What Do You Meme?

The Sociolinguistic Potential of Internet Memes

Abstract

Users of the Internet have established a unique form of communication tool commonly used on social media platforms; these are referred to as Internet memes. The term meme, however, was conceived many years before its appropriation into an Internet sphere. Where memes are units of cultural information propagated like a virus from brain to brain, Internet memes are dynamic digital artifacts that can easily be created and quickly distributed to a large social group with the intention of communication. Internet memes are not static; rather their format inspires social interactions that allow them to be modified and reworked with an infinite amount of communicative outcomes. This paper offers an exploration of the different features of Internet memes, which are identified as creational/distributional, social, as well as communicative. When combined, these features in relation to each other constitute a sociolinguistic potential.