Learner Perspectives on the Use of Instagram and Memes for Promoting Language Learning and Sociocultural Competence
Diplomarbeit
zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades einer Magistra der Philosophie
an der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz
vorgelegt von Maddalena TREVISAN
am Institut für Anglistik
Begutachterin: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Sarah Jane Mercer, B.A. M.A.
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Eidesstattliche Erklärung Ich erkläre hiermit ehrenwörtlich, dass ich die vorliegende Arbeit selbstständig und ohne fremde Hilfe verfasst, andere als die angegebenen Quellen nicht benutzt und die den Quellen wörtlich oder inhaltlich entnommenen Stellen als solche kenntlich gemacht habe. Die Arbeit wurde bisher in gleicher oder ähnlicher Form keiner anderen inländischen oder ausländischen Prüfungsbehörde vorgelegt und auch noch nicht veröffentlicht. Die vorliegende Fassung entspricht der eingereichten elektronischen Version.
Villach, 31.07.2021
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(Ort, Datum) (Unterschrift der Studierenden)
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Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I want to thank my supervisor Univ.-Prof. Dr. Sarah Jane Mercer, who sparked my interest in research and who guided me throughout this process. I cannot thank you enough for your meaningful and quick feedback, which was very thought-provoking, your patience and your constant support. The positivity that you transmitted throughout this process encouraged me, made me believe in my work and helped me stay focused.
I also want to thank all the students, who participated in my study, without whom this thesis could not have been possible. I am very grateful for everyone who took their time and who therefore rendered my investigations possible.
Furthermore, I want to thank my family and friends, who always believed in me and who always motivated me to do better and keep going. A great thanks goes to my parents, without whom my whole studies would not have been possible. Thanks for supporting me financially, as well as mentally and for always being patient and understanding with me. A big thanks also goes to my sister, who keeps inspiring me and being a role model to me with her ambition and determination in everything she does and wants to achieve. I also want to thank all of my friends who always pushed me to keep going when I had a moment of despair. I want to thank my friend Cornelia in particular, who was my thesis-writing-buddy, as she was also working on her thesis in these past few months and with whom I went through all the ups and downs of this process together. iii
Abstract The Internet is imbedded in modern society’s daily life. Be it at the working place, at school or privately at home, the internet has somehow become a faithful companion of everyone who lives in a (western) industrialized country. Amongst all tools that the World Wide Web offers, I’d claim that Social Media platforms are the most powerful and most commonly used ones. Social media platforms are particularly popular among adolescents and young adults. Generation Z, the first generation of kids who will never have experienced a life without the world being digitally connected on a global level because they are born in the golden age of digitalization, are the major target group of social media. Nevertheless, also older generations are increasingly starting to enjoy the benefits of social media. Therefore, these platforms are accessible and used by everyone, regardless of their age or race. A highly appreciated content on Social Media are memes. Memes on the Internet entertain, inform and connect people all over the world. Part of my thesis focuses on how memes have the ability of picking up on certain issues and how they can affect and influence society and social behavior. The aim of this thesis is to point out the general purposes and roles of memes and figure out/find out, whether memes, together with social media, can promote language learning or sociocultural competence. This is accomplished by carrying out a research with Austrian students from different schools that are all located in Carinthia. The research tool is an online questionnaire compiled on LimeSurvey. Comparing my personal research’s results with statistics and findings on memes in general from other scientists, sociologists etc., I concluded on what memes can be used for generally and if and how they could be implemented in the classroom. Results show, that the students that participated in the study do theoretically believe in a promotion of language learning and expansion of sociocultural knowledge through memes. They also already experienced language acquisition or the acquisition of knowledge about certain topics, such as culture or society through memes. However, findings show that not all memes are equally useful for learning and every memes may serve the same purpose. The findings and conclusions of my thesis should serve the purpose of aiding teachers in fining new teaching methods, linking their lessons to the digital world many students live in nowadays.
Keywords: social media, memes, Instagram, digitalization, society, culture, language
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Zusammenfassung
Das Internet ist mittlerweile in den Alltag der modernen Gesellschaft eingebettet. Sei es am Arbeitsplatz, in der Schule oder in den privaten vier Wänden, das Internet ist ein treuer Begleiter eines jeden von uns, der in einem Industriestaat lebt, geworden. Unter all den Programmen, die das World Wide Web bietet, stelle ich die Behauptung auf, dass sozialer Netzwerke die einflussreichsten und am häufigsten verwendeten sind. Social Media Plattformen sind besonders bekannt unter Jugendichen und jungen Erwachsenen. Generation Z, die erste Generation von Kindern, die niemals ein Leben ohne ein weltweit digitales Netzwerk gekannt haben werden, weil sie in der Blütezeit der Digitalisierung zur Welt gekommen sind und darin aufgewachsen sind, sind die größte Zielgruppe von sozialen Netzwerken. Nichtsdestotrotz, nutzen auch immer mehr ältere Generationen die Vorteile von diesen sozialen Medien. Man kann also sagen, dass diese Plattformen für jeden zugänglich sind und jedem genutzt werden, unabhängig von Alter oder Rasse. Ein sehr hoch geschätzter Inhalt auf sozialen Medien sind Memes. Memes im Internet unterhalten, informieren und verbinden Menschen auf der ganzen Welt. Ein Teil meiner Diplomarbeit fokussiert sich auf die Fähigkeit von Memes, gewisse Themen anzusprechen oder aufzuzeigen und wie dadurch unsere Gesellschaft und unser gesellschaftliches Verhalten beeinflusst werden kann. Das Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, die generelle Rolle von Memes zu schildern und herauszufinden, ob Memes gemeinsam mit sozialen Medien auch den Spracherwerb und die soziokulturelle Kompetenz fördern können. Dafür wird eineUmfrage mit österreichischen Schülern von verschiedenen Schulen in Kärnten durchgeführt. Das Umfragematerial ist ein online Fragebogen auf Lime Survey. Meine persönlichen Resultate mit jenen von anderen Wissenschaftlern und Sozilogen, die sich mit Memes generell befassen, vergleichend, habe ich festgestellt wofür Memes generell verwendet werden und ob und wie sie in den Unterricht eingebaut werden können. Die Resultate zeigen, dass die Schüler, die an der Studie teilgenommen haben, theoretisch an eine Förderung des Sprachenlernens bzw. Sprachenerwerbs und die Erweiterung des soziokulturellen Wissens durch Meme glauben. Sie haben laut persönlichen Angaben auch bereits ihre Sprachenkenntnisse durch Meme verbessert oder Wissen über bestimmte Themen wie Kultur oder Gesellschaft durch Meme erworben. Die Ergebnisse zeigen jedoch, dass nicht alle Meme gleichermaßen nützlich für den Erwerb von Wissen sind, und dass nicht jedes Mem dem gleichen Zweck dient. Die Konklusionen meiner Diplomarbeit sollen Lehrern dabei helfen, neue Lehrmethoden zu finden und ihre Schulstunden mit der digitalen Welt vieler Schüler zu verknüpfen. v
Schlüsselwörter: soziale Medien, memes, Instagram, Digitalisierung, Gesellschaft, Kultur, Sprache
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Abbreviations AHS ...... Allgemein Bildende Höhere Schule BHS ...... Berufsbildende Höhere Schule IG ...... Instagram
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List of Figures Figure 2.1: The Internet is a magical place ...... 12 Figure 2.2: Bernie Sanders in Star Trek ...... 13 Figure 2.3: Bernie Sanders in Forest Gump ...... 13 Figure 2.4: Bernie Sanders and Jennifer Lopez...... 13 Figure 2.5: Advantages and Functions of memes ...... 41 Figure 3.1: Participants’ Age ...... 49 Figure 3.2: Class distribution ...... 50 Figure 3.3: Likert scale “function of memes”, part 2, section 1 ...... 57 Figure 3.4: Likert scale of personal experiences, part 2, section 2 ...... 57 Figure 3.5: Language improvement, part 2, section 3 ...... 57 Figure 3.6: Likert scale of “understanding” ...... 58 Figure 3.7: Likert scale of “comprehension struggles” ...... 58 Figure 3.8: Likert scale of “learning success” ...... 58 Figure 3.9: Likert scale of “classroom implementation” ...... 59 Figure 3.10: Leonardo Di Caprio Meme ...... 60 Figure 3.11: Pineapple Pizza Meme ...... 62 Figure 3.12: Mask Meme ...... 63 Figure 3.13: Lava Meme ...... 65 Figure 3.14: Bananas Meme ...... 66 Figure 3.15: Cat Cake Meme ...... 67 Figure 3.16: Heaven and Hell Meme ...... 69 Figure 3.17: Italian Cat Meme ...... 69 Figure 3.18: Simpson Coronavirus Meme ...... 71 Figure 3.19: Aqua Meme ...... 72 Figure 3.20: Swedish Kid Meme ...... 74 Figure 3.21: Trump Meme ...... 75 Figure 4.1: Language Interest of Students ...... 86 Figure 4.2: Language Knowledge/Learning of Students ...... 87 Figure 4.3: Language(s) at school: English ...... 88 Figure 4.4: Language(s) at school: German ...... 89 viii
Figure 4.5: Language(s) at school: Italian ...... 90 Figure 4.6: Language(s) at school: French, Slovene, Latin ...... 91 Figure 4.7: Students’ Use of Instagram ...... 92 Figure 4.8: Frequency of Language Encounter on Instagram ...... 93 Figure 4.9: Memes’ functions and educational purposes ...... 96 Figure 4.10: Personal knowledge gains through memes ...... 100 Figure 4.11: Language improvement through Instagram and memes ...... 101 Figure 4.12: Understanding of memes ...... 103 Figure.13: Struggles: Lack of vocabulary ...... 104 Figure 4.14: Struggles: Lack of background knowledge ...... 105 Figure 4.15: Vocabulary Gains ...... 107 Figure 4.16: Phrases Gains ...... 108 Figure 4.17: Grammar Gains ...... 109 Figure 4.18: Text comprehension improvement ...... 110 Figure 4.19: Learn about stereotypes ...... 111 Figure 4.20: Learn about society ...... 112 Figure 4.21: Learn about specific topic ...... 113 Figure 4.22: Wouldn’t use it ...... 115 Figure 4.23: Introduce a topic/start a discussion ...... 116 Figure 4.24: Teach about sarcasm ...... 117 Figure 4.25: Give insight into everyday life ...... 118 Figure 4.26: Teach vocabulary and phrases ...... 119 Figure 4.27: Teach about society and culture ...... 120 Figure 4.28: Teach about grammar ...... 121
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List o f Tables Table 3.1: Field summary for Age ...... 83 Table 3.2: Field Summary for the depiction of current events in memes ...... 83 Table 3.3: Memes’ functions ...... 84 Table 3.4: What can be learned through specific memes? ...... 85
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Table of Contents Eidesstattliche Erklärung ...... i Acknowledgements ...... ii Abstract ...... iii Zusammenfassung ...... iv Abbreviations ...... vi List of Figures ...... vii List of Tables ...... viii 1 Introduction ...... 1 1.1 General Introduction ...... 1 1.2 Personal reasons for choosing this topic ...... 2 1.3 Thesis purpose and outline ...... 3
2 Literature Review ...... 5 2.1 The definition of meme ...... 5
2.2 Internet memes vs. original memes ...... 7 2.2.1 Replication and selection of Internet memes ...... 9 2.2.2 Constitution of memes and Internet memes ...... 10 2.2.3 The creation of Internet memes in terms of different Memegenres ...... 11 2.3 Meme vs. Viral ...... 15 2.3.1 The definition of viral ...... 15 2.3.2 The difference between meme and viral ...... 16 2.4 Memes is society and culture ...... 19 2.5 Political memes ...... 21 2.6 Memes and movements ...... 25 2.7 The confines of Internet memes ...... 28 2.8 Downsides of Internet memes ...... 30 2.9 Memes in education ...... 31 2.9.1 Humor in the classroom ...... 32 2.9.2 Memes and visual literacy ...... 34 2.9.3 The issue of the generational gap ...... 35 xi
2.9.4 The functions of memes in the classroom ...... 38 2.9.5 Teaching critical thinking skills with memes ...... 41 2.9.6 The embedment of memes in the classroom ...... 43
3 Methodology ...... 47 3.1 Purpose of the Study and Research Question ...... 47 3.2 Research Context and Participants ...... 49 3.3 Research Method ...... 50
3.3.1 Quantitative Research ...... 51
3.4 Method of Data Collection ...... 53
3.4.1 Reasons for Using this Method ...... 55
3.4.2 Design of the Questionnaire ...... 55
3.4.2.1 Categorization and Description of the Memes ...... 60
3.4.2.2 Reasons for Meme Selection with regard to Educational Intentions ...... 75
3.5 Procedure ...... 79
3.6 Ethics ...... 81
3.7 Data Analysis ...... 82
4 Findings ...... 86 4.1 Language Interest ...... 86 4.2 Language learning ...... 86 4.3 Language Grades ...... 88 4.4 Use of Instagram ...... 91 4.5 Languages and languages’ frequency on Instagram ...... 92 4.6 General learning possibilities through memes ...... 94
4.8 Improvement ...... 100 4.9 Comprehension and comprehension difficulties ...... 102 4.10 Knowledge gains ...... 106 4.11 Implementation in the classroom ...... 114 xii
4.12 Possible connection between the students’ language interest and their perceived language improvement ...... 122 4.13 Possible connection between the students’ use of Instagram and their language improvement ...... 122
5 Discussion ...... 124 5.1 Students’ attitude towards and experience with memes as a learning tool ...... 124 5.1.1 Language ...... 124 5.1.2 Culture ...... 125 5.1.3 Society and Stereotypes ...... 127 5.1.4 Feelings, opinions and current events ...... 128 5.2 Selected memes’ function as a teaching and learning tool and intentions and ideas on the memes’ purposes for teaching and learning……………………………...... 131 5.2.1 Linguistic features ...... 131 5.2.2 Sociocultural knowledge ...... 133 5.2.3 Sarcasm and humor ...... 135 5.2.4 Memes as ice breakers and introductory tools ...... 136 5.2.5 Summary of main points ...... 137
6 Conclusion ...... 139 6.1 Summary of the study and its findings ...... 139
6.2 Implications for practice ...... 140 6.3 Limitations of the study and implications for future research...... 141 7 Bibliography ...... 143 8 Appendices ...... 149 1
1 Introduction 1.1 General Introduction
Social media and memes have become part of our everyday lives. Every day, thousands of digital memes are created and shared, spreading laughter and humor, as well as information all over the modern world. Social media function as a new tool for communication, a source for information and a space for discussion and entertainment. Both, social media and digital memes offer a wide range of possibilities to act out one’s creativity and acquire knowledge. The Cambridge Dictionary in fact defines social media as
“websites and computer programs that allow people to communicate and share information on the internet using a computer or mobile phone” (Cambridge Dictionary b, n.d.) There are numerous social media platforms. Some of the most popular ones are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. IG has gained huge power and success over the past 10 years, having become one of the most famous social media platforms. According to the website Statista (2021), IG is amongst the top 5 of the most popular social networks worldwide. The statistic’s ranking relies on the number of active users as of January 2021. IG results on the 5th place with 1,22 billion users According to the Cambridge Dictionary, Instagram is
“the name of a social media service for taking, changing, and sharing photographs and video” (Cambridge Dictionary, n.d.) What becomes clear is that the focus on IG is on pictures and videos. For this reason, this social media platform appears to be the perfect storage and distribution channel for digital memes, which are comprised of digitally shared photos and videos. Merriam-Webster Dictionary distinguishes between two definitions of meme:
1) “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture” (Merriam-Webster, n.d.) 2) “an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media” (Merriam-Webster, n.d.)
The first definition refers to the original meaning of the term meme, introduced by Richard Dawkins. Merriam-Webster cites Richard Dawkins, who said
“Memes (discrete units of knowledge, gossip, jokes and so on) are to culture what genes are to life. Just as biological evolution is driven by the survival of the fittest genes in the gene pool, cultural evolution may be driven by the most successful memes.” (Merriam- Webster, n.d.) 2
The second definition explains the term from the digital point of view, referring in fact to memes on IG and other social media. Again, Merriam-Webster includes a quote by Anastasia Thrift, saying
“The grumpy cat meme frowned its way onto the Internet in September 2012 and never turned its dissatisfied head back. Since then, the image of the cranky cat has grown more and more popular in direct proportion to appearing less and less impressed by fame.” (Merriam-Webster, n.d.) and thereby giving an example of a highly popular Internet meme, the grumpy cat, which shows how consistent and durable a meme and its fame can be.
As already mentioned, social media and memes are something that almost everyone who has access to digital devices- from Generation Z and young adults to increasingly more people from older generations also- sees and is confronted with on a daily basis. This raises the question, whether they can be integrated into lessons at school as well and whether they can promote language learning or the acquisition of sociocultural competence and knowledge.
1.2 Personal reasons for choosing this topic
Ever since I started experiencing digital meme culture around ten years ago, I always enjoyed their constant presence on social media. My first personal experience with memes was on Facebook and pictured Rage Comics, for example, the “Fuuuuuuuuu” comic and other stickman comics. Over the years, my personal use of Facebook drastically decreased and I started focusing on IG, as many other teenagers and young adults. I found interest in IG not only because it has become one of the most frequently used and most popular social media platform worldwide (Statista, 2021b), always offering new creative features, but also because it gave meme culture a chance to expand on a completely new global level. Besides my passion for social media and memes, numerous other motives lead to my choice of my thesis’ topic: Firstly, I am very passionate about teaching. My internships helped me realize that I had chosen the right direction and the right job for myself. Secondly, humor and laughter play and important role in my life. I live true to the motto “A day without a smile or a laughter is a wasted day”. In my opinion, humor has the power to improve life quality and connect people and spread feelings of joy and happiness. Moreover, I think that humor does not only make our quotidian private lives lighter and more positive, but it can also facilitate and enhance the learning process. As we all know, laughter results in a high release of endorphins and causes relaxation and an all- around positive feeling. Therefore, I believe that the power of humor, laughter and positivity can and should not only be used for private purposes, but also in education and hence enable a 3 more enjoyable learning atmosphere. Lastly, I am interested in photography and video making and that is basically what both, IG and memes are fundamentally about. IG gives me the opportunity to look at memes, memes make me every single day and certainly also millions of other young people appreciate and support this new digital meme culture. Therefore, the only question that remained for me personally was the following: why not combine all three of my above-mentioned personal passions and make a thesis topic out of it? So that’s what I did. I am very grateful to be able to write about a topic I am very passionate about because it is both, informative as well as humorous. So what better way is there to teach and learn about certain topics than through humor? The importance lies in understanding and realizing where the fun ends and where the seriousness behind the humorous pictures and videos starts and where the potential for learning exists. In my opinion, as a teacher, it is our job to remind our students to reflect critically on the content they see online, as well as in real life. Content may be ironic, sarcastic, satirizing or funny and it is absolutely fine to laugh about all these contents as long as the humor is not derogatory or demeaning of others. One must also bear in mind the message behind these content as well and reflect on the potential for learning.
1.3 Thesis purpose and outline
This thesis aims at exploring the purpose and the role of memes and social media in society and finding out, whether they can contribute to the acquisition of linguistic features - such as vocabulary, phrases or grammar – in the language classroom, and also whether they can support the acquisition of sociocultural knowledge. The thesis is structured as follows:
Chapter 2, which is literature review, which focuses firstly on the definition and explanation of essential the key terms Instagram and memes. Next, the distinction between the original term meme and the new, modern version of this term are highlighted. In addition, the difference between a meme and a viral meme will briefly be discussed. Furthermore, the chapter focuses on meme culture and how memes aid the representation of cultures, society and events. Finally, the chapter discusses the function and use of memes in education and in the classroom.
Chapter 3 describes the methodological design of my research. After discussing the research question and the research’s purpose, I will further explain the approach of this empirical study, provide information about the ethical aspects, give reasons for choosing this study and declare why I decided to proceed in that particular way. Furthermore, the chapter includes a personal categorization of each meme that has been used in the study, as well as a brief description of every meme. Chapter 3 is concluded with personal ideas and intentions in regards to the memes’ 4 functions in learning and teaching, in other words how this meme could be used for language learning or the expansion of sociocultural competence
In Chapter 4 the findings of the research are presented. In other words, it focuses on the analysis of the data and lists the study’s results.
Chapter 5 compares my research’s results to existing literature and hypothesizes on possible reasons for the results. This chapter mainly focuses on the illustration of the accordance and divergence between existing literature and my study’s results and discussion about the findings’ possible meaning.
Finally, Chapter 6 presents a summary of the study’s findings, practical implications for educators, as well as limitations of the present study and implications for future research. Concluding, it highlights the shortcomings of my empirical study and suggests possible ideas for future research and investigations on this increasingly discussed and interesting topic.
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2 Literature Review This chapter focuses on existing literature that addresses topics, which are relevant for this thesis. It provides an overview of important definitions and the history and development of memes. Furthermore, it outlines existing research studies and teaching methods on the use of memes in educational contexts that help to understand the importance of and need for the present study.
2.1 The definition of meme
According to Shifman (2014), in 1904 German biologist Richard Semon was the first one to use the term “mneme”, which derives from the Greek word mneme and means memory or remembrance. Unfortunately, his use of this term did not successfully spread in the world of science. Years later in 1976, the British biologist Richard Dawkins first introduced the term “Mem” in his book The Selfish Gene, which had huge success all over the world (Dawkins, 1989). Dawkins (1989) describes a mem as an analogy to a gene, whereby a gene is a unit of heredity (TheFreeDictionary, 2021) that is replicated with almost total fidelity (Dawkins, 2014) and passed on from one person to another. In an interview from 2014, Richard Dawkins defines genes as immortal and emphasizes the importance of the difference between a successful and an unsuccessful gene, as their success influences the genetical development for millions of years. A good gene has a major impact on the evolution of the human body, as it forms bodies that are able to preserve good genes and pass them on. Therefore, Dawkins (2014) defines individuals as surviving machines. Analogous to the gene, the mem is described as a unit of cultural heredity, used to describe the cultural evolution.
Similarly to genes, memes are passed on through replication and imitation and their success depends mainly on the Mem fitting into its sociocultural surroundings (Shifman, 2014). Blackmore (1999) emphasizes that a meme and a gene are two very different forms of replication. Shifman (2014) refers to Dawkins, who stated that there are three highly important features, which influence a Mem’s success: longevity, fertility and fidelity. Fidelity meaning accuracy, longevity in the sense of retention and fertility meaning variety (Shifman, 2014). Blackmore (1999) states that the memorability of a meme is far more important than the usefulness of a meme. A meme’s success does not rely on how important or useful it is, but rather on how long it can stay in a person’s mind. Actions that are easy to remember and easily replicable or imitable have a greater chance of becoming a meme than actions, which are complicated and difficult to imitate. Furthermore, the selection of memes depends on people’s preferences, attentions, emotions and desires. 6
Blackmore (1999) states that pictures and videos that are saved and shared in digital form- on digital devices-, run a lower risk of information loss than orally transmitted memes. However, the quality of a meme and of its replication is not necessarily related to digital systems. A “real life” meme can be as successful as a digital one, as long as it lives up to the standards of a qualitatively replicated meme. In his book, Dawkins (1989) lists firm beliefs and cultural artefacts as basic examples for memes.
Shifman (2014) explains that, in spite of the popularity that the term has gained right after the publication of The Selfish Gene, the research on the evolution and diffusion of memes only became an active research program over a decade later. However, when the research program had started, numerous scientists from all over the world started devoting their time to the study of memes. She further explains that the engagement with memetics lead to controversies . Some scientists and authors presented and thought of memetics as an analogy to biology. In doing so, they compared memes to germs and defined memes as cultural viruses that are spread through communication. However, as already mentioned, memes can be compared to genes, but they cannot be equated with genes. Scientists who are in favor of this analogy of memetics to biology tried to find cultural equivalents for biological terms such as genotype, phenotype or code. Shifman (2014) emphasizes though, that many other scientists have criticized this, as the complexity of culture outweighs the range of terminology used in biology. Thus, the term culture would be used in a rather constrained way.
The second controversy revolves around the question whether people are simply devices that serve the distribution of memes, or whether people have control over memes. Blackmore (1999) claims that, in regards to memes, humans’ only function and aim is replication. She defines humans as imitators and selectors, who decide on the success of a meme. People are, as her book’s title says, meme machines. Replication and selection machines of memes, who are responsible for new brilliant, as well as preposterous ideas and trends. She further illustrates that, as with genes, one can also speak of inheritance in memes. Ideas or behaviors are passed on through imitation and might change and develop over time, but part of the original meme will always survive and be recognized in the new versions of the meme(s). Clearly, variations and several different versions of a meme come into existence over time through a common language and people’s beliefs, which might not always stay the same. In any case, the basis serves as a model and will always be somehow evident, hence memes go through the process of heredity and not all variations become equally famous. Every single one undergoes the process of selection and at the end of the day, only very few memes reach a high level of national or global success (Blackmore, 1999). 7
Lamarck’s theory equals Blackmore’s statement that memes are hereditary factors, relaying cultural and social behaviors, ideas, beliefs etc. Lamarckism (Ray, 2017) denotes the principle of inheritance of acquired traits. These traits can change throughout life, but they can, in any case, always be passed on to our descendants. Lamarckism excludes biological evolution, because it does not refer to genetics in biology, but rather to things that can be learned and therefore “inherited” or passed on. It refers to the imitation of the product. In other words, we imitate and reproduce what we see or hear, which is basically what Blackmore means when claiming that humans are meme machines (Blackmore, 1999).
In this context, Blackmore (1999) lays great store on clarifying that the spreading and success of a meme does not necessarily depend on its verisimilitude. Stories that become famous and are retold several times reaching different places all over the world, must not necessarily be true in order to be told and spread. If a meme seems interesting or entertaining it will make its way out into the world, regardless of its truthfulness.
Concerning the question of people’s purpose in regards to memes, Shifman (2014) vindicates the opinion of author Rosaria Contes, who introduces a new point of view regarding the relation between people and memes. She says that people should be seen as agents that stimulate the process of selection of memes, rather than as vectors of cultural transmission, whose function is solely the passing on and sharing of memes. Besides, she stresses importance of the people as agents, which are able to recognize the importance of certain features as social norms, beliefs or preferences and thus influence and decide on the replication of memes.
2.2 Internet memes vs. original memes
The Internet facilitates the formation of this kind of community as it functions as a global connector. Throughout the years, the increasing use of the Internet and particularly social media also lead to a rise in the utilization of digital memes. The way in which memes are created, selected, spread and imitated changed. Blackmore (2008) introduces the term temes in a TED Talk. According to her, temes are technical memes, in other words digital memes, also known as Internet memes.
There are several websites, which store thousands of memes and are therefore also called meme banks, and some of them even contain videos that explain the reasons for the success of certain memes. On sites like Tumblr, Reddit, 9Gag or KnowYourMeme, millions of people check on the latest memes and discuss and validate them. While memetics and the original definition of a meme set great value on longevity as being one of the main features that make a meme’s 8 success, the Internet memes distance themselves from the original definition and features of a meme, as will be further explained in this chapter.
On the Web, it is all about rapidly receiving a meme and spreading it before the next cool meme pops up. According to Shifman (2014), memes that circulate on the Web could be interpreted as a short passing fad. Nevertheless, from a superficial point of view, memes on the Internet have quite some things in common with the non-digital versions of memes. Mina (2019) mentions Limor Shifman in her work, who said that the term Internet memes distances itself from Dawkins’ original explanation of the word mem and hence should be seen in a specific light. Mina (2019) goes on referencing Shifman, saying that Internet memes can therefore be defined on the basis of three key characteristics:
1) Internet memes share certain common characteristics. These characteristics can be everything from content to form or stance. You will always find some basic characteristics remixed memes share with their original meme. 2) The creation of Internet memes is always conducted with awareness of each other. Variations of memes do not lack popularity because they are made visible among the digital communities. 3) Internet memes are not simply shared, they are imitated and transformed several times and in different ways by many different users. This third characteristic perfectly highlights the difference between a meme and a viral1
As can be seen, the new and modern definition of a meme, a digital meme, deviates from its original meaning. While Dawkins’ definition refers to rituals or imitations like singing the Happy-Birthday-Song, clicking your tongue to show disapproval or simply wearing earrings, Internet memes open a whole new world. This does not imply that Internet memes and the original definition of memes do not share any characteristics because, as has already been explained, they do. However, many “normal memes”, banal imitations just as wearing a ponytail or wearing earrings are completely and subconsciously integrated and ingrained in today’s society, while Internet memes should still be considered something rather new and modern, something that has not yet been part of our lives for a very long time up to this moment. Therefore, Internet memes are still rather unexplored and have only been gaining power for a few years now. The main difference, in my opinion, consists in memes being cultural units and habits that are passed on from one person to another, while Internet memes are pieces of content, just as pictures or videos-, which often contain and express personal beliefs that are passed on
1 see chapter 2.4.2 9 and shared via the Internet. Shifman (2014) points out further positive attributes of digital memes. These include the easy dissemination of a meme thanks to the possibility of digitally sharing it with a whole society, the simple imitation of a meme thanks to technical tools, such as image or video editing apps, as well as the straightforward selection of the most successful memes, competing for popularity through likes by Internet users. The immensely rapid and easy spreading of a meme thanks to social media, which makes a meme a common social phenomenon, is highly appreciated by society nowadays for particularly one reason, according to Nicholas John: society’s necessity of sharing (Shifman, 2014). In the digital world, “sharing” means the uploading of photos, videos, the status on Facebook or stories on IG. Sharing something online means, you distribute it and simultaneously communicate something. For example, by uploading an IG story, one shares an event or personal information of their life and make it circulate on that specific social media, while- at the same time- communicating their feelings or attitudes. In today’s digital society everything revolves around sharing, bloggers and influencers share their whole private life and some of them earn a little extra money or even make a living by doing so. Equally to IG Stories or a Facebook Status, also memes can depict and reflect attitudes and feelings. This will be further discussed in the following sections.
2.2.1 Replication and selection of Internet memes
Furthermore, digital memes burst all limits of imitation and replication. Non-digital memes are often communicated orally and can therefore not be reproduced or replicated in an exact and equal way. In contrast, digital memes are presented in the form of pictures or videos and therefore do not necessarily change. However, there are two ways, in which digital memes are frequently edited and replicated. One trend is the trend of imitation in the sense of mimicry and the other one is the trend of remix (Shifman 2014). Mimicry intends people, who mimic a meme in order to make new and unique version of it. For example, an existing meme that shows a person or a group of people in certain positions and with certain facial expressions is copied by other people who imitate the respective content and create a new version of the original meme by simply using themselves as protagonists of the meme. The second trend, remix, refers to the remake of an existing meme, by editing it with modern tools just as Photoshop. In this case, the head of a person is substituted with another person’s head, in order to change a small detail of the whole meme and thus, make it unique and different from the original one without losing the obvious connection to the template. Bini and Robutti (2019) note that memes consist of various templates that have one common feature, which could be a text, an image or an audio. When many features of the meme are changed, while keeping one constant, new memes are created. 10
In regards to selection and competition, a meme’s success depends on its ability to adjust to its sociocultural surrounding. The digital world allows its users to see the ranking, valuation, selection, views and other information of every meme that exists on the Web. Clearly, memes with a better ranking and with more views are selected more often. That is how and where the feature of competition develops. Shifman calls this possibility of controlling a meme’s success and selection metainformation. All these qualities play a major role in the process of defining and creating a digital meme (Shifman, 2014).
2.2.2 Constitution of memes and Internet memes
Nevertheless, this still leaves the question, how a digital meme is constituted. The first theory on the constitution of Internet memes emphasizes the importance to differentiate between a meme and a meme vehicle. In this case, memes are considered complex ideas that are developed in our brains and the meme vehicle is the execution and actual form expressions of the meme, presented in the form of a photo, text or a ritual. This is covered by the term mentalistic memetics (Shifman, 2014). Mentalistic memetics can be compared to Saussure’s theory of the signifier and the significant. In Saussure’s case the theory revolves around language but it can be easily adapted and compared to the concept of mentalistic memetics, as they both take an initial idea or concept that has to be realized as a starting point.
In contrast, behavioristic memetics insist on their theory, that the meme itself and the meme vehicle are one and only exist together, as a coded information. In this case, the meme is seen as a single and concrete unit. This theory says that a meme cannot exist outside of its context and form of appearance (Shifman, 2014). By this, Shifman (2014) means a simple photo, video or ritual.
