 and 2020. The collected unit of observation consists of 360 linguistically modified internet memes, which are analysed structurally to identify their qualities of modifying normative language. The language of the memes is English because of status as an online lingua franca.

Language of internet memes is attached to the idea of three metafunctions of language – ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions – through which meanings arise. These metafunctions affect the way online language is used as they serve as the basis for all linguistic manifestations. Ideational metafunction means how the surrounding world is understood and interpreted. Interpersonal metafunction represents the way people interact with each other. Textual metafunction combines the two by forming meaningful discourse. (Halliday, 1985: xiii.)

The premises of critical discourse analysis state that discourses are interconnected with the historically formed norms and culture around social conducts (Fairclough, 1997: 75–76). Hence, the history of internet memes is examined during the elaboration of theoretical framework. The critical discourse analysis applied in the study takes into account sociological, which include power relations (Fairclough, 1992: 12), personal and groups identities in relation to social reality (ibid.: 26), and membering, which represents the sense of belonging within a group of like-minded individuals (Carbaugh, 2005: 126).

These entities signify fundamentally important characteristics of the contemporary online society of Web 2.0 (Shifman, 2013a: 365). The thesis combines critical discourse analysis, respecting the linguistic metafunctions with a structural analysis that takes into account the internet memes’ linguistically altered qualities. The analysis points out the future possibilities and constraints of linguistically altered memes and their effect on the society, language, and culture.

The hypothesis of this thesis is that the most prevalent categories of language alteration within the unit of observation are orthography, pragmatics, and phonology. Orthography can be viewed to represent explicit linguistic values while pragmatic memes have a tendency to incline towards the implicit linguistic principles, while phonological traits exert both, explicit qualities and/or implicit attributes.

Avainsanat – KeywordsInternet Memes, Language Alteration, Language Modification, Non-standard Language, Socio- linguistics, Memetics, Social Media, Critical Discourse Analysis, Web 2.0, Online Society

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ITÄ-SUOMEN YLIOPISTO – UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN FINLAND Tiedekunta – Faculty

Filosofinen tiedekunta

Osasto – School Humanistinen osasto Tekijä – Author

Mikko Kilpeläinen Työn nimi – Title

‘Memeingful’ Language – Sociolinguistic Analysis on Internet Memes Pääaine – Main Sucject Työn laji – Level Päivämäärä

– Date Sivumäärä Englannin kieli ja kulttuuri 8.6.2021 vii + 88

Pro gradu -tutkielma X

Tiivistelmä

Tutkielma pyrkii määrittämään kielitieteelliset luokat tämänhetkisten internet meemeissä käytetyn kielen ympärille. Ta- voitteena on analysoida pienimuotoinen meemikorpus, joka on kerätty erinäisiltä sosiaalisen median alustoilta vuosien 2017 ja 2020 välillä. Kerätty havaintoyksikkö koostuu 360 kielellisesti muokatusta internet meemistä, jotka analysoidaan strukturaalisesti havaiten meemien ominaisuudet, jotka muokkaavat normatiivista kieltä. Meemien kielenä toimii englanti sen omaaman verkon yleiskielen aseman takia.

Meemeissä käytetty kieli on liitoksissa kolmeen kielen metafunktioon: ideationaaliseen, interpersoonalliseen ja tekstuaa- liseen metafunktioon, joista merkitykset ovat lähtöisin. Nämä metafunktiot vaikuttavat verkossa käytettyyn kieleen, sillä ne ovat kaiken kielellisen ilmaisun perusta. Ideationaalinen metafunktio tarkoittaa, miten ympäröivä maailmaa ymmärre- tään ja tulkitaan. Interpersoonallinen metafunktio edustaa tapaa, jolla kommunikoida muiden ihmisten kanssa. Tekstuaa- linen metafunktio yhdistää molemmat muodostaen merkityksellistä diskurssia. (Halliday, 1985: xiii.)

Kriittisen diskurssianalyysin pohjalta ajateltuna, diskurssit ovat liitoksissa historiallisesti rakentuneisiin normeihin ja sosiaalisen kanssakäymisen vaikuttavaan kulttuuriin (Fairclough, 1997: 75–76). Siispä, internet meemien historia käydään läpi teoriaosiossa. Tutkielmassa käytetty kriittinen diskurssi analyysi ottaa huomioon sosiologiset piirteet, joihin kuuluu ideologiat ja valtasuhteet (Fairclough, 1992: 12), henkilö- ja ryhmäidentiteetit suhteutettuna sosiaaliseen todellisuuteen (ibid.: 26), ja osallistuvuus (Carbaugh, 2005: 126), joka kuvaa kuuluvuuden tunnetta samankaltaisten yksilöiden joukkoon.

Nämä kokonaisuudet kuvastavat huomattavan tärkeitä nykyaikaisen Web 2.0 verkkopohjaisen yhteiskunnan ominaisuuksia (Shifman, 2013a: 365). Tutkielma yhdistää kriittisen diskurssianalyysin, joka ottaa huomioon lingvistiset metafunktiot, ja rakenteellisen analyysin, joka huomauttaa internet meemien kielellisen muuntelun ominaisuuksia. Analyysi ilmaisee kielellisesti muunneltujen internet meemien ja niiden luomien yhteiskuntaan, kulttuuriin ja kieleen vaikuttavien tekijöiden mahdollisuudet ja rajoitukset.

Tutkielman hypoteesina toimii kirjoitusasullisten, pragmaattisten ja fonologisten muunnelmien omaavien internet meemien hallitsevuus havaintoyksikössä. Kirjoitusasu voidaan nähdä omaavan eksplisiittisiä ominaisuuksia, kun taas prag- maattiset instanssit omaavat paremminkin taipumuksen kallistua implisiittisiin periaatteisiin, kun taas fonologiset ominaisuudet edustavat molempia, eksplisiittisiä ja/tai implisiittisisiä näkökohtia.

Avainsanat – Keywords Internet meemit, kielen muuntelu, kielen muokkaus, epästandardi kieli, sosiolingvistiikka, me- metiikka, sosiaalinen media, kriittinen diskurssi analyysi, Web 2.0, verkkoyhteiskunta

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Acknowledgements

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the deterministic qualities of this simulation we populate. I could not have conducted my research if the world was any different.

In addition, I am extremely grateful for the guidance of Dr. Michael Pace-Sigge and Dr.

