Semiotics of Internet Memes

Full text

Semiotics of Internet Memes
Andreas Osterroth
University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany

The internet meme is a hardly researched phenomenon across all disciplines. This paper tries to explain the internet
meme from a linguistics viewpoint by using the vast possibilities of semiotics and therefore semantics and
pragmatics. The emergence and evolution of memes make them unique compared to other texts. A meme cannot be
created by a single author, instead, it emerges by collective semiosis. This means the internet meme solely exists,
because users share, alter and vary it in many ways.
Thereby the meme is very customizable and applicable in many contexts, like political ones. This leads to efforts for
prohibiting internet memes, which is clearly a sign of its subversive nature. Finally, the internet meme can also be
used in educational contexts, especially in English classes all over the world.
Keywords: text, linguistics, semiotics, meme, semantics, pragmatics, education, didactics
Introduction
Traditionally, pictures were not part of linguistic research. In corpus linguistics for example, “a language
corpus does not contain tables, diagrams, sketches, figures, images, formulae and other visual elements, although
these elements are often present in written and printed texts and documents” (Dash 2008, p. 147). Although the
main focus in linguistics is still the written and spoken word without any consideration for images, the so called
“pictorial turn” (Mitchell 1994) had a great impact on the humanities. For a long time “’textuality’ […] was the
lingua franca for critical reflections on the arts, the media, and cultural forms” (Mitchell, 1994, p.11), and now the
picture has become more and more relevant. “Pictures as semiotic artefacts seems inevitable in linguistic accounts
of textual objects” says Stöckl in 2009 (p.203) and a text in 2016 does not necessarily consist solely of written
language. Instead, the prototype of a text is changing to an amalgam of language and image elements, which
constitutes the “textual reality” (Ibid., p. 204). The increase in bandwidth all over the world makes it possible, that
users can operate with images in news, social networking and even in personal or professional communication.
The internet meme is only this widespread and therefore linguistically relevant, since images are such an
important part of our commination. However, before I analyze the meme semiotically, we first have to look at
language-image artefacts in general.
The language-image relationship is very complex and in some cases hard to explain at all. One of the first
approaches to handle these artefacts originated from the studies of Barthes, which are here represented by
Bateman:
Figure . Barthes’ classification of text-image relations represented graphically as a systemic network (Bateman 2014, p. 35)
Bateman visualizes Barthes’ ideas which base on the classification of the relationship between text and
image. The expression text is a little misleading here, because I would consider any combination of verbal and
pictorial parts as text, while Barthes differentiates text and image. A better nomenclature would be language (text
for Barthes) and image, which Stöckl uses, too, in his studies concerning the subject (2009). The most important
distinction Bathes makes, is if the text (verbal parts) is equal to the image.
The case of equality is not of interest concerning internet memes, but amplifying and reducing are very
relevant. We will see later, that most of the memes do not serve their purpose when either the language or the
image is missing, unless the meme is very conventionalized. I will not enlarge upon the theory of language-image
relationships here and instead switch to the subject at hand, the internet meme.
The Internet Meme
Andreas Osterroth, Ph.D., University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany.