Besides the two theories, which illustrate a few differences between the original definition of memes and Internet memes, there are further important differences between the two types of memes. A big difference between the traditional meme and its new digital version is the personal branding. While traditional memes did not necessarily have much personal branding and individual exceptionalism, digital memes offer the possibility of expressing uniqueness by making the person who shares the meme not only the agent of divulgence, but also a real part of the meme. This would, for example, be the case, if a photo of a group of people or a single person is used for the creation of a meme and uploaded into the Web. In this case, the person also becomes the medium of the meme. This is much easier to implement in the digital world, rather than in the real world where memes are found as Graffiti on walls and several other public places. 11
Due to the fact that traditional memes, such as the “Kilroy was here” meme, are often found on walls, there’s a more assessable number of such memes that can be found all over the world, but the accurate diffusion is quite difficult to detect. Nevertheless, these memes usually stay on those walls for a very long time and are not a transitory appearance in the real world.
As opposed to this, the existence and longevity of memes on the Internet has to be treated from two different points of view: the real world and the digital world. A meme that is successful and widespread on the Internet, usually is of fleeting existence in the real world. Shifman (2014) mentions the “Planking” trend as an example for this. The moment in the real world, in this example meaning the act of doing the plank, is quite short and sometimes only lasts a view seconds, as it only aims at taking a good picture of video that can subsequently be uploaded. The actual longevity and enduring existence of those memes begins as soon as they are uploaded and start going viral. In the digital world, they start making their marks. This implies that students could create their own memes with little effort as the creation of the memes, meaning the act of taking a picture or filming a video, takes little time. Therefore, developing their own memes could be considered a quick but funny exercise that can either be acted out at home or at school.
2.2.3 The creation of Internet memes in terms of different Memegenres
According to Shifman (2014), digital devices and tools theoretically offer a lot of space for creativity and freedom to the internet users and meme creators. In practice, however, it becomes clear that meme productions follow a variety of certain concepts. These concepts are called Memegenres. Genres are defined as groups or compositions of anything, which share stylistic traits, as well as structures, themes, motives and target groups. In regards to Internet meme genres, Shifman (2014) refers to Jean Burgess’ term “mundane creativity”, which denotes everyday, innovative, and artistic practices. The realization of such artistic practices is easier in the case of Internet memes thanks to all the modern tools that digital devices offer. Shifman (2014) claims that Memegenres contribute to the development of group identity. Simultaneously, they play an important role in the creation of social boundaries. The reason for the variety of Memegenres is not only the high number of sub-communities and various groups that are formed by people on the Internet, but also the fact that not all memes are equally produced, meaning that some require a higher competence of meme making than others. Some memes can be created, as well as understood, by almost everyone. Others require background knowledge or a more detailed knowledge about a meme subculture. Shifman (2014) lists a few Memegenres that are used for the creation of memes, trying to display the differences between 12 each Genre, also concerning their level of difficulty in regards to understanding and production. The first Memegenre mentioned by Shifman (2014) is the Photoshopreaction. Photoshop allows its users to edit pictures on a highly professional level. That is to say if you know how to use Photoshop properly. Photoshopreactions are pictures that are created as a reaction to other memetic pictures, which contain at least one detail that kindles meme creators’ creativity and evokes several creative reactions (Shifman 2014). An excellent example for such a photoshop reaction is a picture of Bernie Sanders on Inauguration Day. Miao (2021) explains in her article, that a photojournalist called Brendan Smialowski took a photo of Bernie Sanders sitting socially distanced on a folding chair, observing the inauguration and everything happening around him. He sits there with crossed legs, crossed arms, a large brown coat, oversized mittens and a mask. Overnight, thousands of photoshop reactions were created, showing Bernie Sanders picture inserted into various scenarios. From artworks, movie scenes, including in simple everyday life situations, Bernie Sanders peacefully sitting on his chair in different settings has become a widely spread and incredibly popular meme in January 2021.
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Figure 2.1: The Internet is a magical place
2 see chapter 7 for image sources 13
Figure 2.3: Bernie Sanders in Forest Gump Figure 2.2: Bernie Sanders in Star Trek
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Figure 2.4: Bernie Sanders and Jennifer Lopez
3 see chapter 7 for image sources 14
Figure 1 (The Internet is a magical place, 2021) shows Bernie Sanders photoshopped into several environments, in a film, a real-life situation, on the moon as well as inserted in a painting. Figure 2 (Bernie Sanders in Forest Gump, 2021) and Figure 3 (Bernie Sanders in Star Trek, 2021) both picture edited movie scenes, one showing Sanders in the film Forest Gump and the other one placing Sanders on the Star Trek ship. Figure 4 (Bernie Sanders and Jennifer Lopez, 2021) is a photoshopped version of a stage performance of Jennifer Lopez, who is now leaning against Bernie Sanders while being on stage. These figures perfectly illustrate the creativity of people when it comes to the creation of memes.
Another Memegenre mentioned by Shifman (2014) are Phototrends. This includes posed pictures of people who imitate certain poses or actions in various settings. The purpose behind doing so is mostly the subsequent sharing of the respective picture or video online. An example for such a phototrend would be the planking trend, when people planked in numerous different and crazy places (Shifman, 2014).
The next Memegenre introduced by Shifman (2014) is the Lipsynch. Lipsynchs are short videos or clips, in which a single person or also a group of people move their lips synchronically to a song or a short excerpt of a comedian’s speech or any other slightly popular conversation. The App and social media TikTok has gained huge success over the last years, being on 7th place amongst the most popular social platforms as of January 2021 (Statista, 2021). TikTok has originally started with the name Musically and has constantly been growing its user audience ever since Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang created and launched the application as an entertainment app (Kumar, 2020). Lipsychns are an important part and basis of this social platform and many young adults and kids use the genre of Lipsynch for their videos that they share online (Funny TikTok Art, 2020). Shifman (2014) listed 9 different Memegenres, out of which I have mentioned three and I am going to refer to one more Memegenre mentioned by the author: Rage Comics. Rage Comics are comics with rage faces that usually tend to concentrate on the topic of social struggles and society’s winners and losers. They separate into three different categories: Fail memes, What the fuck memes and Win memes. As Rage Comics address quite delicate topics, people have to have a certain “subcultural competence” as Shifman says (Shifman, 2014, p. 110) and a knowledge of socially acceptable ways of introducing such figures properly. Rage Comics may not be as popular as they were some years ago- around 2012- but they never get out of fashion. 15
Shifman differentiates between three types of Memegenres:
1) Genres that are based on the documentation of “real-life” moments. Phototrends for example are part of this first Memegenre type. In my opinion, also Photoshopreactions can partly be considered a Type 1 Memegenre, at least if it contains real-life moments, as in the example of Bernie Sanders, whose photo was a “real-life” snapshot. 2) Genres that explicitly undergo a visual or audiovisual editing. Contents, which are edited and most evidently remixed, be it via Photoshop or in a Video using Lipsynch. 3) Genres that have created their own completely new world of digital contents, just as for example the series of Rage Comics. Rage Comics, or also LOLCats had become overly famous categories of memes, which required certain competences of its users and communities in order to be understood and imitated. Using the example of LOLCats, users would need to master their LOLspeak in order to participate in this community of LOLCats memes.
2.3 Meme vs. Viral
Besides the differentiation of various Memegenres, further distinctions have to be made. In this digital world, memes play an important role. According to An Xiao Mina (2019), nowadays, the internet is crucial for social movements, which imply the spreading of memes and the subsequent creation and diffusion of new memes. Aside from the popular meme, there is another term that is of high importance in the digital world though: the viral. Kevin Pauliks even extends this distinction and differentiates between viral, meme and series. In the following section, I will focus on the definition of virals and examine the difference between memes and virals.
2.3.1 The definition of viral
In the article “Knowlegde and Knowlede Management in the Social Media Age”, Jeff Hemsley and Robert Mason (2013) talk about virality and viral information events, examining how and why certain posts, articles etc. go viral. They state that virality plays an important role in various fields just as political science, communications and many others. Hemsley and Mason define virality as a 16
“cascade diffusion process wherein a message is actively forwarded from one person to others, within and between multiple weakly linked personal social networks, resulting in a rapid geometric increase in the number of people who are exposed to the message” (Hemsley & Mason, 2013, p. 144) In other words, a viral is any form of message, just as a video, photo, text etc., that is passed on from one person to another and thus spreads quickly on social media and goes viral. Therefore, a viral can be identified as a single unit that runs through this process of rapid and great diffusion. The two researchers mention three key characteristics in regard to virality and the viral information events, as they call the virals (Hemsley & Mason, 2013):
1) The continuous diffusion of information from one person to another 2) The high speed of information spreading through social media platforms 3) The broad reach that is achieved by bridging various networks
The original definition of the term viral can be found in the medical world and describes something epidemic. An infection or a virus is passed on from an infected person to a person who is not infected yet. As a result, the other person gets infected as well and passes the infection on to the next person. It becomes viral (Hemsley & Mason, 2013). A brilliant and easily understandable example for this would be Covid-19. Coronavirus has become viral within a few months and spread all over the planet, affecting not only certain parts of the world but humanity as a whole. Hemsely and Mason (2013) say that the same happens with messages, videos, photos or texts on the Internet. A person creates or receives a message and passes it on to another person who has not gotten that message yet and the message is passed on to numerous people until it goes viral. Taking the example of Coronavirus, certain articles, videos or photos concerning Covid-19 have become viral on the Internet as well. Therefore, one could say that this virus did not only spread from an epidemic and medical point of view, but also on a digital level. Though, the most important factor of a digital viral is the following: it is always a single unit that is somehow diffused.
2.3.2 The difference between meme and viral
Virals and memes are both forwarded from one person to another and they both widely and rapidly spread all over numerous social media platforms and networks. Therefore, the question is: where is the difference between a meme and a viral? The answer is simple. As already mentioned, a viral is a single cultural unit. This single unit can be anything, a video, a picture, even a joke. A meme, as opposed to this, is a collection of units. An original video itself is not a meme yet, it is only part of the meme. As I already stated, a meme is often an imitation or a 17 remix of an already existing photo or video. As such, the use of remix and the act of imitation are the fundaments for a real meme. Thus, the difference between the two terms is simple: a viral is a simple message of any form that broadly and rapidly spreads all over the Internet. From that point of view, a meme is analogous to a viral, with the slight difference of it being modified. A meme can vary, it can change and there can be many versions of a meme. A viral only exists in its original form and does not undergo any form of modification (Shifman, 2014).
According to Shifman (2014), a purely viral content does not exist anymore nowadays. She states that with the increasing level of awareness and fame of a video or picture on the Internet, the chances of it being modified, remixed and imitated augment as well. This again implies that a memetic video is the product of a once viral video (Shifman, 2014). Therefore, viral videos or pictures are often the basis for memetic photos and videos. She differentiates between a viral, a founder-based meme and an egalitarian meme. A viral is a single unit that has a single version of its message. It has numerous agents who spread it and millions of spectators who look at it. A viral can cause imitations though. That is how a founder-based meme develops. The latter is based on a certain text, video or image that is going to be remixed and imitated. The several versions of the founder-based meme spread quite a lot, but mostly less than its original version. Finally, Shifman (2014) mentions the egalitarian meme, which is a meme that does not have a clear origin. It contains many different versions that apparently developed simultaneously and are often based on a specific genre or a certain pattern.
Shifman (2014) highlights another difference between virals and memes, which is their form of communication. Besides the fact that they are associated with two different kinds of communication, which I will shortly discuss, the focus lies on passive and active communication through memes and virals. While virals seem to be a more passive way of communication, memes are more actively communicating with their audience through added texts and other sorts of modification. She argues though, that virals can contain an active way of communication too, for example, through the insertion of meta-comments just as “please do not try this at home”. Therefore, both memes and virals can communicate actively with their audience, but it becomes quite clear, that memes give their agents and spectators more design freedom and thus freedom of active communication.
Concerning the two different kinds of communication mentioned above, one must differentiate between communication as transmission and communication as ritual (Shifman, 2014). Communication as transmission means communication as a method for passing on information only. It focuses on spreading its message as quick and much as possible, without any 18 interferences and with information transmission as a main goal. In contrast, communication as ritual aims at communicating a message. Its goal is to transmit values, symbols and similarities between cultures and societies. It does not focus on the spreading of a single information, but it is rather seen as an enduring process of building new constructs of culture, news and identity and transmit feelings of community and belonging (Shifman, 2014). Virality, as a single, unmodified unit, is associated with communication as transmission, while memes represent communication as a ritual.
As opposed to this, Pauliks (2017) states that the example of the Socially Awkward Penguin shows, to which extend digital memes use communication as a ritual. In order to understand, why this meme perfectly represents the communication of rituals, a brief explanation of the meme’s origins and developments is necessary. The Socially Awkward Pengiun first appeared in 2009 on the online platform 4chan. The format and scheme of the meme is comparable to the Advice Animals, as their typography and background layout resembles, but the Socially Awkward Penguin represents and depicts, as the name already says, socially awkward situations. It is a meme based on unpleasant or embarrassing life situations, which, on top of that, resulted in clumsy responses (Pauliks, 2017). The origin of this meme are photographs of the Adeliepenguin taken by George F. Moble. Even though the Adeliepenguin is considered a very sociable bird, its clumsy appearance called certain cultural stereotypes into existence. Thus, the meme of the Socially Awkward Penguin was created and, in comparison to many other digital memes, it got its own personal meaning. Everyone has similar or same associations to this meme and uses it equally, which is why its recurring use made it, what Pauliks (2017) calls it, a series. According him, a plausible explanation for the memes popularity is the fact that it addresses topics that, up to that point- meaning the year 2009-, have not been discussed publicly via the use of memes. The Socially Awkward Penguin takes up the issue of social fears. This meme allows its creators and spectators not only to express personal and social fears and communicate social problems, but it also normalizes and generalizes them. The Socially Awkward Penguin is applicable to various situations, from everyday situations as for example embarrassing encounters or fails to forms of exclusion and general disappointments as being friendzoned (Pauliks, 2017). Therefore, the meme’s success lies in the depiction and addressing of those recurring situations and contexts. This recurrence is what is meant by ritual when one speaks of “communication as a ritual”. Thus, it becomes clear why the Socially Awkward Penguin and Internet memes in general tend to be associated with this form of communication.
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2.4 Memes is society and culture
An Xiao Mina (2019), who, in her book Memes to Movements, explains that, as the title already says, memes have become an important part of movements, thus emphasizes a meme’s purpose as transmitter of values and beliefs. In fact, she claims that the use and involvement of memes in protest movements and their countermovements perfectly exhibits how digital culture is becoming increasingly relevant and influential and that is has become part of modern society’s life, playing a major role in the twenty-first century (Mina, 2019). In her work, she focuses on the correlation between memes and social changes and aims on investigating whether these “most creative aspects of social media culture” (Mina, 2019, p. 4) have a positive impact on society and social change or whether it is just a tool for promoting narcissism, polarization, propaganda etc.
As an example for meme culture, Mina (2019) mentions Cat Memes. According to Mina, cats have not always had a very good reputation. While dogs have always been put in a good light, cats were always associated with trouble and spite and their owners were normally designated “neurotic losers” or “crazy cat ladies” (Mina, 2019, p. 17). Moreover, cats are domestic animals that are more private. The relationship between the owners and their cats remains very private. That is also the reason why many funny or cute moments with cats can only be seen and experienced by the owners themselves. Nowadays, cat owners can share everything they experience at home with their fluffy friends online. Thus, everyone has the chance to experience this feline joy as everyone has access to the pictures and videos that have been put online. Those shared contents are then usually remixed and modified. This results in numerous Cat Memes, GIFs and other media being spread all over various social media, which, by now, entertain a big part of the world’s population. From remixed pictures or videos of random cats to famous cats who even have their own profile, as, for example, Grumpy Cat, the range of feline media and the freedom of creativity in regards these media on the Web seem to be infinite [thanks to the nowadays available tools] (Mina, 2019). According to Mina (2019), feline media has become so successful and popular for one simple reasons: They
“illuminate deeper issues about the role of creative media online […]. Cats […] are a perfect symbol for how memes operate: erratic, unpredictable, and yet somehow attractive, they embody the free-spirited nature of the internet, which sometimes brings cuddles and sometimes brings claws. […] they are a key to illustrating how and why internet media gives voice to so many” (Mina, 2019, p. 16) Section 3.4.2.1 of Chapter 3 includes and presents three cat memes, which perfectly illustrate the diversity of cat memes on the Internet. Furthermore, they picture how cats are used for 20 different types of memes, and how they can convey numerous messages and address various topics depending on the context, in which the cats are put and how the pictures or memes of the cats are remixed or edited. Moreover, those three cat memes are an excellent example of how cat memes can be used as a tool for giving voice to others, such as, for example, students or language learners by addressing various issues, mainly in a very ironic and funny way. One of the three cat memes that are featured in the present survey, for example, portrays the struggles of language learners and the difficulties that L2 learners have to face during the process of language acquisition. Students at school can probably relate to this struggle. Hence, in the classroom, the teacher could let the students come up with other struggles that language learners have to face and let them edit and remix the presented meme by replacing the text that is used in the memes with their own ideas and list of struggles. Concerning language, the use of cat memes has proven to be useful even in regards to the addressing of pronunciation. Taking the example of a meme that has been used for the questionnaire of this thesis’ survey, a cat’s facial expression hints at the pronunciation of a sound or a word. By showing such a meme to the students, the teacher can let the students guess the sound it could be producing and hence make them guess the pronunciation of the sought word or sound. Furthermore, cat memes can also ironically shed light on cultural clichés, such as typical gestures of a certain community or culture. Again, taking the example of the cat meme that shows a cat imitating a “typical Italian” hand gesture, the teacher and the students can, for example, analyze whether the content and the message of the meme is reliable and truthful. In other words, the students can discuss the hand gesture’s association with Italian culture. Moreover, the students could come up with other gestures or features that they would associate with Italian culture. Hence, the teacher could make them create their own versions of cat memes that depict the student’s ideas and suggestions. In addition, the teacher can ask the students to inform themselves on other typical gestures from other countries and cultures and eventually let them create memes on their findings using. Ideally, the students can try to use pictures of cats or any other animal, in order to spread joy- which is being transmitted through feline or any other animals pictures according to Mina (2019)- and laughter while addressing cultural issues.
Therefore, cat memes perfectly illustrate how people connect via the internet and thus, how people developed this new form of culture, also known as digital culture. LOLCats and other popular cat meme trends may seem to have no sense expect pure entertainment and might be considered funny but silly. This, however is not entirely true, as there is a serious side of this media as well, which reveal the “intricate cultural practices and implications for how internet communities operate” (Mina, 2019, p. 21). The idea behind LOLCats etc. is to not only make 21 people laugh and share and create contents, but also to make meaningful connections with others, be it with cat owner who might even form their own community online, be it with people who do not have cats but enjoy their nature.
In other words, the concept of pluralistic ignorance has been broken thanks to these formed communities and the connections that people have built (up). Pluralistic ignorance means the “mistaken belief by a group that their beliefs are not shared by their peers” (Mina, 2019, p. 21). This may have been the case in former times before the World Wide Web was invented, when the possibility of expressing one’s beliefs was rather limited. Nowadays though, it has become quite easy to counteract this pluralistic ignorance. Mina states that the breaking of this concept additionally leads to the formation of new norms of behavior and belief through repetition and affirmation. That is what scientists call the synchronization of opinion. While in former times men who loved cats were associated with a lack of masculinity, women who loved cats were associated with that principle of the crazy cat lady and cats generally were associated with a whole lot of negative adjectives, the internet has now changed these (negative) connotations.
Besides fighting prejudices, this trend of using and sharing feline pictures on the Internet can be leveraged by teachers in the classroom also. Assuming that it its true that cat memes spread joy amongst Internet users and that they can help connect people and find similarities and communalities, they can humorously assist the discussion of cultural aspects and draw attention to experiences or struggles of people, such as language learners.
The internet and social media have made room for all creatures on this planet, be it cats, dogs, people or other as well as for whole new perspectives (Mina, 2019). People finally get the chance to reveal their personal perspectives on numerous topics and to share what best reflects their own values. What makes digital culture so unique, is that it allows to express opinions and share values through what might be considered a silly, insignificant meme at first, as for example all the cat memes (Mina, 2019). When using and remixing these meme properly though, they can be used to share opinions concerning various topics, as for example political issues (Mina, 2019).
2.5 Political memes
Shifman (2014) too, in fact, addresses political memes in her book. She claims that nowadays, Internet memes play an important role in politics and vice versa. Politics is represented in memes in two ways: either in a very humorous way or in a pretty serious way. The aim of political memes is to express proper opinions and concerns and to participate at debates and 22 discussions on how to improve situations that could have a global influence and how the world should look like and what must be one in order to reach certain goals. In this context, Shifman (2014) brings up the term political participation. This term has changed over the years. While years ago political participation meant going to elections and becoming part of political organizations, the meaning of this term now includes digital participation as well, as new media offers creative and convenient ways for encouraging people to actively become part of political ongoing(s). A brilliant example for the importance of media in politics are the presidential elections in the US from 2008. It was the first presidential election campaign that was defined as a Web-2.0-campaign. Not only candidates, just as Barack Obama, used social media just as Facebook and YouTube for promoting themselves, but also supporters of the different parties were able to express and share their support on various ways, politically acting and participating and simultaneously motivating others to do so as well. Shifman (2014) lists three functions of internet-based political memes:
1) Memes as forms of persuasion and political advocacy 2) Memes as grassroots actions 3) Memes as forms of expression and public discourse
The elections of 2008 showed that memes have a high potential of persuasion. Moreover, they connect the personal with the political, which is helpful for both, the candidates and the supporters. The third function implies the humorous and convenient way of expressing one’s concerns. Thereby, many different opinions and identities come together and can be exchanged and used for forming a personal opinion and get various views on all kinds of political topics (Shifman, 2014).
Personal contact plays a major role in the persuasion of people regarding their attitudes and beliefs. Not only the sharing of contents by people who one looks up to can have a huge impact though, numbers and statistics can also influence a person’s quest. Spectator numbers inform others on how often and how much this specific content has been clicked or viewed and thus leaves a certain impression or arouses a certain interest. Moreover, the most popular and most viral memes and political participations are not necessarily the ones created and shared by the political candidates themselves. Supporters’ videos or other memes often get a higher number of clicks and are shared more often. This emphasizes, that also smaller groups of people, who function as agents, can have a great influence on the digital diffusion of political contents (Shifman, 2014). Mina (2019) lists “Brexit” in this context, the referendum in the United Kingdom, which decided on whether the UK remains part of the European Union or not. People 23 started creating cat memes that addressed this political issue and the hashtag #CatsAgainstBrexit went viral. While some memes expressed their support for the UK exiting the EU, others criticized Brexit and made satirical statements about the referendum, comparing the “Britons’ desire to exit the EU to cats’ desire to leave the house. After meowing and meowing repeatedly to leave the EU, […] they would end up just wanting to go back in.” (Mina, 2019, p. 24). Cat owners might find this comparison funnier than people who have never owned a cat, because they can relate to this situation as they most probably have experienced it several times: a cat insisting on wanting to outside but after two minutes they want to come back inside the house. Political memes can be discussed and even created at school as well though. Students, who run for student council president, could be asked to create their own memes to promote oneself in regards to the elections. The same can be done for the elections of the class representative. The students could use all techniques of meme creation, from remixing and Photoshop reactions to imitation and creation through mimicry, or they can simply create an entirely new meme. Besides, existing political memes can also be discussed in the classroom. Memes about political situations, as, for example, Brexit or some presidential elections, can be used as a sort of scrutiny, in order to check on the students’ knowledge, as some memes, in fact, require a certain background knowledge and lacking background knowledge could exacerbate the students’ understanding of a meme. Not all students might be equally familiar with and interested in political situations. Therefore, teachers can promote the discussion of political issues through memes in order to render the issue slightly more interesting and funny by using memes that, as stated by Mina (2019), compare political events to cats’ behavior etc.
Generally, memes establish a connection between silliness and seriousness. They link something familiar, which is part of many people’s everyday life, just as owning a dog or a cat or any other pet and taking pictures of them, with something less common or quotidian, as political referendums. In doing so, a serious, less considered topic maybe integrated more easily in people’s lives and can be discussed and commented on in a funny way and what may appear to be a silly media might gain some seriousness. Internet memes aid creating space for conversation amongst the digital community and advocate the rise of creativity and social change. Because, as technology theorist Clay Shirky, who is cited by Mina (2019), explained, every smallest creative act, as silly as it may be, is still a creative act that pushes people to engage critically and creatively with media, current events or happenings, cultures, society etc. (Mina, 2019). Shifman (2014) agrees with Clay Shirky’s statement that is cited in An Xiao Mina’s book Memes to Movements (2019), pointing out that memes, especially those on the Internet, may be not considered as serious and may be seen as something trivial, but they 24 actually reflect cultures and social attitudes. That way, memes can be seen as postmodern cultural artworks that depict social and cultural values and norms. For example, topics such as culinary culture can be addressed. Another meme that has been used for this thesis’ study is a meme that gives information about the stereotypical Italian and American food culture could, for example, aid the introduction to subjects such as food or raise a discussion about the cuisine of different cultures. In the classroom, the teacher has several options in regards to the implementation of such type of memes. The class can first discuss the truthfulness of the depicted clichés and as a second exercise, the topic being addressed in the meme can be further developed by letting students create memes about the cuisine from other cultures. For the creation of these memes, students can take recourse to the meme genres mentioned by Shifman (2014). The task of letting students create memes means giving them the chance to be creative. Additionally, the creation of meme requires knowledge, meaning that students would have to inform themselves on a specific topic, such as food culture, in order to be able to spread information through their meme and transmit cultural or social values. This outlines how memes function as tools for communication as a ritual, mentioned by Shifman (2014) in section 2.3.2. Finally, the students’ own meme can be analyzed and, if necessary, critically reflected on in the classroom. Thus, by ironically treating stereotypes and serious topics just as racist stereotypes or gender roles, memes raise awareness in regard to those topics’ existence and try to promote a critical treatment of those topics.
The understanding of a digital culture is essential and even though single memes vanish as quickly as they appear, the commonly shared contests of numerous memes contribute to a better understanding of this new form of culture. In addition to that, memes are also a crucial element that serves the definition and explanation of this new digital era. Mina (2019) declares that meme culture has become a big part of digital culture and ever since memes have become one of the most popular digital media, a whole meme community was created, which can then again be subdivided into several smaller communities. A perfect example for a subgroup would be cat owners sharing their cat memes and exchanging their experiences with their furry friends. Besides having the power to connect people by giving them a passion and a hobby that they all share and equally praise and hence reassuring every member of this community that they are not alone, that they, as absurd as it may sound, can find comfort and be given security in this community, they also function as signals of identity. Similarly to Bini and Robutti (2019), also Mina (2019) emphasizes the fact that Memes can be remixed or reshaped more than once but the link to the original meme will always be kept up and be apparent, while still imbuing it with the personality of the new, remixed meme’s maker (Mina, 2019). 25
2.6 Memes and movements
An excellent example of how real-life events and trends expand onto the digital world and become part of the digital culture as well, is the NOH84 Campaign and the rainbow flags, which show support for gay rights and the whole LGBTQ community. Not only did people share pictures of themselves during protests on the streets, holding rainbow flags into the air or having rainbows painted onto their cheeks, they also started a new trend: Many various social media, as, for example, Facebook, decided to introduce a canned colored overlay and a rainbow sticker that can voluntarily be added to one’s profile picture. By doing so, people show support for the LGBTQ community and everything it stands for and made themselves part of the NOH8 Campaign (Mina, 2019). While usually only celebrities have the power to influence and have an impact on their followers’ and fans’ minds, the possibility of adding supportive stickers to their profile pictures made ordinary, normal people become “mininodes” (Mina, 2019, p. 31) as well, who can stimulate people to do so as well. Ever since this Campaign started in 2008, the support for marriage equality has been growing, largely thanks to social media feeds, which have become a number one source to show what one stands for, making one’s own beliefs visible to everyone. Mina defines this success as a “coming out party for straight people” (Mina, 2019, p. 34) and a simple way of participating in such movements and protests. The more people, especially loved ones, participate and show support, the more positive will the impact on marginalized people be, making them feel accepted. Here, Mina (2019) refers to economist Mary Rowe, giving a brief explanation of the economist’s idea of microaffirmation. Microaffirmations are small, often even subconscious acts (of kindness) that show support for marginalized people. These acts can be the most banal things, just as smiling or nodding at them, verbally acknowledging them and their effort and work, keeping exe contact while they speak, acts that should be considered natural. In contrast to these microaffirmations, Mina (2019) introduces sociologist Chester Pierce, who presented the concept of microagressions. Microagressions, which are basically the opposite of microaffirmations, can be defined as small actions that make marginalized people aware of their marginalization and hence result in a feeling of inequality, drawing a clear line between those being marginalized and those who are not. Such acts include insults like “faggot” or simply being ignored. For these reasons, the overwhelming support on social media platforms can be of great importance to people from the
4 NOH8 is a compound of the word “no” and H8. H8 as a composition of the letter H and the number 8, which refers to the Proposition 8, a “constitutional amendment, to ban gay marriage and preserve the legal notion that marriage is between one man and one woman” (Mina 2019, p.29), stands for “hate”. Therefore, NOH8 means “no hate” and is a statement against the hatred towards homosexual people. 26
LGBTQIA community and have a very meaningful and powerful impact on their self-view and personal acceptance (Mina, 2019).
“Between 2008 and 2015, the country had changed: marriage equality was the law of the land, and supporting marriage equality put one on the right side of history. All along, we had the profile pictures to prove it.” (Mina, 2019, p. 36) There is a certain truth behind this statement. It is in fact true, that much has changed over the past few years in regards to LGBTQ community and the acceptance of gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. The digital community has shown great support by adding stickers to their profile pictures and sharing pictures of rainbows. People reacting to such movements by sharing rainbow stickers or adding them to their profile pictures points out the active communication between memes and their audience, which, in this case, relies on active participation. The question that remains open is whether this can really be considered real “support”. Undoubtedly, it can have a positive impact on queer people’s perception of themselves, it might give them a feeling of acceptance and comfort and ch anging your profile picture to a photo of yourself with a rainbow next to it certainly leaves a mark. However, some people may not consider this a real form of support, as it is rather easy for anyone to just add a sticker to an uploaded photo of yours. This is a quite ambivalent discussion point, as on the one hand, as Mina (2019) says, one can show support by doing so little. This again raises the question, whether this can be really defined as support then, if so little is done. It is a point of debate that can be approached from two different point of views and would have to be further investigated by interviewing people and demanding their personal opinion regarding this point of controversy. The fact remains, however, that all the digital and physical support and the collaboration between real-life actions and digital actions have had a huge influence on social change and that they are both leading to a hopefully more tolerant society.
The critical reflection on memes that might use insulting and inappropriate terms, such as faggot, is an important issue that teachers should address in the classroom. The existence and acceptance of communities, such as the LGBTQ community, can be discussed in the classroom by referring to movements, such as the NOH8 campaign. On the one hand, the relevance of such meme movements can be discussed and students can tell about their personal experiences with such meme movements. Besides making the students reflect on the relevance of such digital movements, the teacher could ask the students to start their own little “meme movement”, either individually or as a class. The students can draw on an event that caused real-life action and come up with an idea for the consequent digital action. Moreover, the teacher can shed light on the influence of microaffirmations on people who are part of such 27 communities and address the critical reflection of such microaffirmations. The importance of critical reflection and critical thinking skills will be further discussed in section 2.9.5.
Mersinoglu (2020) also emphasizes the positive side of social media and memes. In his article, he mainly focuses on the platform TikTok, but also social media platforms just as IG are more and more used with the same purpose or aim. He stresses that more and more Internet users make short videos- may they be defined virals or memes- with the goal of informing people on various topics, just as environmental issues, the importance of biodiversity and other things that one may never learn at school (Mersinoglu, 2020). Such digital movements can equally influence and affect their audience and participants as Fridays for Future demonstrations on the streets. The example of 27-year-old Philip Aiken, who created an account called EcoTok, in which he addresses numerous environmental issues and which attracts many people- mainly young adults or adolescents- who want to inform themselves on how they can contribute to saving the planet, perfectly shows how communities evolve thanks to such digital movements. It illustrates how these networks aid in yielding change that not only positively reflects on society, but also on nature.
Mersinoglu’s (2020) assertion that certain topics, such as the importance of biodiversity, may never be addressed properly or at all at school, could be counteracted through the use of such memes in the classroom. By doing so, students could be introduced to techniques on how to contribute to a healthier environment at school. Considering the fact that such memes mainly attract young people (Mersinoglu, 2020), who privately inform themselves and follow channels, such as EcoTok, on a voluntary basis, the implementation of such memes in the classroom could be considered an attractive teaching and learning technique. If many young people spend their free time watching such types of memes at home, why shouldn’t they appreciate their teachers’ using them at school as well? Furthermore, the topics being addressed in the memes can be discussed in the classroom and students can be asked to create their own short meme video clips and share them with their class colleagues. This audiovisual presentation of a topic could replace a Power Point Presentation or an oral presentation and aid a facilitated comprehension of the context (Wright, 1989).
