Humorous but hateful
Linguistic impoliteness and visual dysphemism in anti-Muslim memes
The paper explores the interplay of impoliteness, ethnic/religious humor and multimodality in online contexts. The argument advanced in the paper is that anti-Muslim memes are instantiations of ethno-religious humor that creatively incorporate linguistic impoliteness and visual dysphemism in manners that potentially propagate Islamophobia online. The analysis of a specialized corpus of memes suggests that multimodal impoliteness in these memes is mainly triggered by marked implicitness, reinforced by visual reference to targets. The humor-generating incongruity in these memes is often based on the anomalous juxtaposition of verbal and visual cues expressing ethnic and religious stereotypes, in ways that make the values expressed in these stereotypes easily acceptable. Such multimodal impoliteness creatively incorporates entertainment with emotional coercion, aiming at like-minded participants in the potential presence of targets. This constitutes a form of plausibly deniable incitement, meant to instigate attitude change and intimidate the victims, which consequently blurs the conceptual distinction between jocular abuse, impoliteness and hate speech.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Internet memes, humor and discrimination
- 3.Linguistic impoliteness
- 4.Visual dysphemism
- 5.Methodology
- 6.Analysis
- 6.1Triggering impoliteness across semiotic modes
- 6.2Triggering ethno-religious humor across semiotic modes
- 6.3Multimodal impoliteness, creativity and hate
- 7.Conclusion
- Note
-
References
References (91)
References
Abdel-Raheem, Ahmed. 2020. “Mental model theory as a model for analysing visual and multimodal discourse.” Journal of Pragmatics 1551: 303–320. 

Abdel-Raheem, Ahmed. 2021. “Multimodal metaphor and (im) politeness in political cartoons: A sociocognitive approach.” Journal of Pragmatics 1851: 54–72. 

Abdel-Raheem, Ahmed. 2022. “Metaphorical creativity contributing to multimodal impoliteness in political cartoons.” Intercultural Pragmatics 19(1): 35–70. 

Agha, Asif. 2007. Language and Social Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Allan, Keith, and Kait Burridge. 2006. Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Allan, Keith. 2019. “Taboo words and language: An overview.” In The Oxford Handbook of Taboo Words and Language, ed. by Keith Allan, 1–27. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Al Zidjaly, Najma. 2017. “Memes as reasonably hostile laments: A discourse analysis of political dissent in Oman.” Discourse & Society 28(6): 573–594. 

Anderson, Luvell. 2015. “Racist humor.” Philosophy Compass 10(8): 501–509. 

Barthes, Ronald. 1977. Image – Music – Text. London: Fontana.
Benatar, David. 1999. “Prejudice in jest: When racial and gender humor harms.” Public Affairs Quarterly 13(2): 191–203.
Bergmann, Merrie. 1986. “How many feminists does it take to make a joke? Sexist humor and what’s wrong with it.” Hypatia 1(1): 63–82. 

Boxman-Shabtai, Lillian, and Limor Shifman. 2015. “When ethnic humor goes digital.” New Media & Society 17(4): 520–539. 

Carter, Ronald. 2004. Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk. Abingdon: Routledge.
Channell, Joanna. 1994. Vague Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chiaro, Delia. 2017. “Humor and translation.” In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor, ed. by Salvatore Attardo, 414–429. New York: Routledge. 

Culpeper, Jonathan. 2005. “Impoliteness and entertainment in the television quiz show: The Weakest Link
.” Journal of Politeness Research 11: 35–72. 

Culpeper, Jonathan. 2011. Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Culpeper, Jonathan. 2013. “Impoliteness: Questions and answers.” In Aspects of Impoliteness, ed. by Denis Jamet, and Manuel Jobert, 2–15. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Culpeper, Jonathan. 2016. “Impoliteness strategies.” In Interdisciplinary Studies in Pragmatics, Culture and Society, ed. by Alessandro Capone, and Jacob L. Mey, 421–446. Cham: Springer. 

Culpeper, Jonathan. 2021. “Impoliteness and hate speech: Compare and contrast.” Journal of Pragmatics 1791: 4–11. 

Culpeper, Jonathan, and Michael Haugh. 2014. Pragmatics and the English Language. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Culpeper, Jonathan, Paul Iganski, and Abe Sweiry. 2017. “Linguistic impoliteness and religiously aggravated hate crime in England and Wales.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 5(1):1–29.
Dancygier, Barbara, and Lieven Vandelanott. 2017. “Internet memes as multimodal constructions.” Cognitive Linguistics 28(3): 565–598. 

Dawkins, Richard. 1976. The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dynel, Marta. 2016. “‘I has seen Image Macros!’: Advice Animals memes as visual-verbal jokes.” International Journal of Communication 101: 660–688.
Dynel, Marta. 2021a. “COVID-19 memes going viral: On the multiple multimodal voices behind face masks.” Discourse & Society 32(2): 175–195. 