Mikko Laitinen. I am glad that Dr. Laitinen gave me the opportunity to research such an ex- tensive online phenomenon as internet memes. The academic pressure and council I received from him was put into perspective in an appropriate manner. In other words, he gave me little to no pressure, which, in the end, helped in the elaboration of my thesis. Even more, I would

like to appreciate the input of Dr. Pace-Sigge. His suggestions general help concerning the intricacies of my thesis were invaluable during the writing process of my thesis.

I would also like to thank, wherever or whoever you may be, the creators of the memes I used as the research material on the analysis. It was a pleasure conducting research on an entity

that interest me personally.

Thx fam, Mikko Kilpeläinen,

8/6/2021, Joensuu

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List of Abbreviations

AIM AOL Instant Messenger

BBSes Bulletin Board System

BCNU Be Seeing You

BDSM Bondage, Domination, Submission, & Masochism; Beautiful Dogs Surrounding Me

COVID-19 Corona Virus

CU L8TR See You Later

DTF Down To Fuck; Due to The Fact

EFL English as a Foreign Language

ESL English as a Second Language

FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation

ICU Intensive Care Unit

ILYBIAGESLYB I Love You Bitch, I Ain’t Gonna Ever Stop Loving You Biiitch

IRC Internet Relay Chat

LOL Laughing Out Loud

MSN Microsoft Network

MUDs Multi-User Dungeon

NASDAQ National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations

OED Oxford English Dictionary

OMG Oh My God

UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization UNICEF United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund; The United

Nations Children's Fund

WWF World Wildlife Fund; World Wide Fund for Nature

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Figure 1. Assassination chain

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1. Introduction

Figure 1 introduces an internet meme that summarises linguistics in a humoristic yet fitting manner. It determines the origins of language and linguistics with the application of a meme that embodies an assassination chain that demonstrates the interconnectedness of various fields of science. Prior to the contemporary reputation and popularity of internet memes, they have been lurking on the Internet, in a form or another, for a relatively long time. The onset of meme culture or the first internet meme, which was actually meant as a counter-meme, has been recognised as Godwin’s law. It originates in the discussion board, Usenet. The year is 1990 and Godwin’s law begins to refer to the increased probability of a reference to Hitler or the Nazis as the duration of the discussion prolongs (McCulloch, 2019: 239; Know Your Meme: Godwin’s law). Whoever mentions them has inadvertently ended the discussion in which they were partaking and simultaneously lost any ongoing arguments (Know Your Meme: Godwin’s law). It is quite ironic that they are both mentioned in the first paragraph of this thesis, thus, figuratively ending the research before it even begins.

Internet memes have had substantial amount of time to develop from an idea-based concords like Godwin’s law into numerous types of concrete and visual memes. They have currently attained an extensively popular status as the informant-jokester of the Internet and a refuge from the pains of regular life. Moreover, they are notorious for making people laugh and creating amusement by expressing a variety of ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and opinions associated with the current social phenomena of the world (Grundlingh, 2017: 13; Milner, 2012: 12). Da- vison (2012: 122) defined the concept of an internet meme in his paper ‘The Language of Internet Memes’ as ‘a piece of culture, typically a joke, which gains influence through online transmission’. Similarly, Knobel and Lankshear (2007: 209) establish that humour is an essen- tial component in achieving popular memetic transmission. Internet memes may bear topics that range from references to global politics, movies, puns, seemingly nonsensical humour or, as in the example, linguistics. In addition to the applied metalinguistics in Figure 1, internet memes may involve linguistic alteration or non-standard language usage that violate normative rules of English. However, the contemporary memescape may be considered as vast and varied as the people making and reading them. The assassination chain in Figure 1 is just the tip of the iceberg.

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The definition of a meme itself had already been established well before the term’s usage in the sense of an internet meme. The popular legacy of the meme dates to the year 1976 when an evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins created a cultural replicator that would behave similar to a gene. The concept of a meme was abbreviated from the Greek word, mimeme, ‘to imitate’, making it rhyme with its genetic counterpart, gene, to establish the practical similitude between the two (Dawkins, 1976/2016: 249). However, there had been multiple attempts to create a similar term. For example, a century earlier, an Austrian sociologist Ewald Hering coined a similar term from the Greek word mneme, ‘memory’ (Shifman, 2013a: 363). In addition, numerous scholars including William James, Gabriel de Tarde, Richard Semon, Alfred Lotka, Jacques Monod, Karl Popper, André Siegfried, and Stephen Toulmin had worked on the matter before Dawkins provided a “simple but neologistic name, ‘memes,’ which sticks in the memory” (Sperber, 1998: 1475). The definition represents the cultural transmission of ‘tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes, fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches’ (ibid: 250);

a meme represents an embodiment of literally anything that has the potential to be imitated or replicated (Dennett, 1995: 342). Apparently, the other definitions did not have enough memetic value for it to catch on as Dawkins’ definition had had.

When online communication became accessible for an increasing number of people, and the online community had started to form, the term, meme, inadvertently took its place on the Internet that was not necessarily designed for it but in which it fit exceptionally well. It began representing expressively peculiar images, gifs (short, animated images), and short videos that circulate the Internet. In colloquial conversation, they are simply referred to as memes, but for the sake of clarity, the term has been augmented with the specifying word, internet, to differ- entiate it from its original definition. An internet meme is as versatile as the original version intended. That is, an internet meme can be referred to represent virtually anything regardless of its form, given that it grows popular online, or in other words, goes viral, just as Dawkins described a meme to behave (see Dawkins, 1976/2016: 249-250). However, Shifman (2011:

190) points out the difference between virality and memetic attributes by emphasising that memetic entities involve a prerequisite of user interaction, which results in the alteration of the contents through imitation during their propagation unlike with what is considered viral.

Language is a viable component of internet memes and acts as the medium of communicating with other people and conveying humour at the same time. For example, Figures 2 through 6, consist of images that are accompanied by text. Consequently, these types of internet memes have been conceptualised as image macros and are the most common type of an internet meme

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Figure 4. Snek Figure 3. Doge

Figure 5. Rage Guy Figure 2. Lolcat

(Grundlingh, 2017: 9; Milner 2012: 89). The alteration of the habitual language by non-standard or unconventional forms, mixed with contextual ambiguity, for instance, represent viable options for producing humour (see Blake, 2007). The examples in Figures 2–6 represent internet memes from the start of the 21^st century. The language on them may be considered to violate the normative rules of English. Often, memes may express their non-standard language usage through orthographic erroneousness and syntactic alteration (Know Your Meme, McCulloch, 2014a). However, the applied language on internet memes can be seen to have evolved into embodying a range of modified linguistic aspects that do not rely solely on orthographic or syntactic alteration. That is, the linguistic forms found in contemporary internet memes have potentially evolved into illustrating more reformed methods of linguistic alteration in a more varied memetic environment.