2.7 The confines of Internet memes 28
The diffusion of any digital memetic content is rather simple because Internet memes do not confine themselves to a specific geographical place, one single state, nation or city. Internet memes have the power to cross all geographical borders and facilitate a transnational spreading of memes (Shifman, 2014). According to Shifman (2014), some investigations showed that, other than expected, memes do not eradicate space and distance, but they are deeply ingrained in social, cultural and linguistic contexts. Therefore, this global power does not only rely on the technical advance though, but also on the huge network of users’ practices and decisions, that lead to a meme’s global success. Memes have become an important factor concerning the topic of globalization, not only by creating a meme culture and globally connecting people all over the world, forming meme communities etc., but also by spreading cultural knowledge by showing the uniqueness of various local cultures (Shifman, 2014). In fact, the Cambridge Dictionary defines globalization as
“the development of closer economic, cultural, and political relations among all the countries of the world as a result of travel and communication becoming easy” (Cambridge, 2021). Some people claim that these global streams always go from the western part of the world to the eastern part. Assuming that these assertions are true, this would mean that it is mainly the Western part of the world profiting from globalization, serving their cultural and political interests mostly (Shifman, 2014).
Another factor that could indicate the western and especially American supremacy on the Internet is language. English is not only the lingua franca worldwide, it is also the interlanguage on the Internet. This led to the concern, that the digital media might promote linguistic imperialism, making the English language even more powerful while threatening the status and importance of other (minor) languages. Luckily, the dominance of the English language on the Internet is slowly decreasing. Referring to the assertion of English being the interlanguage on the Internet, one might not be able to understand posts, E-mails etc. that are not available in their L1 (Shifman, 2014).
Shifman (2014) brings up the term user-generated globalization though, stating that memes are translated, adapted and newly shared by numerous ordinary internet users, who aid the worldwide diffusion and circulation of memes. Together with some colleagues, she investigated this user-generated globalization by focusing on the translation of jokes that one finds on the internet. On the example of a joke, they found out that out of the nine most commonly used languages on the Internet (Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, French, German, Portuguese, Arabic, 29
Korean and Italian), the joke was translated into 8 of them. Both, the global aspect, as well as a certain degree of glocalization became evident in the results of the research. The joke spread globally and contained a few local adjustments.
Moreover, she and her colleagues observed and analyzed the translation of a hundred English jokes that have been translated into the languages most spoken by internet users. What becomes apparent is this investigation, is that the results are connected to cultural proximity. Languages, which were closer to the western culture or had more in common with western cultural habits, were on top of the list, having been translated several times. There have been found less translations of the jokes in languages that are spoken in the Asian or African part of the world. Some jokes might therefore be less frequently translated due to cultural differences. (Shifman, 2014)
Nevertheless, there are two main topics that make a joke become globally successful: gender differences and consumption. Generally, it can be said that internet jokes promote Americanization and westernization, but not all cultures participate in this process of westernization and keep themselves distanced from it, as, for example, Japan or Korea. (Shifman, 2014)
The comparison of such jokes, which can easily be presented in form of a meme, can also be used in the educational context in order to make students aware of cultural and linguistic differences between various cultures. This could also be done with puns, for example. Assuming that a class studies English and Italian, the teacher could present a joke in both languages and let the students figure out eventual differences regarding the humorous effect of it. The students can also analyze differences in regards to cultural aspects that are being used in the respective jokes. Hence, the reason for using specific cultural elements in a specific language can be discussed. Concerning puns, which can also appear in a meme, students can be made aware of the linguistic differences of languages by making a literal translation of the respective puns. The humorous effect of puns and jokes due to linguistic appropriateness can be stressed. By linguistic appropriateness, I mean rhymes, the phonology or morphology of a word and other linguistic features that can influence the humorousness of a joke or a pun.
Shifman (2014) distinguishes between two theories of meme based global prevalence, one focusing on linguistic memes and the other concentrating on visual and audiovisual contents. The research on internet jokes that has just been briefly discussed portrays the global and glocal distribution of linguistic memes. In contrast to linguistic memes, visual and audiovisual memes are more likely to cross all borders and be transnational. This does not mean that visual and 30 audiovisual contents do not exhibit features of localization. Shifman (2014) lists the “Successful Black Man” as an example: a meme that shows a black man, a short text at the top of the picture and a short text at the bottom of the picture. The top text hints at negative associations with black skin color and hence makes aware of the problem of racism, while the bottom text contradicts all negative clichés that are built (up) with the text on the top, in order to disprove the negative stereotypes. An example for a text at the top would be “Let’s all get high” and then the text at the bottom would follow saying “grades on our finals”. What renders this meme funny and humorous, is the collision of two very diverging “scripts”, as Shifman (2014) calls it: one evoking racist feelings and negative expectations and the other confuting this racist belief.
Such memes can be used for teaching about and making students aware of racism. The evident divergence of two texts being used in one single meme excellently highlight the problems of racism and negative associations with certain communities in today’s society. Memes, such as the “Successful Black Man” could make students aware of the inappropriate depiction of and prejudices against certain people in today’s society. The respective prejudices can be discussed and other existing prejudices can be addressed by modifying such memes through text. By this, I mean the replacement of the existing text by any other statements that do both, evoke racist feelings and confute the racist beliefs and negative expectations. By doing so, students have to deal with and use the target language in order to accomplish the task successfully, while also having to think of prejudices in today’s society that do not reflect reality though.
2.8 Downsides of Internet memes
As stated above, memes can evoke racist feelings, but they can also mitigate them. Some memes though elicit sexist attitudes and promote stereotypical beliefs. According to Freeman (20021), the Karen meme shows the downsides of memes, promoting sexism and mocking certain female behaviors. She explains that originally, “Karen” was used in the US to address the topic of racial oppression, using the name to describe a middle-class white woman who talks down to people of color. The term extended itself though and became a mainstream term for defining clichés of obnoxious, annoying women who are considered unbearable. Karens define annoying persons in the office, “persons” actually meaning women, or pushy moms that love to ruin teenage fun. While some people and mostly men might consider the Karen memes particularly funny as they principally denigrate the female sex, middle-aged middle-class women may feel highly offended and humiliated. The Karen meme is not about highlighting certain typically female behaviors many women share and laugh about and which might be considered flaws. It 31 addresses a specific age group and cla^^1ss and wickedly ridicules it. A term that has once been used to describe and make people aware of racism has completely lost its original meaning and has become a meme that transmits sexism and female inferiority (Freeman, 2021). This perfectly demonstrates how one type of meme can do both, endorse negative and sexist clichés and attitudes, but also raise awareness of racism.
The portrayal of sexist stereotypes through memes should be addressed in the classroom as well, in order to make students aware of how memes can negatively influence their perception of and attitude towards certain issues or people. Furthermore, the introduction to negative agendas of memes should ideally counteract the conviction or formation of discriminating stereotypes, as well as sexist and racist attitudes amongst the students. Not all people or students will conceive memes equally and while many students will simply laugh about the Karen memes and unconsciously follow the stream of the sexist attitude towards “Karen-type- women”, it is important to draw the students’ attention to the negative aspects and message of the meme, as well as its possible consequences. By consequences, the spreading of stereotypes and increase of inappropriate and untrue content, as well as the denigration and humiliation of a certain group of people, class, community or individual is meant. Not all stereotypes might be discriminating and some could even be considered funny or amusing. In fact, some memes may also address the latter, but it is important to make students aware of the existence of stereotypes and their depiction in memes and other social media content. Thereafter, the truthfulness, the humorousness as well as the level of graveness can be discussed and comparisons between memes that depict various forms of stereotypes can be made.
2.9 Memes in education
Purnama (2017) endorses the use of social media in the classroom, saying that teachers need to incorporate more technology in their lessons and practices. She highlights the importance of choosing the right social media application for each class. Not every social media is equally suitable for every class. The appropriacy depends on the students’ characteristics, the teacher’s intentions, and learning objectives. Not all social platforms have the exact same features and contents, and it is the teacher’s task to select and judge the suitability of a social media platform for their classroom. Purnama (2017) confirms that IG is a social media platform that offers a wide range of images. Most of these posts have little text included and are rich in image presentation (Purnama, 2017). Taking into consideration the aforementioned definition and explanation of the constitution of Internet memes as well as Purnama’s explanation of IG it appears that IG is a suitable social media platform for the distribution of memes. Burns et al. 32
(2016) used the social media platform IG in their experiment. The experiment focuses on the utilization of IG as a teaching tool and showed that students are more interested and interactive when this new and innovative medium is used in the classroom. The utility and usage of memes and social media in educational environments will be discussed in more detail hereinafter.
2.9.1 Humor in the classroom
Memes are becoming increasingly popular as humorous elements that often spread joy and laughter. Political, cultural, social as well as linguistic issues, as well as personal and common experiences and feelings are often addressed in memes in rather ironic and humorous ways. In other words, memes are a source of humor. As several studies argue for the utilization of humor in the classroom, the implementation of memes in educational contexts appears to be reasonable. Friedman et al. (2002) state that humor can help reduce the students’ as well as the teacher’s stress, as it decreases the tension and creates a more relaxed and positive learning environment. Also Weimer (2011) stresses that humor aids in coping with stress and allows people to feel more relaxed, while Garner (2005) confirms that humor creates a positive atmosphere among the teacher and the students in the class and should thus definitely be used as a pedagogical tool. Stebbins (1980) affirms that humor in class can function as social comic relief. Therefore, humor aids reduction of tension and the stress relief. Another positive effect of humor is the increase of students’ attention (Rosegard & Wilson, 2013). In their study, they found out that humor enhances students’ memory. In other words, humor aids a better learning retention. Henderson (2015), whose study showed that content-related humor results in higher retention and a more pleasant learning experience, approves this positive effect of humor in education. Also Powell and Andresen (2006) perpetuate the idea of humor aiding the increase of attention, as well as a better understanding of the taught content. Kaplan and Pascoe (2015), who investigated the connection between retention and humor, found out that humor does not necessarily facilitate immediate comprehension, but long-term it helps students remember contents more easily. Finally, Deneire (1995) underlines that verbal humor contributes to L2 learners’ development of sociolinguistic and sociocultural competence. Wordplays, puns or jokes can help make students aware of the linguistic –meaning morphological, phonological, syntactic etc.- differences in a single language or between their L1 and their L2. As Internet memes often contain puns or wordplays, they appear to be the perfect tool for familiarizing students with the linguistic features of a language and enhance the above-mentioned competences (Deneire, 1995). Harshavardhan et al. (2019) argue that also international organizations, such as the Cambridge ESL etc., using humorous elements in their TESL classrooms clearly point out the importance of including humor in classrooms. It has been 33 proven by these organizations that humor increases the information retention, especially when used at the beginning of a lesson. According to Harshavardhan et al. (2019), in education, humor also functions as a way of teaching and learning a language. In fact, Stephen Krashen lists the ability to understand jokes in the target language in his parameters for classification of the five stages of language acquisition (Harshavardhan et al., 2019).
Taking into consideration all the above-mentioned advantages and positive effects of humor, the use of memes in the classroom appears to be sensible, as various topics are humorously presented through memes. Based on the above listed benefits of humor in the classroom stated by Friedman et al. (2002), Weimer (2011), Garner (2005), Stebbins (1980), (Rosegard & Wilson, 2013), Henderson (2015), Powell and Andresen (2006), Kaplan and Pascoe (2015), Deneire (1995) and Harshavardhan et al. (2019) certain assumptions can be made. Besides memes’ ability to humorously address serious topics and expand students’ knowledge on social, cultural as well as political topics, using memes in the classroom can have further positive effects on students, teachers and the classroom environment in general. The use of memes could
. Reduce stress and tension amongst students and teachers . Make students and teachers feel more relaxed . Create a positive classroom atmosphere . Lead to higher retention and attention . Create a more pleasant learning experience . Aid the development of linguistic competences and familiarize students with linguistic features
Baysac (2017) conducted a study that shows the positive impact humor, memes and technology can have on 21st century class learning if properly utilized. He interviewed five teachers who teach different subjects, asking about their experiences of using humorous memes in their classrooms. The teacher listed various reasons for implementing memes and humor in their lessons and described its positive effect (Baysac, 2017):
1) They use memes in order to get the students’ attention. They show a series of memes in the beginning of the lesson in order to make sure that the students are not only physically, but also mentally present. 2) A humorous introduction creates a more relaxed class atmosphere for both, teacher and students. Moreover, this sort of ice breaker can also be considered a mood setting and implies the readiness of the students, not only on a cognitive, but also on an emotional level. 34
3) Funny stories or memes can encourage students to reflect on the currently discussed topic and build up a connection between the subject and their personal life. 4) Humor and memes affect the students’ performances positively because they reduce the stress level and take away students’ anxiety, which often impedes them from a successful learning.
Chapman and Foot (1977) point out the many functions of humor too, stating that it can positively influence the interaction between people and strengthen relationships. Moreover, it reveals people’s attitudes and can hence not only lay strong foundations for trust and relationships between people, but also cause changes in social groups. Henderson (2015) agrees on the aforementioned functions of humor, saying that humor increases the strength of human connections.
Moreover, Berk (1996) stresses that humor is even more effective when more senses are involved. Concerning memes, in the ideal case, the visual and the oral sense are involved (Baysac, 2017), as, for example, in meme videos.
2.9.2 Memes and visual literacy
Concerning the new digital era, Crystal (2004) highlights the importance of visual literacy, stating that the internet language is a compound of written, spoken and graphic representations of a language. Internet memes rely much on visual literacy, as images are their major and fundamental element. The implementation of memes in the classroom requires an awareness of the various layers of meaning that a meme can have though and hence, of the different ways memes can be used in the classroom (Harshavardhan et al., 2019). These layers of meaning are based on the composition of the visual and textual elements, as well as their background. As memes are taken from complex and independent cultural contexts, just as film scenes, series or certain lines of a song, it is important for the audience to have a certain background knowledge and be familiar with these parts of culture in order to understand the meme.
Moreover, Baysac (2017) adds that features just as class strength, capacity, and level of knowledge have to be taken into account in order to make a humorous meme effective and successfully implement it in the classroom. The level of knowledge can vary from class to class and points out the learning differences between each class. Humor requires the ability to think critically and reflect on the social truth that is depicted in a humorous way. Not all students will equally manage to do so, due to a lack of learning background. 35
Therefore, when using memes in a classroom, the teacher must consider numerous aspects: the class’ level as well as the linguistic aspect of a meme and the aforementioned complexity of cultural background of a meme, which makes learning through memes a multidisciplinary process (Baran, 2013). According to Wright (1989), the visual aspect is of high importance when it comes to the understanding of contexts because verbal language alone is not enough. He argues that pictures facilitate and aid the comprehension of contexts. Memes being a hybrid between an image or a video and a text (Harshavardhan et al., 2019) and additionally infusing humorous elements are hence and ideal teaching and learning tool for the understanding of contexts, as well as the reflection on cultural backgrounds and the acquisition of certain linguistic or grammatical aspects. Rotanova and Federova (2019) highlight the importance of pictures and images in regards to a better understanding of any topic. Therefore, they refer to the connection between memes and visual literacy, explaining that the findings of their study showed that memes that included images had a greater impact than memes that consisted of plain text.
2.9.3 The issue of the generational gap Concerning the digital age we are living in now, Prensky (2001) distinguishes between Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. Digital Natives being the “native speakers” of the digital world, using technology to perform numerous activities on a daily basis. In contrast, digital immigrants did not grow up with technology the way digital natives did. Therefore, they try to adapt to this new environment and the digital world, while still sticking to old habits. By old habits, Prensky intends the use of the Internet as secondary rather than primary source. In other words, the information intake and learning traits of Digital Natives differ from the Digital Immigrants ones. Adapting Prensky’s theory on school environment, one could make the following assertion: as students nowadays are used to growing up with technology and are used to learning and acquiring knowledge or receiving information with the help of technical devices, they might outclass their teachers concerning technology skills and the use of digital devices. In contrast to many teachers, who have not had the privilege of experiencing this technological progress from a young age onwards, students nowadays are used to being surrounded by technology from a very early age on. Harshavardhan et al. (2019) refer to this issue, saying that teachers grew up in different ages than their students. Therefore, students might be taught in a manner that is “old-school” to them, while many teachers are busy keeping up with new technologies and the new age and feel like they are not given their due respect and attention. Internet memes are also part of this new digital culture with which, in most cases, students are more familiar than teachers are. Memes are part of the students’ lives, not of the teachers’ lives. 36
They are young people’s symbol of innovativeness and their sense of humor. They are their way of expressing themselves and communicating. In other words, memes are the language of young people and they largely define and characterize the youth of today. Reddy et al. (2020) explain that today’s generation, using Internet memes to communicate, perfectly depict the changing communication that has been going on ever since the digital era began.
The generational gap between teenagers and their parents not only becomes clear in regards to communication, but also regarding information acquisition (Fink, 2020). Fink (2020) states that, while teenagers get their news from memes, IG, TikTok or other trendy social media platforms, adults or parents usually stick to and confide in the newspapers, digital forms of newspapers or Facebook and Twitter when it comes to learning about current events. Fink (2020) goes on explaining that, besides the information acquisition, also the teenagers’ and young adults’ perception of certain events differs from their parents’ perception of events. Particularly teens and tweens tend to express their feelings and opinions through memes. They often address current events or popular culture in a rather mocking or satirizing way. Teens found a new approach for dealing with and topics like the Coronavirus or political issues as, for example, the killing of the Iranian commander Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani through an American drone attack, which many people feared to be a World War III announcement. While teenagers might laugh about World War III memes, saying that they are prepared and ready for it thanks to videogames like Fortnight and seemingly not being aware of the seriousness of the topic, adults react preoccupied and a little scared to this news (Fink, 2020). According to Fink (2020), the reason for this is that, as already mentioned, kids use memes to channel their emotions. In other words, teenagers use humor for expressing their fears, worries etc. Boring- Bray (2018) emphasizes that
“For those of us who struggle with heavy issues in our lives, memes can be an important tool for self-expression. Among the millions of memes floating around on the internet, funny anxiety memes are readily abundant in that mix. Memes allow those suffering from anxiety and depression to poke a little fun at ourselves, to relate to others, and to help each other understand the truth of anxiety behind the humor” (Boring-Bray, 2018) This statement has to be critically reflected on, because people who seriously suffer from depression and anxiety might not consider this type of memes funny. In fact, such anxiety and depression memes could have the opposite effect from what is being stated by Boring-Bray. They could, for example, make depressed people even more aware of their fears and negative thoughts, which could lead to an increase of despair of such people. Some people might be able to poke fun at themselves, while others might take these memes rather serious and not consider them humorous. However, Boring-Bray (2018) has a point in saying that memes can make 37 people aware of anxiety issues and help them understand how humor can cover people’s real anxiety. A very serious and important issue of today’s society is addressed in such memes. Therefore, memes could be a useful tool for making students and young people aware of mental illnesses and their seriousness, even if they are presented or addressed in form of a funny meme. The fact that such types of memes exist, as well as their frequent appearance on the Internet emphasize the importance of such topics. Emotions, particularly negative ones, might often be underestimated. Therefore, it is important to address them at a young age and discuss potential risks. The critical reflection on anxiety memes in the classroom can serve two purposes: firstly, it might facilitate talking about a serious topic by mitigating the seriousness in order to decrease the level of concern (Fink, 2020) and thus bring a little laughter into the classroom. Secondly, it can encourage students to talk about their own emotions and help them understand the importance of sharing their inner state, as well as recognize and interpret emotions of others.
Referring to Fink’s (2020) claim that adults and young people have a different perception of humorousness, also Baysac (2017) draws attention to the fact that what teachers might consider funny does not necessarily fit the idea of funny for the students. Teacher, who- in most cases- have already experienced more than their students, due to the age gap, life experience etc., may take certain topics more serious than their young students, which can be challenging for both parties. Teachers who incorporate memes in their teaching, which do not connect with the students, fail at fulfilling the purpose of utilizing memes, humor, and technology appropriately. Purnama (2017) also points out that the two major factors of memes, humor and information, always need to be considered when it comes to the effectiveness of a meme. An effective meme needs to have both because a funny meme that does not contain any information or an informative meme that is not funny at all does not fulfill its expected purpose. This is highlighted by Baysac (2017) as well, who claims that the challenging aspect in finding a proper meme for the classroom is the currency of the meme, as some memes might already be known, resulting in a lack surprise effect and could be considered old and corny by the students. Therefore, it is important to choose trending, current and funny memes, which, at the same time, fit the discussed subject or topic that wants to be discussed in class. This can be easily solved by talking to the students to find out what is trendy and hip according to them (Baysac, 2017). Therefore, besides the above-mentioned aspects, there are numerous other factors that teachers have to reflect before implementing a meme in their lesson.
The following three factors summarize the effective use of a meme as a learning instrument and its useful and successful implementation in the classroom: 38
. Humor- What do students consider funny? How does the humor of students might diverge from the teachers’ humor? . Information- Is the meme informative? Does it give away any relevant information? Can students learn something from this meme in regards to either language, society, culture or other topics? . Currency/actuality- How old is this meme? Is there a chance that most students already know this meme? Hence, will every student already be informed about the topic being addressed in the meme?
2.9.4 The functions of memes in the classroom
Reddy et al. (2020) claim that it has been observed that students approve of the use of memes in the classroom. Not only have memes been used in class for teaching, but they have already been included in test papers as well. The implementation of memes and technology in the classroom is necessary, according to Reddy et al. (2020), because the attention span of young people has drastically decreased. The cause for that is mainly technology itself, for example, short video clips that only require attention for a few seconds or minutes. As a result, students struggle with concentrating on old teaching tools like the blackboard or boring PPT. In contrast to these old tools, “memes are proven as a best supportive tool” (Reddy et al., 2020, p. 117) for teaching, as well as learning, due to the fact that memes do not require a long attention span. The reason for that is that memes mainly consist of simple pictures with a short text. Therefore, their content is not very complex and in many cases quickly and easily understandable. In other words, the simplicity of memes in regards to content and illustration is a huge advantage when it comes to teaching and learning, as they do not challenge the students’ poor attention span and they might even render concentration a little easier. What is meant by that is that, while some memes might even be a little challenging and difficult to understand, the act of looking at a meme and trying to understand it, is not comparable to the act of looking at a blackboard and trying to figure out the meaning of the presented text. Possible reasons for that are not only the different amounts of content, meaning that looking at a meme takes less time than looking at a full-written blackboard, but also the fact that memes are usually accompanied by a humorous element, which facilitates the dealing with these tools. In fact, Boa Sorte (2019) reveals that memes can simplify the understanding of complex concepts and Reddy et al. (2020) lay great store on stressing that memes do not solve the problem of complexity of a topic though, they only aid in dwelling on the topic in a simpler way. 39
The potential seriousness that is sometimes hidden in memes is also declared by Mina (2019), who says that there is more to memes than stupid and senseless contents though, which is what the term is usually associated with. Boa Sorte (2019) says that memes often hide symbolic or cultural values that may not become apparent immediately. The Coffin Dance Meme (KnowYourMeme, 2021) perfectly displays how a meme can inform its audience about cultural values, traditions and rituals. The meme shows four pallbearers, who are dancing while carrying a coffin. This depicted ritual is considered a cultural phenomenon from Ghana. The meme gained particular popularity in March 2020, when it was mainly used in Fail edits. Those Fail clips always implied that the person in the Fail clip had died, which is clearly not the case. The adding of the video of the dancing pallbearers after a short fail video clip simply serves as an indication for a risky but funny mishap (KnowYourMeme, 2021). Before the huge success of this meme, presumably few people knew about this Ghanaian tradition. After its great diffusion everyone knew about this extraordinary ritual. The spreading of this meme an d the meme itself serve as an excellent example for the possible expansion of cultural knowledge through memes. By informing oneself, or, as a teacher, by informing students about the cultural background of this meme, the hidden cultural meaning of this meme, which is implemented in a humorous context, can be discussed. The same can be done with other memes, which contain cultural information that might not become apparent when looking at it for the first time, too. Therefore, when using memes in the classroom, it is the teacher’s role to reveal and deconstruct these hidden meanings of a meme and guide the students into recognizing the sense of a meme (Boa Sorte, 2019).
Besides the deconstruction of memes in regards to cultural aspects, which ideally yields an expansion of cultural knowledge, Harshavardhan et al. (2019) state that memes, when exhibiting grammatical puns, can also promote the acquisition of grammatical structures and the complexities of grammar. Therefore, people can benefit from memes on a linguistic level too. In section 2.9.6, I will provide an example of how students can linguistically benefit from memes by focusing on the tenses that are being used or other grammatical structures that can be perceived in the meme and hence be discussed. Harshavardhan et al. (2019) further explain that culture and language are closely connected and stress the importance of recognizing the connection between these two fields. The acquisition of a language does not only involve the learning of grammatical structures etc., but also the culture of that language. Thus, it is important to focus on both, language and culture, and memes appear to be an instrument that can aid the knowledge expansion of both. They define the internet as “an amalgamation of all the cultures of the world” and “a platform for cultural exchanges of which memes is a 40 contemporary example” (Harshavardhan et al., 2019, p. 45). They compare the sharing of memes to the sharing of cultures and equate the two.
Not only do memes contain hidden cultural information as well as linguistic structures such as grammatical puns or phrases though, but according to Boa Sorte (2019) they can also give teachers, as well as students, the possibility of looking at events from different perspectives and discuss the different point of views. A meme that describes a specific situation, such as, for example, the Socially Awkward Penguin meme that describes awkward siuations, offers numerous forms of interpretation, as attitudes and point of views vary and cannot be generalized. While someone might consider a certain situation awkward and unpleasant, another person might have a rather indifferent and unconcerned attitude towards it. Therefore, such memes offer topics for discussion, which ideally leads to social interaction among the students (Recuero, 2007 in Boa Sorte, 2019). Teachers can discuss the presented situations in class and hence spark a debate between the students in class. A discussion should serve the purpose of shedding light on different opinions and point of views. As a teacher, it is particularly important to address the topic of diversity and to make students aware of the importance of acceptance in regards to point of views that might diverge from one’s own opinion. Memes that leave room for interpretation and which offer different perspectives can aid students’ personal growth and consciousness in regards to acceptance of and expression of opinions. Furthermore, they are particularly advantageous in language classrooms because they give the students the chance to practice their L2, L3 through discussion (Boa Sorte, 2019). Boa Sorte (2019), who refers to Menezes de Souza, who stresses that not everyone reads and understands a text in the same way, emphasizes the existence of various divergent perspectives. Therefore, everyone is responsible for their own interpretations of a text. In other words, the meaning of a text does not only depend on the author, but also on the reader. Particularly in a classroom it is important to make students aware of this broad interpretation possibility because otherwise the “attention to semantic aspects (DÍAZ, 2013) will not make sense” (Boa Sorte, 2019, p. 59). Taking into consideration the abovementioned, this can help enrich the learning atmosphere and broaden the students’ horizons.
Memes contributing to the acquisition of knowledge as well as social competences explains why Harshavardhan et al. (2019) claim that they have become a potent “weapon”. Politicians already use this tool to advertise themselves and gain young people’s votes. Thus, there is no reason for teachers to not implement this useful instrument in their classrooms as well and increase the probability of a better, more relaxed and effective teaching and learning environment. Memes being such a huge part of people’s and particularly young people’s lives 41 would create the humor needed in the classroom to support higher participation, increasing information retention and a more relaxed atmosphere (Harshavardhan et al., 2019). Reddy et al. (2020) further reveal that the use of memes does not confine itself to politics and education though. Memes can nowadays be found in advertising and marketing and many other sections as well (Reddy, 2020).
The following table provides a summary of the advantages and functions of memes in the classroom:
Advantages Functions
. Simplified presentation and . Provide information about cultures, addressing of topics rituals, traditions . Requires attention for a very short . Raise awareness of and shed light amount of time on the importance of the . Humorous (yields facilitated attention communication and acceptance of and information retention, more different viewpoints relaxed atmosphere and more fun) . Introduce students to language and linguistic structures (grammar, puns, phrases etc.)
Figure 2.5: Advantages and Functions of memes
2.9.5 Teaching critical thinking skills with memes
Not only do humor and memes function as attention catchers, sustainers of learning interest, information providers and language learning tools, but they also spur the development of critical thinking skills. They are a balance between moments of laughter and pondering (Baysac, 2017). Wells (2018) highlights the importance of looking at Internet content critically and skeptically. Teachers should help students develop critical thinking skills, by, for example, introducing political memes in their lessons. He stresses that it is necessary to encourage students to reflect on the contents they come across on the Internet and be skeptical about what social media presents to them (Wells, 2018). Reddy et al. (2020) refer to Yoon’s (2016) paper, which revolves around racialist associated memes, concluding that
Images have addressed the meaning of racism, how they address racial issues and what ideological assumptions are hidden in the coupling of visual images and texts. The 42
denial of racism manifests as a rhetoric insisting that racism is a matter of perspective or racial injustice that comes from faults of people of color rather than the social system. Racism manifested in various ways in Internet memes, including stereotyping, othering, and the denial of structural racism. Teachers should thoughtfully respond to students’ questions and set the tone that welcomes open inquiry in racial issues. (Reddy et al., 2020, pp. 119-120) Sexist memes, such as the in section 2.9 mentioned Karen meme, are also part of such racialist associated memes, which encourage young people and students to follow and endorse stereotypical beliefs. They can provoke negative associations with and attitudes towards a certain community, a specific type of person or group of people or even an individual and hence give wrong ideas about the respective people or things. By simply accepting what is being portrayed, inappropriate and untrue beliefs and opinions are formed and imposed on the memes’ spectators. Such examples exhibit that the development of critical thinking skills is of high importance when it comes to the use of social media and social media content, which also includes memes. Fink (2020) stresses that it is important to keep in mind that memes are not always trustworthy and some might even spread racist attitudes in fact. Using the example of the Coronavirus, at the beginning of the pandemic, when the virus had not reached Europe and the Western world yet, racist anti-Asian attitudes aroused. As much as memes can promote certain movements and have a positive impact on social behavior and attitudes, they can also have the opposite effect. In her article, Fink (2020) refers to Andrew Selepak, who points out that memes can be created by anyone and it is important to keep that in mind. People with intentions of spreading rumors can create memes as easily as people who have serious and positive ulterior motives. What is further highlighted by Yoon’s (2016) statement cited in Reddy et al. (2020) is the fact that behind all the funniness of a meme often lies a deep message. In other words, humorous considered memes can nonetheless convey serious messages and encourage people to reflect on stereotypical contents. This is also stressed in Figure 5, which sums up the functions of memes, which include drawing attention to the hidden messages and backgrounds of memes and highlighting the importance of discussing different viewpoints. In other words, Figure 5 stresses the importance of analyzing memes carefully and reflecting on its content too.
While memes undoubtedly spread laughter and connect people through the sharing of common beliefs, experiences and passions, it should be in the teacher’s interest to broach the critical reflection on memes’ content, as well as on Internet and social media content in general. Showing students sexist or racist memes and letting them analyze the memes’ content in regards to truthfulness, claims, inappropriateness and humorousness should ideally yield a greater awareness of stereotypes, which often discriminate or negatively and falsely portray a specific 43 group of people or community. Moreover, focusing on and challenging the students’ critical thinking skills ideally supports a less judgmental environment and prevent the spreading of rumors that could possibly harm the reputation of certain (groups of) people.
2.9.6 The embedment of memes in the classroom
Boa Sorte (2019) lists three suggestions for using memes in the classroom. The first idea is to have students share their own memes with their classmates and let them analyze the meme based on Shifman’s three categories on meme analysis. The three categories include content, form and stance. Content refers to all the ideas and ideologies that are incorporated in the text(s). Form means the composition of the message, so whether it has professional production qualities or not, whether it has public or private settings etc. Stance includes the participation structures, meaning the communicative functions and the identities of the addressor and addressee. The second idea is remixing existing memes with a focus on writing as a multimodal practice. Boa Sorte defines remixing as a gathering of information and combination of elements from different sources without changing the first source of information. This exercise should serve as a possibility for the students “to understand reading and writing in a different prospect […] in order to explore discourses of dominant ideologies of patriarchal, heteronormative culture, issues of ethnicity, gender, social class, age and sexual orientation […]” (Boa Sorte, 2019, p. 60). Students get to explore new discourses that are rarely contemplated by mainstream media and at the same time, they get the chance to express themselves, their beliefs, opinions and views. Such freedom is extremely valuable, especially in such a young age as the students’. The third idea focuses on political memes. The aim is to show the students possible ways of reading and writing political memes and to stress the function of political memes as persuasion tools. The elements of persuasion, the political ideologies and ethical backgrounds can be investigated and discussed. All three suggestions aim at developing creative methods to explore and spread ideas, promote self-expression and reflect critically (Boa Sorte, 2019). In this context, Fink (2020) highlights that it is important to educate children properly and help them develop a personal code of ethics in order to secure appropriate judgements and actions, not only in real life but also in the digital world. This can, as illustrated by Boa Sorte, be done by having a look at memes and discussing them together and decide on which ones are appropriate or can be interpreted as funny and which ones may go too far and why.