Dynel, Marta. 2021b. “Humour and (mock) aggression: Distinguishing cyberbullying from roasting.” Language & Communication 811: 17–36. 

Dynel, Marta. 2021c. “Desperately seeking intentions: Genuine and jocular insults on social media.” Journal of Pragmatics 1791: 26–36. 

El Refaie, Elisabeth. 2011. “The pragmatics of humor reception: Young people’s responses to a newspaper cartoon.“ Humor 24 (1): 87–108. 

Evnine, Simon. 2018. “The anonymity of a murmur: Internet (and other) memes.” The British Journal of Aesthetics 58(3): 303–318. 

Forceville, Charles. 2020. Visual and Multimodal Communication: Applying the Relevance Principle. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Forceville, Charles, and Billy Clark. 2014. “Can pictures have explicatures?” Linguagem em (Dis)curso 141: 451–472. 

Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar. 2010. “The YouTubification of politics, impoliteness and polarization.” In Handbook of Research on Discourse Behavior and Digital Communication: Language Structures and Social Interaction, ed. by Rotimi Taiwo, 540–563. Hershey: IGI Global. 

Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar. 2022. “Moral emotions, good moral panics, social regulation, and online public shaming.” Language & Communication 841: 61–75. 

Habermas, Jürgen. 1989. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Haugh, Michael. 2015. Im/politeness Implicatures. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. 

Haugh, Michael, and Derek Bousfield. 2012. “Mock impoliteness, jocular mockery and jocular abuse in Australian and British English.” Journal of Pragmatics 44(9): 1099–1114. 

Haugh, Michael, and Daniel Z. Kádár. 2013. Understanding Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Haugh, Michael, and Valeria Sinkeviciute. 2019. “Offence and conflict talk.” In The Routledge Handbook of Language in Conflict, ed. by Mathew Evans, Lesley Jeffries, and Jim O’Driscoll, 199–123. New York: Routledge. 

Hickey, Leo. 1992. “Politeness apart: Why choose indirect speech acts?” Lingua e Stile 27(1): 77–87.
Jeffries, Lesley. 2010. Critical Stylistics: The Power of English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Jewitt, Carey. 2016. “Multimodal analysis.” In Handbook of Language and Digital Communication, ed. by Alexandra Georgakopoulou, and Tereza Spilioti, 69–84. Abingdon: Routledge.
Jewitt, Carey, Jeff Bezemer, and Kay O’Halloran. 2016. Introducing Multimodality. Abingdon: Routledge. 

Knobel, Michele, and Colin Lankshear. 2006. “Online memes, affinities and cultural production.” In A New Literacy Sampler, ed. by Michele Knobel, and Colin Lankshear, 199–227. New York: Peter Lang.
Kress, Gunther. 2010. Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London: Routledge.
Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. 2006. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (2nd edn.). Abingdon: Routledge. 

Larkin-Galinanes, Christina. 2017. “An overview of humor theory.” In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor, ed. by Salvatore Attardo, 4–16. New York: Routledge. 

Leech, Geoffrey N. 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.
Leech, Geoffrey N. 2014. The Pragmatics of Politeness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Locher, Miriam A., and Derek Bousfield. 2008. “Introduction: Impoliteness and power in language.” In Impoliteness in Language: Studies on Its Interplay with Power in Theory and Practice, ed. by Derek Bousfield, and Miriam A. Locher, 1–16. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 

Locher, Miriam A., and Sage L. Graham. 2010. “Introduction to interpersonal pragmatics.“ In Interpersonal Pragmatics, ed. by Miriam A. Locher, and Sage L. Graham, 1–13. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. 

Marlow, Mikaela. 2017. “Public discourse and intergroup communication.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication, ed. by Jon Nussbaum. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Martinec, Radan, and Andrew Salway. 2005. “A system for image-text relations in new (and old) media.” Visual Communication 4(3): 337–371. 

Martinez Lirola, Maria. 2014. “Exploring visual dysphemisms in pieces of news related to immigrant minors in a Spanish newspaper.” Visual Communication 13(4): 405–427. 

Mazzone, Marco. 2011. “Schemata and associative processes in pragmatics.” Journal of Pragmatics 43(8): 2148–2159. 

Mills, Sara. 2003. Gender and Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Milner, Ryan. 2013. “Pop polyvocality: Internet memes, public participation, and the Occupy Wall Street movement.” International Journal of Communication 71: 2357–2390.
Moeschler, Jacques. 2009. “Pragmatics, propositional and non-propositional effects: Can a theory of utterance interpretation account for emotions in verbal communication?” Social Science Information 48(3): 447–464. 