In 1982, Dawkins further developed his theory on memes, and Milner (2012: 10) refers to his thoughts and indicates that language is, in fact, a memeplex that consists of countless micro- level memes. That is, a language’s lexicon, for instance, forms a mountain of innumerable tiny memes that have been fortified in a language. Some words may refer to a certain type of flow- ers, others to animals, or food. Moreover, certain words may be more recurrent in certain

Figure 6. Y U NO guy

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cultures than others. Cultures that encounter a lot of snow or swamps, for example, may have more words to describe their different qualities. In addition, there are words that are not merely nouns. They may act as various agents in a language to indicate manner, mode, case, and tense, for instance. Language starts to take its form once these micro-memes are put together in a certain, culturally normative manner so that the outcome entails numerous memes that form the memeplex. In other words, this memeplex, which is habitually referred to as language, consists of the combined elements of various culturally bound memes of lexicon in an en- trenched word order and conjugation that form the syntax and grammar of a language (see De Saussure, 1916/2018: 12). It might be taken for granted, yet it has been pointed out by numerous scholars, such as Hudson (1980: 84), Halliday (2007: 67), Fairclough (1997: 75-76), and Fuchs (2003/2021: 6) referring to Engels, that language and culture are highly interconnected and can be seen to emit a variety of cultural qualities of the society to which it belongs or from which it originates. This may be viewed as linguistic determinism, which is believed to affect the thought process and ‘conception of reality [of individuals] in a language community’

(Brown, 1957: 1). For example, cultures affect the way the syntax and grammar of a language have evolved to behave. That is, language and culture together can, in fact, have an effect on the perception of time and how it is perceived and expressed in addition to the differences in lexicon, case, mode, and tone (e.g., English vs. Russian vs. French).

Memetics and the linguistic study of internet memes have become current and rapidly growing fields of academic study. Internet memes and their language have been objects of doctoral dissertations, master’s theses, bachelor’s theses, numerous books, and articles. Researchers and scholars have focused on various aspects of the memetic spectrum, including, but not limited to general linguistics, pragmatics, semiotics, social identity, and the history of memes.

Grundlingh (2017), for instance, investigates internet memes according to the principles of speech acts. She, analyses and discusses various characteristics of memes to point out that they respect the rules of speech acts and can thus be categorised according to them within online social conduct. Milner (2012), instead, focuses on various social identities that are spread and exerted by internet memes. He utilises a critical discourse analysis and finds out that politically induced memes make use of polyvocality to establish multiple possible interpretations according to the background knowledge. Yus (2018) views the matter more personally by concentrat- ing on social media users’ self-concept, self-awareness, overall identity, and group identities.

He takes into account the different stages of sharing internet memes and finds out that the

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successfulness of the sharing process of a meme is closely related to the individuals’ identity and the various group identities with which the individuals are involved, e.g., Facebook, Red- dit. Miltner (2014) looks into the linguistic characteristics of a specific meme, LOLcats, which involves images of cats accompanied by non-standard language that violates the rules of orthography, syntax, and grammar. She concludes that LOLcats may be experienced as powerful instruments in the formation of social identities in spite of initially seeming essentially insig- nificant. De la Rosa-Carrillo (2015) examines internet memes in his doctoral dissertation ‘On the Language of Internet Memes’. Although the name of the dissertation implies linguistics of internet memes being the main object of examination, it only touches expressive and vernacular language use in memes and concludes that language can also be emitted with emojis or images that do not include text. Furthermore, he argues that since internet memes are created and shared by various online communities, they can be considered as communal property for eve- ryone to use. Finally, he emphasises that memes should be used with an increased quantity and emphasis in the education of children. The linguistic expectations of De la Rosa-Carrillo’s dissertation, however, do not meet with its conclusions. The conclusions are relatively disorgan- ised and implies that the linguistic attributes of internet memes are a valid tool in teaching arts- based subjects to children and that the language of internet memes should be researched more thoroughly.

The aim of this thesis is to categorise linguistically implicit and explicit internet memes according to their linguistic attributes. Another aspiration is to analyse the sociolinguistic effects that the language revolving around contemporary internet memes might entail. The research method is to analyse a set of 360 internet memes that have been gathered from several social media platforms and personal social media feeds during 2017-2020. The material consists mainly of image macros, which include an image, or a set of images accompanied by text.

However, there may be instances that do not include images at all, or conversely, instances that are deprived of text altogether. In the former case, the text may feature linguistically expressive quotes, puns, tweets, comments or online discussions in the form of screen captures (see Milner, 2012: 85). The latter can be referred to as reaction shots. That is, images act vicari- ously as the only linguistic agent and utilises cultural implicature to establish the intended message or reaction during an online conversation involving communication through internet memes (Eco, 1979: 7; Shifman, 2013b: 96). The omission of language, in this case, has been regarded as language alteration because of the similitude of pictograms and ideograms, serving

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as language in the form of Egyptian hieroglyphs, opposed to mere images on the Internet, acting as linguistic vehicles, relaying various cultural cues (see Yule, 2010: 212-213).

The research questions of this thesis are the following:

(1) how do the contemporary internet memes make use of language modification, (2) are there implications of significantly marked forms of language variation

(3) what kinds of sociolinguistic possibilities and constraints are there for linguistically altered internet memes.

The hypothesis of this thesis is that the most prevalent categories of language alteration within the unit of observation are orthography, pragmatics, and phonology. Orthography can be viewed to represent explicit linguistic values while pragmatic memes have a tendency to incline towards the implicit linguistic principles, flouting contextual information and relation (see Grice, 1975: 43-45). Phonological aspects, however, may exert both, explicit qualities, which reformulate non-standard text to speech (see Grundlingh, 2017) and implicit attributes similar to pragmatics and paronomasia, and are connected to the majority of the internet memes within the unit of observation. In the process of analysis, Know Your Meme (www.knowyour- meme.com), an Internet encyclopaedia of memes, is utilised to determine the memes’ origin and fundamental characteristics. The benefit of using an online database dedicated on the origins and key credentials of internet memes is to acquire the most accurate base information on internet memes from a monitored source.

