THE WAY WE MEME:
TOWARD A DESCRIPTIVE TYPOLOGY FOR COGNITIVE SOCIOLINGUISTIC
ANALYSIS OF INTERNET MEMES
by
ANDREW JOHNSON

Thesis
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
the Degree of

MASTER OF ARTS IN LINGUISTICS
in the
FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
TRINITY WESTERN UNIVERSITY

May 2024
© Andrew Johnson, 2024

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For
Alan Turing & Aaron Swartz

Without you we would have no memes
Now we have our memes, but we are without you

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Acknowledgements
I wish to acknowledge a number of people without whom this paper would never have been
completed. First and foremost, I want to thank my spouse Meilani, who put in way more time
and patience than she had any right to, our cat Kitte, who diligently reminded me when it was
time to eat, rest, and play, and our void Demetria, who mostly hid under the bed and sulked
because Kitte didn’t want to participate in any mischief. I would like to thank my committee:
Jamin, Sean, and Steve, who demonstrated unparalleled patience for both my horrible time
management and my pretense of any kind of understanding of the fields of linguistics and/or
philosophy. I want to thank the TWU Writing Centre as a whole, and several people in
particular: Emily, Anmol, Shrawani, and Tanvi. I want to thank some of my fellow students
and staff who were along for the ride and reminded me verbally and practically that it doesn’t
matter that much how long it takes to finish: Grace, Hannah, and Danny.
I would also like to thank my fellow students who engaged (occasionally against their
will) in extensive conversations about memes: especially Frits, Nick, Christiane, and Lydia.
Additionally, I would like to thank my non-linguist friends who sent me an endless supply of
memes to analyze and hosted me while I traveled: Vess, Matthew, Jonathon, Brandon,
Rebekah, Mike, Lauren, Kyle, Mike, Lynn, Eira, Kim-Mai, and Stephen. More importantly, I
would like to thank their pets who kept me sane while I visited with them: Rugrat, Noah,
Luna, Mulberry, Kyber, Maxwell, Hurricane, Lincoln, Penny, Celty, Nona, Ginti, and even
Tika even though she might be offended that I included her; luckily, I do not believe she can
read. I want to thank my family, who cheered me on even when they didn’t understand what
I was talking about, didn’t agree with what I was saying, or didn’t hear from me for weeks at
a time. And although he didn’t directly contribute to the process of finishing my thesis, I
want to acknowledge Will,1 in part because I genuinely believe that more people should
acknowledge him, but mostly because being included in things for no reason both frustrates
and amuses him, and that’s the precise combination of emotions that meme culture at large
seeks to elicit.
Even though I know the following a bit less personally, I would also like to thank
both our overnight host and the owners of the Sovereign Grounds café, wonderful souls in

1

Cf. our will in §4.4.3.

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Minneapolis who opened their spaces for me to get some random work done in the summer
of 2022 while Meilani and I were couch-surfing across the States on our way back home. I
am also grateful for a few particular workers in Langley who kept my morale up in various
ways: Aki and Vicky consistently prepared excellent bubble tea at Meowdel Tea Shop, the
staff of Donair Hut performed miracles with falafel and feta, and the wait staff at Andreas
Restaurant and another late-night diner kept my coffee filled at all hours of the night. I also
could not have finished this project without the manufacturers and dispensaries that helped
me get my hands on the cannabis edibles that helped me approach some of my questions
from new angles and ultimately come to conclusions I otherwise would likely still not have
found.
Finally, I have to (and even mostly want to) acknowledge the entirety of the internet.
Together, you and I form the rest of the entity I refer to in this thesis as we. We are not
always in agreement, we are not always good, we do not even always have good motives; but
we collectively form the most decentralized international humanistic egalitarian culture that
has ever existed as far as we know, and it is our responsibility to safeguard this digital
landscape where ideas and information can reach all kinds of people. This thesis would
literally be meaningless and nonexistent without you, just as it might also be nonexistent
without Alan Turing’s contributions to computer science or Aaron Swartz’s contributions to
the open internet. As we continue evolving in tandem with our culture, I hope we all keep
looking back to our roots even as we look forward and Demand Progress.

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Abstract
In this thesis, I outline a functional typology for categorizing internet memes using the
cognitive linguistic theory of Conceptual Integration (CIT) and related concepts from
Construction Grammar and Relevance theory. Although cognitive linguists have analyzed the
communicative power of memes, their endeavours have yet to result in a typology that can
organize all types of memes for extensible future analysis. Some meme categorization
schemes have been proposed, but memes evolve too rapidly for these to be helpful long-term.
I argue that CIT provides the necessary tools to construct a robust typology that can support
descriptive meme analysis, emphasizing the importance of emergent dynamic meaning
creation and phatic socio-pragmatic function to meme communication. I organize memes
based on two functional concerns: 1) whether form and function explicitly correspond and 2)
whether the meme’s meaning structure applies top-down from conventionalized instructions
or bottom-up from a non-conventionalized pattern recognition process.

