Part of
The Pragmatics of Humour in Interactive ContextsEdited by Esther Linares Bernabéu
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 335] 2023
► pp. 32–64
Edited by Esther Linares Bernabéu
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 335] 2023
► pp. 32–64
Political-electoral memes and
interactional humour on
Twitter
This chapter presents the results of a qualitative study
of a corpus of replies to humoristic memes, which were published and
viralised on Twitter during the Spanish general elections campaign
held on November 2019. Based on the General Theory of Verbal Humour
and on its adaptation to multimodal humour, this study aims at
establishing whether and how memes made up of a single image or a
combination of an image and a caption may generate humorous effects
on the imagined audience on Twitter and encourage responses that
entail continued humour. The results show that most of the memes
analysed convey recognition, understanding, appreciation, and
agreement among Twitter users, whose responses express laughter
using different multimodal affordances, or replicate the humorous
contents of the meme by producing new memes. Moreover, humour
created by these memes enables producer users and recipients to
challenge the political power, while nurturing in-group
solidarity.
Keywords: memes, Twitter, electoral campaign, interactional humour, multimodality, Spain
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Theoretical framework
- 2.1Memes
- 2.2Political humor
- 3.Description of corpus and methodological considerations
- 4.Results and discussion
- 4.1Qualitative analysis
- 5.Conclusions
-
Notes -
References
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