The thesis is constructed in the following way. There are three theory sections. The first theory section covers the history of internet memes and online language. The second, establishes sociolinguistic and memetic aspects reflected on internet memes. The third, elaborates the intricacies of social media and humour. After these, there is a section that explains the re- search material and methods used in the analysis. Within this section there is also a short review on the legislature revolving around internet memes and a justification for the research material in use. Subsequently, the material is analysed quantitatively to find out the estimated frequency of the methods of altering the normative language. In addition, the material is also analysed qualitatively to point the applied linguistic variation on the memes. They are then reflected on the sociolinguistic of the online society and online social conduct. After the analysis, the matters are the discussed according to the linguistic principles and sociolinguistic

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characteristics, discovered during the theory sections and the analysis. The conclusion of this thesis ties the results and the discussion together, forming an inductive deduction on the future of internet memes. The conclusion also features the restraints of this study and remarks for possible future inquiries on the matter.

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2. History of Internet Memes

The speed of propagation that has made internet memes such a huge phenomenon has primarily been possible because of the world-wide society, more commonly known as The Internet.

People log on and off with ease and frequently search for funny situational images or just happen to see a meme or two by chance. It has not always been like this. Internet memes and their means of distribution have gone through an evolution, adapting to the available technology.

McCulloch (2019: 66, 68-69, 78-80, 83, 94, 100) explains the evolution of social media platforms categorising them according to their time frame:

Table 1. Social media services, 1980-2021

emails Usenet IRC BBSes MUDs

1980s and 1990s

: a means or system for transmitting messages electronically (as between computers on a network)

: an early non-centralized computer network for the discussion of particular topics and the sharing of files via newsgroups.

: an international computer network of Internet servers, using its own protocol through which individual users can hold real-time online conversations.

: a Bulletin Board System;

software that allows users to leave messages and access information of general interest

: a multiplayer real-time virtual world, usually text- based. MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, player versus player, interactive fiction, and online chat.

AIM MSN Messenger MySpace

1990s and early 2000s

: an instant messaging and presence computer program created by AOL, which used the proprietary OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol to allow registered users to communicate in real time

: an instant messaging service where it is possible to sent private instant messages to friends or within certain groups of people

: a social networking site that focuses on music, movies, celebrities and games. It enables members to create a blog, share music, videos and photos and communicate via instant messaging and email

Facebook Twitter Youtube

Mid-2000s

: an online social networking website where people can create profiles, share information such as photos and quotes about themselves, and respond or link to the information posted by others

Twitter is a free social networking microblogging service that allows registered members to broadcast short posts called tweets

YouTube is a video sharing service that allows users to watch videos posted by other users and upload videos of their own

Instagram Snapchat Whatsapp

Late 2000s and 2010s

Instagram is a free, online photo-sharing application and social network platform that was acquired by Facebook in 2012

Snapchat is a mobile app that allows users to send and receive "self- destructing" photos and videos

WhatsApp Messenger is a cross-platform instant messaging application that allows iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone and Nokia smartphone users to exchange text, image, video and audio messages for free

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Along with new possibilities, people have had the opportunity to greatly expand the memescape. For instance, the new technological advancements at the start of the 21^st century increased the online variety of personal photos and pet photos to be used as meme templates (Börzsei, 2013: 15). Moreover, the emergence of photoshopping image manipulation has been an in- creasingly prominent part of making internet memes (De la Rosa-Carrillo, 2015: 58) (see Fig- ure 7).

Before diving into the deep end, however, the earliest internet memes need to be accounted for.

Davison (2012: 124) argues that early emoticons such as :-), as memes in their original sense.

Technically, they might be argued to embody the earliest types of internet memes, since they are vehicles of expressing emotion, and thus, encouraging recipients to experience the appropriate emotion as well – laughter, for example ( :-D ). Even so, the earliest accepted introduc- tions to internet memes may bear numerous similarities to the contemporary internet memes yet, their format might be different because of the unsophisticated technology available at the time of the first appearances of memes. The idea, however, has remains essentially the same.

In fact, one of the oldest viral internet memes that resemble current internet memes is Baby Cha-Cha-Cha also known as Dancing Baby created by a CGI software, Kinetix Character Studio, in 1996 (Know Your Meme: Dancing Baby; Figure 8). Dancing Baby is in video format, and it is dancing to the intro of the song, ‘Hooked on a Feeling’, performed by a Swedish rock band Blue Swede. Dancing Baby received multiple worldwide adaptations and

Figure 7. Photoshopped crossover meme

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Figure 9. Zero Wing Figure 8. Baby Cha-Cha-Cha/Dancing Baby

modifications including Kung Fu Baby, Rasta Baby and Samurai baby. Another example of a relatively old meme is the still image of a SEGA Mega Drive game, Zero Wing (1998), which featured a mistranslated phrase, ‘CATS: All your base are belong to us’ (ibid.: Zero Wing), (Figure 9). Although the syntactically erroneous phrase is a mistranslation of the orig- inally purposed phrase, ‘all of your bases are now under our control’, it can be considered one of the first language alternating. According to Davison (2012: 125-126), yet another specimen of an early internet meme is Hampster Dance (Figure 10). In consonance with Know Your Meme, Hampster Dance features rows of dancing hampsters in the format of short, animated images, GIFs. The meme features a sped-up version of the song “Whistle Stop” by Roger Mil- ler.

Internet memes may utilise various aspects of language just as seen in the examples thus far.

They can also, for example, spread internet slang, which originates in the hacker slang of the Jargon File, updated 1975 onward until the end of 2003 (McCulloch, 2019: 71). Internet slang can be regarded as a result of efficiency since it reduces the keystrokes required to type the same message (ibid: 8). McCulloch (ibid: 11) recounts the usefulness of acronyms in a written form of a language, such as UNESCO for ‘United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’, or UNICEF for ‘United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund’, or

Figure 10. Hampster Dance

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NASDAQ for ‘National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations’, and it habit- ually holds true with spoken efficiency except, for example, WWF, which is spoken more effi- ciently by uttering ‘World Wildlife Fund’. The use of abbreviations may also be due to the fact that they are so frequent that it actually pays off to abbreviate them and they are easy to re- member because of their regularity (ibid: 58). Ironically, ‘due to the fact’ could be abbreviated as DTF within these particular circumstances. What is more, instances like LOL for ‘laughing out loud’ and OMG for ‘oh my god’ date back to 1990, where the rise of contemporary social acronyms can be traced (ibid: 72). In addition, there are various other acronyms still used today including but not limited to BRB, ‘Be Right Back’, BCNU, ‘be seeing you’, and CU L8TR, ‘see you later’ (ibid). Clearly, they take in to account the phonological qualities of single letters and numbers. It appears that the ‘internet people’, as McCulloch (2019: 63-108) defined them, or netizens, who use the Internet have had their own sense of a written dialect that has caught on and become popular amongst them and beyond.