THE WAY WE MEME
Contents
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... ii
Abstract ............................................................................................................................. iv
Contents ..............................................................................................................................v
Figures ............................................................................................................................... vi
Abbreviations, notation, and formatting ..................................................................... viii
1. Introduction: Why bother analyzing memes? .........................................................1
1.1 Introduction................................................................................................. 1
1.2 Background ................................................................................................. 2
1.3 The problem ................................................................................................ 7
1.4 Definitions ................................................................................................... 9
1.5 Structure .................................................................................................... 15
2. Literature review: Cognitive linguistics as a foundation for meme analysis .....17
2.1 Introduction............................................................................................... 17
2.2 Review ....................................................................................................... 18
2.3 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 23
3. Theory: Accounting for lies via conceptual integration .......................................24
3.1 Introduction............................................................................................... 24
3.2 CIT elements ............................................................................................. 25
3.3 Examples of conceptual integration.......................................................... 33
3.4 Category-determining criteria .................................................................. 38
3.5 Examples of each form-function correspondent category ........................ 42
3.6 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 52
4. Analysis: Accounting for lies without losing the truth .........................................53
4.1 Introduction............................................................................................... 53
4.2 Methods ..................................................................................................... 54
4.3 Form-function correspondent meme case studies..................................... 56
4.4 Form-function anti-correspondent meme case studies ............................. 73
4.5 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 89
5. Discussion: What the lies tell us about the truth ...................................................91
5.1 Introduction............................................................................................... 91
5.2 Category division criteria ......................................................................... 91
5.3 Socio-pragmatic motivations .................................................................... 99
5.4 Toward a cognitive sociolinguistic analysis by embracing lies.............. 114
5.5 Conclusion .............................................................................................. 116
6. Conclusion: How can we work toward a meme typology? ................................117
6.1 Introduction............................................................................................. 117
6.2 My contributions ..................................................................................... 117
6.3 Theoretical implications ......................................................................... 118
6.4 Limitations .............................................................................................. 119
6.5 Recommendations ................................................................................... 120
6.6 Final summary ........................................................................................ 121
References .......................................................................................................................123

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Figures
Figure 1.1 Original trolley problem exploitable image (Prinz) .............................................. 12
Figure 1.2 Demographic differences between Instagram, Twitter, and Reddit ...................... 14
Figure 1.3 Why researchers should not ignore the void ......................................................... 15
Figure 3.1 Warning about proliferating standards (Munroe) .................................................. 25
Figure 3.2 Addressing the dangerous assumption of the mind ............................................... 26
Figure 3.3 Humorous clashing frames for the #ZESTY STRAIGHT ENTITY# space ................... 27
Figure 3.4 Master Yoda passes on ancient wisdom ................................................................ 29
Figure 3.5 Ernest Hemingway addresses Fodor’s (1987) frame problem using poetry ......... 30
Figure 3.6 A restaurant sign acting as OP confirms Hemingway’s observations .................. 31
Figure 3.7 Prototypical blend structure (adapted from Fauconnier & Turner 2002) .............. 32
Figure 3.8 The generic space as an organizing frame (Turner 2001) ..................................... 32
Figure 3.9 #FATHER# simplex network (Fauconnier & Turner 2002) .................................... 34
Figure 3.10 The Buddhist Monk mirror network (Fauconnier & Turner 2002) ..................... 36
Figure 3.11 Billboard advertisement featuring a cowboy with a drooping cigarette .............. 37
Figure 3.12 Impotent Smoking Cowboy double-scope network ............................................ 38
Figure 3.13 Unidimensional Top-Down structure .................................................................. 43
Figure 3.14 Multidimensional Top-Down structure ............................................................... 43
Figure 3.15 Unidimensional Bottom-Up structure ................................................................. 43
Figure 3.16 Multidimensional Bottom-Up structure .............................................................. 44
Figure 3.17 Frame structure of (3.1) ....................................................................................... 45
Figure 3.18 Frame structure of (3.2) ....................................................................................... 47
Figure 3.19 Frame structure of (3.3) ....................................................................................... 49
Figure 3.20 Frame structure of (3.4) ....................................................................................... 51
Figure 4.1 CIT diagram for (4.1) ............................................................................................ 58
Figure 4.2 CIT diagram for (4.2) ............................................................................................ 61
Figure 4.3 CIT diagram for (4.3) ............................................................................................ 66
Figure 4.4 CIT diagram for (4.4) ............................................................................................ 71
Figure 4.5 A modified Drakeposting meme that is in fact not anti-correspondent................. 74
Figure 4.6 Unaltered reaction image This is fine (Green) ....................................................... 75
Figure 4.7 CIT diagram for (4.5) ............................................................................................ 76