Another study by Purnama (2017) revolves around students’ creation of memes based on given topics that have already been discussed in the English classroom. The topics were symptoms and caring for elderly. The outcome of this task should be a correctly created meme, “correct” 44 meaning that the image choice fits the embodied text and the topic. In other words, in her study, she focused on the correct creation of a meme. For this reason, she ignored grammatical errors and mistakes in orthography. Some students managed to meet the expected criteria, thus image, text and content matched and made sense. Others completed the task in a less fulfilling and satisfactory way, lacking the understanding about homonymy in L1 and language expressions in L2 (Purnama, 2017). She concluded that memes are a creative and innovative tool in language teaching and lists three advantages of using her study’s approach in the classroom: The creation of memes is an eye-catching learning process, which probably increases students’ interest and their will for adopting this new method of language learning. Secondly, it is advantageous that meme creation is possible due to applications that make image editing on Smartphones and other digital devices possible. The last advantage stated is that the creation of memes is an enjoyable technique to familiarize students with the English language and to make them gain a better understanding of English class’ topics. It moreover supports the collaboration and communication between students and, when the memes are posted on IG and get likes, it gives the students a feeling of contentment. Similarly to Baran (2013), who, as above mentioned, states that the choosing of appropriate memes has to be well-conceived and is a rather difficult process for teachers, Purnama (2017) draws the conclusion that meme creation requires a high order of thinking and is a challenging task as well, which is why not all students are able to do it correctly. An example of a successful method of using memes in the classroom is the following, introduced by Baysac (2017). Students come up with their own memes regarding a certain topic and the teacher uses these memes on the other class for talking about that specific topic. This method appears to be quite effective, as the students assumably understand the memes a hundred percent and can relate to them due to the fact that they have been submitted by their peers (Baysac, 2017).
Concerning grammar and plainly linguistic features, Harshavardhan et al. (2019) did a short study on selected memes of English dialogues from Tamil movies that can be used for teaching various linguistic fields, such as grammar, pronunciation, semantics and discourse analysis in order to prove that memes can have educational purposes. In their study, they presented memes, which, according to them, aid the teaching and learning of the present simple tense, the present continuous, imperative sentences, interlanguage, pronunciation and distinguishing between right and wrong. For instance, they claimed that a meme saying, “I’m back” could be used for teaching present simple tense explaining that the words “I” and “am” become “I’m”. Basically, this meme would be used for teaching contractions. Another example would be “I am waiting” and “start music”. Here the students can become aware of the present continuous tense, as well 45 as imperative sentences and the distinction between commands and requests, which both require the imperative. The conclusion Harshavardhan et al. draw from their study, was the following
The digital text in memes can be used to teach a wide range of sentence patterns. Tenses and the differences between one tense and the other can be elucidated. Linguistics theories, like interlanguage, are clearly defined and illustrated. The nuances of pronunciation and the influence of the mother tongue are clearly portrayed. The semantics of grammatically incorrect sentences is focused upon, and errors are easily highlighted (2019, p. 51). They added that other influential factors for successful teaching through memes are the students’ awareness of popular culture and their media consumption. Some memes might be more challenging to understand for students than others, because at such a young age they might lack the ability to form connections between the addressed and shown topics, such as politics and cinema, and the semantics of the meme. Finally, they claimed that memes may never become a major material for lesson planning and curriculum development, but they can still be implemented in the classroom occasionally for teaching vocabulary and language structure, as well as register and speech etiquette (Harshavardhan et al., 2019).
In conclusion, memes and especially internet memes are gaining popularity not only in the private context, but also in public contexts, such as advertisements, politics and, most relevant for this study, in education. According to several studies, the implementation of memes in the classroom has already been tested and successfully conducted in various ways. The embedment of memes occurred through, for example, the creation of individual memes and the remixing and personalization of existing memes. Furthermore, the introduction of memes in the classroom aims the exploration and discussion of the background and hidden meanings of a meme, the analysis of a meme from different perspectives and the acquisition of linguistic and grammatical structures through memes thanks to a meme’s simplicity, humorousness and modernity. The present study, which focuses on the Learners’ Perspectives on the Use of Instagram and Memes for Promoting Language Learning and Sociocultural Competence addresses the aforementioned functions of memes in the educational context. It aims at gaining more information and collecting further data on the functions of memes and their educational purposes. This will be conducted by gathering students’ opinions and personal experiences on the general utility of memes in regards to language learning and the expansion of cultural and social knowledge, as well as their opinion on the embedment of selected memes’ in the classroom. The findings of the present study will then be compared to existing literature and the above-mentioned studies and theories on memes. 46
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3 Methodology This chapter focuses on the methodology of the study. First, the purpose of the study will be described and the research questions will be briefly discussed. Second, information about the participants and the research context will be given. Third, the research method will be outlined. The fourth section focuses on the method of data collection, explaining the reasons for using this specific method and the design. Furthermore, the fourth section also includes a categorization and description of the memes illustrated in the questionnaire and the reasons for choosing the respective memes will be listed. In addition, I will give intentions concerning the memes will be listed. The fifth section explains the context and procedure of the data collection, followed by a reflection on the ethical aspects of the study. Finally, an explanation of how the data has been analyzed will be given.
3.1 Purpose of the Study and Research Question This study aims at examining students’ attitudes in regards to the promotion of language learning and the expansion or acquisition of sociocultural knowledge through IG and particularly memes. To be precise, it investigates students’ opinions about the learning of linguistic features- such as vocabulary, grammar etc.- and cultural and social values through memes in general, as well as in respect to specific examples of selected memes. Hence, the aim is to find out, whether students think that memes can serve as a learning tool. The main research question of this thesis is the following:
RQ: What do students believe they can learn with the help of Instagram or memes?
This RQ will be answered by carrying out a descriptive study using a quantitative research method. Punch and Oancea (2014) differentiate between descriptive studies and explanatory studies. They define the term describe as “somehow to draw a picture of what happened […], or of what a situation […] is like” (Punch and Oancea, 2014, p. 22). While a description points out and lists what is the case, an explanation lists reasons for why something is the case (Punch & Oancea, 2014). The research question of this thesis will be answered using descriptive statistics for data analysis. Thus, it aims at examining what is the case. Moreover, according to Punch and Oancea (2014), when it comes to the development of new research areas, descriptive studies are of high value, as new research areas often require a systematic description before further focusing on explanatory studies. As research on the topic of the present study is still rather limited, the choice of a descriptive study appears to be quite reasonable. 48
The creation of categories of response will aid and facilitate the answering of the respective RQ. The first category will shed light on what memes can depict and express and what can thus be learned in general from memes by looking at them according to the survey participants. It focuses on the students’ opinion in regards to memes’ general ability or function of depicting cultures and current events and expressing emotions, feeling and opinions. Moreover, the aim is to find out, whether the survey participants believe that it is possible to expand one’s knowledge about the respective issues and improve vocabulary, general text comprehension and sociocultural knowledge with the help of memes. Second, the findings about the survey participants’ personal learning experiences that have been made by looking at memes will be outlined. The respective subcategories of knowledge gains include:
. Vocabulary . Phrases . Overall understanding . Cultural knowledge, including cultural behavior, sights and geographical knowledge . Society and stereotypes . Current events . Unknown events . Other’s opinions and attitudes
The final category refers to the selected memes that have been used for data collection. The students’ attitudes on the teaching and learning purposes in regards to the respective memes will be outlined and the findings of a self-reported learning success concerning the presented memes will be presented. The teaching and learning purposes thematize the memes’ use for
. introducing a topic . teaching different forms of sarcasm, meaning irony and humor in general . giving insight into everyday life situations . teaching vocabulary and phrases . teaching about society and culture . teaching grammar
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3.2 Research Context and Participants The survey was conducted online by students from different AHS5 and BHS6 schools in Carinthia. Most of the students who participated, are students from BHS schools. As, due to Covid-19 restrictions I was not able to be present in the schools and explain my study to the students personally, I decided to opt for a snowball system. Hence, I initially sent an E-Mail that included the link to my survey as well as an explanation to four teachers, who were asked to forward the E-Mail to their students. Three out of four teachers were BHS teachers, which leads to the assumption, that most participants are BHS students. The participants of the study were between 15 and 20+ years old. I decided to conduct this study with students from higher classes because the complexity of cultural and social topics can be quite challenging and pupils from lower grades might not be able to understand or grasp the hidden message of certain contents and hence not reflect upon the respective issues. Furthermore, students from lower grades may not have the linguistic competence that is required in order to be able to participate in this survey. Another reason for choosing older students is that younger students may be less familiar with the digital world and social media than their older peers.
In total, 61 pupils participated in the study. Another 60 participated as well but did not manage to complete the whole survey successfully. The incomplete data has been omitted in the process of data analysis because most of the incomplete data did not include any responses concerning the main part of my survey. Concerning the pupils’ age, 51% are between 16 and 17 years old, 31% are between the age of 18 and 19, 10% are 15 years old and only 8% are 20 years old or older (cf. Figure 3.1)
Figure 3.1: Participants’ Age
5 Allgemein Bildende Höhere Schule 6 Berufsbildende Höhere Schule 50
In regards to the classes the students are in, most of the students are in 8th grade upper school level or 4th grade upper school level, depending on whether they are AHS or BHS students, making up 31% of the whole survey population. 26% are in 7th grade upper school level or 3rd grade upper school level. 25% are in 6th or 2nd grade upper school level and 18% are in 5th grade upper school level, which is only possible for BHS students (cf. Figure 3.2)
Figure 3.2: Class distribution
3.3 Research Method
Dörnyei (2007) distinguishes between two main research approaches: Qualitative and Quantitative Research. The main difference resides in the divergent methods of data collection and data production. Qualitative data mainly focuses on spoken data, which is recorded and set into written form through transcription. Therefore,
“Qualitative research involves data collection procedures that result primarily in open- ended, non-numerical data, which is then analysed primarily by non-statistical methods. […]” (Dörnyei, 2007, p. 24) Quantitative data, on the other hand, is mainly based on numbers. In contrast to qualitative research,
“Quantitative research involves data collection procedures that result primarily in numerical data which is then analysed primarily by statistical methods. Typical example: survey using a questionnaire, […]” (Dörnyei, 2007, p. 24) 51
Dörnyei (2007) also suggests an additional option which is mixed methods research, which combines both methods “either at the data collection or at the analysis levels” (Dörnyei, 2007, p. 24).
3.3.1 Quantitative Research
In the present study, I chose to use the quantitative research approach, as it appeared to be the most suitable method for my research according to Dörnyei’s (2007) definition of quantitative data. He lists various characteristics of quantitative research. I will list and briefly discuss the characteristics I consider most relevant for pointing out why I opted for a quantitative research approach:
. The usage of numbers, as already mentioned in his definition. He explains that numbers can be very powerful. Particularly in research though, they are powerless when the contextual background of the numbers is missing. In other words, exact descriptions are necessary and the category or the content to which the numbers are connected or associated with always needs to be specified (Dörnyei, 2007). As this study is based on descriptive statistics, the main focus lays on the analysis and presentation of numerical and percentage data that outlines results that show what is the case. This includes the calculation of the sum of responses for each statement or question as well as the subsequent statistical comparison of the results. Hence, numbers play an important role regarding the process of data analysis in the present study. . Quantitative research focuses on common features of groups of people, rather than on the individual itself. It is not interested in single, individual answers but in the shared opinions of numerous people. Dörnyei defines quantitative research as “the study of variables” (2007, p. 33). These variables are counted and hence capture the common features (Dörnyei, 2007). As already mentioned, the present study’s statistics and findings rely on the sum of responses for each single statement or each question. Thus, it aims at collecting data about the shared opinion and attitudes of the study’s participants and hence describe common features. . Quantitative research bases itself on statistics, which means that the data in quantitative research is analyzed statistically, for example, by calculating the average of several figures. This is only one of many examples though, as the range of methods for statistical analysis is very wide (Dörnyei, 2007). The present study uses descriptive statistics in order to show and outline what is the case, which is why it is considered a 52
descriptive study. This is done by calculating the sum of responses for each statement and presenting the findings in form of percentage and numerical data. . Quantitative research lays great importance on generalizability. The conclusions that are drawn from the results, meaning the numbers, variables and statistics, are facts that can be generalized and ideally add up to universal laws (Dörnyei, 2007).
Nevertheless, Dörnyei (2007) stresses the importance of evaluating if and how much of the findings can be generalized. He explains that overgeneralization occurs when the results of a study are generalized to a population that has not been involved in the study. Therefore, if, for example, a research’s population are secondary school students, the findings should not be generalized and adopted to primary school students or university students. Generalization is a rather delicate topic in quantitative study and thus, “researchers need to exercise great caution when pitching the level of generalization in their research reports” (Dörnyei, 2007, p. 213). Discussing the topic of (over)generalization, Dörnyei sheds light on two main struggles. On the one hand, he claims that limiting the findings and discussions to specific subgroups can reduce the audience due to a lack of broad relevance, which is why many researchers wish and tend to generalize. On the other hand, he points out that the basis of big claims are big and broad studies. These studies would have to include numerous different representatives who come from different age groups, ethnicities, school types and subject matters etc. According to Dörnyei (2007), one should find a balance between these two considerations, which can prove to be quite challenging. In fact, the present study’s findings cannot be generalized, as they only reflect the opinions and attitudes of the survey population. Therefore, the study’s results cannot be adopted to students in general.
McKinley and Rose (2017) stress that low response rates can also be quite challenging in quantitative research. The response rate often depends on the form of sampling one uses for the research, as well as on the respondent self-selection (Dörnyei, 2007). Dörnyei (2003) lists numerous sampling procedures and distinguishes between probability sampling and non- probability sampling. For my study, I used the non-probability snowball sampling, which
“involves a ‘chain reaction’ whereby the researcher identifies a few people who meet the criteria of the particular study and then asks the participants to identify further appropriate members of the population.” (Dörnyei, 2007, p. 98) Using this sampling method, I had to face the already mentioned problem of respondent self- selection. This means that participation on the part of research population was not compulsory. Instead, their personal contribution to my study depended solely on their willingness to 53 participate (Dörnyei, 2007). As the snowball sampling somehow implies voluntary participation though, I had to hope for as many students as possible to be motivated to support my research.
McKinley and Rose (2017) point out another challenge that researchers have to face in regards to response rates, arguing that they do not necessarily meet one’s expectations. When compiling a quantitative research, be it a questionnaire or any other form of test, the researchers have certain expectations in mind. Often, those expectations diverge from the results, which can be quite challenging and raise some problems. McKinley and Rose (2017) state the example of a study, which was aimed at students who were in their first year of university. Therefore, the expected age of those students was around 18-19 years. However, the first person to participate in the study was a 56-year-old man, who was a first-year student. Therefore, they “did not appear to be getting responses from a whole range in the target sample […]” (McKinley & Rose, 2017, p. 85). This can on the one hand be of advantage when it comes to generalization, as mentioned by Dörnyei, because some key factors (in this case the key factor age) of the research population turn out to be broader than expected and therefore the relevance of the study extends itself to a wider age range. On the other hand, it can be challenging for researchers to get results that they have not considered at all in their preparation phase. Concerning the present study, the findings did not entirely meet my personal expectations as a researcher. On the one hand, results regarding the general functions of meme and what can be learned through them reflect my own expectations and attitudes. On the other hand, the results of the survey’s section concerning the use of a selection of illustrated memes as a teaching tool did not always equal my personal thoughts, ideas and opinions. Therefore, in the case of the present study, some results are rather unexpected as well. This does not cause any severe complications or challenges though because other studies offer a great chance of comparison and encourage hypothesizing. Moreover, even though the findings themselves cannot be generalized very much, the further comparison to existing literature allows a certain level of generalization.
3.4 Method of Data Collection
Amongst all options of quantitative research, I opted for the questionnaire. My study utilized an online questionnaire. It has been compiled and conducted with an online survey system called LimeSurvey. LimeSurvey is an online survey tool, which allows professionals, as well as newcomers, to create questionnaires and surveys and hence investigate people’s opinions, attitudes, interests or the reasons behind certain decisions. Private individuals, opinion research institutes, universities and even large companies use this software. LimeSurvey provides all the 54 necessary tools for the compilation of an effective study as well as simple surveys (Lime Survey GmbH, 2021). My university, the Karl-Franzens University, provided me the opportunity of using the software and all its included tools for free.
According to Dörnyei (2003), a questionnaire can include three different types of questions. It must not necessarily include all three types though. The collection of data about the respondents is conducted through the help of the
1) Factual questions. Factual questions normally aim at finding out characteristics about the respondents, such as their age, gender or any other background information that can be relevant for the study’s examination. Questions that concern the students’ language learning history and success are also part of this section. 2) Behavioral questions. This type of questions is used for investigating people’s lives. This includes their actions, life-styles and habits, as well as their personal history. 3) Attitudinal questions. As its name implies, attitudinal questions revolve around people’s attitudes, beliefs, values, interests and opinions. In other words, these questions focus on what people think. Dörnyei (2003) points out a clear distinction of these terms. He defines attitudes as subjective evaluative responses to people, institutions or situations, which are embedded in a person’s mind due to significant people around them who often influence the way this person perceives things. Opinions are also defined as (being?) rather subjective but more likely to change compared to attitudes. As cited by Dörnyei (2003), Aiken (1996) claims that people are fully aware of their own opinions, but they are not necessarily conscious their attitudes. Beliefs base themselves on whether something is true or false, hence, beliefs are supported by facts, which makes them less subjective than attitudes and opinions. Interests are simply personal preferences for all kinds of activities or topics. Finally, values refer to personal preferences in regards to life goals or ways of life, as well as the importance and worth of certain activities and concepts.
The present study contains all three types of questions, which ideally leads to a successful and effective analysis and data collection, as it investigates facts about the participants, including their age, school level and school grades. Moreover, the survey aims at finding out the participants’ habits in regards to their social media and IG use. Finally, the questionnaire focuses on the students’ attitudes and opinions towards memes’ general functions as well as memes’ function and efficiency as a learning and teaching tool.
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3.4.1 Reasons for Using this Method
There are several advantages to using a questionnaire as a research tool. Firstly, Dörnyei (2003) states that a questionnaire enables you to gather a respectively large amount of information in a rather short period of time. As I needed opinions and information of as many people as possible for my study to be convincing and reliable, the questionnaire appeared to be a great option for achieving my goal. The time aspect is enormously advantageous too, as it saved me a lot of time, which I could effectively use for the further development of my thesis.
Secondly, besides the data collection, also the data analysis of a questionnaire is rather simple and fast if the respective research tool is well conceived. Often, the processing of data can be supported by computer software (Dörnyei, 2003). These software packages are very user- friendly and do not require mathematical skills for analyzing the data (Dönryei, 2009). For the present study, I chose to use Microsoft Excel. After some research on how to use this statistics program properly, it turned out to be of great assistance for the statistical calculation and evaluation of the participants’ answers.
Finally, another advantage of this research tool is that many different topics, people and situations can be addressed in one single questionnaire. This is why many projects in the behavioral and social sciences use questionnaire data at one point of their research (Dörnyei, 2003).
3.4.2 Design of the Questionnaire
The questionnaire is divided into three main parts. It begins with a general introduction that gives a brief explanation of my study and familiarizes the students with the ethics of the research. The first part is composed of a brief introductory description of the section, followed by factual and behavioral questions, as well as an attitudinal question regarding their interest in the English language. Oxford (2011) claims that “attitudes are generally viewed as either positive or negative and can strongly affect L2 learning” (Oxford, 2011, p.71), which stresses the importance of this investigation. The factual questions aim at finding out the age of the students and what grade they are in. Thus, I wanted to be able to categorize the students’ English levels. I am aware of the fact, that the students’ age and the grade there are in do not necessarily define their language level, but I decided to base myself on the CEFR and the expected language level in the respective classes. Moreover, some behavioral questions concerned the students’ social media habits, such as further details on their use of IG. 56
The second part of the questionnaire focuses mainly on behavioral questions, while also including some factual questions as well. For this part of the questionnaire, close-ended questions and Likert scales were used. Closed questions provide “ready-made response options to choose from” (Dörnyei, 2003, p. 35). In this study, the close-ended questions were presented in the form of statements. A Likert scale consists of a number of statements. The respondents’ task is to indicate, whether and to which extent they agree or disagree with the respective statements by choosing one out of five response options (cf. Figure 7). The five response options, which indicate the extent, to which the students agree with the statement, are: “strongly agree”, “agree”, “neither agree nor disagree”, “disagree” and “strongly disagree”. The participants were offered five response options for two main reasons. Firstly, providing five response options, the respondents’ were offered a wide enough range of degrees of agreement. Secondly, while four response options hardly allow a neutral response, the inclusion of a fifth response allows respondents to remain neutral on the addressed issue. According to Dörnyei (2003), Likert scales always follow a ‘summative model’, meaning that the scores are either summed up or averaged. In the present study, the scores will be summed up and the statistics will be compared and analyzed.
Part two consists of 18 statements in total, which are subdivided into three sections. The first section consists of seven statements, which address the participants’ general opinion and attitude concerning a possible acquisition of various competences with the help of social media and memes. The Likert scale of this first section of part 2 of the questionnaire consisted of the following statements (cf. Figure 3.3):
. In my opinion represent cultures . Generally, I think that memes expand sociocultural knowledge/competence . A basic knowledge of a language is required in order to be able to learn/improve that language through Instagram or memes . I think it’s possible to learn vocabulary with the help of memes . I think it’s possible to improve the overall understanding of a text/sentence by looking at memes . I think I can learn about current events and deal with current topics via memes . I think memes can help express a nation’s/people’s emotions and opinions
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Figure 3.3: Likert scale “function of memes”, part 2,
section 1 In section two, 11 items are based on the respondents’ personal experiences about gaining knowledge through memes. A Likert scale- following the above mentioned scheme- with the following statements is illustrated (cf. Figure 3.4):
a) I learned new vocabulary i) I learned new phrases b) I improved my overall understanding of a text (text comprehension) c) I expanded my knowledge about culture i) I learned about cultural behaviors of a foreign country ii) I learned about sights and/or the geography of a foreign country iii) I learned about society and stereotypes of a foreign country d) I learned about current events that are going on all over the world e) I got informed about events I didn't know about f) I got to know other people's/nation's opinion regarding specific topic
Figure 3.4: Likert scale of personal experiences, part 2,
section 2 The last section of the questionnaire’s second part consists of two questions that rely on the respondents’ answers regarding statement a) and b) of section two and require short free writing answers. The participants are asked in which language(s) they improved their vocabulary and their overall understanding (cf. Figure 3.5).
Figure 3.5: Language improvement, part 2, section 3 58
The third part of the survey is the longest part, consisting of twelve different memes. With each meme come four close-ended questions, following the same scheme of Likert scales as in part two of the questionnaire. Only the first section consists of a single question that does not follow the original Likert scale, which contains five response options (Dörnyei, 2003), as it only provides four answers (cf. Figure 3.6). Four response options have been chosen for this question because providing the respondents with a fifth answer that allows them to remain neutral on the topic of comprehension does not appear reasonable.
Figure 3.6: Likert scale of “understanding”
The second and the third section contain nine statements in total and both follow the same type of scaling technique, again using five options: “very much”, “quite a lot”, “a little”, “not really” and “not at all”. Providing the respondents with five response options expands the range of comprehension and learning success grading. The two statements of section two of part three refer to the students’ struggles of comprehension due to lacking vocabulary or lacking background knowledge (cf. Figure 3.7) and their learning success (cf. Figure 3.8).
Figure 3.7: Likert scale of “comprehension struggles”
Figure 3.8: Likert scale of “learning success”
The fourth and last section of part three equals the Likert scale of part two, consisting of five response options that represent degrees of agreement and disagreement. It consists of seven 59
“If I were a teacher, I would use this meme to…” statements, which provide options for using memes as a learning and teaching tool, including the following (cf. Figure 3.9):
. I wouldn’t use it . Introduce a topic/an argument or start a discussion . Teach and talk about different types of sarcasm . Give an insight into everyday life (situations) . Teach vocabulary and phrases . Teach about society and culture . Teach grammar
Figure 3.9: Likert scale of “classroom implementation”
Hence, the first part of the questionnaire focuses on all three types of questions mentioned by Dörnyei (2009), and the second and third part aim at finding out whether and how memes can contribute to improving one’s language skills or expanding their cultural and social knowledge and other competences, such as text comprehension.
The investigation for the present study relies on self-reported data, which means that respondents share their personal experiences, opinions and attitudes. Gonyea (2005) points out the subjectivity of attitudinal questions, explaining that they are “based on personal beliefs and perceptions” (Gonyea, 2005, p.76). Hence, the responses cannot be verified, as it is not possible for an outside source to know what an individual truly believes. Therefore, verifiability is one major issue of self-reported data. According to Gonyea (2005), it is not enough to simply believe and trust in the respondents’ answers. Existing theoretical models should serve as a guidance for the researchers for the assessment of the trustworthiness of the data (Sudman, Bradburn, and Schwarz, 1996; Tourangeau, Rips, and Rasinski, 2000; Turner and Martin, 1984; in: Gonyea, 2005). The data of the present survey will be compared to several studies on the use and implementation of memes in the classroom. This should support the credibility of the present study’s findings. 60
Moreover, Gonyea (2005) stresses that validity and reliability are two important factors for determining the quality of survey information. Validity indicates “the extent to which asurvey question or construct actually measures what it purports to measure” (Gonyea, 2005, p. 77), while reliability “refers to the consistency of the information obtained from respondents” (Gonyea, 2005, p. 77). Both indicators, validity and reliability, can be threatened though the ambiguity of self-reported items, which can cause errors in data analysis (Takalkar, Waugh, and Micceri, 1993; in: Gonyea, 2005). The more complex the items are, the more the chance of errors increases (Gonyea, 2005). Concerning the issue of validity and the correctness of the conclusions that are drawn from the findings, as well as the issue of reliability, the present survey resorts to the comparison to other studies addressing similar topics, as also suggested in regards to the verifiability and credibility of the subject and data.
3.4.2.1 Categorization and Description of the Memes
Concerning the memes that have been included in my survey, I decided to categorize them and further describe each meme properly for a better understanding of the meme itself as following:
Figure 3.10: Leonardo Di Caprio Meme
I decided to call the first meme the Leonardo Di Caprio Meme (cf. Figure 3.10). It is basically and Everyday-Life-Meme, as it revolves around the adult world and its everyday life struggles 61 and ironically welcomes young adults to adulthood by hinting at what awaits them in the life as an adult.
The meme shows a picture of Leonardo Di Caprio in a scene from the film Django Unchained. In the film, the scene shows Di Caprio chatting with some guests at the dining table during dinner (Frdnsyh, 2020). At one point, he makes a joke and the following scene image functions as foundation for the above-noted meme, as well as numerous other memes. Originally, Di Caprio holds a glass of wine but in the case of this meme the picture has been edited and the engine symbol of a car replaces the glass of wine. To make the meme complete, some text is added above the picture.
In the original scene, Di Caprio is actually making fun of what one of the other men is trying to say, he ridicules the man’s affirmation, which makes everyone laugh apart from the man he is referring to. Leo7 reacts to what this the man says as if the man’s statement was a joke and cannot be taken seriously. Everyone laughing makes Di Caprio make the gesture that can be seen in the meme, which could be interpreted as a fake laughter that expresses a sort of intellectual superiority. Additionally, his facial expression clearly indicates a lot of irony.
In the case of the Leonardo Di Caprio Meme, Di Caprio’s facial expression represents the car, or more specifically, its engine. As an adult, there are moments in which you think you can finally relax a little and there’s not much you have to worry about: all the bills are paid and there’s neither any financial trouble, nor any expected expenses. Then, out of nowhere, the usual car problems emerge and make you spend a lot of money on your car again. In other words, the car is ruining the adult’s illusion of not having financial struggles or having to pay any more bills for a while. That is exactly the meme’s message, saying “finally catches up with all my bills” and “My car”, followed by the picture of Di Caprio with an engine in his hand. As I already said, Di Caprio represents the car or the car’s engine in this case and him holding the engine in the meme is like the car answering to an adult’s state of happiness and satisfaction with evil “Haha, not today, that’s a good one”. Thus, the car radiates a kind of superiority because it has the power of ruining an emotional state of serenity and happiness and converting it into stress and financial troubles again.
7 Leonardo Di Caprio 62
Figure 3.11: Pineapple Pizza Meme
The Pineapple Pizza Meme (cf. Figure 3.11) could be categorized as cultural meme that represents a fake historical event and points at emphasizing stereotypes.
The meme is certainly remixed and the original image is probably taken out of a film. Moreover, the reason why the creator of this meme chose to make the meme beige and not in color is probably because they he or she wanted to make the meme look old, as if the event pictured in the meme had happened a long time ago. Other versions of this meme saying “Italian-American immigrant is held down and forced to watch in horror as pineapple is addes to a pizza for the first time. -1914, Brooklyn, New York”, confirm that the intention behind the meme was to make it look like a historical event that had taken place many years ago, as pizza with pineapple is quite popular all over the world nowadays. It pictures three men. Two men are trying to hold back a third man, who is starring aggressively at something. It is not clear what he was originally starring at, but in the case of this specific meme, it is the pineapple being put onto a pizza. By looking at the three men, the scene seems to be rather violent and serious, as the third man’s facial expression is full of anger, disguise, despair and aggression. By looking only at the three man, one would probably expect a horrifying scene. Instead, the meme was edited in a way that the three men are actually looking at and witnessing someone putting a piece of pineapple on a pizza. The whole original event is being ridiculed by substituting the original happening with a pineapple pizza. At the same time though, the picture wants to demonstrate in a quite purposely- exaggerated way that pineapple on a pizza is a total no go for Italians and that this kind of topping is highly unacceptable in the original Italian cuisine. The meme does both, it puts an emphasis on the Italian culture and their disguise towards pineapple pizza and simultaneously 63 highlights the appreciation and love for this dish in other parts of the world. Therefore, the meme sheds light on the stereotypical attitudes of two different countries in regards to culinary culture.
Figure 3.12: Coronavirus Mask Meme
The Mask Meme (cf. Figure 3.12) is a society and event meme. It addresses a current situation, which in this case would be the Covid-19 pandemic that has been going on since March 2020. It addresses the current struggles everyone is facing due to Coronavirus. People are asked to always wear mask and to wash them or change them as soon as they get home in order to eradicate the bacteria that aggregates on the mask while breathing onto it while in public. The mask should help everyone avoid getting into contact with bacteria from other people that could be infected with Covid-19, as the germs can be spread spread every time someone exhales, coughs or sneezes.
The meme shows a mother with her little son, who are both wearing a mask. The wearing of the masks draws attention to the current global situation, meaning the pandemic with all its measurements and restrictions. Due to the Coronavirus, everyone has to wear masks in public, be it at school, at work or in supermarkets. The meme captures a scene, where a mother picks up per child from school during this pandemic. The child comes out of the school and apparently wears a different mask from the one he wore that same morning when leaving for school. In the meme, the son admits that he switched masks with a schoolmate and that actually more pupils did so. Therefore, they did what should actually be avoided: they spread their germs by sharing their masks with one another. By doing so, they do not assist in the prevention of the spreading of this new virus called Covid-1, but actually contribute to its spreading. As big part of the 64 audience or spectators of this meme are familiar with the rules in regards to the Coronavirus, everyone immediately understands that what this child admits to have done at school, is neither sustainable nor the right thing to do in such a global situation. For that exact reason, many people might laugh at this meme. It thematizes an inconvenient action accomplished by young little school kids that may not realize what they have actually done. The children’s innocence and cluelessness is what may make the audience laugh. Children might not be aware of the seriousness of this pandemic as they might not be able to fully understand what been going on this past year. The funny part about this whole meme is that many grown ups behave just as the child in this meme, lacking respect towards the restrictions and measures that have been introduced ever since the pandemic has started, even though, in contrast to children, they should be aware of the consequences and dangers.
Figure 3.13: Lava Meme
The Lava Meme (cf. Figure 3.13) is a society meme, as it ironically depicts and compares pupils’ struggles in life and their situation at school.