In addition to social acronyms, various language variants such as 1337speak, lolspeak, and doge-speak have had their way of becoming popular on the Internet. These three language variants might seem sporadic or nowadays even obsolete, yet they have left their mark on the internet language. 1337speak (McCulloch, 2019: 125), which replaced letters with their corre- sponding look-alike numbers: ‘1 4m l33t h4x0r!’ (ibid). This is a valid example of orthographic change in online communication. Consequently, the orthographic changes evolved with LOL- cats (Figures 2 & 12) from 2006 onward (Lefler, 2011: 1; Know Your Meme: LOLcats), ex- pressing syntactic changes in addition to the variation of the habitual orthography of English (Figure 12). Lolspeak became internet phenomenon, ‘a form of broken English’ used by a devoted online community using lolspeak as a means of communication; the community members shun anyone who tries to use habitual language variants in their discussion forums (Lefler, 2011: 1-3, 16, Know Your Meme: LOLcats). The orthographic and syntactic differences between lolspeak and normative English are easily noticeable, but both are mutually intelligible so, instead of a different language, Lefler supposes lolspeak as a register of English (ibid: 21) relating to the use of lolspeak within the community (see also Halliday, 2007: 7). However, it lolspeak could also be seen as a distinct variety of English such as various regional varieties like Scottish or Appalachian English. The primary ‘region’ of lolspeak just happens to be of intangible quality that does not recognise habitual dialect boundaries. Tangent to the peculiar variant of English used by cat fans, McCulloch (2014a) recounts the dog-lover variant, which is called, doge-speak (Know Your Meme: Doge; cf. Figures 2 & 17). It tends to bend similar

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conventions to lolspeak, but their linguistic alterations of syntax and orthography cannot be seen as interchangeable (ibid.).

It appears animals and non-standard language use are closely linked together. It would seem that McCulloch’s (2019: 65) reference to Mufwene’s ‘founder effect’, which states that ‘the earliest members of a speech community exert a disproportionate influence on how it develops later’, holds effectively true. Sure, the online premises might be rather different to traditional speech communities. However, it needs to be stated that internet memes can be regarded as speech acts according to Grundlingh’s study (2017). This would suggest that the earliest instances of language variation on internet memes must have had a substantial effect on how the Internet slang and the language of internet memes evolved. Similar to the linguistic founder effect, the format of Internet memes might be seen to have evolved in a similar manner.

Shifman (2014: 342) points out that although there is an unlimited supply of internet memes, the quantity of standard memes that have become popular so that they are ‘used by the internet community as a whole’, is quite limited. Soon after Doge and LOLcats (Figure 2, 3, 11), meme

Figure 11. Lolcat 2 Figure 12. Rage comics 2

Figure 14. Advice Animals: Philo- soraptor 2

Figure 13. Advice Animals: Philo- soraptor 1

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formats like Rage Comics, Advice Animals, and memes embodying various vivid facial ex- pressions of people became essentially popular (Know Your Meme: Rage Comics; Advice An- imals; Dolan; see Figures 12, 13, & 14).

Dennett (1995: 345) continues to point out, that memes resemble genetic evolution by being

‘susceptible to the environmental pressure while propagating and mutating generationally’.

Thus, memes tend to mirror and take into account the contemporary events of the world. For example, they have a tendency of satirising political events, and, according to Milner, have the ability to ‘combine pop and political in unique ways’ (2012: 46-47). From a different stand- point, several memes focus on elevating non-prescriptive forms of language that do not conform to the set norms of language. In a way, these sorts of memes incorporate a relevant sociolinguistic factor. Their deficit qualities of language would suggest that they are ridiculed because of their unnatural, ‘tarded’ nature (see Figure 15). Nevertheless, they might also be used as a means of conveying the incoherent dispositions that people may be experiencing just as McCulloch (2014b) explained in her online thread focusing briefly on the language of internet memes. Moreover, Bucholtz and Hall (2005: 587) indicate that individual’s language usage may reflect the internal mental state and identity of individuals and communities. This linguistic incoherence reflected on memes might also have the potential to be found relatable, funny or humane, which are factors that may improve the reception of said memes and their language.

In principle, it also is possible to refer to and use the intricate form of language found on internet memes even within the quotidian offline social conducts. However, Sperber (1996: 32) recounts that oral transmission of memes has ‘a low reliable means of reproduction and creates low fidelity copies’, because this kind of application might not even be noticeable for individuals with no background knowledge.

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The popularity of certain internet memes might be either brief or long-lasting. Wang et al.

(2019), for example, utilise human behaviour models combined with mathematical induction to come up with a general approximate to the internet memes’ longevity, death, and possible rebirth or remodelling. They conclude that internet memes’ popularity decreases over time and is bound to the memes’ longevity factor in addition to Wang’s meme popularity model. The popularity of lolspeak, for example, can be seen to slightly diverge from the model of meme popularity because of its long-term popularity. Habitually, it might be noticed that internet memes of a certain time period might not be considered as common or popular in the other, since Le temps détruit tout, ‘time destroys all things’ (Irréversible, 2002). However, memes might get overwritten, or replicated and reformulated as new instances even after a long time (Wang et al., 2019: 4; see also De la Rosa-Carrillo, 2015, 18-21; Díaz, 2013: 85).

Figure 15. Tarded Doge

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3. Sociolinguistics and Memetics

In linguistics, meanings of language have been studied according to the structures of language.

For instance, morphemes are used as a part of the analysis for syntax. However, Halliday suggests a reverse approach in which meanings themselves represent the building blocks of language (Halliday, 1985: xiv). However, Hallidayan model is contested by normative grammar- ians when looking at non-standard language usage at the expense of normativity and established rules. Nevertheless, Halliday emphasises that the role of language is to act as a means of communication through the features of language, which include meaning as a central ele- ment. He emphasises that the role of language is to behave according to the systemic-functional language theory, which embodies the attachment of language to the three linguistic metafunctions. These metafunctions are the ideational, interpersonal and textual metafunction, from which the notions of all meaning arise, and which can be seen to serve as the basis for all linguistic manifestations (cf. Figure 16). The ideational metafunction means how the sur- rounding world is understood and interpreted. The interpersonal metafunction represents the way people interact with each other. The textual metafunction refers to the formation of meaningful discourse according to the two previous metafunctions. (Halliday, 1985: xiii; see also Thompson, 2013: 28-29). In addition, Thompson (2013: 38-39) suggests that there is also a fourth distinctive metafunction called the logical metafunction, which establishes the con- nections that are made between the received messages.