2
Figure . Satisfied seal Meme1
„[I]nternet memes […] have been largely ignored in academia“ (Miltner 2011, p.7) is still true in 2016,
although some researchers approached the subject with different intentions. One very noteworthy contributor is
Dynel, who studies the „prevalent but underresearched phenomenon of humorous Internet memes“ (2016, p. 1).
Other notable papers are from Bauckhage (2011), Herwig (2010) and Rutkoff (2007).
The internet meme is an artefact that consists of a picture and written language. I will provide a detailed
definition later, but to simply call it text, like Miltner (2011, p.13), should be sufficient for now. Internet users then
share the text in forums, via social media or other platforms to communicate in the widest sense of the word. To
illustrate this, I will provide an example:
Situation: Something bad happened to you and you want to share it with the community. For example, your
birthday is one the 1st of April and no one believes you.
Step 1: You are in a situation that is ,bad luck’ for you and you are not responsible for it. In this scenario, you
choose the so called ,Bad luck Brian’ meme:
Figure . Bad luck Brian Meme2
Step 2: Now you add the first verbal parts to set the situation:
Figure . Bad luck Brian Meme with upper verbal part3
Step 3: Now you add the second verbal part to conclude the meme:
Figure . Bad luck Brian Meme with bottom verbal part4
Step 4: You finally post the created meme in your community to communicate about the situation.
This is the prototypical use by an average user and does not explain why there even is a ,Bad luck Brian’
meme in the first place. It solely illustrates the concept of a meme which consists of certain parts:
The first verbal part (evoking a semantic frame)
The image (evoking a semantic frame for experienced users)
1 http://9gag.com/gag/aeYKzgO
2 http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/bad-luck-brian
3 http://image.cleveland.com/home/cleve-media/width960/img/plain-dealer/photo/2015/01/06/-f8c40f700eb41e15.jpg
4 http://image.cleveland.com/home/cleve-media/width960/img/plain-dealer/photo/2015/01/06/-f8c40f700eb41e15.jpg

3
SEMIOTICS OF INTERNET MEMES
the second verbal part (conclusion or twist)
Figure . Structure of a meme5
The semantic frame, as described by Fillmore, embeds the meme in a semantic way and makes it
understandable:
Every memorable experience occurs in a meaningful context and is memorable precisely because the experiencer has
some cognitive schema or frame for interpreting it. This frame identifies the experience as a type and gives structure and
coherence – in short. meaning – to the points and relationships, the objects and events, within the experience. (Fillmore 1976,
p. 26)
The image in Figure 6 can be just amplifying in the sense of Barthes, but the more conventional the image is,
the more equal to the language it becomes. Some of the memes are highly conventional, others are understandable
for outsiders, too, which leads to the assumption, that the so called „Memesphere“ (Miltner 2011) is a very closed
semantic/pragmatic net, which I will discuss later.
„Put in simple terms, Internet memes are inside jokes or pieces of hip underground knowledge, that many people are in on”
(Bauckhage 2011).
So the first definition to work with should be: An internet meme (or just meme) is a text, which consists of
verbal and pictorial parts, which are arranged in a very particular way. German linguists call such texts “Sprache-
Bild-Text” or “language-image-text” (Stöckl 2011 and 2009).
Before I analyze the emergence and evolution of internet memes, we have to clarify the origin of the term
meme, which will be very important to understand memes as a whole.
Etymology
“In Internet users’ parlance, the label “Internet meme” applies to any artefact (a film, spoof, rumor, picture, song, etc.)
that appears on the Internet and produces countless derivatives by being imitated, remixed, and rapidly diffused by countless
participants in technologically mediated communication”. (Dynel 2016, p. 662)
The term meme originally emanates from Richard Dawkins’ studies concerning genetics and memetics.
“Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just
as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate
themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.”
(Dawkins 2006, p. 192)
The definition is applicable to internet memes, too, and there are some very important details in Dawkins’
explanation. First of all, the basic idea of a meme like Dawkins describes, is also inherent to internet memes.
Everything that can go viral and be passed on from user to user or everything users can create, modify and share
by themselves, could be called meme. Second of all, there are no medial or semiotic specifics given (Löber 2011,
p. 60), which opens the term to all kinds of cultural practices. I should mention that other researchers and also the
users refer to many things as meme:6
- challenges, like the Ice Bucket challenge
- dances, like the Harlem Shake or dabbing
- songs
- etc.
In this article, I will narrow down the definition solely to texts, moving or not, and factor out memes, which are
only represented by actions, movement etc.
„What is important here is that the Internet meme has emancipated itself as an independent creativity-based species, now
omnipresent in online reality“ (Dynel 2016).
So, the term (internet) meme is not equal to the term of Dawkins. As Dynel states here, it is now a concept of
its own and is used for many different artefacts, textual or not. The main question is, how such verbal-pictural
texts emerge and how the users alter them by using memes to communicate.
5 Osterroth 2015
6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_phenomena