The meme consist of two different pictures, which are separated by a thin line. The first picture shows a man singing and holding a guitar. A text saying “school” has been placed on the man, which indicates that the man represents school in this case. It is obvious that the man is singing something while playing the guitar, as his mouth is open. In front of the guitar the text “lava is called magma when underground” has been inserted, which would be the words sung by the man according to this meme. In other words, the first part of the meme reveals what is being 65 taught at school, what pupils learn and get information about. School teaches you general geographic knowledge like this, which certainly contributes to your general knowledge. But the second part of the meme questions, whether this knowledge serves any other advantage besides the broadening of your general knowledge, as there are more important things students would want to know. In fact, the second picture shows another man, who is looking at the guitar playing man with a rather serious facial expression. Also in the second picture, at chest height of the man, a text is added, which says “Me wanting to know how to pay taxes”. The “me” and therefore the man in the picture, represents all students who are loaded with and gaining all this general knowledge, whilst lacking information and knowledge on helpful topics that will help them cope with several tasks in their future everyday life as an adult, such as knowing how to pay taxes for example. In other words, the meme judges the school system in a rather harmless way, criticizing the usefulness of what is being taught, whilst also emphasizing what should be taught and focused on more. Nevertheless, the fun factor of the meme does not stay out. Most students, who are the target group of this meme, can completely relate to this situation. A meme is usually created because many people share the same opinion or feel the same way, therefore this meme would not have gone viral, if it did not represent a big part of all students’ still attending school in this world. Therefore, the simple creation and success of this meme imply that many students must feel the same. The transmission of this sort of ‘community spirit’ might have a tranquilizing and comforting effect on the students and might hence be one fun factor of this meme. It generalizes students’ situations, feelings and attitudes towards this addressed issue. Moreover, the information that lava is called magma when underground perfectly shows what is meant by gaining knowledge that most probably won’t be needed in life later on, except you want to become a geologist. This lack of helpful knowledge and the overwhelming load of less useful information might actually concern some students, but in the context of this meme, the whole topic becomes rather ironic and therefore funny. In addition, the look on the man’s face on the second picture emphasizes the funniness of the meme because the rather serious facial expression leaves room for interpretation and some people might even see a little despair and confusion in his eyes, which would again perfectly depict many students’ personal feelings in regards to this issue. 66
Figure 3.14: Bananas Meme
The Bananas Meme (cf. Figure 3.14) is, in contrast to the previously presented memes, not a culture and society meme, but a language meme. It combines several languages, for example, English, German, French etc. Bananas without the B is Ananas, which means pineapple in German, Italian and French.
The meme shows two pictures, whereby only the first picture includes a text. The pictures used for this meme look like they have been taken out of a computer-animated film. It is clear that the inserted text appertains to the woman. The man’s reaction in the second picture confirms that the woman must have made the statement. Clearly, the text used are not the original words (in the film). The meme is a world play that mixes up various European languages and requires the knowledge of the English language, as well as a basic knowledge of German, Italian or French, for example. A German or Italian Native Speaker immediately gets that bananas without the B is Ananas, which, to them, is another type of fruit. Thus, they should be able to connect that pineapple must be the English translation for Ananas. The other way around, an English Native Speaker, who does not speak any other languages, is left with the information that “Ananas is just pineapple”. This statement could sound rather confusing. Nevertheless, also English natives should be able to interpret the meme correctly and, even without any further language knowledge, they should not struggle with understanding the pun. Clearly, the understanding of the meme is facilitated with a basic language knowledge of English and German, Italian or French. Regarding the fun factor of the meme, only someone who knows 67 the word pineapple in a language that translates pineapple with “Ananas” can immediately understand the meme’s funniness.
In the first picture, the woman makes a pun, while the man’s face cannot be seen. In the second picture though, we can see the man’s turned around and the look on his face pictures extreme confusion. This implies, that the man does not understand the pun. The man’s reaction may mirror the reaction of people, who do not immediately understand the wordplay as well. People who understand the pun, on the other hand, might start laughing due to the man’s confused face caused by his lack of knowledge.
Figure 3.15: Cat Cake Meme
Also the Cat Cake Meme (cf. Figure 3.15) can be categorized as a language meme, as well as a society meme. It mirrors language learners’ struggles regarding their speaking competence, which includes syntax, grammar, vocabulary etc.
The meme shows a cat sitting on a table with a cake in front of it. The cake depicts the cat, as the colors and the form of the cake are apparently aimed at being equal to the cat itself. Clearly, the cake does not represent the cat perfectly, even though a slight resemblance can be noted. In this meme, the cake is depicted as the ugly version of the cat. It hides a subtle hint that the cake is not very professional and cannot be compared to the original cat. The cat and the cake are set into comparison in this meme. The cat represents, as the text says, the sentence in a language learner’s mind, whereas the cake represents the same sentence when it is being said out loud. Therefore, the cat is the beautiful version of the sentence, whereas the cake is the ugly outcome of the sentence someone had in mind. The meme could maybe be compared to Saussures theory of the significant and the signifier. Adapting his theory to the meme, the living cat would be the 68 signifier and the cat cake would be the significant. The cat is the signifier, hence the sentence we tell ourselves and picture in our mind. The cake is what is actually being said, thus the significant. Of course the issue addressed in the meme is not equal to Saussures linguistic concept of signifier and significant, as Saussure talks about our notion of words and their phonetic picture, for example, the picture we have in mind when we hear the word tree and the actual word “tree”. Nevertheless, in my opinion, this Meme can somehow be compared to this concept of language, as the Meme still compares something we have in our mind and the phonetic realization and concretization of this image.
The Meme shows language learners’ struggles in a rather different, particular and ironic way. Probably everyone who has ever tried to learn or learned a new language can relate to this situation: I know what I want to say, I have the sentence in my mind and it sounds highly professional, but then I fail at or struggle with producing it in that exact same way. I am not familiar with the real matter why this happens so often to so many L2, L3 etc. learners. My personal assumption is that these common struggles are related to the receptive and productive skills and competences that are developed throughout language learning. As our receptive skills, meaning Listening and Reading, are developed faster and earlier in the process of language learning, we have the sentence perfectly structured in our head. When it comes to producing the sentences though, the outcome does not equal our expectations that have been build up in our minds. Depicting this struggle of language learners by comparing it to a cat and a cake in the shape of the same cat is rather entertaining. As the cake is evidently a rather failed or unsuccessful copy of the real cat, the message of the meme becomes clear immediately. As already mentioned, many pupils or language learners can relate to this situation as they have more than once experienced it. The rather unexpected and creative way for expressing such a struggle, as well as the meme being so relatable, are both features that give the meme a humorous touch. 69
Figure 3.16: Heaven and Hell Meme Hell Meme
The Heaven and Hell Meme (cf. Figure 3.16) follows the categorization of a cultural meme. It addresses the topic of stereotypes and assumes how hell and heaven must be, based on various nations occupying certain roles.
Pictures of flags are added, but other than that the meme consists only of text, which could raise concern, whether this can really be considered a meme. It is an almost plain text meme. This does not affect the meme’s humorousness though if there is enough background knowledge about the various mentioned cultures. In order to get across its humorous message successfully, the plain text meme relies on an audience that has a certain basic knowledge about each country and their social behaviors and traditions. The required knowledge should evoke enough pictures in the audience’s mind to ensure a clear image of heaven and hell as they are described in the meme.
Figure 3.17: Italian Cat Meme
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The Italian Cat Meme (cf. Fugure 3.17) falls into the category of both, cultural memes and cat memes. It is not clear, whether the cat really has such an unusual paw, or whether the cat’s paw has been edited. In any case, this meme is a new version of a meme. I have been observing such types of memes for the past one and a half to two years now, so they must have gone viral around 2019. This new type of meme consists of a meme that has already been posted on a social media platform and a person’s comment in regards to that specific meme. In the case of the Italian Cat Meme, the picture of the cat with the added text has apparently been posted on twitter and a guy named Cameron commented on this meme with “Looks like he’s about to say something in Italian”. The comment gives a whole new meaning to the original meme. Therefore, the composition of the original meme and the comment results in the creation of a new meme.
The trend of the Italian-hand-gesture-meme went viral on a global level in 2017 and 2018. The typical Italian hand gesture was used for the creation of numerous memes, which pictured the use of this gesture in a variety of contexts. These contexts often were very ironic, stereotypical, exaggerated and still humorous. The Italian Cat Meme, in fact, is based on and associated with this meme trend. In contrast to other Italian hand gesture memes, the intention of the original meme diverges from the new version of the meme. Originally, the meme did not want to refer to the Italian hand gesture, but it rather aimed at drawing attention to a cat standing, rather than sitting on a window sill, as explained in the text of the meme. The adding of the comment created a whole new context, which brings the Italian hand gesture into focus.
The original intention and humorous part of the meme is the fact, that a cat is standing on a window sill, while cats normally sit on window sills, watching out of the window for hours. The owner of the cat must have taken a snapshot of this rather unusual feline position of his or her cat. The text in the meme emphasizes the rareness of such an event. The coincidence of seeing a cat in such a position, the chance of taking a picture of such a moment and particularly the cat’s weird and funny standing position itself are all humorous factors, which contribute to the humor of the original meme.
With the adding of the comment, the focus of the meme takes some turns and a cat meme is transformed into a cultural meme. The association of the cat’s paw with Italy or Italian culture is quite stereotypical but it also has a cultural background. In the whole world, this gesture is associated with Italy or Italians and everyone knows it. It is a cliché of Italian language culture, as Italians are known for using their whole body while speaking. I would like to use myself as 71 an example for this cliché. I personally often use this hand gesture without even consciously noticing. Austrian people make me aware of it and laugh about it though, because they are not used to seeing people who communicate, using their whole body. Moreover, it has happened to me more than once that, after only a few minutes into a conversation with people who don’t know me and have not seen me before, they can already tell that I am not a 100% Austrian, assuming “You must have Mediterranean blood running through your venes.” These assumptions, which turn out to be true, always make me laugh because this situation has occurred several times, always independently of one another. As already mentioned, on the Internet, the Italian hand gesture meme trend emphasized this stereotype and depicted it in various exaggerated forms. According to these memes, everyone who uses this gesture automatically becomes or is identified as Italian, as can be seen by the example of this cat. Clearly, the contexts in which the use of this hand gesture is shown, do not reflect reality, but they still humorously address a cultural topic.
Figure 3.18: Simpson Coronavirus Meme
I would personally categorize the Simpson Coronavirus Meme (cf. Figure 3.18) as a society and event meme, as it addresses happenings of 2020 and pictures society’s dealing with it.
All pictures are a reference to the current global situation. The images serve as a comparison of what people have actually been doing ever since the year 2020 has started and what people will tell others in the future, as e.g. their grandchildren, how they contributed to solving the addressed problems or situations. They perfectly mirror how the most part of society deals with everything going on, while tragic happenings, such as risking World War III, the Australian 72
Bushfires and the worldwide pandemic jeopardize big parts of our planet and society. The only thing most people did is stay at home, not only because they didn’t know what else to do, but also because politicians asked them to do so and certain measurements and rules have been introduced.
The meme shows several pictures of the Simpsons and two separate text. The first three pictures are a collage of images of Homer Simpson in the role of a military, a firefighter and a plague doctor. When hearing of World War III, bushfires and a pandemic, people, in fact, probably think of military fighting in the war, firefighters trying to put out the fires and scientists working on a vaccine or doctors doing their best to help and cure people. Given the situation of a person telling someone in the future about this period of time and the tragic events, there is a lot of space for imagination and interpretation. According to this meme, when telling a story, people tend to exaggerate and not tell it properly because they may want to put themselves in a better light and come out the hero of the story. The first three pictures of Homer Simpson aim at transmitting this message. The second part of the Meme, picturing Bart Simpson sitting in front of the computer, by contrast, perfectly illustrates reality and reveals in a slightly exaggerated form how most people really faced the year 2020 and its happenings. Most people who went through 2020 and are still going through several Lockdowns, due to the global pandemic, can probably relate very much to this meme, as in some parts of the world, people are not even allowed to leave the house. What renders this meme humorous, is the high contrast between imagination and reality, as well as the truth content and traceability that lies behind it.
Figure 3.19: Aqua Meme
The Aqua Meme (cf. Figure 3.19) is categorized as a language meme. 73
The cat’s facial expression is rather unusual and funny and could be interpreted in numerous ways: either the cat is about to spit something out or throw up, or it may be coughing or gagging.
The languages listed are romance languages and when looking at the Meme it becomes evident that all of them similarly write and pronounce the word water, with a few phonological and phonetical differences. Therefore, the heritage from the Latin language becomes apparent in every romance language listed, apart from one: French. While in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan and Romanian the orthography and the pronunciation of this word are very similar to the Latin term “aqua”, the French pronunciation- and presumably also the orthography- is entirely different. The French term for water is eau, pronounced more or less like a simple [o] in a slightly higher voice tone.
Therefore, this Meme revolves around the phonetic realization of the word water in different romance languages. More precisely, it aims at the pronunciation of the word eau, which cannot be found in written form in this meme. The intention of this meme is to illustrate or make people figure out the correct pronunciation of this word by looking at the cat’s mouth or facial expression in general. In other words, the phonetic realization of the French term for water is compared to the cat doing strange expressions with its mouth. Of course it is illustrated in an exaggerated form and slightly ridicules the pronunciation of this word, but the resemblance is what should be giving the meme a quite humorous touch. I do not think that the meme creator intended to offend the French language but rather chose to humorously present an undeniable fact. If someone isn’t familiar with any romance language it might be a little harder for that someone to understand this Meme, but it still isn’t impossible as it becomes quite evident by just looking at the words that all words look quite the same and that the last one, French, somehow shines out by being apparently different. What might remain unclear is the meaning of the words but that is actually quite secondary, as the focus is not on the meaning, but on the pronunciation, as previously mentioned. 74
Figure 3.20: Swedish Kid Meme
It is rather hard to categorize the Swedish Kid Meme (cf. Figure 3.20). The most applicable category would be the cultural meme category, as the meme somehow addresses Swedish culture in connection with its huge furniture and domestic needs chain IKEA. It does not have many stereotypical manifestations but rather some cultural references that are illustrated in an ironic way.
Most importantly, concerning the understanding of this meme, background knowledge is needed, otherwise the reference to IKEA cannot be understood and the meme does not result in being funny anymore. Therefore, background knowledge plays a very important role in this meme and without it, it is impossible to understand and appreciate it. One needs to know what it is referring to and have some basic information, such as the fact that Ikea is a Swedish company that produces furniture and other household tools, accessories and decoration for your house etc. That little background information about IKEA is essential, in order to conceive the meme’s point. It is obvious that the scenario told in the text is unrealistic, which may be another influential factor for the meme’s humorousness. However, by having little background information one should normally understand the reference to Ikea and be able to build up a connection between the furniture assembling itself and a Swedish kid talking. The composition of the surreal scenario described, the subtle and indirect reference- that challenges the audience to think a little further and beyond- and the picture of the man with that shocked look on his face perfectly displays the silliness of some memes, but also their humorous side. Most importantly though, it shows how background knowledge and therefore a certain level of education or general knowledge is needed in order to understand certain memes. 75
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Figure 3.21: Trump Meme
The Trump Meme (cf. Figure 3.21) falls into the category of political memes, as it addresses the presidential elections in the United States in 2020.
Background knowledge plays a very important role in this meme. First of all, one must be able to identify and recognize the cartoon of Trump, the former president of the United States of America. Second, one should be informed about Trump’s relation to and usage of Twitter, otherwise the allusion of the doctor’s statement to this commonly known and globally discussed issue loses its humorous overtone because the reference is not understood. Trump’s cartoon holding a mobile phone that shows the Twitter emblem emphasizes and confirms his constant- mostly negatively connoted- need to share and post tweets. Additionally, the humorousness of this meme can only be understood if one constantly keeps oneself up to date regarding the elections and in particular the evaluation process and controversies concerning the election outcome. One must know, that Trump refused to accept the election result in order to understand the whole context of the meme and why it is portrayed like this. The fact that a doctor has to explain this fact to Trump mockingly stresses his ignorance and refusal of acceptance in regards to his failed participation in the election.
3.4.2.2 Reasons for Meme Selection with regard to Educational Intentions
The Leonardo di Caprio Meme (cf. Figure 3.10) addresses modern society’s problems as an adult. Therefore, future life as an adult and everyday life struggles in the adult world can be
8 see chapter 7 for image sources 76 discussed in a rather ironic way, in order to not scare the pupils but make them aware of and prepare them for what is awaiting them in the adult world. Moreover, small phrases, such as “to catch up with your bills” or vocabulary, such as “bills” can be learned. There again, if the word “bills” is not understood, this might lead to difficulties understanding the meme, as, in this context, it is a quite fundamental word in order to get an overall understanding of the meme.
The Pineapple Pizza Meme (cf. Figure 3.11) perfectly depicts stereotypes and Italian, as well as American culture in a funny way. The intention behind this meme is to make the students aware of stereotypes, as well as to motivate them to compare cultures and find similarities and differences. In the case of this meme, the students’ could reflect upon and get new information about the culinary culture of America and Italy. Additionally, the students could improve their overall understanding, as some vocabulary are very easy to understand, even if the level of English is not great. Even though the vocabulary used is rather simple, expressions such as “being held down” or “watch in horror as something is done” can be learned.
Regarding the Mask Meme (cf. Figure 3.12), short phrases and vocabulary such as “to trade to” and “trade with” could be learned and the slight difference of meaning can be discussed. Another aspect that can be improved with the help of this meme is the students’ overall understanding. One might understand what is being addressed or “said” by only understanding parts or one part of the meme. Connecting the words “mask”, “cooler” and “Taylor and Hunter” one might already be able to imagine the conversation the mother and the son are “having”. While discussing the overall understanding one could also go deeper into some vocabulary learning, as mentioned above. Signal words and the corresponding appropriate tense could also be discussed, for example in this case, the use of past tense in correlation with the signal word “this morning”. Moreover, the meme sheds a light on society and the current issue of Covid- 19. Thus, the meme could encourage the students to critically think about what is being said and addressed in this meme and compare it to what is going on in the real world, how people behave and whether people respect the restrictions and measurements.
What could be learned through the Lava Meme is, on (cf. Figure 3.13) the one hand, specific knowledge. In other words, anyone who doesn’t know that lava is called magma when underground, will know it after having seen his meme. On the other hand, the meme raises the matter of students’ struggles concerning their education. The meme can be interpreted as a generalization of concerns about and issues of the school system and subject matters, as well as future adult life. It could encourage students to come up with ideas for possible solutions regarding an improvement in education with an increased focus on essential and necessary 77 information for the awaiting adulthood. In addition, the differences between adolescence and adulthood can be explored and discussed amongst the pupils.
The Bananas Meme (cf. Figure 3.14) can be used as a tool for learning how languages can be connected to one another and how various languages can have linguistic features in common or how they can differ from one another. Taking the example of this meme, for example, the three languages Italian, French and German all use the term “ananas”, while in Spanish one would say “piña” and in English the term is “pineapple”. Moreover, the students could get acquainted with the irony of wordplays.
Through the Cat Cake Meme (cf. Figure 3.15), phrases, such as “say something out loud” and vocabulary, such as the word “literally” and its meaning and in which various contexts this word is used in the English language can be learned. Moreover, students can also become aware of the use of “in my mind” instead of saying “in my head”. Another issue addressed in this meme is the possible lack of exercise of oral production, meaning that students do not get the chance to practice their speaking skills often enough. The students can start solving this problem by discussing the meme and the truth behind it with their peers. Additionally, they can, again, discuss flaws in the educational system. With the help of this meme, similarities amongst language learners can be brought up and the struggles that every language learner has to face when learning a new language can be pointed out. While realizing that many language learners face the same struggles in acquiring productive skills can make the language learning process seem impossible, the same realization might give students and language learners a feeling of community, knowing that others are confronted with the same problem. As a teacher, it is important to ironically shed light on the addressed issue while emphasizing that the language learning process and acquisition of productive skills requires quite a lot of time and practice. Everyone feels a little lost at first, but everyone will improve and make progress too.
The Heaven and Hell Meme (cf. Figure 3.16) can give the students an understanding of stereotypes and different cultures. It can encourage them to reflect critically on whether what is being claimed is true and if the mentioned stereotypes are really just stereotypes or if some of them represent reality. People often tend to have certain prejudices towards certain communities, countries or even individuals in mind. These prejudices are often rather reinforced than mitigated in memes and other digital content that circulates on the Internet. This can lead to the spreading of wrong ideas and inculcate wrong attitudes towards a specific community, country etc. Hence, it is important to address the issue of stereotypes and prejudices by revealing and illustrating them and critically shedding light on their depiction. In other words, 78 it is important to discuss and critically think about the truthfulness of the shown content. Moreover, it can motivate students to think about other stereotypes in other countries. Ideally, this leads to an arousal of curiosity and a discussion, which hopefully results in the pupils gaining knowledge about several countries’ cultures and traditions, while also raising awareness on the issue of stereotypes and differentiating between reality and clichés. Regarding vocabulary, the level of language used in this meme is rather elementary. Therefore, from a linguistic point of view, it can be used for lower grades, where students can learn words like “heaven”, “hell”, “police”, “mechanics” etc.
The Italian Cat Meme (cf. Figure 3.17) contains phrases like “being about to do something” and vocabulary, such as “window sill”, which can be a quite important word for everyday life but which might not be taught in school as it is not considered important enough in the school environment. Again, students can learn about Italian culture and Italian stereotypes and the discussion can be extended, bringing up other stereotypical features of Italian or any other culture. Moreover, the meme can animate pupils to share their opinion on this specific stereotype as well as stereotypes in general, on their verisimilitude and whether they consider them a good or a bad thing.
The Simpson Coronavirus Meme (cf. Figure 3.18) can be useful for students for learning short expressions, such as “to face something” and for improving their overall understanding thanks to the aid of the many pictures, the simple text in the second part and the little required understanding of a few keywords. Furthermore, it informs the students about current events and society. Students can first of all, figure out the message behind this meme. Then they can think about how they personally cope with the situation, how the meme depicts everyone coping with the situation and investigate the truth content of this meme. Moreover, the meme can inspire students to ponder on what could be done and what should be done in such situations.
With the Aqua Meme (cf. Figure 3.19), pupils can learn how to say water in different romance languages. It should inform students about romance languages, show them how they resemble each other, but also what evident differences there are. This Meme can be especially helpful for French learners and people who learn more than one romance language. The awareness of the resemblance of these languages, which is being made clear through this meme, might lead to romance language learners being able to use their knowledge of one language for learning and improving the other language. This can be done by, in fact, figuring out similarities and building cribs between the languages or by simply trying to adapt a word of one romance language to 79 the other one, keeping in mind certain linguistic features as for example the phonology or morphology of a language.
Concerning the Swedish Kid Meme (cf. Figure 3.20), pupils can be made aware of the difference between “start + to” and “start + gerund”, emphasizing the different use and different meaning. Moreover, unusual expressions, such as “assemble by oneself” and words like “furniture” can be learned. Moreover, it might make students aware of the necessity of background knowledge in order to understand certain memes. Other than that, this meme is not an idea tool for the acquisition of cultural knowledge. It might teach students to read between the lines. Additionally, students might realize the importance of thinking beyond what they see, read or hear.
The Trump Meme (cf. Figure 3.21) can serve as an aid for the learning of the Present Perfect Tense. Pupils could discuss why this specific tense is being used and why any other tenses, such as the Past Tense, the Present Perfect Progressive or the Past Perfect, would not fit equally well. New modern vocabulary, such as “to tweet”, can be discussed and pupils could come up with and share other new modern words they know, which are mostly related to digital culture. Furthermore, political issues can be taken up and discussed in class. Students can share their opinions regarding the American voting system, Republicans and Democrats, Trump and his relation with Twitter, as well as Trump’s reaction to the election outcome. Moreover, the people’s and particularly the Trump supporters’ reaction to can also be taken up as an issue. Political discussions can be lead and further political vocabulary, besides “being elected” can be introduced.
3.5 Procedure
The administration of the questionnaire was a little challenging, due to the Covid-19 situation. People have been living in Lockdown since November 2020. Schools were partly open and partly closed, but strict measures and rules have been introduced. At first, most students had to face homeschooling, having online classes at home. After some time, most classes have been divided into half and hence had contact teaching in small groups twice a week. Students had to test themselves before going to school though. Therefore, it was impossible for me to perform my original idea.
The original idea was to go into different schools, into upper classes, and ask teachers, whether they would let their students complete my questionnaire during their lesson. Due to the pandemic, I could not personally go into the school and be present while the students complete 80 my questionnaire online. In other words, due to the situation caused by the pandemic, students have become a “hard-to-reach” population. Therefore, I opted for a snowball system, which, according to Etikan and Bala (2017), is a “process of selection usually done by using networks” (Etikan & Bala, 2017, p. 216). By doing so, I was able to reach my target population. According to Gabor (2007), snowball sampling “involves the identification, by the researcher, based on some specific reasoning, of a number of respondents […] who […]will indicate the researcher (advise) other respondents who, in their turn, will be the research purpose” (Gabor, 2007). Thus, for the present study, I decided to send an E-Mail with a link to my questionnaire to some teachers I know and asked them to forward the link to their students and other colleagues, who could then again send the link to some of their students. As my goal was to recruit as many students, who would then become research participants, the snowball sampling technique appeared to be a reasonable, quick and simple method for reaching my goal, particularly due to the inconvenient situation of Covid-19. Gabor (2007), as well as Etikan and Bala (2017) stress that this sampling procedure comes with a few disadvantages as well though. Etikan and Bala (2017) claim that the whole sample mainly depends on the initial choice of individuals. Gabor (2007) also points out that the “elements are not randomly drawn, but are dependent on the subjective choices of the respondents first accessed”. This means that the outcome depends on the teachers I initially contacted. Moreover, Gabor (2007) further explains that by using the snowball sampling method, individuals, who might not have access to social networks, will probably be isolated and cannot be included in the sample. Furthermore, due to snowball samples being biased, researchers cannot generalize them (Gabor, 2007). Moreover, this selection bias also limits the validity of the sample (Gabor, 2007). Hence, the present study depends on the choice of teachers that have been contacted at the beginning, as well as on the students’ access to the Internet, which can both have a major impact on the participant pool. In my E-Mail that was initially forwarded to a number of teachers, I explained all further details concerning the topic of my Diploma thesis, my study, the requirements for participation and ethical details. teachers from one school asked their students to complete the questionnaire during their lessons at school, so the chance of active participation in my survey was almost at 100%. The other teachers only forwarded my E-Mail, thus the probability of students deciding to participate was certainly lower. Dörnyei (2003) points out that, as it is the participants’ free choice whether they participate in the survey or not, the response rate is- in many cases- rather low and the dropout rate increases. This can be seen by the example of the present study: While 121 students started filling out the questionnaire, only 61 entirely completed it, meaning that 81
60 dropped out at one point. Another issue stressed by Brown (2001) is that the results of a survey that is based on respondent self-selection cannot be generalized to the entire population, but rather only on the survey population. Hence, as the present study is mainly based on voluntary participation and participants self-selection, not only a hardly acceptable participant rate can become a major problem, but also the generalization of the results to the participant population only has to be considered. As a researcher, I set the minimum number of participants at 50. Therefore, a sufficient amount of students participated in the survey. I was aware of the fact that not all students, who would receive my E-Mail, would read it, click the link and complete my questionnaire. Given the current situation, in which students sit a lot in front of their computers due to online teaching and online learning, one could assume that the students’ motivation to spend another 20-30 minutes, which is the estimated duration of the survey, in front of their computer, having to sacrifice their free time, is rather low. In fact, many questionnaires have only been done partly. Nevertheless, out of 121 participants, 61 students and thus more than 50% fully completed the questionnaire. Data analysis had been performed with fully completed questionnaires only, which implies that the findings include the responses of 61 participants.
3.6 Ethics Before sending out the link to my survey, I had to consider certain ethical guidelines that my research would follow. A fundamental issue concerning ethics is anonymity. This survey, in fact, ensured an entirely anonymous participation. The students were neither asked their names, nor did they have to report their school’s name or any other details, that could have been considered private or personal information. Moreover, the results will be presented in a rather generalized way and will not focus on the single answers of the students. Therefore, the pupils’ anonymity is assured.
It was important that the students knew that the questionnaire was anonymous and that participation was voluntary in order for students to be able to respond as openly and honestly as possible. Anonymity is highly important because the risk of any possible harm to the respondents can be decreased or avoided (Dörnyei, 2003). Furthermore, Dörnyei (2003) emphasizes the importance of respecting the participants’ right to privacy. “No information can be published […] without their permission (Dörnyei, 2003, p.92). Hence, opting for an anonymous questionnaire seemed to be a proper solution, in order to respect the respondents’ right to privacy and avoid any unwanted and undesired publishing of information. 82
I specified that participation was on a voluntary basis and anonymous in my E-Mail, as I did not have the chance to explain it to them in person. The fact that I was not able to present myself in various classes and meet the pupils face to face rendered participation in the questionnaire even more anonymous, as I could not allocate any participant to any specific face. While an increased level of anonymity was a huge advantage, not being able to be present in the classes also came with some drawbacks. On the one hand, finding and gathering enough participants was more challenging. On the other hand, my presence could have aided the avoidance of possible confusion amongst the respondents. If I had been able to be there in person, I would have had the chance to give further explanations and clarify possible upcoming issues or obscurities. This could have led to a clearer, faster and less complicated participation, assuming that some students might have struggled with eventual confusion in regards to certain questions or tasks.
The information contained in my E-Mail, as well as the brief introductory explanation of my survey at the beginning of my questionnaire were very clear. Hence, students must have been aware of the requirements and ethics of the survey and thus, their participation implied their approval of their answers and data being used for my survey.
3.7 Data Analysis
I administered the questionnaire online on Lime Survey, which facilitated the statistical calculations of the participants’ responses. The survey tool provides an option that allows you to filter specific questions or parts of the survey and that statistically analyzes the chosen fields. The statistics can be displayed in HTML format, as a PDF file or as a Microsoft Excel file and present the results in counted numbers and percentages. Moreover, the option of showing graphs that illustrate the results of the respective questions is available as well. Finally, one can chose whether to include all participants in the statistical evaluation or if only the fully completed questionnaires are taken into account. For the present study, as already mentioned, only then fully completed questionnaires were considered. Concerning the depiction of the statistics, the HTML format was chosen, as it provided the best overview of the data and allowed a clear visualization of the results. The HTML format listed the question of statement, the respective response options, as well as the count and the percentage of the respective answers (cf. Table 3.1 & 3.2). 83
Table 3.1: Field summary for Age Table 3.2: Field Summary for the depiction of current events in memes
The graphs aided in visualizing the distribution of the data as well. Both, numbers and percentages have been considered and included in the data analysis. The data and statistics provided by Lime Survey in HTML format have been copied and summed up, sorted by questions, in one single Microsoft Excel file in order to have a clear overview. Moreover, charts, similar to the illustrated ones in Table 3.3, have been created, which made further calculations, that had not been considered by Lime Survey, easier.
Concerning the first part if the survey, simple descriptive statistics have been used, presenting numbers and percentages that represented the count of responses of each response option. Concerning part two and part three of the questionnaire, which consisted of numerous questions or statements that were answered using a Likert scale, I decided to proceed as follows: First, I decided to add up the responses that favored any form of agreement, as well the answers that represented any form of disagreement in order to emphasize a clear tendency of major agreement or disagreement with the respective statements. Second, I calculated the statistics, including the mean value, the mode value and the median value.
Regarding the languages that the students study at school and the respective grades they have in those subjects, I decided to create a table that listed all ID numbers, which represent the survey’s participants, and their corresponding languages and grades. By doing so, I got a clear overview of which languages are mentioned the most, which, again, facilitated data analysis of the respective topic. Moreover, it helped me estimate the language level of the pupils in the respective languages.
For the analysis of the languages that pupils come across on IG, I used a rather simple chart. It lists numerous languages and the number of contestants who claim to come across those 84 languages. In order to have a clear structure, I ranked the languages based on the frequency with which they have been mentioned and finally counted the responses for each language.