Figure 16. Wait it's all pragmatics? Always has been

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Systemic-functional language theory affects language usage according to the various possible linguistic choices within social conducts. The possible choices are primordially influenced by the environment, which act both as a resource and a constraint when making linguistic choices.

(Halliday, 1985: xxvi – xxvii; Thompson, 2013: 30-31). That is, the four metafunctions identify the characteristics of the contemporary world and simultaneously describe the interaction with other language users. From a sociological point of view, they therefore produce a social, and a common reality, representing linguistic choices which are dependent on the circumstances and contexts surrounding them. The online reality and the language varieties it withholds are thus, affected by the accepted history of both, the online and offline worlds. Moreover, linguistic choices depend on the language users, their conceptions of reality, and the linguistic prefer- ences they apply online.

According to the descriptivist perspective, language change is constant, inevitable, and a natu- ral part of any language (Curzan, 2014: 1). From the prescriptivist point of view, which promotes the correct, yet conservative forms of language and endeavours to stop language change (Curzan, 2015: 1-4, 13), internet memes’ linguistic variation is often viewed violating the normative rules of language. Language change, or language corruption, as Thompson (1992: 25) expresses it, can be said to originate in imitation of altered linguistic forms. In other words, if certain forms of language were preferred and utilised by an individual’s closest friends and family, they may end up adopting at least parts of their idiolect. If this same idiolect would evolve to be used assertively by a powerful figure or a certain quarter of the populace to be employed in a specific way in a certain context, people would probably be more amiable to adopt and imitate the new linguistic norm to conform to the set conventions (see Curzan, 2014:

8). The prescribed normative language would then go through standardisation and codification to ensure its continuity (ibid: 30). For example, normative English has been the prescribed by prestigious and influential quarters of society and maintained with literature, academia, and law, for instance, to ensure the highest practicality of social and academic conduct and to min- imise the number of possible misunderstandings of an intended message (Curzan, 2014: 25).

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The imitation process of language change resembles the propagation of an internet meme. Even the term, meme, had been coined from the Greek word, mimeme, ‘to imitate’. Because of the viral nature of memes, they can be seen to reach a wide online audience on various social media platforms in a short period of time, spreading jokes, ideas, and potentially unconventional language. These memetic linguistic anomalies and slang that are spread in the virtual society are prone to find hosts from people, who may end up spreading them even offline. In other words, the ‘corrupt’ language may get adopted by the in-group members of meme communities and given the chance, they might continue to ‘contaminate’ non-in-group members’ brains as par- asites (cf. Dennett, 1995: 365). Intentionally or not, the meme community is, in fact, prescrib- ing language to fit their purposes, usually striving for humoristic outcomes.

Milroy and Milroy’s (1985: 365-366) paper shows that weak social ties spread linguistic innovation between groups of people in the most efficient manner. They also point out that early adopters, who ‘occupy a central position in the network [of people]’ (ibid. 369), are an integral part in the spreading of linguistic innovation (ibid. 367-368). Internet memes make prime can- didates for the transmission of linguistic variation and change. That is, their spread happens primarily through online communication on various social media platforms that entail a lot of weak social ties between various groups of people (see McCulloch, 2019: 39). However, there may also be strong ties involved within the online society as well as in the offline world behind the online scenes. In other words, the offline world might provide inspiration and invoke alter- native linguistic forms that may then get propagated by internet memes (ibid.). Also, the surrounding people and power relations have a substantial effect on the peoples’ attitudes towards a certain language variety (ibid: 41, 43, Curzan, 2015: 39). In online contexts, cohorts of people, who are engaged in online social conducts, are collectively shaping the way language is used online. Moreover, the possible input of social influencers may be substantial since they can be regarded to have a relatively powerful position. In fact, the extent to which an internet meme spreads and how popular it grows might indicate the employed language’s likability and acceptability. Additionally, if the matter were looked at from the point of view of linguistic standardisation, internet memes themselves seem to have influence over their followers and readers because they may change the way people use language online. For example, online communication tends to favour efficiency and swiftness. Hence, the employment of social acronyms has become one of the prescribed variants on the internet since it requires the least time and effort in the form of the fewest keystrokes needed (McCulloch, 2019: 8-12). According to

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one of the principles of language standardization expressed by Curzan (2014: 29), the prescribed language variety is maintained by utilizing it in literature and spoken environments. In this case, the language is utilised social acronyms are widely used in written format, but they have slid into the spoken language as well (e.g. LOL, OMG, SMH, TBH to mention a few).

Table 2. Characteristics of successful cultural transmission

Longevity states the amount of time the replicator is able to survive.

Fecundity dictates the speed at which copies can be produced.

Copying-fidelity refers to the accuracy of the replication process when copies are created given that every time a copy is made, there may be a slight deviation from the original.

Dawkins (1976/2016: 251-252; see table 2) explains the characteristics of successful cultural transmission, which entails three factors. The first is called longevity, which states the amount of time the replicator is able to survive (ibid.). The second one concerns the meme’s fecundity, which dictates the speed at which copies can be produced (ibid.). Lastly, copying-fidelity refers to the accuracy of the replication process when copies are created given that every time a copy is made, there may be a slight deviation from the original (ibid.). The mutation of a meme can happen in a few ways. There may be multiple variations of a certain meme, which is “filled in by different contents” (He, 2008: 72). To further assimilate memetics into biology, these types of instances could be referred to as phenotypes (ibid: 72, 74), (see Figures 17 & 18). In fact, many of the iconic memes have various pieces of text alongside the same image or set of images. Conversely, a fundamental idea of a meme can be conveyed through diverse set of memes. These could be referred to as genotypes (ibid), (see Figures 18 & 19). The images might have also been slightly modified to incorporate different points of view or characteristics of other memes or images as is the case with the meme template in Figures 7 and 25, for in- stnace. Epidemiology can be regarded as a prominent part in the propagation of meme as Sper- ber (1996: 57-58) suggests that the propagation of memes may happen (a) vertically passed on over generations, as is the case with genes, or (b) horizontally across a certain segment of population, from person to person similar to viruses (see also Blute, 2005: 223-224). Díaz (2013: 88) recounts that memes tend to get propagated according to the latter inclination.