4
Emergence and Evolution
“[A]ll media depend on other media in cycles of remediation” (Bolter und Grusin 2000), and internet memes
are no exception to this long established rule. If anything, they are a prime example of remediation, because the
whole existence of a meme is an ongoing cycle of variation and conventionalisation. In this sense, the meme is a
variation template (Polajnar 2012) and as such, the community can use it in infinit contexts. I will explain this by
example:
An invidual, or a group of any kind, develops an artefact7 X1, that is capable of becoming an internet meme.
X1 can have many attributes and it is yet to know, what makes a meme successful. Nevertheless X 1 now enters a
community, where it is up to the users (and many other, unknown factors) if it will become a succesful meme.
After the author (or group of authors) shared the artefact, it is possible, that the community picks it up to create
variants (X1A, X1B, etc.). First, the verbal parts get altered, because it is the easiest way to modify said artefact. If
there are enough people to share it via social media or inside that particular community, the artefact becomes a
meme, now called X. It is not possible however, to create a meme without the viral aspect. In many ways, memes
are similar to advertising texts. Both consist of verbal and pictural parts and both are often shared in communities
or by social media. But while the advertising text can be created by a single person or team and is completed, the
meme is solely an artefact, capable of becoming a meme, but not quite finished, yet.
Only after the first phase of alteration which spawns many variations of the first artefact, the meme is
established and henceforth part of the ,memesphere’ (Miltner 2011, p. 13). After that, it is possible to alter the
originals pictural parts, which can only happen, when the meme is stable and conventionalized. This leads to
variants like X`A, X`B, etc.
Figure . Emergence and Evolution of a meme8
Figure . Emergence and Evolution of a meme – examples9
Paradoxically, the more variation the meme undergoes, the more stable it gets. Many iterations lead to a
conventionalisation to the point, that the community can understand the meme even whithout any verbal part. This
process could be called collective semiosis (Herwig 2010, p. 10) and is a vital part of an internet meme. We
remember the first definition of memes, which I will enhance with the viral aspects given here:
Internet memes are texts, consisting of (relatively strict arranged) verbal and pictural parts, which
unfold their meaning through collective semiosis.
This definition covers the many aspects which differentiate the meme from any other text. The strictness
concerning the composition of the text and the viral aspects. It should be obvious that not many artefacts with
meme-potential actually get to become a meme. The so called ,memesphere’ is not only very exclusive, it also
follows very strict rules concerning the use. When a meme becomes popular and is used by many different users,
it establishes rules by the collective semiosis. Often the very first artefact has a big impact on these rules, but they
can be changed and varied like the meme itself. Also, meme mashups are possible, which can break these rules
easily. I will address that later and now discuss the mentioned rules.
Ruleset of the memesphere
Figure . Wrong Use10
7 artefact as opposed to natural phenomens, hence anthropogonetic.
8 Osterroth 2015
9 http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/socially-awkward-penguin; https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/Socially-Awkward-Penguin;
http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/46/464420ce3a92467d3b5910ea7cd81084f845dd9632929679f6c6b9ca39be9e74.jpg
10 http://9gag.com/gag/adXLENM?ref=android.s.gt