For the analysis and portrayal of the students’ opinions on memes- what they can represent and what knowledge can be gained-, their self-assessment and experience on whether and what they have already learned by looking at memes, another chart has been developed (cf. Table 3.3). The numbers in the chart represent the number of responses to each statement, sorted by the level of agreement. It follows a descending classification. After calculating and getting an overview of the sum of the answers in favor of the statement, as well as the sum of responses in disagreement with the statement and the neutral statement “neither agree nor disagree”, the mean value, as well as the median and the mode value were included in the process of data analysis and the findings.
repres. basic learn overall curr. Memes… Cult. sociocult. K. knowl. vocab. und. events emotion&op. strongl. Agr. 4 6 18 24 22 20 15 agree 22 34 37 25 25 23 20 n. a nor da 32 16 4 6 10 12 20 disagree 2 4 2 5 4 5 6 strongl. Disa. 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 Summe pos. 26 40 55 49 47 43 35 Summe neg. 3 5 2 6 4 6 6
Table 3.3: Memes’ functions
Furthermore, concerning the languages in which the pupils improved their vocabulary and overall understanding, Lime Survey did not provide any numerical or statistical data, but rather simply listed the languages in an unsorted manner. Therefore, first I had to sort the responses by language. Afterwards, I created two charts that displayed the sum of responses for each language that has been given as an answer. One chart refers to the statistics regarding vocabulary and the other to the counts of responses in regards to overall understanding.
I decided to analyze part three by creating charts for each meme and each section. For section one, the sum of responses that indicated a struggle of understanding, as well as the counts of responses that did not indicate any great struggle and the descriptive statistics were calculated and portrayed. Equally, section two depicts descriptive statistics in regards to how much has been understood by the participants. Section three and four are analyzed by listing the sum of the responses in agreement, as well as the sum of the answers in disagreement with each statement and calculating the arithmetic mean, as well as the median vale and the mode value. 85
Leomeme much/a lot not much/nothing a little Summe Summe pos. vocab 11 37 13 61 24 phrases 13 32 16 61 29 grammar 7 35 19 61 26 overall und. 14 30 17 61 31 stereotypes 11 36 14 61 25 society 15 27 19 61 34 specif. Topic 20 29 12 61 32
Table 3.4: What can be learned through specific memes?
Even though the creation of the Excel files took up a lot of time, the charts and sorted statistics ultimately enabled an eased calculation and analysis of the data and avoided any chaos or complications during the analysis process.
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4 Findings The following chapter presents all the results and data from the study. Every question will be described with statistics and there is a brief summary for each question. The findings follows the structure of the questionnaire itself, working sequentially.
4.1 Language Interest The students were asked to rate their language interest on a scale from 1 to 5. 1 implied a high interest, while 5 meant no interest at all. As can be seen in the graph, the mode on the scale of language interest is 2, as it has been the most frequent answer with a total of 21 responses, which equal 34% and hence make up more than a third in total. The mean value on this scale is 2,56 (x̅ =2,56, σ= 1,13), whereas the median value is 2. While 52, 46% of the respondents claim to be very interested or interested in foreign languages, only 47, 54% rated their language interest at 3 or below (cf. Figure 4.1). I decided to investigate on the participants’ language interest in order to compare the statistics of their language interest to the data of their language improvement through IG and memes, as well as to the findings regarding the students’ attitude towards memes’ educational purposes and functions. The comparison of the statistics can serve as an idea for further investigations on this topic.
Language Interest
25 21 20 17 15 11 10 8
5 4
0 1 2 3 4 5 Language Interest
Figure 4.1: Language Interest of Students
4.2 Language learning “What languages do you know and/or are you currently studying (at school/in private)?” was the fourth question of Part 1. The students were presented a multiple choice that included 12 responses consisting of 12 different languages. They were asked to mark the respective 87 available answers that corresponded to them individually. This question serves as a precursor to the following task discussed in section 4.3, in order to get an overview of the languages that are known by the students. Numbers can be compared to the statistics of the languages listed regarding the students’ language improvement through IG and memes. The descriptions of the present study can serve as ideas for further investigations and explanatory studies.
The graph shows that the mode value on the scale of languages known or learned by the students is 61, representing English. In other words, English is the most frequently known and studied language amongst all the listed languages. All 61 participants selected English, which is probably due to the fact that English is taught as L2 or L3 in every middle- and high school in Austria. German being the national language of Austria and probably also most students’ L1, the result of 58 students claiming to know or learn German is rather unexpected. Italian is the third most learned and known language amongst the study’s participants with a selection rate of 68,85%, which equals 42 students. Other available languages, such as French, Slovene, Spanish, Serbian, Russian, Croatian, Albanian and Portuguese have been marked quite rarely. While French is known by 5 participants, less than 5 respondents marked any of the other listed languages (cf. Figure 4.2). This could be attributed to the fact that those languages, in contrast to English, are not obligatory subjects and can therefore be chosen voluntarily, which would explain the lower selection rate of these languages.
Language knowledge/Language learning 70 61 58 60
50 42 40
30
20 11 10 4 5 2 2 1 1 0 0 0
Language knowledge/learning
Figure 4.2: Language Knowledge/Learning of Students
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4.3 Language Grades
For this question, the students were asked to list the languages they know or are currently studying and add the grades they have at school in the respective languages by filling out boxes. All 61 respondents completed the task, whereas one participant did not perform it correctly. The cause for the incorrect performance of this task must be a misunderstanding of the task’s explanation. The term “grade” must have been interpreted differently from its intended meaning, as he or she did not list school grades from 1 to 5, but class grades, stating “8th grade” etc. Therefore, the answers of this respondent regarding the school grades of the respective languages could not be analyzed and included in the findings. The presented statistics include the responses of this participant concerning the languages that he or she learns, while the incorrect answers regarding the grades are not included in the graphs and the arithmetic mean.
English
59 students state that they either already know English or that they are studying it at school or in private. Findings reveal that there are no negative school grades in the respective languages that have been listed by the participants. The mean value of the participants’ grades in English is 2,034 (x̅ = 2,034). The graph shows that the mode as well as the median of the respective scale are 2. In other words, the English level is rather high amongst the survey participants.
Language(s) at school: English 35 30 30
25
20
14 15 12
10
5 2 0 0 1 2 3 4 5
English
Figure 4.3: Language(s) at school: English
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German
Even though students were adverted to not include German if it was their native language, 23 students added this language to their list. The mean value of the participants’ grades in this language is 1,95 (x̅ =1,95), while the mode is 1, as 9 out of 23 respondents claimed to have the highest school grade possible in this subject. The median of this scale is 2. Hence, statistics show that in average, results regarding the respondents’ grades in German are slightly better than the respective statistics concerning English.
Language(s) at school: German 10 9 9
8 7 7 6 5 5 4 3 2 2 1 0 0 1 2 3 4 5
German
Figure 4.4: Language(s) at school: German
Italian
More than 50% of the survey respondents confirmed their language knowledge or language acquisition of the Italian language. While 37 students in total claimed to learn this language, the grades of 36 students yield a mean value of 1,94 (x̅ =1,94). However, the mode of this scale is 1, as a total of 14 participants claimed to have the best grade possible in Italian, while the median is 2. This again implies a rather high language level amongst the students in this respective language. 90
Language(s) at school: Italian 16 14 14 13
12
10
8 6 6
4 3
2 0 0 1 2 3 4 5
Italian
Figure 4.5: Language(s) at school: Italian
Other languages
Other languages have also been listed quite rarely. Only 5 students stated to know or study French. According to the mean value of the students’ French grades, which is 1,75 (x̅ =1,75), as well as the median and mode, which are both 1, their language level of French should be quite good. Latin has been listed by 9 students, whose grades add up to an average of 1,88 (x̅ =1,88), a median of 1,5 and a mode of 1, as five out of nine students claimed to have this grade in Latin. Due to that, the knowledge of Latin is expected to be rather high as well. The least listed language is Slovene with a mere number of 3 students who confirm to either study it or know it already. The mean value, as well as the median add up to a straight 2 (x̅ =2). There is no mode on the scale regarding the respondents’ grades in Slovene, as for each school grade from 1 to 3, there is one respective answer.
In conclusion, the average of the students’ grades in the listed languages never exceeds 2,2, which implies a rather high language level and a satisfying knowledge of the respective languages. The foreign language that is studied most is English, followed by Italian. Possible reasons for this result will be discussed in Chapter 5. 91
Language(s) at school: French, Slovene, Latin 6
5 5
4
3 3 3
2
1 1 1 1 1 1 1
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 3 4 5
French Slovene Latin
Figure 4.6: Language(s) at school: French, Slovene, Latin
4.4 Use of Instagram
The data about the students’ use of IG was collected through a single choice Likert scale. The participants had to rate their IG use on a scale from “a lot” to “never”. Assuming that “a lot” equals 1 and “never” equals 5, the mean value of the participants’ use of IG is 1,77 (x̅ = 1,77, σ=0,998). Moreover, both, mode value and median value are 1. These statistics imply a rather frequent use of this social media platform. While 50 respondents, equaling 81,97%, confirm a frequent use of IG, only 4 respondents, equaling 6,56%, claim to use IG rarely or never. This gives great emphasis to the prevalence of a high use of IG. In section 4.13, the statistics of this category and the statistics of the students’ language improvement will be juxtaposed and hence, an eventual link between this category and the students’ language improvement will be examined. 92
Use of Instagram
35 31 30 25 19 20 15 10 7 5 2 2 0 a lot often sometimes rarely never
Use of Instagram
Figure 4.7: Students’ Use of Instagram
4.5 Languages and languages’ frequency on Instagram
After investigating the participants’ general IG use, I wanted focus on the languages that the students come across on this social media platform and further examine how frequent the languages’ encounter is. The respondents were asked to mark the individually corresponding languages and rate how much they come across the respective languages’ on a scale from 1 to 5, 1 indicating a very frequent encounter and 5 equaling a very rare encounter. Some responses are not clear and can hence not be allocated. This includes responses, such as “/” or “ja”. Therefore, these responses have not been considered and included in data analysis and statistical calculation. Based on the numbers, English is the most frequently encountered language amongst the survey participants with a total of 58 responses, out of which five are not added and included in the statistics because the response is unclear, and out of which 46 are rated either 1 or 2. The mean value on the scale of the frequency of the students’ encounter of the English language on IG is 1,62 (x̅ =1,623, σ=1,05), while the median value and the mode value are 1. These descriptive statistics confirm that students come across this language very often on this social media platform. German has a total of 54 responses, being the second most frequently encountered language on IG amongst the survey participants. Three responses are not included in the statistical calculations, due to unclear and not interpretable answers. The statistics regarding German present a mean value of 2,12 (x̅ =2,1176, σ=1,395), as well as a median value of 2 and a mode value of 1. Italian ranks third in regards to the languages respondents come across most. In total, 32 participants stated to come across this language on IG, while only 25 responses are included in the statistics. Concerning the frequency, a mean value of 3,76 (x̅ =3,76, 93
σ=1,27373) and a median value of 4 have been calculated. The mode value is 5. Thus, numbers and statistics show that more than 50% of the survey participants come across this language but the frequency with which they claim to encounter the Italian language on IG is rather low. The statistics regarding the other languages are rather similar and imply a low frequency of encounter on IG. While French has a mean value of 4,16 (x̅ = 4,16, σ= 1,21), the mean value of Spanish is 4 (x̅ = 4, σ= 1,272), of Portuguese 3,9 (x̅ = 3,9, σ= 1,513), of Russian 3,727 (x̅ = 3,727, σ= 1,482), of Slovene 3,9 (x̅ = 3,9, σ= 1,513) and of other languages 3,1 (x̅ = 3,1, σ= 1,40). The mode value of all the respective languages is 5. Moreover, regarding the median value, results are the following: the median value of…
. …French is 5 . …Spanish is 5 . …Portuguese is 4,5 . …Russian is 4 . …Slovene is 4,5 . …Other languages is 3
Frequency of Language Encounter on Instagram
40 34 35
30 26 25
20
15 1111 10 10 8 6 6 5 5 5 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 2 3 3 2 3 2 3 3 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 3 4 5
English German Italian French Spanish Portuguese Russian Slovene other languages
Figure 4.8: Frequency of Language Encounter on Instagram 94
4.6 General learning possibilities through memes
As explained in Chapter 3, a Likert scale has been used for the examination of memes’ general purposes and the expansion of knowledge through memes. For data analysis and in order to gather descriptive statistics, the response options have been converted into numbers. A Strong agreement with the statement equals 1, while a neutral opinion equals 3 and a strong disagreement equals 5 (strongly agree=1, agree=2, neither agree nor disagree=3, disagree=4, strongly disagree=5). The evaluation of the data showed the following results:
Statement 1: In my opinion Memes represent cultures.
Even though most students neither agreed nor disagreed with this statement, more respondents were in agreement with it rather than in disagreement. A total of 26 students agreed with this statement, while only 3 students claimed to disagree with it (cf. Figure 4.9). This yields a mean value of 2,57 (x̅ =2,57377, σ=0,734) and a median and mode value of 3. The median value and the mode value imply that the majority of the students was rather neutral, meaning that they neither agreed nor disagreed with this statement, while the mean value gives emphasis to a higher tendency towards agreement with this statement (cf. Figure 4.9).
Statement 2: Generally, I think that Memes expand sociocultural knowledge/competence. More than 60% of the participants either strongly agreed or agreed with this statement, while merely five students in total expressed their disagreement. Another 26% neither agreed nor disagreed. However, a clear tendency for agreement towards this statement becomes evident considering a mean value of 2,32 (x̅ =2,32, σ=0,824), as well as a median and mode value of 2. The statistics clearly highlight the respondents’ attitude in favor of this statement (cf. Figure 4.9).
Statement 3: A basic knowledge of a language is required in order to be able to learn/improve that language through Instagram or Memes.
The prevalence of agreement becomes even more apparent in this case. A total number of 55 students, who represent 90% of all participants, confirmed their agreement with this statement. Besides, no student strongly disagreed with it and a mere two respondents shared their disagreement with it. Besides the mean value of 1,836 (x̅ =1,836, σ=0,681) and the median and mode value of 2, which all confirm that the respondents do agree with this statement, the big numerical difference of responses in agreement and disagreement emphasizes the common and shared opinion of the participants in favor of this statement.
95
Statement 4: I think it’s possible to learn vocabulary with the help of Memes.
The percentage and number of participants who express their disagreement with this statement is equal to the number of students who neither agree nor disagree with it. Both mark 6 responses, representing the opinion of 20% of all survey participants. In addition to that, the number of students who strongly agree is almost equal to the number of students who agree. 49 students, and therefore the vast majority of 80%, confirm their positive attitude towards learning vocabulary with the help of memes. The statistics of this statement yield a mean value of 1,918 (x̅ =1,91803, σ=0,980048) and a median and mode value of 2, which gives great emphasis to the participants’ conviction that it is possible to learn vocabulary through memes.
Statement 5: I think it’s possible to improve the overall understanding of a text/sentence by looking at Memes.
While merely four students do not agree with the fact that it is possible to improve the overall understanding of a text by looking at memes, 47 respondents do think that it is possible to do so. A mean value of 1,99 (x̅ =1,9934, σ=0,884), as well as a median and mode value of 2 again stress a clear general tendency towards agreement with this statement amongst the survey participants.
Statement 6: I think I can learn about current events and deal with current topics via Memes.
While 20 students strongly agreed and 23 students agreed with this statement, only 1 student strongly disagreed and another 5 disagreed with it. These numbers yield statistics that present a mean value of 2,08 (x̅ =2,081, σ=0996) and a mode and median value of 2, which endorse the respondents’ positive attitude towards a meme’s function as information medium.
Statement 7: I think Memes can help express a nation's/people's emotions and opinions. The number of students who neither agree nor disagree with this statement is rather high compared to the number of the other statements. However, this has no further impact on the statistics, which show that the students’ agreement with the fact that memes can help express emotions and opinions is prevalent, as a mere 10% are in disagreement with this claim, while 58% approve of it. The mean value on this scale is 2,27 (x̅ =2,278, σ=0,943) and the median value is 2. As the number of responses that present an agreement and the number of responses that indicate a neutral attitude are equal, no mode value can be identified. Nevertheless, statistics show that respondents support this statement.
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Memes' functions and educational purposes 40 37 34 35 32 30 24 2525 22 22 23 25 20 20 20 18 20 15 16 12 15 10 10 6 6 6 4 4 4 5 4 5 2 2 5 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 strongly agree agree neither agree nor disagree strongly disagree disagree
represent cultures expand sociocultural knowledge basic language knowledge needed learn vocabulary improve overall understanding learn about current events expression of emotions
Figure 4.9: Memes’ functions and educational purposes
4.7 Personal gains through memes in general
For a facilitated data analysis and easier statistical calculation, the response options have again been converted into numbers. As above, a strong agreement with the statement equals 1, while a neutral opinion equals 3 and a strong disagreement equals 5 (strongly agree=1, agree=2, neither agree nor disagree=3, disagree=4, strongly disagree=5).
Statement 1: I personally already gained language knowledge by looking at Memes.
Even though 17 students cannot decide whether they agree or disagree with this statement, numbers and statistics show a clear tendency of agreement on behalf of the students. While 69% of the students confirmed to have gained language knowledge by looking at memes, only 2 students in total claim to strongly disagree with this statement. Data analysis yields an arithmetic mean of 2,11 (x̅ =2,11475, σ=0,907) and a median and mode value of 2, which implies a clear agreement with this statement, confirming that the survey participants have already gained language knowledge by looking at memes.
Statement 2: I learned new vocabulary.
80% of the students - and therefore the vast majority- expressed their agreement with this statement. Expressed in figures, this means that 49 participants gave their consent to it. As opposed to this, only three students explained to not have learned any new vocabulary by 97 looking at memes and another 9 students were neutral about it, meaning that they had no clear tendency. The statistical analysis of these numbers yields a mean value of 1,95 (x̅ =1,95082, σ=0,8574), as well as a median and mode value of 2. The statistics imply that 2 is the response option that has been selected most frequently and a clear tendency of agreement with this statement can be discerned.
Statement 3: I learned new phrases.
Again, a clear dominance of responses in favor of this statement becomes apparent when examining the data. While merely 5% disagree with it, a whole 72% confirm to have learned new phrases. Expressed in numbers, this means that as few as 3 students who disapprove of this statement are opposed to 44 students who endorse it. Statistical calculations present an arithmetic mean of 2,01 (x̅ =2,01, σ=0,8587), as well as a median and mode value of 2. Considering the fact that all three values are almost equal and 2 implies an agreement with this statement, it can be assumed that respondents have already learned new phrases by looking at memes.
Statement 4: I improved my overall understanding of a text (text comprehension). Compared to the statements that have been mentioned so far, this statement has a higher number of disagreements, counting 11 responses that represent a negative answer. Nevertheless, the agreement rate clearly outweighs the percentage of disagreement. A total of 35 students agreed with the statement, while a mere 11 respondents don’t. These numbers result in a data analysis that yields a mean value of 2,49 (x̅ =2,491, σ=0,968). The median and the mode value are 2. Therefore, in average, the respondents tend to agree with this statement and hence confirm that they have already improved their overall understanding of a text with the help of memes
Statement 5: I expanded my knowledge about culture.
Even though most students neither agreed nor disagreed with this statement, the number of students who are in agreement with it slightly exceeds the number of students who disagree with it. Numbers show that 15 students were in disagreement with it, while 21 approved its accuracy. The remaining 41% of the students did not have a clear tendency of agreement or disagreement. The high number of neutral responses impacts the statistics of this statement’s data, as the arithmetic mean is slightly higher compared to the calculations of the previous statements’ data. The mean value is 2,88 (x̅ =2,83607, σ=0,871), which implies a general major agreement with this statement with a tendency towards a rather neutral attitude. Moreover, the median value and the mode value stress the respondents’ neutral attitude towards this statement, 98 as both values are 3 and hence imply that the students neither agreed nor disagreed with this statement.
Statement 6: I learned about cultural behaviors of a foreign country.
Again, 26 students, who neither agree nor disagree with this statement, outweigh the number of students who both agree and disagree with it. Nevertheless, 20 students affirm that this statement applies to them, while 15 students dissent from it. This results is a mean value of 2,83 (x̅ =2,83607, σ=0,8903) and a median and mode value of 3. Statistical calculations show that the average value of responses of this statement equals the arithmetic mean of statement 5 and hence shows that a general agreement with this statement is prevalent but a tendency towards a rather neutral attitude can be discerned.
Statement 7: I learned about sights and/or the geography of a foreign country.
Both, the number of students who neither agree nor disagree, as well as the number of students who share their disagreement with this statement, exceed the number and percentage of agreement with it. Only 19 students claim to have learned about sights and geography of a foreign country, while 21 disputed any form of learning process in regards to these topics and another 21 did not tend to a clear agreement or disagreement. This results in a mean value of 3,083 (x̅ =3,083, σ=1,0213) and a median and mode value of 3. This statement shows the highest arithmetic mean, as well as the highest standard deviation, which imply that there is no clear tendency towards the respondents’ agreement with this statement. Instead, statistics show a clear neutral attitude towards this statement, as all values equal 3, which means that, in average, the respondents neither agreed nor disagreed with this statement. Therefore, no clear tendency of agreement or disagreement could be discerned for this statement.
Statement 8: I learned about society and stereotypes of a foreign country.
According to the statistics, memes have helped 44 survey participants to expand their knowledge on the society and stereotypes of foreign countries. In comparison, only 7 responses expressed dissent from this assertion. Hence, the mean value is 2,14 (x̅ =2,1475, σ=0,9203), while the median and the mode value equal 2. Therefore, the arithmetic mean, as well as the other two values show that the survey participants tend to be in favor of this statement, claiming that they have already learned about society and stereotypes of foreign cultures and a foreign country through memes.
99
Statement 9: I learned about current events that are going on all over the world.
Again, the statistics show a clear tendency of agreement on behalf of the students in regards to this statement. While 42 students confirm a certain knowledge acquisition concerning current events and other news through memes, only 7 students deny to have learned anything regarding the respective topic by looking at memes. These numbers yield a mean value of 2,16 (x̅ =2,16393, σ=0,9947) and a median and mode value of 2, which emphasize that the respondents tend towards agreeing with this statement, rather than disagreeing with it.
Statement 10: I got informed about events I didn't know about.
Data results show that the bare majority of the respondents gets informed about events they did not know about before by coming across or looking at memes. The mean value of 2,52 (x̅ =2,83607, σ=0,8903) and the median and mode value of 2 point out the participants’ agreement with this statement in average. While 10 participants disagree with the statement and 20 neither agree nor disagree, 31 do agree with it. The numbers emphasize the narrow gap between agreement and disagreement or neutral opinion. Nevertheless, the percentage of agreement slightly exceeds 50%, which can be seen in the statistical calculations that highlight this agreement.
Statement 11: I got to know other people's/nation's opinion regarding specific topics.
The gap between the number of agreements and the number of disagreements concerning this statement is very evident. As with many other statements, the numbers shed light on the preponderance of the number of students who state that they have been familiarized with other people’s or nations’ opinion regarding specific topics over the number of students who discount this statement. While 66% agree with it, only 18% of all participants do not consider this statement to be true to them personally. This is why statistical calculations present a mean value of 2,36 (x̅ =2,36066, σ=1,0087) and a median and mode value of 2. The statistics confirm the respondents’ clear agreement with this statement, implying that the participants have already experienced a situation, in which they were informed about someone’s opinion regarding specific topics by looking at memes. 100
Personal knowledge gains through memes 35 30 29 29 30 27 26 25 25 2526 25 21 21 1919 20 20 16 17 17 16 17 16 15 15 1415 1515 15 12 1011 10 10 10 10 8 9 8 10 7 6 4 5 5 5 3 2 3 2 2 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 strongly agree agree neither agree nor disagree strongly disagree disagree
language knowledge vocabulary phrases overall understanding cultural knowledge cultural behavior sights and geography society current events new/unknown events people's/nation's opinion
Figure 4.10: Personal knowledge gains through memes
4.8 Improvement
The last section of part two of the survey addresses the students’ perceived language improvements. They were asked to mention all the languages, in which they noticed a personal improvement of their vocabulary and their overall understanding ever since they started using social media and looking at memes.
Concerning Vocabulary, 8 students claim to not have observed any improvements in any language. However, 52 students found a personal improvement in English. Moreover, two students’ Italian word pool appears to have increased, according to their self-report. An even lower response of improvement can be noted with other languages, such as German, Spanish, French, Japanese and Korean. Each of those languages has been mentioned only once, which does not mean that this data can be ignored but the graph (cf. Figure 4.11) shows a clear dominance of the students’ improvement of English vocabulary through IG and memes.
Concerning the improvement of the students’ text comprehension and overall understanding, the data is similar to the above-mentioned vocabulary improvement. Even though in this case 22 students state that they have not noticed any improvement regarding their textual comprehension in any language, English is, again, ranked first, with a number of 34 students personally observing that they improve their overall understanding by looking at IG posts or memes. Furthermore, in contrast to the above, less other languages (Spanish, German and Italian) have been mentioned. Besides, all three languages have low to very low number of 101 responses. While four respondents claim to have improved their overall understanding in German, only one respondent claimed the same for Spanish and Italian (cf. Figure 4.11). Thus, in both cases, English is clearly the most frequent answer in regards to the students’ language improvement.
Language improvement through Instagram and memes 60 52 50
40 34
30 22 20
8 10 4 1 2 1 1 1 2 1 1 0 English German Italian Spanish French Japanese Korean None
Vocabulary Overall Understanding
Figure 4.11: Language improvement through Instagram and memes 102
4.9 Comprehension and comprehension difficulties
The first section of part three of the questionnaire refers to how much the respondent understood fromeach single meme. The possible answers include “every word”, “almost everything”, “Just a few words” and “nothing”. In order to enable a facilitated calculation of the data, the response options are substituted by numbers from 1 to 4 in regards to the participants’ understanding (1=every word, 2=almost everything, 3=just a few words, 4=nothing). The students were asked to mark, which answer applied most to them personally. Section two of the survey’s third part presents two statements that address two different reasons for possible difficulties in understanding a meme. The reasons include vocabulary and background knowledge. The students had to rate their level of difficulty on a scale from “very much” to “not at all”. Again, numbers from 1 to 5 were used instead of the response options in order to facilitate statistical calculations (1=very much, 2 quite a lot, 3=a little, 4=not really, 5= not at all). Every meme shows a certain number of responses for each response option for every question or statement. The sum of the number of responses of all memes for each response option is calculated and used for the calculation of the mean, median and mode value of each question or statement.
Q 1: How much did you understand of this meme?
Overall, it can be stated that every featured meme is almost fully understood by the vast majority of the survey participants. Data shows that all 61 participants understood every word of the Simpson Coronavirus Meme. The least understood meme was the Swedish Kid Meme, counting 50 responses that claim a good understanding of this meme, compared to a mere 11 participants who claimed to have encountered difficulties in understanding it. Numbers show that even in the case of this meme the responses that mark a successful understanding far outweigh the number of responses that mark lacking comprehension. However, numbers show a rather equal distribution of responses in general. Therefore, I decided to calculate the arithmetic mean and the median and mode value of all memes combined, rather than listing the statistical values of each meme individually. Results show that the mean value regarding the understanding of the memes is 1,2896 (x̅ = 1,28961749, σ= 0,66018392) and the median value is 1. The mode value is also 1, as the response option “every word” has a total of 588 responses. Hence, statistics confirm that in general the survey participants did not struggle with understanding the memes at all. 103
Understanding 60 56 5355 54 51 50 47 48 49 50 46 44
40 35
30
20 15 12 11 8 8 10 7 6 6 7 7 4 3 5 3 5 4 3 3 3 3 3 4 2 2 1 0 0 2 2 1 2 0 1 0 0 1 0 every word almost everything just a few words nothing
Leomeme Ananaspizzameme Maskmeme Lavameme Banansmeme Catmeme Heavenhellmeme Italycatmeme Coronavirusmeme Aquameme Swedishkidmeme Trumpmeme
Figure 4.12: Understanding of memes
Statement 1: I struggled with understanding this meme because of a lack of vocabulary.
Numbers show that the vast majority of the students do have a sufficiently rich vocabulary and therefore did not experience any difficulties in understanding the memes. For all the memes except the Swedish Kid Meme, more than 80% of the participants indicated that they did not feel as if they lacked any vocabulary that could impede them from comprehension. The graph (cf. Figure 4.13) shows that the distribution of responses is rather equal concerning all memes. Therefore, I opted for a general statistical calculation that includes the responses of all memes, rather than calculating the statistical values of each meme individually. Statistics show that in general the respondents did not lack vocabulary, which could have impeded them from understanding the memes, as the mean value is 4,59 (x̅ = 4,596995, σ= 0,84351) and the median and mode value are both 5, implying that there has not been a struggle of understanding due to lacking vocabulary at all.. The statistics of the Swedish Kid Meme slightly diverge from the other memes’ numbers and percentages, as comparatively more respondents admitted having slight to great comprehension difficulties due to a lack of vocabulary. Nevertheless, the number of responses that mark “not at all” and therefore imply an easy understanding far outweigh the numbers that indicate the contrary. In the case of the Swedish Kid Meme, statistical calculations show the following results: the mean value is 4,21 (x̅ = 4,213115, σ= 1,112276), while the median value are 5. The arithmetic mean of the Swedish Kid Meme is closer to 4 than the general mean value of all memes combined, which would imply a higher struggle in 104 understanding due to lacking vocabulary. As the difference between the two values is minimal though, results stay the same.
Lack of vocabulary 60 5050 515150 50 50 46454747 46
40 37
30
20 11 8 8 8 8 10 6 6 6 6 7 3 3 3 5 4 5 4 5 5 5 4 4 5 4 3 5 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 2 2 0 very much quite a lot a little not really not at all
Leomeme Ananaspizzameme Maskmeme Lavameme Banansmeme Catmeme Heavenhellmeme Italycatmeme Coronavirusmeme Aquameme Swedishkidmeme Trumpmeme
Figure.13: Struggles: Lack of vocabulary
Statement 2: I struggled with understanding this meme because of a lack of background knowledge.
Comparing the statistics of Statement 1 and Statement 2, it can be determined that the participants experienced greater difficulties with understanding this meme due to a lack of background knowledge, rather than due to lacking vocabulary. In the case of almost all memes, the number of respondents who admitted to having encountered difficulties with comprehension because they lacked required background knowledge is either equal or higher than the number of participants who struggled because of insufficient vocabulary. Nevertheless, the distribution of responses is rather equilibrated and equal amongst all illustrated memes. Hence, a general calculation of the statistical values of all memes combined seemed more reasonable than an individual statistical calculation. Results show that the mean value is 4,413 (x̅ =4,413, ϭ=1,054) and the median and mode value are 5, which means that there is only a minor difference between the general struggle of understanding due to vocabulary and background knowledge amongst the survey participants, which, in both cases, is almost not existent. Therefore, it can be stated that the vast majority’s background knowledge was generally sufficient and allowed a proper understanding of all memes. 105
Lack of background knowledge 60 50 5050 50 43 444544 43 39 40 38 40 33 30
20 12 8 10 10 8 10 6 7 6 7 6 7 7 7 6 7 7 6 7 3 4 4 4 5 3 3 3 3 5 4 4 4 3 5 5 4 0 2 1 1 0 1 0 0 2 2 1 0 2 0 very much quite a lot a little not really not at all
Leomeme Ananaspizzameme Maskmeme Lavameme Banansmeme Catmeme Heavenhellmeme Italycatmeme Coronavirusmeme Aquameme Swedishkidmeme Trumpmeme
Figure 4.14: Struggles: Lack of background knowledge 106
4.10 Knowledge gains
The survey participants were asked to rate their learning success in different categories on a scale from “very much” to “not at all”. For data analysis, numbers were used instead of the response options, in order to enable statistical calculations (1=very much, 2 quite a lot, 3=a little, 4=not really, 5= not at all). The listed categories are the following: vocabulary, phrases, grammar, overall understanding, stereotypes, society and “a specific topic”. While the answers “very much” (1), “quite a lot” (2) and “a little” (3) imply a range from small to major learning achievement, the responses “not really” (4) and “not at all” (4) imply no or only a very limited form of learning success. As the numerical distribution of responses of all memes is rather similar or equal, I decided to sum the number of responses of all memes for each response option. Afterwards, I calculated the statistical values by using the sum of responses for each response option. Hence, I opted for a general statistical calculation that included the data of all memes, instead of focusing on the statistical analysis of each meme individually.
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Statement 1: I learned something from this meme regarding vocabulary.
It is true for all illustrated memes that the number of students who claim not to have learned anything from this meme outweighs the number of students who claim to have noticed a learning success in regards to vocabulary. The number of students, who have not gained any vocabulary knowledge lies above 30 in almost all of the cases, which equals a percentage of more than 50% of all respondents. In contrast, the numbers of the Simpson Coronavirus Meme show that more than 40 participants claim to have expanded their vocabulary by looking at this meme. Due to a rather equilibrated distribution of responses, the general mean value is 3,63 (x̅ = 3,63, σ= 1,27) and the median value is 4. Hence, it can be stated that the participants have learned that rather little to few new vocabulary from the illustrated memes.