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Figure 18. Galaxy Brain variant 2

Figure 17. Galaxy Brain variant 1 Figure 19. A Fellow Man of Culture

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4. Social Media and Humour

The Internet and social media have risen to represent various equivalents of habitual offline society. Currently, it is possible to work mainly online, and many spend their free time online after work. User-created content, sociability and sharing are factors that have become central during the contemporary Web 2.0 era (Shifman, 2013a: 365). Smart Insights provides the number of Internet users, which adds up to approximately 4.66 billion people worldwide and is only growing (Chaffey, 2021). Chaffey (ibid.) continues that a study conducted by Global WebIn- dex shows that 53.6% of the world’s population uses social media. The rise of social media networks has facilitated the circulation of memes. Due to the immense number of internet memes and the speed of propagation that the social media platforms of the Web 2.0 provide, it could be stated that nearly anyone who has access to the Internet has seen an internet meme of a sort – over a half of the Earth’s population, that is. These numbers might give an accountable piece of evidence on the extent of internet memes’ propagation.

There are multiple social media platforms on which internet memes can be shared. They include 4chan, Reddit, Tumblr, Imgur, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Whatsapp, and Snapchat. Figure 20 shows the worldwide distribution of social media users according to platform. Currently, Facebook appears to be the most popular social media platform (Figure 20). Additionally, Figure 21 depicts the monthly active Facebook users. Wiggins and Bowers (2014: 5) suggest that nearly anyone who uses Facebook tends to see memes on a daily basis.

Furthermore, 75 per cent of 13–35-year-olds share memes, and the percentage is even higher (79%) when looked at the younger age group of 13–17-year-olds (YPulse, 2019). This would suggest that Facebook cannot be seen as the widest memetic highway, and that it is notable that younger population, Gen Z, and millennials, are more familiar with internet memes since they seem to be more involved with other social media platforms alongside Facebook. Contempo- rarily, Instagram, for example, is more suitable for the distribution of memes because of its image-based posts. In fact, Figure 23 indicates that users of Instagram are essentially young;

over two thirds of the global users of Instagram are below the age of 35. De jure, Instagram is the second most popular social media platform similar to Facebook (cf. Barnhart, 2021). How- ever, TikTok is a rapidly growing social media platform which makes use of short video posts and has similar or even younger user age-group distribution as Instagram (ibid.; Figure 24).

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According to Chaffey (2021), video-posts and live video tend to receive more attention and user engagement than image-posts or status updates. The preference of video format over others implies the potential of TikTok as the new medium of communication and sharing in the time of Web 2.0.

Figure 20. Smart Insights, 2020: Number of people using social media platforms

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Figure 21. Statista, 2020: Monthly active Facebook users worldwide

It could be argued that the concept of an internet meme is also substantially connected to the time-period within which it appears not only regarding its means of spread, its context, and contents, but also whether they are seen as relatable or humorous. That is, humour cannot be considered entirely stagnant, but slightly ever changing along with the time and culture (Blake, 2007: 22-23). If younger generations are considered as the alleged target audience of memes (cf. Figure 27 & 28), it should be mentioned that according to McCulloch (2019: 32), the youth can also be considered more prone to adapt to variation in language found on memes. Moreo- ver, Hockett (1950: 453, 454) solidifies the linguistic importance of interacting with other children during childhood. He (453) also points out that linguistic continuity across the whole population cannot be held uniform because of small communities that do not necessarily get to communicate with each other. However, the Internet alleviates the communication between groups of young people across the globe and thus, the language used on the Internet, which they use to communicate with each other to a great extent, may end up affecting the way language gets imitated and propagated by the youth. However, linguistic age-grading indicates that the use of non-standard forms starts to decrease with young adults through middle-aged adults and starts to increase again with people who approach the old age and have left the active working life. This would indicate that other people tend to even out the edges personal

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linguistic anomalies and identities to make the language more uniform as Postmes et. al (2005:

224) implied. Still, Hockett (ibid.) emphasises that linguistic acquisitions that originate in ad- olescence continue to influence the linguistic behaviour during adulthood.

Figure 22. Smart Insights, 2020: Facebook user distribution according to age

Figure 23. Statista, 2021: Distribution of Instagram users worldwide by age and gender

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Figure 24. Distribution of TikTok users by age-group, US, 2021

In addition to the linguistic capabilities and inclinations related to the age of the language user in question, the age-factor may also define how they perceive humour. That is, different generations may have their own, different funny bones (sense of humour) that distinguish them from each other. For example, Ruch’s et al. (1990) study on the enjoyment of humour during different stages of adulthood found that age of the participants is a differentiating factor that indicates how the perception of humour might be different for people of various age-groups. It would appear that earlier internet memes could have been seen more as the younger generations’ pass time. However, even though the older population seems to have adapted to reading and sending memes, they might still occasionally find the format a bit confusing. At least, the newest forms of absurdist memes might get a similar reception to the opinion in Elizabeth Bruenig’s article ‘Why is millennial humor so weird’, which appeared in the Washington Post in 2017. Older generations’ humour, conversely, might not be appreciated by the youth and get yeeten by the Gen Z population with an interjection: ‘OK, Boomer’. The aforementioned strange-looking and -sounding words like yeet, which refers to the action of discarding some- thing with high velocity (among other things), and boomer, which refers to the baby-boomer

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generation with a derogatory twist (Urban Dictionary; see also Figure 26), have become a part of online Gen Z language.

Figure 26. Expanding Corona Figure 25. Woman yelling at a cat

Figure 27. Meme Man and Stonks alternatives on Covid-19: Corona Man

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Linguistic variation and the anomalies that internet memes embody, may be considered as written forms of expression that exert identity (McCulloch, 2014: 57, 62; Bucholtz et. al., 2005:

587) and possibly convey ‘the general pattern of stylized verbal incoherence mirroring emo- tional incoherence’ (2014b) by ‘borrowing coolness’ and creating sense of belonging (McCul- loch, 2019: 50) in the internet community. Carbaugh (2005: 126), further elaborates the feeling of belonging expressed by McCulloch in the previous passage, pointing out the concept of membering, which allows people to feel socially connected through common ways of life.

Currently, because of the global pandemic, caused by COVID-19 virus (cf. Reynolds and Weiss, 2020), life evolves quite abruptly into incorporating online interaction in increasing quantities along with internet memes formed on the basis of the change (cf. Figure 25–27).

This could be considered as an external social change within the society to which language needs adapt (see Curzan, 2014: 47). If the situation prolongs, the statements of McCulloch (2019: 50) and Milner (2012: 36–37), might be witnessed to spread various online phenomena even further because of the increased requirement of online interaction across the population.