5
SEMIOTICS OF INTERNET MEMES
This is not the kind of reaction one would anticipate in a medium, where spell checking and orthography are
often regarded as not too important. But the rules of the memesphere are rather strict but only established by
convention. In some cases, users recapitulate the rules in form of a meme, if there were too many ,wrong’ memes
in the past:
Figure . Rules of the memesphere – examples11
These rules cannot be enforced by a specific person, but the community sanctions wrong uses by
downvoting, not liking or simply not spreading the misused meme. It is curious, that there are such strict rules
considerung the communication and it suggests that memes are pragmatically relevant in online communications.
The rules are inherently pragmatic and sanctions are only uttered, when the situation is not appicable to a ertain
meme, which leads to the assumption, that memes should be looked at from a pragmatic viewpoint.
Pragmatic Aspects: How to do things with memes
An established meme can used as a substitute for a traditional text. One can use it to tell a story, but also to
criticize and insult; interesting possibilities in regards of pragmatic aspects. “How to do things with memes?”
could be the right question to ask and if we look back at the theories of Austin, we may find answers. The crucial
part of Austins theory comes after establishing the “performative/constative distinction” (Austin 1962, p. 147). In
short, Austins main idea is, that utterances are not only spoken language, there are so called speech acts (ibid., p.
146) which are used to perform an act (hence performative). So, by saying “Yes” during a wedding ceremony, I
marry the bride. The utterance “Yes” is, by itself the act. Now there are not only speech acts, but also pictorial
acts, for example traffic or warning signs, although this theorem does not exist in Austins research.
Figure . Pictural act in form of a warning sign12
The sign is a pictorial act by itself, in Austins terms an illocution (ibid., p. 101), a warning in this case. This
is not a revelation and has been researched before (for example Novitz 1977, p.89), but it is very applicable to
internet memes, which are, as stated before, not just pictures but texts and have therefore a great potential
illocutive force. Let’s discuss an example of a meme conversation:
11 http://9gag.com/gag/a8MvWMp?ref=android.s.gt
12 http://www.hse.gov.uk/workplacetransport/images/warning-general-2.gif

6
Figure . Meme conversation13
artefact pictorial act verbal translation
Who are you again? calling into question who has asked you?
The greatest man self-portrayal i am the greatest
No! objection i dont see it that way
You underestimate my power threat you are wrong
Not all pictorial acts are speech acts in the sense of Austin but the the first and third ones are text book
examples for illocutive acts. Although it is possible to use memes in a conversation, there is not much data
13 Osterroth 2015

7
SEMIOTICS OF INTERNET MEMES
available to prove it actually happens. One can research facebook groups like in Figure 12 for excampe, but i
would consider such arrangements as untypical.
Figure . Meme conversation14
The place where users enhance a conversation with memes is in private chat groups and therefore even more
encrypted than usual. Since there is no accessible data to this, yet, I will now treat the more openly used memes,
which are often controversial discussed.
Political Memes
Sometimes politicians or regimes see memes as a threat or an insult and feel the need to react. Referencing to
the section above, which clearly states that memes can be illocutive acts, memes can be used to insult, hurt, in
nuce, communicate. The latest effort originates from spain:
Figure . Ban all the memes15
“Spain proposes a BAN on memes... and its government is immediately mocked with memes” 16 is a headline,
which is prototypical for meme users and their interaction with traditional media, politics and other sources of
criticism. As usual it is a slight exaggeration of the truth. In the past, many members of different political parties
all over the world try to ,ban’ memes, but in actual fact, they often want to criminalize “spreading images that
infringe the honour of a person” (ibid.), “internet humiliation”17, insulting politicans18 or “,disparaging’ pictures”19.
The meme in this case is merely a semiotic vehicle to deliver the critical message. Nevertheless, it is an
uncommon phenomenon, that political parties and leaders try to ban a certain text type. There have always been
efforts to ban content or ideas, but never a whole type of texts. This encourages the assumption, that the internet
meme has some special, yet to define features, which make it semiotically interesting. The illocutive power of an
internet meme makes it interesting, I may say dangerous in some way, for oppressing governments, because the
users can create memes to criticize them. But instead of boring, in many cases not very accessible political satire,
the meme is a funny, easy digestible text, which can be understand by most of the audience. Furthermore, it is
very easy to share memes or artefacts with meme potential, so everyone can participate very easily in the
discourse. Philosophically, every item that has been targeted by the established parties for being subversive, has
proven itself as very valuable culturally. The fact, that such simple, semiotic constructs like memes can even be a
target, puts them in a great tradition of banned media:
- Marquis de Sade (1789): The 120 days of Sodom
- Mark Twain (1884): The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- Vladimir Nabokov (1955): Lolita
- Entartete Kunst in Germany; for example Hafenkneipe (Ringelnatz 1933)
14 https://www.facebook.com/imjusthereforthememes/posts/10154850274288868
15 https://www.facebook.com/imjusthereforthememes/posts/10154850274288868
16 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3923656/Spain-proposes-BAN-memes-government-immediately-mocked-memes.html
17 Mexico: http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/05/05/mexican-congresswoman-wants-ban-memes/
18 Turkey: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/12/02/lord-of-the-rings-gollum-erdogan_n_8701110.html
19 Russia: http://metro.co.uk/2015/04/13/russia-has-banned-memes-so-heres-the-best-ones-of-vladimir-putin-5147681/

