Internet Memes as Form of Cultural Discourse: A Rhetorical Analysis on Facebook

Abstract

Internet memes are phenomena that rapidly gain popularity on the Internet which construct intercultural discourse. Using visual rhetoric, the Internet memes convey a set of symbols and ideals that express socio-political structure represented on the Internet. The story of memes is crucial in understanding the digital culture along with revealing the identity of an Internet subculture, as well as in analyzing the impacts of this cultural artifact. This study analyzes the nature and functions of internet memes and its contribution to formulate a new cultural discourse. The findings have been instrumented to illustrate how memes operate as rhetoric to explore the intercultural communication and identity construction prevalent in representative cyber-culture. It has specially been targeted to inquire the inter-textual nature of memes which are created and disseminated by the Bangladeshi Facebook prosumers. In addition, the study makes a comparison of theoretical approaches to the study of memes, including visual rhetoric approach which combines elements of the semiotic and discursive approaches to study the persuasive constituents of visual texts. These methods help deconstruct a sign or a text and decode possible hidden meanings through discourse analysis in terms of written texts and through semiotic analysis in terms of images. The presence of both an image (sign) and a caption (text) in an internet meme requires such a combined approach for reflective output.

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