International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature E-ISSN: 2200-3592 & P-ISSN: 2200-3452 www.ijalel.aiac.org.au Ideational Meaning and Morality in the Internet Memes of 9gag about the Interaction between Teacher and Students Majid Ariyoga, F.X. Rahyono* Department of Linguistics, Universitas Indonesia Depok, West Java, Indonesia Corresponding Author: F.X. Rahyono, E-mail: [email protected] ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history As multimodal text, Internet memes encompassing verbal and visual elements have a significant Received: March 03, 2020 function in producing meaning both independently and inherently. In addition, they are not only used Accepted: May 14, 2020 to entertain the reader through humorous messages, but also used to convey moral message. This Published: July 31, 2020 research investigated the ideational meaning and the critical message in the internet memes related Volume: 9 Issue: 4 to the interaction between teacher and students in teaching and learning activities. It was conducted Advance access: July 2020 to reveal experiential and representational meaning; inter-semiotic logical relations; the portrayed events; and the implied problems as criticism to both teachers and students contained in these Internet memes. They were obtained from Instagram account of @9gag. Focusing on the ideational Conflicts of interest: None meaning, it applied three theories, namely, transitivity system, representational component of visual Funding: None grammar, and inter-semiotic logical relations. It also applied the theory of relevance to reveal the critical message behind these internet memes. Several studies, related to the internet memes both in multimodal discourse analysis and pragmatic study, have been conducted. Nevertheless, this present study is the development of those studies using different approach. Specifically, this study focused on internet memes concerning teachers and students interaction which have never investigated before. The results revealed five kinds of verbal processes; five kinds of visual processes; six logical relations between caption and image; five portrayed students’ behaviours; nine problems implied in student figure; and six problems implied in teacher figure. Through this study, the readers are expected to understand both wisdom and un-wisdom messages of criticism in the Internet memes. Key words: Meme, Multimodal, Ideational, Inter-semiotic, Relevance, Instagram INTRODUCTION with each other, then circulated, imitated, and / or changed The Internet meme is a modern cultural phenomenon that over the Internet by many users. Shifman (2014a) stressed spreads certain information through Internet communication that digitalization is very important in spreading a culture, networks. Before being viral, the term “meme” has existed for and in the digital era the Internet and its users are significant a long time and was popularized by Richard Dawkins in his elements that lead to the spread of ideas. In addition to ideas book, “The Selfish Gene”. Dawkins (2006) defined a meme as and cultural items that spread through the digital world, so an act of imitating ideas that spread from person to person. He also do new media and agents. According to Davison (2012) (2006) also explained that the term “meme” comes from the “An Internet meme is a piece of culture, typically a joke, Greek μίμημα (mīmēma), which means something that can be which gains influence through online transmission.” He em- imitated. Furthermore, “meme” is related to the French word phasized that Internet memes as online humour are unique in “même,” which means the same or similar, and the English the case of transmission speed and fidelity of form. word “memory,” which means awareness of mind. By using the Internet, humour has become the dominant Shifman (2014), a researcher in the field of memetics, online communication mode and has increased significantly defined the Internet meme as “(a) a group of digital items in scale and diffusion speed (Shifman, 2014a). Internet hu- sharing the common characteristics of content, form and / or mour is any funny interaction or appearance that manifests stance; (b) that were created with awareness of each other; on the Interne (Shifman, 2014a). One of the changes that (c) were circulated, imitated and / or transformed via the In- has appeared is that Internet humour is no longer dominated ternet by many users.” In other words, the Internet meme is a by verbal forms; in other words, Internet humour currently group of digital items that share the common characteristics tends to be based in visual forms that can spread quickly of content, form, and / or attitude created in consciousness and easily throughout the world (Shifman, 2007, 2014a). Published by Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD. Copyright (c) the author(s). This is an open access article under CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.9n.4p.91 92 IJALEL 9(4):91-100 Internet humour has had a close relationship with the pop- students during teaching and learning activities at the school. ular discourse