8
I do not intend to give memes more gravitas than they deserve, but the fact that conservative governments all over
the world fail in banning memes makes them very interesting also for educational purposes, since many formerly
banned books are very important for school purposes nowadays.
Education
As showed above, memes are heavily used in private or public contexts online, but there is also the
possibility to use it in teaching surroundings. The applicable uses are for a very specific kind of meme, the so-
called rage comics:
Figure . Rage comic example20
“The rage comic has a plethora of uses. Seriously. There is no emotion - no situation great or insignificant
that cannot be expressed with a thoughtfully constructed rage comic”.21 Rage comics are a very specific kind of
meme, because they tell a story like a comic strip. Still there are many similarities to the memes described above,
because the actors have their semiotic power only by collective semiosis. Scott Scillar, a teacher in Japan, uses
rage comics receptive but also productive in his class to learn English (Ibid). The advantage in comparison to
traditional text production is obvious, if one thinks about the concept of affirmative learning. Humor is known to
enhance learning scenarios (Pollak und Freda 1997) and rage comics are pragmatically multimodal jokes, with
which the students can practice their vocabulary, syntax and, foremost, their pragmatic skills.
Instead of just writing a letter, a story or a joke, students have to consider the multimodal aspects of the
language-image-text to create a humorous text. Scott Scillar embraces the possibilities of the internet and created a
subreddit, where his students share their work and other forum members can evaluate them. 22 This is a very
advanced learning technique, where students create texts, which are read by actual people, which is very hard to
do in traditional education (e.g. the traditional pen friend to learn a foreign language). This is only a brief display
of the possible applications for memes in an educational context and since it isn’t the main focus of this paper, I
will now conclude the thoughts about internet memes.
Conclusion
Communicating by internet memes could be considered as a back step to cave paintings and less developed
communicative systems (Ross 2001, p. 382; mentioned in Stöckl 2009, p. 204) but “communication always
involves a division of labour between language and image” (Stöckl 2009, p. 204). “Ultimately, language,
communication and text are essentially multimodal, rather than exclusively verbal” (Ibid.) and memes are the
ultimate multimodal artefact. To bring this concept to the extreme, memes can also be moving texts, when the
users communicate by gifs. Some of them don’t contribute more to the pragmatic meaning than a still image, but
others only work in moving form:
20 https://www.facebook.com/imjusthereforthememes/posts/10154850274288868
21 http://www.webpronews.com/teaching-the-english-language-with-rage-comics-2011-11/
22 https://www.reddit.com/r/EFLcomics/