Nemesi, Attila. 2013. “Implicature phenomena in classical rhetoric.” Journal of Pragmatics 501: 129–151. 

Oswald, Steve, and Didier Maillat. 2018. “Deceptive puns: The pragmatics of humour in puns.” In Perspectivas sobre el significado: Desde lo biológico a lo social [Perspectives on Meaning: From the Biological to the Social], ed. by Cristián N. Padilla, 145–171. La Serena: Editorial Universidad de la Serena.
Page, Ruth, David Barton, Johann W. Unger, and Michele Zappavigna. 2014. Researching Language and Social Media: A Student Guide. Abingdon: Routledge. 

Richardson, John, and Ruth Wodak. 2009. “The impact of visual racism: Visual arguments in political leaflets of Austrian and British far-right parties.” Controversia 6(2): 45–77.
Scott, Kate. 2020. Referring Expressions, Pragmatics, and Style: Reference and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shifman, Limor. 2014. Memes in Digital Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Sifianou, Maria. 2019. “Im/politeness and in/civility: A neglected relationship?” Journal of Pragmatics 1471: 49–64. 

Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1995. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell.
Stöckl, Hartmut. 2020. “Multimodality and mediality in an image-centric semiosphere – A rationale.” In Visualizing Digital Discourse: Interactional, Institutional and Ideological Perspectives, ed. by Crispin Thurlow, Christa Dürscheid, and Federica Diémoz, 189–202. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. 

Svensson, Jakob. 2011. “The expressive turn of citizenship in digital late modernity.” JeDEM – eJournal of eDemocracy & Open Government 3(1): 42–56. 

Taecharungroj, Viriya, and Pitchanut Nueangjamnong. 2015. “Humour.2.0: Styles and types of humour and virality of memes on Facebook.” Journal of Creative Communications 10(3): 288–302. 

Terry, Adeline. 2020. “Euphemistic dysphemisms and dysphemistic euphemisms as means to convey irony and banter.” Language and Literature 29(1): 57–75. 

Van Dijk, Teun A. 1998. Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach. London: Sage.
Van Leeuwen, Theo. 2000. “Visual racism.” In The Semiotics of Racism: Approaches in Critical Discourse Analysis, ed. by Martin Reisigl, and Ruth Wodak, 333–350. Vienna: Passagen Verlag.
Van Leeuwen, Theo. 2008. Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Vásquez, Camilla. 2019. Language, Creativity and Humour Online. Abingdon: Routledge. 

Walther, Joseph. 2011. “Theories of computer-mediated communication and interpersonal relations.” In The SAGE Handbook of Interpersonal Communication (4th edn.), ed. by Mark Knapp, and John Dally, 443–479. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Weaver, Simon. 2011. “Jokes, rhetoric and embodied racism: A rhetorical discourse analysis of the logics of racist jokes on the Internet.” Ethnicities 11(4): 413–435. 

Weaver, Simon. 2016. The Rhetoric of Racist Humour: US, UK and Global Race Joking. Abingdon: Routledge. 

Weitz, Eric. 2017. “Online and internet humor.” In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor, ed. By Salvatore Attardo, 504–518. Abingdon: Routledge. 

Wharton, Tim. 2009. Pragmatics and Non-Verbal Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Wilson, Deirdre. 2018. “Relevance theory and literary interpretation.” In Reading Beyond the Code: Literature and Relevance Theory, ed. By Terence Cave, and Deirdre Wilson, 185–204. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wodak, Ruth, Jonathan Culpeper, and Elena Semino. 2021. “Shameless normalisation of impoliteness: Berlusconi’s and Trump’s press conferences.” Discourse & Society 32(3): 369–393. 

Yoon, InJeong. 2016. “Why is it not just a joke? Analysis of Internet memes associated with racism and hidden ideology of colorblindness.” Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education 33(1): 92–123. 

Yus, Francisco. 2019. “Multimodality in memes: A cyberpragmatic approach. In Analyzing Digital Discourse New Insights and Future Directions, ed. by Patricia Bou-Franch, and Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 105–132. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Zappavigna, Michele. 2012. Discourse of Twitter and Social Media: How We Use Language to Create Affiliation on the Web. London: Continuum.
Cited by (3)
Cited by three other publications
Pogontseva, D. V.
2024.
Theoretical and Empirical Justifications for The Development of the Questionnaire “Subjective Evaluation of Lukism in Humor”.
Innovative science: psychology, pedagogy, defectology 7:3
► pp. 77 ff.

Walther, Joseph B.
2024.
The Effects of Social Approval Signals on the Production of Online Hate: A Theoretical Explication.
Communication Research 
Xie, Chaoqun & Weina Fan
2024.
Theorizing impoliteness: a Levinasian perspective.
Journal of Politeness Research 20:1
► pp. 157 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 8 january 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.