Meaning-Making of Internet Memes to Create Humorous Sense: Functions as Speech Acts

Abstract

This research explored how the memes were created with multimodal elements that could make meaning to create a humorous sense and function as speech acts. With the complexity of meaning-making, nowadays, it had become a trend that people could communicate online through Memes. Semiotics provides how the combination of modes, media, and potential meanings, that were applied to make meaning in memes. At the same time, pragmatics proposes details on how memes can function as speech acts. This research adopted a qualitative method using multimodal analysis by Leeuwen (2005) and speech acts theory by Bach and Harnish (1980) that were employed as the theoretical framework. A total of 16 memes were retrieved and captured as JPG files from social media and other internet websites; therefore, documentation was the only technique used in this research. The results of the study showed that (1) the integration of semiotic resources such as mode, media, and meaning potentials in memes aided the readers to understand the background knowledge of memes (2) two types of communicative illocutionary acts were found in the memes: constative and directive illocutionary acts which function to express the emotion or opinions and question something (3) the effects of using internet memes could be seen through verbal and non-verbal perlocutionary acts which showed an agreement and had the same feeling as in the memes. Finally, the memes containing multimodal components composed of semiotic resources interacted creatively to make humorous sense, and it could aid the readers to communicate online.

Speech Function in Teaching Speaking Skill: Evaluation, Analysis, and Recommendation

“…In another case, speech function and speech act specify the communication's social purpose, and up to now, there had been a number of research into these contexts, such as Derakhshan & Arabmofrad (2018), Kauffeld & Goodwin (2022), Lee (2022), Oluoch (2020), Rakaj (2022), Santosa & Kurniadi (2021), Susilawati (2019), Uspayanti, (2020), Nita & Lestari (2021). It indicates that when people want to speak differently in different social situations, they are concerned with recognizing the social uses of language and how it is employed to communicate social meaning.…”

What do they Really “Meme”? A Multimodal Study on ‘Siakap Langkawi’ Memes as Tools for Humour and Marketing

“…By doing so, this study could fill the gap by analysing Malaysian memes from a multimodal discourse perspective, specifically on the latest issue on Siakap Langkawi in Malaysia since no study as explored this issue. Multimodality allows researchers to examine the way memes are created with multimodal texts as well as the way elements in the semiotic resources such as framing, salience, colour, and position create intended meaning in order to reach out to audiences (Nita et al, 2021). Therefore, it is only through an indepth multimodal analysis of the memes from a linguistic perspective that we are able to fully comprehend the way Malaysian social media users communicate their thoughts on the Siakap Langkawi issue.…”

An Account of Humor in Covid-19 Internet Memes from the Perspective of Cognitive Relevance: A Contrastive Case Study

“…Motivated by their virality and ubiquity as the lingua franca of online communication and their unique aim that extends beyond inciting internet humor to become a form of "appropriation and resistance to dominant media messages", IMs became the subject of abundant research (Huntington 2013: 3;Nissenbaum and Shifman 2018). Different perspectives were adopted in researching this new genre such as the systemic perspective which investigates IMs as a system of signs representing a uniform movement in predetermined paths to cater for the netcitizens' expectations (Cannizzaro 2016 as cited in Zollinger 2021); the pragmatics perspective which concluded that the constative (for the expression of emotions) and the directive (for questioning issues) are the two main illocutionary acts by IMs (Nita, Setiawan and Lestari 2021); the multimodal pragmatics perspective which focuses on exploring the integration of semiotic resources for the interpretation and the construction of meaning (Mahfouz 2021); the generic perspective which foregrounds studying IMs' adherence to a template of specific generic rules (Dancygier and Vandelanotte 2017); finally, the cognitive perspective which studies the use of metaphors and metonymies in IMs (Younes and Altakhaineh 2022;Elyamany 2023). Nevertheless, there is a dearth of contrastive research across different languages on IMs as a genre marked by complex communication affordances in delivering meaning and creating humor.…”