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Digital Literacies Digital literacies by Vinicio NTOUVLIS Supervisor: Dr. Jarret GEENEN Radboud University Nijmegen Second reader: Dr. Piia VARIS Tilburg University A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN LINGUISTICS AND COMMUNICATION SCIENCES Title: Ironic memes Subtitle: Digital literacies deep fried Author: V. Ntouvlis (Vinicio) Student number: s1023961 Study programme: Master’s in Linguistics and Communication Sciences (research) Supervisor: Dr. J. G. Geenen (Jarret) Second reader: Dr. P. Varis (Piia) Word count: 29,705 August 2020 Faculty of Arts Radboud University Nijmegen Acknowledgements First of all, I obviously want to thank my supervisor Jarret for his invaluable guidance and his continuous support through some tough times. I am also grateful to him for taking a genuine interest in my topic in the first place and finding it as intriguing as I did. Not only did he push me to learn a lot and become better at conducting research and writing about it, but he also made this whole thesis process quite fun. I could not have asked for a better teacher to guide me through this. I also want to thank my sister Alexandra, first and foremost for offering me a home in the midst of a pandemic, but also for always inspiring and supporting me, and in general for being my awesome sister. I would not have gotten to the finish line of my Master’s or written this thesis without all my amazing friends either. Some well-deserved thanks go to them too. Whether they were in Nijmegen or Athens or Thessaloniki or as far as Brisbane, Australia, they were always there for me. Finally, I would like to thank everyone out there who makes memes for fun. Never stop creating and sharing. The world needs you. Pyli, August 2020 For my Supersister Alex “I think the potential of what the internet is going to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable. I think we’re actually on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying.” David Bowie, Interview on the BBC with Jeremy Paxman (1999) MEMEANDWATCH [@memeandwatch] on Instagram Abstract As internet memes are becoming a staple of our social lives online, this thesis project examines the phenomenon of ironic memes, a type of memetic content that proliferates online despite being seemingly incomprehensible. Drawing on recent theoretical developments in sociolinguistics, research on multimodality, and New Literacy Studies, this project analyzes ironic memes as a sociocultural “new literacy” phenomenon linked to processes of identity construction and the emergence of social formations online. In this vein, the study explores both (a) how ironic memes are designed as multimodal texts based on particular semiotic design strategies and (b) what the cultural significance of ironic memes is for “ironic memers” as reflected in the memes’ design patterns. This study thus comprises a digital ethnographic approach complemented by multimodal discourse analysis. With the subreddit r/ironicmemes as a primary research site, this methodological approach allows for a situated understanding of ironic memeing as a literacy phenomenon, generating data through naturalistic observation and participant interviews. At the same time, the study sheds light on the stylistic particularities of ironic memes’ design through multimodal discourse analytical tools, primarily drawn from the tradition of social semiotics. Our analysis suggests that ironic memes are a hybrid genre of multimodal texts, in which authors jokingly represent personas of users that are perceived as being “less literate” in internet memeing than the authors themselves are. This is achieved through design strategies such as making ironic memes “worse, on purpose,” which results in purposely embarrassing (or “cringey”) semiotic work associated with “less literate” memers (or “normies”). Ironic memes are also rendered deliberately “less direct,” which makes them incomprehensible to outsiders but enjoyable to ironic memers as an in-group who is well-versed in the relevant literacies. Ironic memers are thus constructed as a counter-mainstream cultural group based on their difference from normies along the lines of digital literacies in the domain of internet memeing. Overall, the phenomenon of ironic memes illustrates how cultural identities and social formations can emerge around digital literacy practices today, and particularly around playful online practices like memeing. 4 Contents 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 6 2. Literature review ....................................................................................................................... 10 2.1. Sociolinguistics for an online-offline world ...................................................................... 10 2.2. Sociolinguistics going multimodal ..................................................................................... 13 2.3. (The) New Literacy Studies: Studying literacies in today’s society .................................. 15 2.4. Understanding memes ........................................................................................................ 19 2.4.1. Memes: Towards a definition ...................................................................................... 21 2.4.2. Memes as new literacies .............................................................................................. 24 3. Methods..................................................................................................................................... 27 3.1. Data collection.................................................................................................................... 28 3.1.1. Research site(s) ............................................................................................................ 28 3.1.2. Interview participants and ethics ................................................................................. 31 3.2. Data analysis ...................................................................................................................... 32 3.2.1. Data reduction .............................................................................................................. 32 3.2.2. Analytical frameworks and relevant concepts ............................................................. 33 4. Analysis 1.0: OMG IT’S IT’S EMINEM ................................................................................... 38 4.1. Genre hybridization and polyphony ................................................................................... 38 4.2. Identity construction 1.0: Towards understanding what an “ironic memer” is .................. 48 5. Analysis 2.0: NO THAT SLIM SHADY ..................................................................................... 52 5.1. Bad inscrutable hybrids ...................................................................................................... 52 5.2. Identity construction 2.0: Cringe as a goal ......................................................................... 61 6. Discussion: Literacies, identities, and the internet .................................................................... 66 6.1. Hybridity meets literacies................................................................................................... 67 6.2. Literate contrarians: The limits of ironic memer identity .................................................. 73 6.3. Identities through “thick” and “light” ................................................................................ 85 7. Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 88 8. References ................................................................................................................................. 91 Appendix ..................................................................................................................................... 103 5 1. Introduction Internet memes are everywhere. Ephemeral and highly spreadable, they come in all shapes and sizes. Whether they are made simply as jokes (Dynel, 2016) or as forms of public discourse (Huntington, 2013), advancing activist rhetoric (Barlas Bozkuş, 2016) or even promoting conspiracy theories (Varis, 2019), memes are becoming a staple of our social lives across various online platforms, and their social importance is becoming difficult to ignore. Research suggests that internet memes foster the formation of communities online as people with common interests come together through the making and sharing of memes (Literat & van den Berg, 2019; Nissenbaum & Shifman, 2017; Varis & Blommaert, 2015). As forms of communication that serve to establish a connection among users, memes and their appreciation through likes, comments, and shares might appear trivial, yet they serve to nurture feelings of groupness and conviviality online (Blommaert, 2018; Miltner, 2014; Varis & Blommaert, 2015). These social formations are increasingly variable in today’s globalized world, where thanks to the internet our social lives unfold in an online-offline nexus, and where “niche” group formations appear to emerge around social practices more diversely than ever (Blommaert, 2018; Blommaert et al., 2019; The New London Group, 2000). Internet memes are thus being approached as cultural artifacts that can illuminate facets of digital culture (Shifman,
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