A Cognitive Study of Chinese Internet Memes from the Perspective of Viewpoint Network

【Abstract】This paper attempts to identify the types of Chinese Internet memes and explore the mechanisms working in the formation of them. The findings suggest that memes can be classified into three types， namely “meme in similarity”， “meme in contrast” and “meme in complement”. In addition， the mechanisms working in the formation of those types of memes can be briefly summarized as the discourse viewpoint space formed by the a similarity， contrast or complement generated from the interaction of lower-level viewpoint spaces.

【Key words】Chinese Internet Memes； Viewpoint Network

【作者簡介】戴健（1994- ），女，漢族，河北承德人，東北師范大學外國語學院碩士研究生，研究方向：英語語言文學（語言學）。

I. Introduction

Internet memes， often simply termed “memes” by internet users， are ideas and trends transmitted through electronic communication in multiple forms （signs， pictures， videos） and characterized by common recognition and massive reproduction. Though memes have been studied abroad from a great variety of perspectives and has drawn great attention from cognitive linguistics in recent years， those studies all focus on English Internet memes. On the contrary， most studies of memes at home focus on the importance of the cultural and aesthetic value. Till now， few study of memes at home is from the perspective of linguistic， let alone a perspective of cognitive linguistic. Therefore， this thesis will make a study of memes on cognitive senses， to be more specific， from the perspective of viewpoint network， and try to answer the following two questions： （1）What are the types of memes？ （2）What are the mechanisms working in the formation of memes？

II. Literature Review

In 1976， Richard Dawkins in the first edition of his book The Selfish Gene coined the term meme， in analogy to the biological notion of a gene， to refer to any unit of cultural transmission （Dawkins 1976）. However， Shifman（2013） pointed out that until today， the meaning of the term is highly contested and thus ambiguous. Thus， he defines memes as “units of popular culture that are circulated， imitated， and transformed by individual Internet users， creating a shared cultural experience in the process” （Shifman， 2013： 367）. In recent years， Dancygier & Vandelanotte （2017：566） added that “the fact that Internet memes spread very quickly in online communication was the reason why these image/text combinations have been named memes. ” They further narrow down a type of Internet memes as non-moving images with superimposed text. In this paper， the working definition of memes are based on the definition given by foreign scholars Dancygier & Vandelanotte as well as Chinese scholar Zheng Manning. Memes are defined as “a multimodal artifact which spread very quickly in online communication in the form of non-moving images with superimposed text in Chinese”， that is， Chinese multimodal Internet memes.

The working model of this paper is adopted from Dancygier & Vandelanottes （2016） model used to analyze English Internet memes. However， that is an ideal version of viewpoint network in memes. Since memes have different types， the relationship between different spaces can also be different.

III. Methodology

In this paper， thirty memes are selected from two most prevalent platforms for online communication， namely Wechat and Webo. These selected data are analyzed through two procedures. The first step is to objectively identify and describe types of memes according to a statistical analysis. Then， the mechanisms working in the formation of each type of memes will be figured out and interpreted with a specific viewpoint network model.

IV. Results and Discussion

4.1 Description of Memes

Memes are manifested by a combination of verbal and visual modalities. Therefore， the most effective and convincing way to classify memes is based on the relationship between their texts and images. According to Van Leeuwen （2005）， the relationship between the text and the image of one particular meme can be summarized as follow：

Similarity Contents of the text is similar to that of the image

Contrast Contrast between Contents of the text and the image

Complement The image complement information of the text or vice verse

All thirty memes have been objectively identified and classified on the basis of the above analysis， the attribution of those memes can be shown by the following table. To summarize， memes， on the basis of the relationship between their images and texts， can be basically classified into three types， namely “meme in similarity”， “meme in contrast” and “meme in complement”. All these types are found in the collected data， the most frequently used one is “meme in similarity”， followed by “meme in contrast”and then “meme in complement”.

4.2 Mechanisms of Memes

In the previous section， memes are classified into three types based on the relationship between their texts and images， and the contribution of those types has been figured out. In this section， due to the limited page of this paper， we will further discuss the results by analyzing a specific example abstracted from the most frequently used meme， namely “meme in similarity”.

The content of the picture in this meme is a kid who looks really satisfied with a bowl in his hand. In addition， the content of the text which is at the bottom of the meme is “fanjie jingyou zhemeduo meishi” which means “it is amazing that there are so many tasty food in the world”. It is easy to see that the content of the picture and that of the text are similar， which makes this meme a “meme in similarity”. It is proposed to analyze cases such as this figure in terms of a multilevel viewpoint structure （Dancygier & Vandelanotte， 2017）， represented in the following figure.

The above figure mainly contains two parts. The box on the left is the the Discourse Space 1.It represents the text in the meme， which is written in Chinese “凡界竟有這么多美食（fanjie jingyou zhemeduo meishi）”. The meaning is “it is amazing that there are so many tasty food in the world” as it could be initially understood. This space is then embedded （the big arrow represents the process） in Discourse Space 2 which is presented by means of the image in which a kid who looks fully satisfied with a bowl in his hand. It is easy to tell from the image that the little boy is enjoying his food and it is he who delivers the utterance （the text in meme）. Therefore， the initially understanding of Discourse Space 1 and that of Discourse Space 2 are similar to each other. To interpret the meme as a whole， a unified higher space is set up， represented by the outer box， which has been labeled the Discourse Viewpoint Space （Dancygier and Vandelanotte， 2016）. This unifying space is also meme views final understanding of the whole meme， which， in this case， is “I really enjoy those tasty food in the world”.

In conclusion， as it is illustrated on the right side of the figure， lower-level viewpoint spaces affect the initial understanding of each other， thus generate a similarity between them which result in an interpretation of the whole meme that forms the top-level unifying viewpoint space which is also the final understanding of the meme as a whole.

Conclusion

This paper first classifies memes into three types which are all found in the collected data of this study， the most frequently used one is “meme in similarity”， followed by “meme in contrast”and then “meme in complement”. In addition， the mechanisms working in the formation of each type of meme have been generated. However， this study has some limitations. The cognition of memes highly relies on the readers perception， thus， subjectivity is unavoidable.

References：

[1]Dawkins，R.1976.The selfish gene.Oxford：Oxford University Press.

[2]Dancygier，B.& Vandelanotte，L.2016.Discourse Viewpoint as Network.In：Dancygier，Lu，Wei-lun，Verhagen，Arie（Eds.），Viewpoint and the Fabric Meaning：Form and Use of Viewpoint Tools across Languages and Modalities.Mouton de Gruyter，Berlin.

[3]Dancygier，B.Vandelanotte，L.2017.Internet memes as multimodal constructions.In：Dancygier，B.Vandelanotte，L.（Eds.），Viewpoint Phenomena in Multimodal Communication.Cogn.Linguist.28（3）

[4]Shifman，L.2013.Memes in a digital world：Reconciling with a conceptual troublemaker.Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 18.362–377.