Discourse Analysis of Selected Memes during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cognitive Linguistics Perspective

Document Type : Original research articles

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College of Language and Communication, Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport Alexandria

Abstract

The aim of this research is to conduct a discourse analysis of selected internet memes that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic in the span between March and May 2020 from a Cognitive Linguistics perspective. Data collection was restricted to memes featuring two common social phenomena: “virtual meetings” and “working from home”. A total number of 40 internet memes was collected via Google search and a representative sample of 14 memes was selected for analysis. The memetic discourse analysis explores the links between the macrostructures and the superstructures of the selected memes. The analysis is conducted within the frameworks of Mental Model Theory (van Dijk, 2014) and Discourse Viewpoint Space (Dancygier & Vandelanotte, 2016). Findings of the research reveal that text and image complement each other in order to convey a sense of humor and that internet memes serve as a platform for projecting our ideologies in a satirical way. It is recommended that further research is conducted to explore the multimodal discourse-view nature of internet memes on other aspects of COVID-19 pandemic.

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