LINGUISTIC AND VISUAL MODES CONTRIBUTION TO THE HUMOR PRODUCTION OF PUNS IN INTERNET MEMES

Abstract

This article aims to get a better understanding of the text-picture interaction and, in particular, the pragmatic consequences of 150 online memes that feature puns, one of the linguistic humor subgenres. This article will analyze a corpus of 150 memes. Using a comic taxonomy by McCloud (1994). This classification is used considering the similarities of memes that are used in comics and internet memes. The internet memes then were to be categorized. The default taxonomy of categories produced the following classification of internet memes: word specific (28), picture specific (2), additive (29), and interdependent (91). The findings show rather significant disparities among the findings. Some categories in the original taxonomy are even absent in the data set, i.e due-specific, parallel, and montage. Internet memes lack these other categories of comics because there are distinctive features that set them apart from comics. These differences involve the fact that comic graphics are typically sequential in nature, whereas memes are not, and that comic authors have seemingly limitless opportunities to use language creatively, whereas memes rely more on visual elements.