of Internet memes since 2010 (Shifman, These interactions provide separate experiences for each 2014a). Humour is sometimes used to produce social com- concerned party. As both teachers and students, we definite- mentary memes; successful social commentary memes reach ly experience memorable events during teaching and learn- people at high speed, gain attention from the public, and ul- ing activities. The things taught, done, and applied by the timately raise awareness of a social practice or event (Kno- teacher leave an impression on students. Conversely, how bel & Lankshear, 2006a) (Knobel & Lankshear, 2006b). students behave and act leaves a separate impression for Shifman (2014a) noted that “humorous Internet memes are their teachers. In this case, these memorable events are ideas often employed as forms of political and social participa- for creating Internet memes to convey humour and criticism. tion.” Shifman (2014b) also argued that Internet memes can Based on this phenomenon, the authors detected certain be “forms of persuasion or political advocacy,” “grassroots ideas in these internet memes to build ideational meaning action,” and “modes of expression and public discussion.” and criticism to teachers and students. Therefore, this study Internet memes can be found on various social media is conducted to answer the following questions: “how do platforms, one of which is Instagram. Various Instagram ac- verbal and visual modes of these internet memes construct counts specifically share Internet memes with followers—a ideational meaning and implied problems as criticism to popular one is the @9gag account. In this case, Instagram as students and teacher?” In line with the formulation of the a social media platform provides a “container” for sharing research problem, this study aimed to reveal 1) ideational information, such as photos, captioned images, and videos,1 meaning consisting of: experiential meaning represented whereas the @9gag account as an Instagram user uses Ins- by the processes of verbal modes, representational meaning tagram to publish its Internet memes.2 The Internet memes represented by the processes of visual modes, inter-semiot- of @9gag on Instagram have been filtered from its website, ic logical relations and the portrayed events, and 2) implied which is why they are more relatable and relevant to readers problems which can be interpreted as criticism to teacher than on its website. One type of Internet memes that can be and students. These internet memes were analysed for each found on the Instagram account of @9gag is a stock charac- mode to find involved processes. Later, these modes were ter macro, often called “image macros” (captioned image). connected to find the logical inter-semiotic relations and the According to Magel (2016), a stock character macro is an im- portrayed events. Meanwhile, both utterances and images age that represents a character that exhibits the behaviour to were analysed to uncover the interpreted criticisms behind mimic, which is accompanied by the text or sentence above, these internet memes. To answer the research problem, this research was executed by using a systemic functional-multi- in the middle, or below the image as a parody and criticism. modal discourse analysis and pragmatics study. Thus, this design indicates that Internet memes represent multimodal text. As Walsh (2006) stated, printed or linear texts are mono-modal texts, whereas multimodal texts are LITERATURE REVIEW related to a variety of sensory modes, moving in a synchro- With regard to Internet memes as multimodal text, this nized way to convey meaning. In other words, a multimodal research was carried out in the realm of a systemic func- text can be a combination of spoken and written languages, tional-multimodal discourse analysis (SFMDA) approach. still or moving images, which can be presented on paper or Multimodality is realized based on social semiotics (Van electronic screen (Baharani & Ghafournia, 2015). Leeuwen, 2005). Kress (2009) stated that the function of According to Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996), multimo- each mode, the relationship between different modes, and dality refers to the manner in which people communicate important entities in multimodal text can be elaborated on using different modes at the same time. In other words, mul- by social semiotics. In systemic functional linguistic (SFL), timodality can be defined as the simultaneous use of multiple the text is a unit of the use of language (Halliday & Hasan, semiotic modes in product design or semiotic events and, 1976). This theory is one of the streams in linguistic disci- in particular, how these modes are used to strengthen, com- pline that introduces functional systems and systemic theo- plement, or be in a particular order (Kress & Van Leeuwen, ries. SFL theory by Halliday is different from the systemic 2006). Multimodality can also be regarded as a technical theory of language that views language as part of the social term that aims to show that the meaning made by people so phenomena related to the social context in its use.