9
SEMIOTICS OF INTERNET MEMES
Figure . Gif with irrelevant movement23
The moving of the image is just a slight enhancement of the effect (what could be proven by experiment and
is yet to do), but the pragmatic aspects remain intact. It does not alter the language-image-act at all if the
movement is added to the meme. Other memes only work, because they change their image or language:
Figure . Gif with relevant movement 24
In this case, the movement or alteration of the image is the main pragmatic aspect of the meme. Furthermore,
only advanced meme users can fully understand the meme, because it is highly intertextual and refers to two other,
non moving memes, which brings us back to the beginning and the assumption, that memes are in conclusion very
elaborate inside jokes of a large group of people. Nevertheless, the meme is a symptom of what is yet to come in
human communications and strengthens the assumption, that linguistics cannot work mono-modal. One does not
need to see in the future to predict that multimodality will be norm in public and personal communications and
linguistic research needs to acknowledge that. “Text corpora need to be built up in order to conduct truly empirical
and systematic research into the workings of the language-image-link” (Stöckl 2009, p. 224) and while
researchers here do not target the meme specifically, the demand is still applicable. Linguistics and semiotics are
well advised to broaden their multimodal research in general and their research concerning internet memes
specifically.
References
Austin, John L. (1962): How to do things with words. The William James Lectures delivered at
Harvard University in 1955. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Bateman, John A. (2014): text and image. a critical introduction to the visual/verbal divide. New
York: Routledge.
Bauckhage, Michael: Insights into Internet Memes. Proceedings of the Fifth International AAAI
Conference on Weblogs and Social Media. Online verfügbar unter
http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/%20ICWSM/ICWSM11/paper/viewFile/2757/3304, zuletzt
geprüft am 10.03.2016.
Bolter, Jay David; Grusin, Richard (2000): Remediation. Understanding New Media.
Massachussets: MIT Press.
Dash, Niladri Sekhar (2008): Corpus Linguistics. An Introduction. New Delhi: Dorling Kindersley.
Dynel, Marta (2016): “I Has Seen Image Macros!”. Advice Animal Memes as Visual-Verbal Jokes.
In: International Journal of Communication (10), S. 660–688.
Fillmore, Charles J. (1976): Frame semantics and the nature of language. In: Annals of the New
York Academy of Sciences 280 (1), S. 20–32.
Herwig, Jana (2010): Fluktuierende Kollektive, lebendiges Archiv: semiologische Praktiken im
Imageboard 4chan. In: Christine Ehardt, Daniela Pillgrab, Marina Rauchenberger und Barbara
23 http://giphy.com/gifs/hYJMvSpmgkt2M/html5
24 http://giphy.com/gifs/vYxT9fKi6FN5K/html5

10
Alge (Hg.): Inszenierung von Weiblichkeit: Zu Konstruktion von Körperbildern in der Kunst.
Wien: Löcker, S. 1–16.
Miltner, Kate (2011): SRSLY PHENOMENAL: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE APPEAL OF
LOLCATS.
Mitchell, W. J. Thomas (1994): Picture Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Novitz, David (1977): Pictures and their use in Communication. The Hague: Martinus Niihoff.
Osterroth, Andreas (2015): Das Internet-Meme als Sprache-Bild-Text. In: IMAGE. Zeitschrift für
interdisziplinäre Bildwissenschaft. 22 (7).
Polajnar, Janja (2012): Textuelle Aspekte von rekontextualisierten Werbeslogans in
deutschsprachigen Zeitungen. In: Muttersprache (122), S. 48–176.
Pollak, Judy P.; Freda, Paul D. (1997): Humor, Learning, and Socialization in Middle Level
Classrooms. In: The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas 70
(4), S. 176–178.
Ross, Dieter (2001): Der Sprachverlust der Massenmedien und seine publizistischen
Folgen. Medienkritische Anmerkungen zum Siegeszug des Sichtbaren. In: Dieter Möhn, Dieter
Ross, Tjarks-Sobhani und Marita (Hg.): Mediensprache und Medienlinguistik. Festschrift für Jörg
Hennig. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang (Sprache in der Gesellschaft), S. 371–384.
Rutkoff, Aaron (2007): With 'LOLcats' Internet Fad, Anyone Can Get In on the Joke. Online
verfügbar unter http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118798557326508182, zuletzt geprüft am
10.03.2016.
Stöckl, Hartmut (2009): The language-image-text – Theoretical and analytical inroads into semiotic
complexity. In: AAA – Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 34 (2), S. 203–226.
Stöckl, Hartmut (2011): Sprache-Bild-Texte lesen. Bausteine zur Methodik einer Grundkompetenz.
In: Hajo Diekmannshenke, Michael Klemm und Hartmut Stöckl (Hg.): Bildlinguistik. Theorien –
Methoden – Fallbeispiele. Berlin: Erich Schmidt (Philologische Studien und Quellen, 228), S.
45–70.