This can already be seen to a certain extent since, according to Margolis (2020), the older segments of population have started to familiarise themselves in the art of internet memes. It resembles the rise of social media amongst the older population in the 2010s.

On the metalevel, humour can be seen as rather memetic itself as humour is a human-made product of imagination and can be said that it may reflect the culture and the society in which it is produced. Even if jokes are interpreted correctly, they might not still be found funny by all (Blake, 2007: 8), which underlines personal preference and reinforces the significance of sub- jectivity when looking at humorous products. This would indicate that whether an internet meme is found humorous, relatable, or funny, depends on its contents but also on its audience.

That is, it might not be the meme that succeeds or fails in the creation of humorous conditions, but in fact, the people who find them as such. Thus, internet memes tend to find their hosts according to mutual interests within various internet communities, for instance. In addition to the variety of different communities that promote different varieties of humour, and it could be said that the communities withhold at least just as many, or maybe even more, of specific types and styles of internet memes as the combined volume of communities and subcommunities. In fact, shared internet memes within the community may specialise in matters that the community values and promotes. In other words, they are prescribed by the communities’ mutual

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interests in the attributes of entertainment (see Milner, 2012: 132). So, internet memes may focus on politics, movies, games, anime, or any other category imaginable.

Blake (2007) recounts that various linguistic factors are used to create humour, for example which include grammatical ambiguities, rhyming, puns, and neologism can be used to portray linguistic wittiness. Moreover, as seen in various examples and in the history of internet memes, the variation in orthography still seems to be a relatively recurrent method of conveying humour. Blake (2007: 2, 13) emphasises the importance of introducing the unexpected in jokes, in this case, the non-standard forms of language or unconventional implicature. How- ever, when language itself is the object of joking on internet memes, the recipient needs a certain level of linguistic proficiency for the joke to unfold. In fact, playing with language can be seen as relatively humorous. Often in these cases, there might rise a necessity to know the background to a joke’s premises before it fully unravels. This translates to having mutual or shared knowledge between the interlocutors. Blake (ibid: 24) points out the importance of shared knowledge that concerns humour and the ways of interpreting it, and Downes (1984:

268-269) emphasises the effect of mutual knowledge within discourse. In addition, analogous to the shared knowledge, Dawkins (1976/2016: 254) explains how an ‘idea-meme’, which is an “entity that is capable of being transmitted from one brain to another”, can be regarded as a prerequisite for the mutual understanding of a subject.

As stated earlier by Dennett (1995: 345), memes tend to propagate periodically under the contemporary cultural pressure. Memes may frequently be seen to satirise certain events of the world (Peacock, 2018). For example, quotes, political speeches, and movie scenes make up for a fair number of accomplished meme phenotypes, which can then be reprinted with an altered message to represent new entities regarding the given setting. Memes concerning the impeach- ment of the US President, Donald Trump, for instance, exemplify the requirement of background knowledge (Figure 28 and 29). Figure 28 includes the first panel of a recurrent meme called Woman yelling at a cat, which was already shown earlier on. According to Know Your Meme, this still image comes from an American TV reality show called ‘The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’, where its cast members Taylor Armstrong and Kyle Richards shout angrily at the frequently followed panel of a strange-looking cat (see Figure 25). In this case, however, the cat is replaced by still images of President Trump with the captions ‘WRONG’ and ‘IM

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PEACH’. For the meme to make sense, it is required to know that Donald Trump is the 45^th President of the USA and that he was impeached by the US senate in December 2019 (BBC News, 2020). This may, in fact, be possible to deduct through linguistics since the meme makes use of the similar phonology of ‘impeach’, [ɪmˈpiːʧ], and ‘Im peach’, [ɪm piːʧ], making an instance of paronomasia, a pun. The latter is written without an apostrophe, which would normally indicate ‘I’m’ to be pronounced, [aɪm]. Naturally, the resembling colours of an orange and a peach would also have to be viewed as required knowledge. The second one (Figure 29) takes into account phonology yet again. According to the meme, President Trump has understood impeaching, [ɪmˈpiːʧɪŋ], as being in peaches, [ɪn ˈpiːʧɪz]. The meme might be referring to the inconsiderate politics of President Trump in relation to his alleged linguistic inability.

However, if the contextual information or would be inadequate, the confusion of the bilabial nasal [m] and postalveolar nasal [n] could be seen as a perceivable cue because of the letter n’s tendency to assimilate its pronunciation from [n] to [m] in phonological contexts where it is followed by a bilabial plosive.

For an individual to fully comprehend a meme and grasp all the nuances specified by it, they need to have the prerequisite background information about the subject. This is humorously exemplified by a meme in figure 30, featuring a still image of Jack Black in the movie, School of Rock. However, certain memes can be understood and found humorous without the full contextual information. Still, others might require a deeper understanding of the meme’s framework. These sorts of memes include, but are not limited to certain linguistic memes, possibly requiring sufficient linguistic knowledge, or political memes, requiring knowledge of the

Figure 28. Woman yelling at Trump Figure 29. Trump in peaches

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political framework. The previous examples fittingly combined both of the two meme phenomena.

The lack of contextual mutual information is not a problem in the contemporary society. Glob- alisation aids in this and provides ease of access over the Internet. It has facilitated the attain- ment of the required mutual knowledge needed for the understanding of occasional internet memes. That is, it is substantially easy to look up a thing or two from online search engines.

However, not all people who read memes, can be bothered to do that in the moment. They are probably reading memes for their own personal entertainment, not for educational purposes, although memes can be useful vehicles for that as well.

In fact, there are certain informative memes that strive for hilarious linguistic circumstances to point out and to correct the erroneous ways people use language on the Internet. Figure 31 shows a teachable moment through an internet meme. In the meme, the alleged ‘speaker’ first provides three homophones, ‘there’, ‘their’, and ‘they’re’, which are all pronounced [ðɛr], and expects the reader to know the difference, yet, in the same phrase, the ‘speaker’ breaks the supposedly obvious linguistic rules by saying the possessive, ‘your’, instead of the contracted form, ‘you’re’ and, thus, plummeting into the linguistic pitfall themselves. In this case, the reader of the meme is expected to acknowledge that the premises of the meme might be experienced to bear a certain degree of uncertainty regarding the English phonology, or that they

Figure 30. Jack Black, School of Rock.

'Memeingful' Language - Sociolinguistic Analysis on Internet Memes