Learned vocabulary 30 26 24 25 25 22 22 2122 19 20 19 201919 20 18 18 18 17 16 17 14 14 14 15 13 11 11 11 11 12 1212 1212 11 11 10 10 9 10 1010 9 9 10 8 6 66 6 7 6 7 7 4 4 5 5 5 3333 3
0 very much quite a lot a little not really not at all
Leomeme Ananaspizzameme Maskmeme Lavameme Banansmeme Catmeme Heavenhellmeme Italycatmeme Coronavirusmeme Aquameme Swedishkidmeme Trumpmeme
Figure 4.15: Vocabulary Gains
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Statement 2: I learned something from this meme regarding the use of phrases.
Results show that, similarly to the statistics of Statement 1, most participants agree on a rather poor function of the memes as a learning aid with regard to the use of phrases. Aside from the Swedish Kid Meme, which has a higher number of responses that imply a learning success in relation to the respective issue, rather than yielding no improvements at all, the other memes’ statistics show that more than 50% of all respondents were not able to observe any gains in knowledge regarding the use of phrases. Due to the fact, that, in average, the number of responses is quite equally distributed, the same calculation technique that has been used for the statistical analysis of Statement 1 is applied. The arithmetic means of two memes, the Heaven and Hell Meme and the Swedish Kid Meme, illustrate this rather equilibrated distribution. The statistics of the Heaven and Hell Meme yield a mean value of 3,557 (x̅ = 3,5573, σ= 1,258631), while the arithmetic mean of the Swedish Kid Meme is 3,606 (x̅ = 3,606, σ= 1,294587). Hence, the statistical values are not calculated and presented of each meme individually. Instead, the sum of responses for each response option of all memes combined is used for further calculations, which yields a mean value of 3,59 (x̅ = 3,59, σ= 1,279). The arithmetic mean implies that respondents noticed a slight learning success through the illustrated memes regarding the use of phrases. Nevertheless, a tendency towards a rather poor learning success can be discerned. This is emphasized by the further statistics, as the median value, which is 4, and the mode value of 5. Both values imply that the respondents have not learned new phrases or expanded their knowledge on the use of phrases by looking and the presented memes.
Learned phrases 35 29 30 24 25 23 23 23 19 19 2019 1920 20 20 16 16 16 16 1717 14 15 14 15 15 13 13 13 11 1112 11 11 12 1212 12 12 12 10 1010 9 10 10 8 8 8 7 6 6 6 7 7 6 4 5 5 4 4 4 5 2 3 2 0 very much quite a lot a little not really not at all
Leomeme Ananaspizzameme Maskmeme Lavameme Banansmeme Catmeme Heavenhellmeme Italycatmeme Coronavirusmeme Aquameme Swedishkidmeme Trumpmeme
Figure 4.16: Phrases Gains 109
Statement 3: I learned something from this meme regarding grammar.
No other statement has more disagreement and encounters more dissent than this one. It is the only statement that counts more negative than positive answers in all 12 memes. Moreover, it is true for most memes that the responses “not really” and “not at all” count more than 35 responses. These numbers are reflected in the statistics. Amongst all statements, Statement 3 has the highest arithmetic mean, which is 3,69 (x̅ = 3,69, σ= 1,267). Moreover, the median value is 4 and the mode value is 5. While the median and the mode value imply that the survey participants have not learned grammatical structures or rules from the illustrated memes, the mean value implies that very little has been learned. Nevertheless, the tendency towards no learning success regarding grammar is rather evident, as the mean value is rather close to 4, which represents the response option “not really” and thus means that the respondents did not learn any new grammar.
Learned grammar 35 30 30 26 24 24 25 25 23 21 19 19 20 19 20 2020 20 18 16 1515 1414 15 15 15 15 13 13 13 13 11 12 11 12 12 12 12 9 9 10 10 9 10 8 8 8 8 8 6 7 6 5 5 5 4 4 4 5 5 5 3 3 3 3 2 0 very much quite a lot a little not really not at all
Leomeme Ananaspizzameme Maskmeme Lavameme Banansmeme Catmeme Heavenhellmeme Italycatmeme Coronavirusmeme Aquameme Swedishkidmeme Trumpmeme
Figure 4.17: Grammar Gains
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Statement 4: I learned something from this meme regarding the overall understanding of a text/text comprehension.
According to the numbers that can be seen in the graph (cf. Figure 4.18), the majority of the respondents did not learn something from this meme regarding overall understanding of a text or text comprehension. Nevertheless, the numbers concerning the answers that show a slight consent with this statement are clearly higher compared to the previously mentioned statements. This is also reflected in the arithmetic mean, which is 3,49 (x̅ = 3,494, σ= 1,243) and hence closer to 3 than to 4, which has not been the case in the previous statements. Even though the median value is 4 and the mode value is 5, which would imply no improvement in overall understanding, the mean value being closer to 3 shows that, according to the participants, the illustrated memes have helped the participants to improve their overall understanding to a low extent. Again, the equal and equilibrated distribution allowed a general statistical calculation, rather than an individual one.
Learned text comprehension 30 24 25 21 19 19 20 1818 18 18 18 17 17 16 16 16 17 161717 17 14 15 15 15 14 14 1515 14 15 13 12 13 131312 12 10 1110111010 11 11 11 10 7 7 7 7 8 4 4 4 4 5 4 5 5 5 3 2 3
0 very much quite a lot a little not really not at all
Leomeme Ananaspizzameme Maskmeme Lavameme Banansmeme Catmeme Heavenhellmeme Italycatmeme Coronavirusmeme Aquameme Swedishkidmeme Trumpmeme
Figure 4.18: Text comprehension improvement
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Statement 5: I learned something from this meme regarding stereotypes.
As can be seen in the graph (cf. Figure 4.19), the Pineapplepizza Meme and the Heaven and Hell Meme favor the learning of stereotypes, while the Leonardo di Caprio Meme and the Bananas Meme do not serve as a tool to learn about this topic. While the mean value of the Pineapplepizza Meme is 2,88 (x̅ = 2,885246, σ= 1,355217) and the Heaven and Hell Meme has a mean value of 2,65 (x̅ = 2,655738, σ= 1,352593), the Leonardo di Caprio Meme has a higher arithmetic mean of 3,57 (x̅ = 3,57377, σ= 1,189664) and the mean value of the Bananas Meme is 3,72 (x̅ = 3,721311, σ= 1,185062). Concerning the other memes, the distribution of responses is rather equal. Hence, the arithmetic mean regarding the expansion of knowledge in regards to stereotypes of all memes in general is 3,289 (x̅ = 3,289, σ= 1,34). The median and the mode value are both 3. Hence, it can be stated that the respondents have learned a little concerning stereotypes from the memes presented in the questionnaire.
Learned about stereotypes
25 23 21 21 20 19 20 18 17 17 17 1717 16 16 16 16 15 15 14 14 14 1414 14 14 14 15 13 13 13 13 13 13 12 12 12 12 11 11 10 10 10 9 9 9 9 9 9 10 8 8 8 8 7 7 6 6 6 6 5 5 5 5 2
0 very much quite a lot a little not really not at all
Leomeme Ananaspizzameme Maskmeme Lavameme Banansmeme Catmeme Heavenhellmeme Italycatmeme Coronavirusmeme Aquameme Swedishkidmeme Trumpmeme
Figure 4.19: Learn about stereotypes 112
Statement 6: I learned something from this meme regarding society.
The graph (cf. Figure 4.20) shows a rather equilibrated distribution amongst the responses of the respective memes. While the previous graphs and statistics have shown a clearer tendency towards the participants’ disagreement with the statements, claiming that they have not learned much or anything from the memes included in the questionnaire regarding vocabulary, grammar, phrases etc., Figure 4.20 shows less polarized results. This is also reflected in the statistics, which are analyzed equally to the previous statements’ statistical values. The mean value is 3,12 (x̅ = 3,124, σ= 1,349) and the median and the mode value are both 3. The values, in particular the arithmetic mean, are slightly better compared to the previous results. All values imply that the survey participants have learned a little regarding society from the illustrated memes.
Learned about society 25 20 19 20 18 18 18 17 17 17 16 16 16 15 15 15 1515 1414 14 1414 14 14 15 13 1313 13 13 12 12 12 121212 1212 12 11 11 11 11 11 10 10 10 10 9 9 9 9 9 10 8 8 7 7 7 6 6 6 5 5
0 very much quite a lot a little not really not at all
Leomeme Ananaspizzameme Maskmeme Lavameme Banansmeme Catmeme Heavenhellmeme Italycatmeme Coronavirusmeme Aquameme Swedishkidmeme Trumpmeme
Figure 4.20: Learn about society 113
Statement 7: I learned something from this meme regarding a specific topic.
While most memes have a rather equilibrated and equal number of responses, the Bananas Meme and the Trump Meme stand out positively, while the Swedish Kid Meme shows more negative results compared to the general statistical values of this statement. As most response options have rather equal numbers for all memes, the arithmetic mean for this statement is 3,06 (x̅ =3,0669, ϭ=1,397), implying that in general respondents have learned a little about a specific topic from all memes. This is emphasized by the median and mode value that equal 3 and hence the response option “a little”. Compared to this, the mean value of the Bananas Meme is 2,688 (x̅ =2,688525, ϭ=1,408794) and the mean value of the Trump Meme is 2,67 (x̅ =2,672131, ϭ=1,445929), which both imply that the respondents have learned slightly more regarding a specific topic from these memes than from all memes in general. The Swedish Kid Meme presents a mean value of 3,47 (x̅ =3,47541, ϭ=1,409569), which is lower than the general arithmetic mean and hence shows that respondents have learned less regarding a specific topic from this meme than in average from all memes.
Learned about a specific topic 25 22
20 18 18 18 17 17 17 16 16 16 16 16 15 14 14 14 15 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 1212 12 12 12 11 11 11 11 11 10 10 10 1010 10 10 9 9 9 10 8 8 7 7 7 6 6 6 5
0 very much quite a lot a little not really not at all
Leomeme Ananaspizzameme Maskmeme Lavameme Banansmeme Catmeme Heavenhellmeme Italycatmeme Coronavirusmeme Aquameme Swedishkidmeme Trumpmeme
Figure 4.21: Learn about specific topic 114
4.11 Implementation in the classroom
The respondents were presented seven statements and were asked to mark to which extent they agreed or disagreed with each one of them on a scale from 1 to 5 (1=strongly agree, 2=agree, 3=neither agree nor disagree, 4=disagree, 5=strongly disagree). The statements concerned the meme’s implementation in the classroom. Each statement started with “If I were a teacher, I would use this meme to…” and could be completed in the following seven different ways:
1) I wouldn’t use it 2) Introduce a topic/an argument or start a discussion 3) Teach and talk about different types of sarcasm 4) Give an insight into everyday life (situations) 5) Teach vocabulary and phrases 6) Teach about society and culture 7) Teach grammar
The sum of responses representing a certain level of dissent is greater than the sum of those responses suggesting consent in most memes. The Leonardo di Caprio, the Pineapplepizza Meme and the Lava Meme are the only three memes that present better statistics and higher numbers in regards to a general agreement with the statements 2-7 than to a general disagreement. The other nine memes illustrate an overall tendency towards disagreement with these statements. However, this does not automatically imply a higher rate of disagreement with each statement individually. The Swedish Kid Meme shows the greatest gap between an overall agreement and an overall disagreement with these statements. While as few as 88 responses refer to any great or slight form of consent, the answers that indicate any form of disagreement are 208 votes. In comparison, the statistics of the Leonardo di Caprio, for example, are 168 responses that imply that the participants either strongly agree or agree with the statements 2- 7. In contrast to that, the total number of answers that imply the opposite is 130.
I will now present and analyze the data of each statement individually. The analysis includes the statistics of all memes and presents an overview of the overall findings with regard to the respective statements.
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Statement 1: If I were a teacher, I would use this meme to… I wouldn’t use it.
Overall, more respondents appear to agree or strongly agree with this statement, claiming that they would not use the respective memes in their classroom if they were teachers. Besides the Lava Meme, which shows a high number of responses for the response option “disagree” and has a mean value of 3,393 (x̅ =3,393443, ϭ=1,255371), which diverges from the general arithmetic mean for this statement, the other memes find their responses quite equally equilibrated and distributed. This yields an arithmetic mean of 2,89 (x̅ =2,893588, ϭ=1,330444) and a median value of 3 for this statement in general, which includes the responses of all memes for each response option. Therefore, results show that the participants were rather neutral about implementing the illustrated memes in the classroom and using them for teaching with a slight tendency towards not using them.
Wouldn't use it
25 22
20 18 18 16 17 1616 16 17 16 16 17 1616 15 15 14 14 14 14 15 14 15 13 13 13 13 13 13 12 12 11 1211 1211 12 11 11 12 1111 910 9 10 9 10 10 10 10 8 8 8 8 6 7 7 7 7 7 4 5
0 strongly agree agree neither agree nor disagree strognly disagree disagree
Leomeme Aananspizzameme Maskmeme Lavameme Bananasmeme Catmeme Heavenhellmeme Italycatmeme Coronavirusmeme Aquameme Swedishkidmeme Trumpmeme
Figure 4.22: Wouldn’t use it 116
Statement 2: If I were a teacher, I would use this meme to introduce a topic/an argument or start a discussion.
This statement encountered quite a lot of positive feedback. While the Leonardo di Caprio Meme counts most responses for the response option “agree”, resulting in a mean value of 2,88 (x̅ =2,8852, ϭ=1,28284), the two memes that met with the least approval with this statement were the Bananas Meme and the Swedish Kid Meme. Their mean values are 3,55 (x̅ =3,5573, ϭ=1,4682) and 3,54 (x̅ =3,540984, ϭ=1,4682). All the other memes show quite similar and equally distributed and equilibrated response numbers, as can be seen in the graph (cf. Figure 4.23). Hence, the arithmetic mean for this statement in general is 3,019 (x̅ =3,019126, ϭ=1,40145), which implies a neutral attitude amongst the survey participants in regards to using the memes from the questionnaire for introducing a topic or starting a discussion. The median value, which is 3, highlights the fact that the respondents neither agreed nor disagreed with this statement in average. Nevertheless, the mode value being 2 implies that the memes’ function as introductory medium for certain topics appears to be quite plausible for the survey respondents.
Introduce a topic or start a discussion 35 30 30 28 26 25 23 23 25 22 21 21 18 19 20 1716 16 14 14 14 15 1212 12 13 13 12 13 1213 11 11 10 10 10 11 1011 11 10 11 9 8 8 9 8 9 8 8 9 10 7 6 6 6 7 6 7 7 6 6 5 5 4 5 3 0 strongly agree agree neither agree nor disagree strongly disagree disagree
Leomeme Aananspizzameme Maskmeme Lavameme Bananasmeme Catmeme Heavenhellmeme Italycatmeme Coronavirusmeme Aquameme Swedishkidmeme Trumpmeme
Figure 4.23: Introduce a topic/start a discussion 117
Statement 3: If I were a teacher, I would use this meme to teach and talk about different types of sarcasm
According to the data, the vast majority of the memes have not been considered a useful tool for teaching and talking about different types of sarcasm. Aside from the Leonardo di Caprio Meme, which shows a high number of responses for the response option “agree”, the other memes show rather similar numbers in average. Again, the sum of responses of all memes for each response option was calculated, yielding 78 responses in total for response option 1, “strongly agree”, while the response option “agree” received 196 responses in total. “Neither agree nor disagree” counts 137 responses, while “disagree” has 122 responses and “strongly disagree” has 199. This results in an arithmetic mean of 3,229 (x̅ =3,229508, ϭ=1,377682) and a median value of 3. Both values imply that in average, respondents neither agree nor disagree with this statement. The mode value is 5, which means that the response option “disagree” received the most responses. Therefore, a tendency towards disagreement with this statement becomes clear, which means that the respective memes do not appear useful for teaching sarcasm.
Teach about sarcasm 30 26 24 25 22 20 19 20 19 20 1818 18 16 17 17 16 14 14 14 14 15 15 13 13 13 13 13 13 12 12 12 111111 12 11111211 11 1211 12 9 9 109 10 910 10 8 8 6 6 6 7 7 5 4 5 5 4 4 5
0 strongly agree agree neither agree nor disagree strongly disagree disagree
Leomeme Aananspizzameme Maskmeme Lavameme Bananasmeme Catmeme Heavenhellmeme Italycatmeme Coronavirusmeme Aquameme Swedishkidmeme Trumpmeme
Figure 4.24: Teach about sarcasm
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Statement 4: If I were a teacher, I would use this meme to give an insight into everyday life (situations).
Data analysis yielding a mean value of 3,211 (x̅ =3,211749, ϭ=1,394821) and a median value of 3 outlines the respondents’ neutral attitude towards this statement. Even though the response option 2 (“agree”) has 196 responses in total-adding up the responses of all memes for each response option-, the response option 5 (“strongly disagree”) counts 199 responses and thus slightly exceeds the number of responses of response option 2. Therefore, the mode value is 5, as it counts the highest number of responses, which leads to the conclusion that respondents tend to disagree with this statement, but in average, they have no clear tendency and are not sure, whether they would implement the illustrated memes in the classroom for teaching about every day life situations.
Give insight into everyday life 30 26 25 23 22 22 21 21 20 20 20 16 17 16 17 14 15 15 14 1414 15 14 15 13 13 13 13 13 12 12 12 11 12 1112 12 11 11 11 9 10 10 9 9 9 10 9 10 10 10 8 7 8 7 8 7 7 8 8 4 5 5 4 5 3
0 strongly agree agree neither agree nor disagree strognly disagree disagree
Leomeme Aananspizzameme Maskmeme Lavameme Bananasmeme Catmeme Heavenhellmeme Italycatmeme Coronavirusmeme Aquameme Swedishkidmeme Trumpmeme
Figure 4.25: Give insight into everyday life
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Statement 5: If I were a teacher, I would use this meme to teach vocabulary and phrases.
As can be seen in the graph (cf. Figure 4.26), there is a clear tendency towards disagreement with this statement. While response option 1 (“strongly agree”) has a total number of 56 responses summing the responses of all memes in regards to this statement, response option 5 (“strongly disagree”) counts 221 responses. Hence, the mode value for this statement is 5, which emphasizes that the respondents would not use the memes for teaching vocabulary or phrases. Moreover, the median value is 4, which further highlights a disagreement with this statement. The arithmetic mean is 3,427 (x̅ =3,427596, ϭ=1,335182). Therefore, in average respondents tend to neither agree nor disagree with this statement but the other statistical values, as well as the graph, show that the tendency towards a disagreement is still rather evident.
Teach vocabulary and phrases 30 24 25 22 21 19 19 19 20 20 18 18 161717 16 17 16 17 1716 15 14 15 14 141514 1515 15 15 13 13 13 11 11 12 12 11 9 1010 9 1010 10 10 10 8 6 6 7 7 7 7 4 5 4 4 4 5 4 5 3 2 0 strongly agree agree neither agree nor disagree strognly disagree disagree
Leomeme Aananspizzameme Maskmeme Lavameme Bananasmeme Catmeme Heavenhellmeme Italycatmeme Coronavirusmeme Aquameme Swedishkidmeme Trumpmeme
Figure 4.26: Teach vocabulary and phrases
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Statement 6: If I were a teacher, I would use this meme to teach about society and culture.
The Heaven and Hell Meme and the Trump Meme show the highest numbers for the response options that indicate an agreement with this statement. Opposed to this, the Swedish Kid Meme has the highest number of responses that indicate a disagreement. The mean value of the Heaven and Hell Meme and the Trump Meme are 2,6 (x̅ =2,606557, ϭ=1,4999) and 2,8 (x̅ =2,819672, ϭ=1,4074), while the mean value of the Swedish Kid Meme is 3,57 (x̅ =3,57377, ϭ=1,445648). Therefore, the mean values of these memes slightly diverge from the general arithmetic mean. Summing up the responses of all memes regarding this statement for each response option, data analysis reveals that the arithmetic mean for this statement in general is 3,1 (x̅ =3,107923, ϭ=1,4231). This means that the respondents neither agreed nor disagreed with this statement in average. Also the median value is 3, which confirms the neutral attitude amongst the survey participants. The mode value is 2, as response option 2 (“agree”) counts the most responses with a total of 197 responses. This value stresses that even though the mean value shows that respondents have a rather neutral attitude, there is a tendency towards agreement with this statement, meaning that participants may use the illustrated memes to teach about society and culture.
Teach about society and culture 30 25 24 25 20 20 21 20 1818 18 18 1617 16 14 15 15 14 14 14 14 14 15 15 13 13 11 11 12 1112 11 12 11 1212 11 11 109 109 9 9 9 9109 1010 9 9 10 10 10 8 8 8 8 7 6 4 5 4 5
0 strongly agree agree neither agree nor disagree strognly disagree disagree
Leomeme Aananspizzameme Maskmeme Lavameme Bananasmeme Catmeme Heavenhellmeme Italycatmeme Coronavirusmeme Aquameme Swedishkidmeme Trumpmeme
Figure 4.27: Teach about society and culture 121
Statement 7: If I were a teacher, I would use this meme to teach grammar.
Results show that the opinions and attitudes of the survey participants are very consistent in regards to this statement. The following statistics apply to all of the twelve memes that are featured in the questionnaire: Less than 20 respondents would use the memes to teach grammar, while at least 25 and in most cases even more than 30 participants claimed that they disagreed with this statement. This yields a mean value of 3,6 (x̅ =3,632514, ϭ=1,293013). The median value is for and the mode value is 5, as “strongly disagree” received 260 responses in total, summing up the responses of all memes for this response option in regards to this statement. These values outline a clear tendency towards disagreement with this statement. In other words, none of the featured memes is considered a proper tool for teaching grammar according to the survey participants.
Teach grammar 35 29 30 24 24 25 22 22 2120 2120 20 20 18 20 16 1716 16 17 15 14 15 14 1414 15 12 12 12 12 12121312 12 10 10 10 10 11 10 9 8 9 9 9 8 8 9 10 6 6 7 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 5 5 3 3 3 0 strongly agree agree neither agree nor disagree strognly disagree disagree
Leomeme Aananspizzameme Maskmeme Lavameme Bananasmeme Catmeme Heavenhellmeme Italycatmeme Coronavirusmeme Aquameme Swedishkidmeme Trumpmeme
Figure 4.28: Teach about grammar 122
4.12 Possible connection between the students’ language interest and their perceived language improvement
Comparing the data regarding the survey participants’ language interest and their personal language improvement, the following can be concluded: as already stated, there is a rather high language interest amongst the survey’s respondents, as statistics show an average interest of 2,56. Furthermore, students claim to have improved their language skills, either regarding vocabulary or their overall understanding, mainly in the English language, as 52 students claimed to have improved their English vocabulary and 34 self-reported an improvement of their overall understanding in English. Therefore, one could assume that the participants’ language interest could be somehow connected to their language improvement via IG. This appears to be a logical argument, as most people who are interested in a language assumably also show great will and motivation to improve it, either at school or in private through applications, social media, books etc. Passion or interest pushes people to gather information and acquire knowledge in a specific field. Thus, if the language knowledge is rather poor and there is no wish for improvement due to the lack of motivation or interest, it may also result difficult to improve a language via IG on your own.
4.13 Possible connection between the students’ use of Instagram and their language improvement
The apparently high numbers suggest that there must be a connection between the use of IG and the improvement of languages, as the numbers of a rather rare use of IG are generally very low, which is emphasized by the average value of 1,77 regarding the participants’ use of IG, which implies a quite frequent use of this social media platform. This does not imply that students, who rarely use IG cannot or do not learn or improve their language skills via IG, the statistics simply picture that the respondents’ use of IG is rather high and the majority of the participants claimed to have improved mainly their English vocabulary and overall understanding through IG and memes (cf. Figure 4.11). Therefore, one could assume that the probability of improving a language via IG most probably increases with a frequent use of this social media. 50 out of 61 students stated that they used IG rather often. 46 participants quite frequently come across English posts or contents on IG. 52 claim to have improved their English vocabulary by using IG and 34 improved this language with regard to textual comprehension. The sum of students who come across English posts rather often is almost as high as the number of students who confirmed personal improvements of English vocabulary via IG (cf. Figure 4.7 & Figure 4.11). Hence, the high and rather similar numbers concerning the two issues allow to 123 make the following assumptions: the frequent use of IG and the students’ language improvement via this social media could influence each other and be connected to a certain extent. In other words, the more you use IG, the higher the probability that one may improve languages on IG to a certain extent due to IG post captions, videos, memes or other content that the participants can come across on this social media platform. These conclusions and assertions cannot be generalized but in the case of the present study, statistics reveal that a connection between these issues can be probable.
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5 Discussion
This chapter discusses the findings of the present study with respect to the study’s research question, as well as existing literature and other studies. Section 5.1 will discuss students’ reported general knowledge gains through IG and memes according to the present study’s findings. Moreover, in section 5.2, the findings of the questionnaire’s third part will be discussed, which include the reported expansion of knowledge through memes, as well as their function as a teaching tool. Both sections seek to answer the study’s research question.
5.1 Students’ attitude towards and experience with memes as a learning tool
RQ: What do students believe they can learn with the help of Instagram or memes?
One aim of this study was to investigate students’ opinions and attitudes regarding memes as a learning tool. In other words, the study aimed at examining whether students think that they can expand their knowledge of language, culture(s), society and events through IG and memes. The study also includes students’ self-report on their personal experience regarding the learning of language and the expansion of knowledge through memes. Findings generally show that students believe that memes can promote language learning and the expansion of sociocultural knowledge. Moreover, students reportedly already experienced language improvement and acquired sociocultural knowledge. Regarding the implementation of a selection of memes, which were integrated in the questionnaire, in the classroom as an educational tool, students show rather neutral attitudes, which means that they neither consent nor dissent the use of the selected memes in the classroom for various purposes. Similarly to the present study, Purnama (2017), Harshavardhan et al. (2019), Fink (2020), Reddy et al. (2020) discuss memes’ functions as information transmitter and as a tool for language learning as well as a form of self- expression. Boa Sorte (2019) also lists ideas for the use and implementation of memes in the classroom. The similarities and differences between existing studies and literature and the present study will be outlined and discussed in the following sections.
5.1.1 Language
Concerning memes as a learning tool for the acquisition of linguistic knowledge, such as vocabulary, phrases, grammar and pronunciation, findings of the present study reveal that the students that participated in the survey reportedly believe that, in general, it is possible to learn vocabulary with the help of memes. This is outlined by a mean value of 1,9 (σ=0,98), which suggests a rather high level of agreement with this assertion. Moreover, findings show that, besides vocabulary, students also think that memes can help improve their overall 125 understanding of a text or a long sentence. For this statement, a mean value of 1,99 (σ=0,88) has been calculated, which, again, implies a high level of agreement. Not only do they share their agreement with memes’ general function as a learning tool, but the students have reportedly already personally experienced learning new vocabulary and phrases with the help of memes. A mean value of 1,95 (σ=0,857) shows that, according to the participants’ self- report, they have learned and improved vocabulary by looking at memes. Moreover, concerning phrases a similar mean value of 2,01 (σ=0,8587) has been calculated, implying that the students have reportedly also experienced an expansion of their knowledge regarding common phrases and their proper use. Similarly to what the present study’s findings show, Purnama (2017) claims that memes can be a creative tool for language learning, which is also emphasized by Harshavardhan et al. (2019), who state that vocabulary and language structures can indeed be learned with memes and that they can aid in analyzing these linguistic structures and improving linguistic competences. Furthermore, the implementation and use of puns, wordplays and jokes in memes aids the familiarization with linguistic features (Deneire, 1995), such as the vocabulary, phonology and syntax of a certain language. As memes are a hybrid between an image or a video and a text (Harshavardhan et al., 2019) and hence always include written textual elements, the assumption that all memes, as long as they include at least one word, could be a possible tool for teaching vocabulary, can be made. However, factors such as the students’ language level and the complexity of the memes influence the efficiency of a meme as a learning or teaching tool, which means that not all memes are equally efficient for everyone. The decision of conducting a descriptive study with a quantitative research approach impeded me from getting deeper insight into the students’ thoughts regarding this topic. Hence, I could not further investigate which kind of memes allowed the students to expand their vocabulary or other linguistic knowledge and what factors influenced their personal vocabulary improvement through memes. However, as findings reveal that students’ attitude towards memes’ function as a promoter of language learning is rather positive, a more frequent use of memes in the classroom could serve the implementation of an innovative method for language teaching and learning. Even though nowadays memes are still a rather rare teaching and educational instrument, the reported conviction of students, as well as existing literature, of memes’ possible language learning tool function should push teachers to trying out and using these new teaching techniques.
5.1.2 Culture The findings suggest that the participants believe that memes can generally represent cultures and facilitate or aid the acquisition of sociocultural competence, presenting a mean value of 126
2,57 (σ=0,734) for the first assertion and 2,32 (σ=0,824) in regards to the second statement. Besides the general theoretically confirmed function of memes as transmitters of cultural information, further findings with a mean value of 2,83 (σ=0,87) reveal that survey participants reportedly experienced an expansion of cultural knowledge through memes. A comparison of the results shows that students had a slightly more positive attitude towards the theoretically conceivable function of memes as a tool and an aid for the expansion of sociocultural knowledge, rather than on their personal experiences regarding the same argument. Hence, it appears that students might be aware of memes’ theoretical potential as transmitters of cultural information, but their personal experience with this memes’ function is not equivalent to their theoretical beliefs in it. Concerning memes and culture, respondents had a tendency towards agreement in regards to their experience with memes as a tool for learning about cultural behaviors with a mean value of 2,83 (σ= 0,89). Concerning the expansion of knowledge through memes in regards to sights and geographical knowledge, findings show that the respondents had a rather neutral attitude, as, on average, they neither agreed nor disagreed with it, presenting a mean value of 3,08 (σ=1,02). Hence findings indicate a prevalence of memes illustrating and giving information on cultural behaviors, such as traditions or rituals, rather than on sights and geography. The categorization and content of the selected memes that have been used for the questionnaire’s third part serve as a good example for this and hint at the fact that cultural and social behaviors dominate geographic information when it comes to memes’ content. The memes are mainly categorized either as society memes or cultural memes, as, for example, the Pineapple Pizza Meme, the Heaven and Hell Meme, the Italian Cat Meme, as well as the Simpson Coronavirus Meme. They all illustrate and reflect on stereotypes or behaviors, but they do not address any cultural information in regards to sights, landscapes or other geographical information. This emphasizes the study’s findings, which show that students reportedly learned more about cultural behaviors than about sights and geography through memes. The study’s findings could also connect to Reddy et al (2020), who claim that stereotypes-, which are often associated with either cultures or behaviors-, are rather present in memes. Similarly, Harshavardhan et al (2019), who state that memes serve as a tool for the reflection on cultural backgrounds, which also emphasizes the dominance of cultural information on beliefs, attitudes, rituals, traditions etc., rather than on geographical knowledge. The Coffin Dance Meme (2020) is an excellent example for a meme that transmits cultural information, depicting a ritual and tradition from the Ghanaian culture, which proves that some memes contain cultural information that can be discussed. Harshavardhan et al. (2019) define 127 memes as the perfect example for cultural exchanges, which is also emphasized by Boa Sorte (2019), who claims that memes hide a symbolic or cultural value.
5.1.3 Society and Stereotypes
Besides culture, also the learning about society and stereotypes through memes is addressed in the survey for the present study. While, as mentioned above, a mean value of 2,3 reveals that the survey’s respondents do believe that memes can generally aid the expansion of sociocultural knowledge, a mean value of 2,1 (σ=0,92) shows that the students who participated in the study have reportedly noticed a personal knowledge acquisition or knowledge expansion concerning society and social issues, including stereotypes. The deductive assumption that- according to what findings show- certain memes do present sociocultural content and address social issues, could be compared to and highlighted by Reddy et al. (2020), who claim that memes’ content often includes racist or stereotypical attitudes. On the one hand, this stresses memes’ potential to function as a learning instrument for giving insight into society and stereotypes. On the other hand, it raises awareness on the two sides of memes: the humorous and entertaining side, as well as the serious side. While the depiction of stereotypes may appear funny in the first place, Reddy et al. (2020) stress the importance of critically reflecting on stereotypical content on the Internet, which hence also includes memes. The importance of critical thinking skills and the critical reflection on digital content is not only highlighted by Reddy et al. (2020), but also by Wells (2018) and Fink (2020). Stereotypes might not always be taken seriously and can be considered very funny, but they might also provoke prejudices and shed a negative or wrong light on people, communities, cultures or other. Therefore, the depiction of stereotypes in memes can be very entertaining and promote the humorousness of memes, but it is also important to think about the truthfulness of the content (Fink 2020). Freeman (2021) points out the negative connotation with some stereotypical depiction of people or communities by giving the example of the Karen meme, which has become an overall-term for a certain type of women, who are often described as obnoxious and annoying. This raises the question, whether the students who participated in the survey and who claim to have learned about society and stereotypes through memes have also reflected on the content that has been presented to them. As the range and depth of the questions in the survey was rather limited and superficial, due to the methodology that has been used, the study lacks information on what kind of content the students have seen and learned about. Moreover, it cannot be detected whether the information that they claim to have been given and learned about is reliable and truthful. In other words, as findings only reveal that students’ have reportedly learned about society and stereotypes, but they lack information on what kind of content they have come across and expanded their 128 knowledge on, it remains unclear whether students have come across truthful content and gained useful knowledge or whether a critical reflection on the information that they have been given through the memes would have been necessary.
