Multimodality in Memes: A Cyberpragmatic Approach

Abstract

In this chapter, a corpus of 100 instances of a specific type of meme, image macro (the one typically made up of one top and one bottom stretch of text and a picture in-between), is analyzed in its multimodal quality, specifically in search of different categories that these memes might fit into depending on the relationship existing between picture and text and its impact on the quality of the eventual interpretation. An underlying assumption in the chapter, broadly within a cyberpragmatic framework (F. Yus, Cyberpragmatics: Internet-mediated communication in context, John Benjamins, 2011), is that different text-picture combinations will have an impact on eventual relevance by yielding different balances of cognitive effects and mental effort, the latter sometimes compensated for by an offset of additional cognitive effects in the shape of implications.