Internet-Memes als Zugang zu multimodalen Konstruktionen

Abstract

Abstract The adaptation of Internet memes is an important practice in social media that is an excellent subject of investigation to explain (the instantiation of) multimodal constructions with regard to social-cognitive processes. In this article, we would like to plead for paying more attention to Internet memes as linguistic research object. By using a qualitative-quantitative corpus-pragmatic approach, we worked out the multimodal character of selected constructions being instantiated within adaptations of the so called Merkel-Meme (n=632). We discuss two constructions, which can only be thought of through the interplay of a pictorial component that shows a gesture and varying linguistic elements. This is on the one hand the construction [[so* adjektiv]AdjP + Ausprägungsgrad anzeigende Armgeste] and on the other the construction [[so* artikel (adjektiv) nomen]NP + Umfang anzeigende Armgeste]. Therefore, it becomes evident that the pictorial component influences the linguistic part of the Internet meme.