While research only shows that students do believe that memes can help expand sociocultural knowledge and that the participants have reportedly learned about society and stereotypes with the help of memes, Mina (2019) and Pauliks (2017) point out what exactly is or can be addressed through memes in regards to social issues. Mina (2019), for example, mentions political memes, giving the example of Brexit, stating that people digitally discussed this topic and either showed support or criticized it. The Trump Meme, for example, which was part of the questionnaire, also addresses a political issue, which is the Presidential Election of the United States in 2020. In fact, numbers in Figure 4.20 (cf. Figure 4.20) show that more than half of all students that participated in the survey have reportedly learned something about society from this meme, which in the case of the Trump Meme would be a political issue that concerns a big part society and affects big parts of the whole world’s population. Pauliks (2017) highlights that memes also address socially awkward situations and social issues, giving the example of the Socially Awkward Penguin. This meme sheds light on situations that might make people feel uncomfortable. By pointing out social fears, it not only communicates the existence of such social issues, but it also tries to normalize and generalize the social problems it addresses. The questionnaire’s Mask Meme also illustrates a slightly awkward social situation regarding the current situation of Covid-19. Figure 4.20 (cf. Figure 4.20), in fact, shows a high numbers of responses that endorse having learned about society from this meme. Thus, these examples show that some memes do depict political issues and socially awkward situations and that these respective memes can reportedly aid the acquisition or expansion of knowledge regarding society and social issues.
Hence, it can be assumed that people could learn about society and stereotypes through memes, but it is important to reflect on and question the content, inform oneself and weigh the truth behind the depicted images and texts.
5.1.4 Feelings, opinions and current events
Students agree on the fact that memes can inform people about current events and help them deal with current topics. The average value of 2,08 (σ=0,996) highlights that the students agree with this memes’ function. This is also emphasized by Fink (2020), who claims that teenagers nowadays get their news from memes. Hence, they stay informed about current events and happening through memes. These events are often addressed in a mocking and satirizing way, 129 which highlights how teenagers may perceive events differently from those who do not engage in this way with memes. Furthermore, comparing the findings with existing literature, it appears that students could confirm Fink’s (2020) explanation that teenagers use memes to personally express their opinions on certain events or topic. Not only do young people express and share their opinions through memes, but also their feelings and emotions. In fact, findings reveal that the students who participated in the study believe that memes can (help) express personal opinions and emotions, presenting a mean value of 2,278 (σ=0,943) which confirms the respondents’ positive attitude towards this memes’ function. Not only do students see potential in memes as an aid for expressing personal feelings, but a mean value of 2,3 (σ=1,0087) reveals that, on average, the participants themselves already got to know other people’s or nations’ opinions regarding specific topics by looking at memes. Thus, students appear to be both, aware of a meme’s possible function as a tool for sharing emotions and beliefs, and familiar with memes, whose content includes other people’s opinions and feelings that participants have reportedly already learned about and can be reflected on. This emphasizes that, as Mina (2019) claims, memes can give voice to so many. Not only can people express their beliefs and opinions through the creation or remixing of memes (Boa Sorte, 2019), but they can also become aware of different perspectives and points of view through memes. Instead of expressing their feelings and opinions in an essay, students can use innovative and creative ways of sharing their thoughts and attitudes, for example, by putting their emotions into a hybrid of an image and text and adding a humorous note to it. This could not only facilitate the presentation, due to the visual support of an argument through images, as well as the addressing of the respective issues, but it could also reduce the students’ stress level and anxiety and additionally promote a more relaxed class atmosphere. The importance of visual literacy, which usually affects memes in general, is stressed by Crystal (2004) and the positive effects of humor and humorous elements in the classrooms are also emphasized by Baysac (2017), who conducted a study that shows the positive impact of humor on class learning. The sharing of emotions, beliefs and opinions through memes can arise from debates on several topics, such as social or cultural issues, politics or even specific people. Memes may represent political opinions, attitudes on society or current situations or events. Students can take sides and create memes that represent their point of view and hence express their personal feelings and get confronted with other perspectives as well. Taking the example of the Cat Cake Meme, which is one of the memes that were included in the questionnaire, the feelings and sensations of a language learner were expressed and depicted in a creative and innovative way, using a comparison between a cat and a cake. Not only might the meme address one single person’s 130 perceptions, but the more it is being shared, the more it might appear that the attitudes that are expressed in the Cat Cake Meme can be generalized and do also affect and concern other language learners as well. Similarly, Fink (2020) highlights young people’s expression of emotions through memes by mentioning the example of the killing of the Iranian commander Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani and the consecutive World War III announcement. While adults appeared to be rather preoccupied and concerned, teenagers addressed this topic through memes in a satirizing and mocking way, taking away the seriousness and simultaneously sharing and reflecting their feeling towards this event in the meme(s). The same can be assumed for the Cat Cake Meme. The struggles of a language learner are depicted in a humorous way. This may serve the mitigation of the addressed issue, which is also stressed by Boring-Bray (2018), who states that teenagers use humor also for expressing their fears and that they may use memes to talk about emotions while trying to mitigate the level of concern. Boa Sorte (2019) explains that through the own creation and remixing of memes in the classroom, students can be given the opportunity to express those feelings and emotions through memes. As Chapman and Foot (1977) state, humor points out attitudes, lays foundations of trust and can change social attitudes. Hence, as memes are always associated with humor or humorous elements, their depiction and promotion of the diversity and variety of opinions, ideally leads to a reflection on and acceptance of other people’s opinions. Taking into consideration Boa Sorte’s suggestion, as well as the study’s findings, the use and creation of memes in the classroom for addressing and sharing students’ personal beliefs, attitudes, perceptions or emotions appears to be a modern way of dealing with certain situations, as well as a creative way to get more insight into young people’s lives. The selected research method for the present study rendered investigations and findings rather limited and superficial, in other words descriptive. Based on the study’s findings, it can be assumed that memes can support the sharing of and learning about feelings and opinions. Nevertheless, explanatory and practical studies, which focus on a closer examination of the input given by the present study as well as existing literature, would be necessary to confirm the extent, to which emotions can really be transmitted and shared through memes. Moreover, practical investigations that include the creation of memes with students could find out whether memes can really raise awareness of the existence of various attitudes and beliefs, as well as of the importance of accepting other people’s opinions and feelings.
Generally, findings reveal that memes could be used for learning about various topics. Results show that, according to the survey participants, this is mainly true for learning about vocabulary and phrases, society and stereotypes and current events. Even though the students appeared to have learned least about culture, in particular sights and geography, the overall term culture is 131 nevertheless depicted quite frequently in memes, considering that society and stereotypes are part of culture as well. As Shifman (2014) points out, memes can globally, culturally and socially connect people. In fact, students reported on having experienced personal improvements regarding language knowledge, as well as sociocultural knowledge. Young adults are often very familiar with memes, which is also stressed by Fink (2020), who claims that young adults get quite a lot of information from memes, and Prensky (2001), who defines students nowadays as Digital Natives. Hence, due to this familiarity with memes, they might also know how to “read” memes properly. People who are not familiar with the meme world may not understand some memes and insiders. Due to the fact that many memes are remixed and recreated (Shifman, 2014), people come across many versions of memes that show the content of a meme in different contexts. The more contexts a meme is put in, the more familiar and popular it becomes and the more relatable or identifiable it becomes. In other words, this may facilitate a better understanding of some memes that might be a little complex or hard to understand due to hidden messages or required background knowledge. The familiarity with and popularity of memes could be the reason why students generally believe that memes can promote language learning and the expansion of cultural, social or other knowledge and why they were able to learn something from this modern digital element. A good example for a very familiar and popular meme is the Leonardo di Caprio Meme, which has been used for the creation of a variety of memes. The fact that it is used in various contexts could promote an easier and better understanding of the meme itself and consequently provide a facilitated learning approach.
5.2 Selected memes’ function as a teaching and learning tool and intentions and ideas on the memes’ purposes for teaching and learning
5.2.1 Linguistic features
While respondents claimed to have learned vocabulary through memes in general, findings show that in regards to the selected memes that have been included in the questionnaire, participants tend to not have learned much vocabulary from them, which is indicated by a mean value of 3,63 (σ=1,27). A very similar result can be detected regarding the learning of phrases from the illustrated memes. With an average mean of 3,59 (σ=1,279), findings show that the participants have expanded their knowledge on the use of phrases by looking at the presented memes on a very low level. Moreover, an arithmetic mean of 3,427 (σ=1,33) shows that participants have a rather neutral attitude towards using the selected memes in the classroom as a teacher, but tendencies show that they would rather not use them for this purpose. While 132 findings show that students theoretically believe that memes can promote and support the acquisition of new vocabulary and phrases, which is outlined by a high number of responses and emphasized by Harshavardhan et al. (2019), who claims that vocabulary and other linguistic or grammatical features and structures can be learned and improved with the help of memes, the selected memes show rather poor results regarding the learning and teaching of vocabulary and phrases. The reason for a poor improvement could be the class capacity (Baysac, 2017), meaning the class (language) level (Baran, 2013) as well as the wrong selection of memes. Baysac (2017) and Purnama (2017) explain that when choosing a meme for the classroom, humor, information and currency are important factors, in order to achieve the goal of a successful and effective implementation of the memes in the classroom. As findings reveal that, on average, students did not struggle to understand the respective memes, neither due to lacking vocabulary, nor due to lacking background knowledge, it can be assumed that the participants are already familiar with the majority of the vocabulary or phrases used in the illustrated memes. Even though findings show that the students from the study tend to disagree with it, some of the selected memes serve as example for how simple vocabulary can be learned and discussed with low grade students. Taking as example of the Leonardo di Caprio Meme, the phrase “to catch up with something” could be learned in a class with an A2+ to B1 level. Furthermore, other memes, as, for example, the Mask Meme, the Cat Cake Meme or the Swedish Kid Meme include phrases and vocabulary that can be learned, such as “to trade with”, “say something out loud” or “assemble by oneself”.
Besides the linguistic features and structures that might be improved through wisely chosen, effective and appropriate memes, also new grammatical structures and aspects can be acquired. Harshavardhan et al. (2019) state that grammar can be learned with memes. They stress that grammatical puns promote the acquisition of grammatical structures. In their study, which included selected memes than can be used for teaching grammar, pronunciation and other linguistic fields, they explained that, for example, “I’m back”, which is apparently used in one of their selected memes, can be used for teaching and discussing the present simple tense, deconstructing the phrase into “I am back”. As opposed to this, findings of the present study show that the respondents have a clear tendency towards disagreement with the use of the selected memes of the present study for teaching grammar, presenting a mean value of 3,63 (σ= 1,29). Furthermore, the students that participated in the study also claim to not have learned anything regarding grammar from the selected memes, as findings show a mean value of 3,69 (σ=1,267) of knowledge acquisition regarding grammar. Hence, not only the learning and teaching of linguistic aspects with the selected memes meets tendential dissent from the survey 133 participants, but also learning and teaching of grammatical structures shows tendentially negative results. The findings and responses concerning the learning and teaching of grammar with the selected memes present the lowest numbers and poorest results. Reasons for this could be that students might already be familiar with the grammar that is used in the illustrated memes. Considering the fact that memes usually use simple expressions or sentences, the grammar that is used might have been too simple for the survey participants, who are all in upper school classes and whose English level, showing a mean value of 2,03 regarding the participants’ English grades at school, is rather good. Another reason why respondents may not consider the selected memes a potential grammar teaching tool is their lack of reflection. The fact that they did not learn anything regarding grammar from the memes does not imply that the memes cannot be used for teaching grammatical features in general. Furthermore, the study does not investigate why the students believe in their responses. In other words, it remains unclear why students would not use the memes for teaching grammar. Hence, while the memes might not meet the respondents’ language level or might contain enough grammatical structures that can be taught or learned, others might be able to learn something from the Swedish Kid Meme, for example. . The use of “start + Gerund” and “start to + Infinitive” can be discussed. The phrase “has been elected”, which is used in the Trump Meme, can be used for learning and teaching the Preset Perfect tense. Thus, there are ways to teach grammar with the selected memes, but the survey participants do not entirely agree with this. This leads to the assumption that more challenging memes in regards to grammatical structures might have led to a more successful learning achievement on this issue. The respective memes could serve as grammar teaching and learning tools in classes that have not discussed certain tenses yet. Hence, they could be implemented in classrooms of lower grades. As the majority of the survey participants is either in 8th or 7th grade upper school level, they might already be familiar with all tenses and other grammatical structures.
5.2.2 Sociocultural knowledge
Concerning stereotypes and society, findings reveal that the participants have learned a little about these topics from the selected memes, with a mean value of 3,28 (σ=1,34) regarding stereotypes and 3,12 (σ=1,349) regarding society. Moreover, a mean value of 3,1 (σ=1,42) shows that students’ attitude was rather neutral in regards to the use of the selected memes for teaching about society and culture. The Trump Meme and the Heaven and Hell Meme, which are both categorized culture and society memes, have an above-average mean value, showing that respondents are more likely to use these memes for teaching about these topics than the other memes. This could be due to the fact that these memes address social and cultural 134 stereotypes, as well as political situations, which could promote the expansion of sociocultural knowledge. The Heaven and Hell Memes addresses cultural stereotypes which endorse a critical reflection on the truthfulness of the displayed content, as well as a possible expansion of cultural knowledge about other nation’s habits and behaviors. Generally, possible reasons for the study’s findings, which show that the statistical values concerning society, culture or stereotypes are higher than regarding other issues, could be the choice and use of several society memes, as they have been categorized in section 3.4.1.1. While, on average, students reportedly learned a little about stereotypes from the selected meme, the existing but rather low expansion of knowledge concerning the respective issue could be due to the fact that the students may already be familiar with a big part of the depicted stereotypes. Assuming that students are familiar with the majority of the illustrated stereotypes, the knowledge acquisition could be based on some stereotypical or cultural details that the students may not have been aware of.
Moreover, while an average value of 3,21 (σ=1,39) shows that the participants had a rather neutral attitude in regards to the use of the selected memes for addressing and teaching about everyday life issues, Mina (2019) highlights how memes can indeed give insight into other’s lives, such as pet owners. Concerning the selected memes, the Leonardo di Caprio Meme gives insight into adult everyday life struggles. Students might not be entirely familiar with the illustrated problems that adults have to face on a frequent basis though. Therefore, it might be hard for students to understand the message behind the meme and associate it with everyday life struggles, as they might not be familiar with the depicted situation, which would explain their rather neutral attitude regarding the above-mentioned issue. Another example of a meme that depicts everyday life situations and struggles is the Cat Cake Meme, which is highlighted by a high number of responses in agreement with the use of this meme for teaching about the respective issue (cf. Figure 4.25). As it addresses language learner’s struggles when they are confronted and expected to have a conversation with their L2, the memes’ content could promote a discussion on social and linguistic struggles, such as language learning difficulties and the flaws of the educational system, and motivate students to critically reflect on the addressed issues, as suggested by Reddy et al. (2020). Furthermore, the Cat Cake Meme also stresses the creative implementation of cat memes in the digital world, which is highlighted by Mina (2019). Besides the Cat Cake Meme, another two out of the twelve selected memes for the questionnaire are cat memes that not only give voice to cats as protagonists of memes, but also address cultural and linguistic topics. While the Italian Cat Meme address stereotypes, the Aqua Meme is a language meme that focuses on vocabulary and mainly pronunciation. The Aqua Meme, which could serve as a learning or teaching tool for the proper pronunciation of 135 the French word “eau”, which translates to water, shows rather negative and poorer results compared to other memes in regards to almost every statement (cf. Figure 4.15- Figure 4.28). Even though it addresses phonology and pronunciation in a very creative way, possible reasons for the rather negative results could be that the questionnaire does only address the learning of certain language elements, such as vocabulary or phrases, while omitting linguistic features, such as phonology or pronunciation. The Italian Cat Meme might introduce students to learn Italian culture, while also raising awareness about cultural stereotypes. Even though a mean value of 3,03 implies that, on average, the students only learned a little about stereotypes from this meme, a more critical reflection on the meme’s content might support a change of opinion.
However, what becomes clear is that, concerning the general functions of memes that the students that participated in the study theoretically believe in, as well as their personal knowledge gains through memes, the representation of cultures and the acquisition of cultural knowledge show the poorer results than other listed functions. Opposed to this, findings show that that the use of the selected memes, which are illustrated in the questionnaire, for teaching about society and culture presents better statistical values than other mentioned purposes regarding the question, whether the students would use the memes for certain purposes if they were a teacher. However, findings also show that learning about society through memes presents higher statistical values compared to other mentioned topics in both, the students’ reported general experiences with gaining knowledge through memes, as well as their knowledge expansion regarding this topic through the selected memes. In regards to the selected memes the following can be detected: even though, in general, students did only learn a little from most of the illustrated memes, learning about society shows, on average, the second best mean value. Moreover, the Heaven and Hell Meme shows above-average results concerning the learning about stereotypes. This is probably due to the fact that it fully addresses social and cultural clichés of different nations concerning certain working areas. Thus, students’ general attitude regarding the implementation of the respective memes in the classroom for teaching about society and culture is rather neutral and their knowledge gains regarding this topic through the selected memes is quite mediocre. However, students’ appear to be most positive about the learning and teaching about this topic compared to the other mentioned topics and functions.
5.2.3 Sarcasm and humor
Participants were rather indecisive in regards to the general use of the selected memes in the classroom, even though a slight tendency towards agreement with not using them can be 136 detected, as findings present an average value of 2,89 (σ=1,33). These results are also reflected in the findings of using the selected memes for teaching about sarcasm, as they show a mean value of 3,2 (σ=1,37), which also implies a rather neutral attitude. Nonetheless, a tendency towards a negative attitude regarding the use of the memes for teaching about different types of humor can be detected. Hence, while the selected memes might not be an appropriate tool for teaching or talking about sarcasm, the importance of humor, which includes sarcasm as well, in the classroom and in memes is stressed by Friedman et al. (2002), Weimer (2011), Garner (2005), Stebbins (1980), (Rosegard & Wilson, 2013), Henderson (2015), Powell and Andresen (2006), Kaplan and Pascoe (2015), Deneire (1995) and Harshavardhan et al. (2019). The selected memes might either not be sarcastic or the sarcasm in the memes might not have been understood by the students, which could be due to lacking background knowledge that can impede the students from understanding a meme’s message (Baysac, 2013), which in this case would be the sarcastic undertone, or due to the different perceptions of humor and sarcasm of people. Even though sarcasm, being a form of humor, might not be very present amongst the selected memes according to the study’s findings, the importance of general humor in memes is stressed by many, as it has several functions that impact the classroom atmosphere and the learning environment positively. As existing literature stresses the positive effects and importance of humor in the classrooms and explains the composition of memes being a hybrid between an image, a text and humorous elements, it appears that memes are usually associated with humorousness. As findings show that the students that compiled the questionnaire are rather neutral in regards to the question, whether they would use the depicted memes for teaching about different types of sarcasm. However, as statistics show negative tendencies, this might lead to the assumption that the depicted memes might contain humorous elements, but most of the presented memes reportedly hardly promote the learning or teaching about the respective issue. While the illustrated memes might not contain sarcastic elements, other types of humor might be addressed in these memes. The very limited range of questions regarding memes’ potential as promoters of humor and tool for teaching about other kinds of humor yields a rather superficial and narrow perspective of the students’ concerning this issue.
5.2.4 Memes as ice breakers and introductory tools
Regarding the use of memes as an introduction to a specific topic, findings show a mean value of 3,019 (σ=1,4), which implies a rather neutral attitude amongst the study’s respondents in regards to this purpose for the selected memes. However, the mode value of 2 shows that students appear to tendentially approve of the selected memes’ use to start a discussion or introduce a topic. Baysac (2017) and Baran (2013) state that the class level, as well as the 137 complexity of the background of memes have to be considered before using a meme in the classroom. When using memes as ice breakers or introduction to a topic though, background knowledge may not be necessarily required, as the memes serve as a first insight into the respective topic, which means that the students might not be expected to know something about the addressed issue and understand the meme’s message. Baysac (2017) explains that memes can be used as ice breakers in order to familiarize students with a certain topic. They can be used to get the students’ attention, especially at the beginning of a lesson (Harshavardhan et al., 2019), as they are an innovative tool for addressing topics (Mersinoglu, 2020). Due to the fact that memes require a short attention span (Reddy et al., 2020) and they are a quick and modern way to get information (Mersinoglu, 2020), students can be introduced to a specific topic in a humorous and innovative way that does not challenge the student’s concentration and attention span. Moreover, the use of visual elements, such as images, promotes a better understanding of any topic (Rotanova & Federova, 2019). When using memes as an introductory element at the beginning of a lesson, students are hence confronted with a hybrid between an image or a video and a text (Harshavardhan et al., 2019), which, based on Rotanova and Federova’s (2019) claim, is an ideal tool for a simple and relaxed addressing of any topic. Furthermore, as Baysac (2017) says, a humorous introduction creates a more relaxed class atmosphere for both, teacher and students and can be considered a mood setting which implies the readiness of the students on a cognitive and emotional level. Any meme can be used as an ice breaker or an introduction to a specific topic, as long as the issue is addressed properly. Taking the example of some of the selected memes, the Pineapplepizza Meme could be used as an introduction to the issue of stereotypes, while the Mask Meme or the Simpson Coronavirus Meme can be used as an introduction to the discussion of current events. This assumption can be made due to the present study’s findings, which show that the selected memes
While the present study does not investigate the reason why students would use certain memes for introducing a topic or starting a discussion
5.2.5 Summary of main points
In conclusion, findings show that the survey participants believe that memes could be efficient as educational tools in general. However, not all memes address the same topics and hence not all memes can teach the same issues. A differentiation between various memes must be made, which is highlighted by the categorization of the selected memes that were included in the questionnaire. The categories of memes, as well as findings and response numbers of the present study point out that some memes are language memes and aid the promotion of language 138 learning, while other memes inform about culture, society, events or opinions and feelings. Findings lead to the assumption that not all topics can be taught equally well. Moreover, what becomes clear is that the right choice of memes influences the learning efficiency. While normally class levels regarding their language, as well as their background knowledge, must be considered, I was not able to consider these important factors in the present study. Not only did the current situation, the aim, as well as the methodological approach of the study not allow certain considerations, but the research method of the study limited the range and depth of the questions in the survey that were used for investigations. More detailed questions would have been necessary for a deeper insight and more information and explanation. However, more time would have been required for an extended and more detailed investigation. Time is an important factor and needs to be considered when compiling a questionnaire, as it should not take too long because otherwise participants get annoyed, do not concentrate properly and thus do not efficiently contribute to the study by not participating properly.
Furthermore, findings reveal that students see potential in memes as an educational tool for the promotion of language learning and the expansion of sociocultural knowledge, but they must be made aware of memes’ full potential and focus on a deeper critical reflection on the hidden messages, backgrounds and general contents of memes.
The comparison between findings and existing literature raises the question, whether memes should be implemented in the classroom or not. Reported experiences and findings of the present study show that, according to the survey’s respondents, something can be learned or taught through memes and the and the positive effects of humor in the classroom, which are numerously mentioned by existing literature, could be considered convincing arguments for using them. Even though memes might be a rather new and modern possible learning instrument, students’ rather positive theoretical beliefs in memes’ function for the promotion of language learning and the expansion or acquisition of knowledge about culture, society, news, events, opinions and feelings etc. hopefully motivates teachers to integrate these digital, possibly educational, tools in their lessons.
More detailed questions would have been necessary for a deeper insight and more information and explanation. However, more time would have been required for an extended and more detailed investigation. Time is an important factor and needs to be considered when compiling a questionnaire, as it should not take too long because otherwise participants get annoyed, do not concentrate properly and thus do not efficiently contribute to the study by not participanting properly. 139
6 Conclusion
In this chapter, the study and its most important findings will be summarized and possible conclusions will be drawn. Moreover, section 6.2 outlines the limitations of the study and lists ideas for further studies in the field of memes in the educational context.
6.1 Summary of the study and its findings
The present study’s aim was to examine students’ attitudes in regards to the promotion of language learning and the expansion or acquisition of sociocultural knowledge through IG and particularly memes, using a quantitative research approach. In order to gather data on the respective issue, a self-report, online questionnaire on Lime Survey was conducted. The quantitative data was mainly collected through open-ended questions, using the Likert Scale technique. Concerning the analysis of the data, descriptive statistics, which were calculated with Microsoft Excel, have been used. Finally, findings of the study were discussed and compared to other existing studies and theoretical input about memes.
The findings of the present study suggest that students do believe that linguistic and sociocultural competences can be learned through memes. According to the students meme can aid the acquisition of vocabulary and phrases, contribute to the improvement of the (con)textual comprehension and overall understanding of sentences or phrases and inform about events. Moreover, findings show that the students have a clear tendency of agreeing with the fact that memes can represent cultures and that they can promote the transmission of sociocultural knowledge and other people’s emotions, opinions and beliefs.
Concerning the students’ personal experience with memes as an educational tool, findings showed that they have already experienced knowledge acquisition and expansion through memes in several fields. The students claimed to have mainly learned something through memes in the fields of vocabulary, phrases, current events and society and stereotypes. However, memes also already aided them in becoming familiar with other’s beliefs and feelings, as well as with unknown events and other cultures and cultural behaviors
In regards to the selected memes that have been included in the questionnaire, findings suggested that students had a rather neutral attitude towards the extent of efficiency as a learning and teaching tool of the respective memes. The reason for students to neither agree nor disagree with the majority of the statements in average and hence their lack of decisiveness could be due to a lack of critical reflection on memes, which reveals their real potential. As Mina (2019) stresses, people mostly consider memes tools that share funny content. However, people do not 140 question the seriousness behind some memes and do not further try to explore the memes’ hidden messages, which is why memes’ function and purpose appears to be mere entertainment. This assumption is contradicted by Wells (2018), who stresses that memes can aid the development of critical thinking skills and should motivate students to critically reflect on digitally shared content. Even though in the case of the present study, there could not be detected any lacking background knowledge or lacking vocabulary based on the students self- report, in general, lacking language and background knowledge and the complexity of some memes can impede students from efficiently learning something from memes (Baran, 2013; Baysac, 2017). However, the opposite may be the case as well. Factors such as the class capacity and class level- meaning the language level of the students, as well as their level of knowledge regarding various topics- must be considered before implementing a meme in the educational context (Baran, 2013; Baysac, 2017). While, as already mentioned, some memes may be too complex, others may be too simple and not sufficiently challenging. According to the study’s findings, which suggest that the students did not struggle with understanding the selected memes because of lacking background knowledge or vocabulary, it can be assumed that the memes’ content and language was too simple and that thus, they have not been chosen properly and did not correspond to the students’ language and general knowledge level.
6.2 Implications for practice
While findings suggest that the respondents have a rather neutral attitude towards using the selected memes as a teacher, either for introducing a topic or teaching about society, or as an instrument for teaching grammar and other linguistic aspects, literature shows that memes have already been used in the classroom and that they can serve as an educational tool. Berk (1996) explains that when more senses are involved, the learning effect is higher and understanding appears easier, which is emphasized by Crystal (2004), who stresses the importance of visual literacy in the learning process. While students may not be entirely convinced of the selected memes’ efficiency as a teaching tool, Harshavardhan et al. (2019), Mina (2019) and Reddy et al. (2020) suggest that memes can be used as a learning tool for teaching and learning about linguistic, grammatical, as well as cultural and social features and aspects. Fink (2020) and Boring-Bray (2018) further highlight that memes can aid the expression of feelings and opinions. As stated above, the efficiency of a meme does depend on its content and complexity and the students’ competences regarding linguistic as well as cultural and social aspects, which implies that not every meme can be used for the same purpose and not every meme can have the same functions. Therefore, a more appropriate choice of memes can lead to clearer tendencies in regards to the use of the illustrated memes as an educational tool. However, as 141 the researcher has not been familiar with the students’ language level and sociocultural competences, an appropriate and entirely fitting choice was rather challenging. When choosing the “right” memes, existing literature reveals that they can in fact be a helpful instrument in the classroom. Based on what literature suggests, the selected memes can be used for teaching about and discussing stereotypes, culture, society and politics, as well as linguistic and grammatical aspects, keeping in mind the necessity of critically reflecting on the shown content (Reddy et al., 2020).
6.3 Limitations of the study and implications for future research
The present study exhibits several limitations that might generate new ideas for further studies and encourage researchers to further investigate on this rather new and unexplored topic. First of all, the sample of the present study was rather small, which means that the generalizability of the study was very limited. Thus, further studies that gather a higher sample for their study might be needed to prove or refute the hypothesis and outcome of the present study.
Second, the choice of conducting a descriptive study, using a quantitative research approach, limits the study in terms of closer examination. The study only focuses on the students’ attitudes and what they believe, but it does not question or examine the reason for their opinions. Moreover, while other studies include practical investigations, such as letting students’ create or remix memes, the present study relies on theoretical input about students’ self-reported experiences. Hence, the present study served as a basis for outlining students’ opinions, but the corresponding reasons still need to be investigated and discussed. Therefore, other methodological designs, such the use of interviews for data collection, might provide further interesting findings regarding the present study’s topic. The use of a qualitative research method and the conduction of an explanatory study might add interesting insights to this topic, which could not be investigated and discovered in the present study.
Further studies could…
. Discuss why students do or do not think that memes are an effective tool for language learning and the expansion of sociocultural competences . Examine hether memes should or should not be used in the classroom . Discuss how memes could be used in the classroom . Investigate how memes affect the classroom atmosphere and the learning process and success of students when implementing them in the classroom for a certain period of time 142
To date, there are few studies that examined memes’ functions as an educational tool. With my study, I hope to have given a little insight into this rather new, modern research field and to not only have sparked my own interest, but also encouraged and inspired other researchers to further examine this issue.
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Image sources:
[1] The Internet is a magical place https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EsONTezXIAA- beP?format=jpg&name=360x360; Retrieved from https://twitter.com/ashtroid22/status/1352079682137583616
[2] Bernie Sanders in Forest Gump_ https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EsOhCXhXAAMrImD?format=jpg&name=small; Retrieved from https://twitter.com/KatieOK_/status/1352101380824166402
[3] Bernie Sanders in Star Trek https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EsMsFrQXIAYGvik?format=jpg&name=small; Retrieved from https://twitter.com/NoContextTrek/status/1351972791315275779
[4] Bernie Sanders and Jennifer Lopez https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EsQBMCoXcAAeag- ?format=jpg&name=small; Retrieved from https://twitter.com/presley_oranges/status/1352207097430204417 148
[5] Leonardo di Caprio Meme: https://img-9gag- fun.9cache.com/photo/abGRD49_700bwp.webp
[6] Ananaspizza Meme: https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/aZyoKLV_460swp.webp
[7] Mask Meme: https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/an4G0g5_460swp.webp
[8] Lava Meme: https://www.mandatory.com/assets/uploads/gallery/funny-photos-03-12- 2021/screen-shot-2021-03-11-at-2-48-59-pm.png
[9] Bananas Meme: https://www.instagram.com/bananas_without_the_b/
[10] Cat Cake Meme: https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/awBG36Q_460swp.webp
[11] Heaven and Hell Meme: https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/aoPGQqe_460swp.webp
[12] Italian Cat Meme: https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/aBmvO0N_460swp.webp
[13] Simpson Coronavirus Meme: https://img-9gag- fun.9cache.com/photo/a5W5A8E_460swp.webp
[14] Aqua Meme: https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/aGdAyO0_460swp.webp
[15] Swedish Kid Meme: https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/aMxDW1V_460swp.webp
[16] Trump Meme: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/T1bO8Rx7toz97fWjNrZgKc- JPbFOt2tVvMu7nhI01LuoYH0wa6LywGOBr7fBq6TrQRQQU34=s119
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8 Appendices
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9 Part three includes the same questions for each of the twelve memes, hence only the first meme with the respective questions will be illustrated 155
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