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Multimodality in Memes: A Cyberpragmatic Approach

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Analyzing Digital Discourse

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.

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Acknowledgments

This chapter is part of the research project PROMETEO 2016/052, titled “Humor gender: Observatory of identity of women and men through humor”, funded by the Generalitat Valenciana, Conselleria d’Educació, Investigació, Cultura i Sport.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English Studies, University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain

    Francisco Yus

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  1. Francisco Yus
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Correspondence to Francisco Yus .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. IULMA - Department of English and German Philology, Universitat de València, Valencia, Spain

    Patricia Bou-Franch

  2. Department of English, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, USA

    Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich

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Yus, F. (2019). Multimodality in Memes: A Cyberpragmatic Approach. In: Bou-Franch, P., Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. (eds) Analyzing Digital Discourse. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92663-6_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92663-6_4

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-92662-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-92663-6

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