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Figure 4.8 CIT diagram for (4.6) ............................................................................................ 80
Figure 4.9 Meme stating that all cops avoid "blue" ................................................................ 83
Figure 4.10 Failure CIT diagram for (4.7) .............................................................................. 84
Figure 4.11 Success CIT diagram for (4.7)............................................................................. 85
Figure 4.12 Original "Loss" comic (Buckley 2008) ............................................................... 87
Figure 4.13 Abstract image of the #LOSS# frame ................................................................... 87
Figure 4.14 Example (4.7) with #LOSS# shape superimposed ................................................ 88
Figure 5.1 Proper GREETING script for a member of r/prequelmemes .................................... 98
Figure 5.2 Nonlinear rendering of the linearly represented meme Malicious medicine ....... 102
Figure 5.3 CIT diagram for (5.1) .......................................................................................... 103
Figure 5.4 Framed gloss map of meme Malicious medicine ................................................ 104
Figure 5.5 Epic handshake simplex blend for the meme Malicious medicine...................... 105
Figure 6.1 Death may be certain, but our perspective is not................................................. 120

Tables
Table 1.1 Possible modality counts for example (1.2)............................................................ 13
Table 4.1 Proposed meme category schema ........................................................................... 55

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Abbreviations, notation, and formatting
One of my goals in pursuing this research is to advocate for the importance of treating
multimodal communication methods with proper academic rigour and validity. Since I have
this opinion, it seems disingenuous to me to prepare a thesis presenting a typology for memes
without including any multimodal contents in the paper body. As such, I have included some
images within the text labeled as “Figure” where I have exaggerated their demonstrative
relevance. These images should be treated as part of the text body and therefore read and
interpreted in-line with the text, more like a block quote than a true figure.
In order to avoid implying unclear or unintentional philosophical assumptions, I
intentionally avoid terms such as hearer, addressee, conversational participant, decoder, and
mind. For the same reason, I have made careful use of first-person pronouns in this thesis.
When I use a singular form (e.g., I, me, my), I am speaking in my capacity as the author of
this thesis. However, when I use a plural form (e.g., we, us, our), I am speaking as an
interlocutor on the receiving end of some piece of meme communication begun by another
person; I refer to this other communicator as OP, or the original poster. I have chosen to use
the plural pronoun for this purpose because a meme-maker or meme-sharer (OP) always has
an implied intended audience of more than one person. Even if some or many instances of
meme communication are one-on-one, memes are understood to be addressed to members of
a group. In a hypothetical case where one single person created a meme and shared it with
one other single person with no intention of the meme having meaning outside that
interaction or being passed on, the lack of a plural audience would almost certainly be part of
the joke.
I use the following abbreviations and other symbolic notation in the text body and
diagrams to aid in clarity. I use square brackets to bound conceptual constituents (e.g.,
[ELEMENT]), hash symbols to bound anything equivalent to a space (e.g., #SPACE#, #FRAME#,
etc.), angle brackets to bound the actual conceptual coactivation-binding part of a relation
(e.g., <RELATION>), and curly braces to bound a complete relation that has at least two
elements and a relation between them (e.g., {[A]<RELATES>[B]}). These symbols inherently
imply that we are construing their conceptual contents because in theory any component can
be conceptualized as any other kind of component. I have presented several abbreviations
and examples of my notation in the table below:

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OP

Original poster, that is, the person who first transmitted the meme

1PL pronoun

Meme “reader,” that is, a person attempting to understand the meme

CONCEPT

Function (semantic) component of a construction identified by the
identifier concept

concept

Form (lexical) component of the construction identified by the
identifier concept

#CONCEPT#

Mental space, frame, or blend identified by the identifier concept

[CONCEPT]

Element of a space identified by the identifier concept

<RELATES>

A conceptual relation identified by the identifier relates, relation, etc.

[[A] [B]]

Compound element equivalent to {[A] <RELATES> [B]}

{[A] <RELATES> [B]}

Explicit conceptual relation between [A] and [B]

#{[A]<RELATES>[B]}#

The entirety of the simplex, mirror, or single-scope blend explicitly
identified by its defining relation {[A] <RELATES> [B]}

{0[1A]1 <B>0 [1C]1}0

In order to improve readability, I have used subscripts to label the
brackets for particularly complex relations. All entities with a given
subscript number are at the same level of nesting.

#A’#

A reinterpreted or re-blended version of the space #A#

#A0#

The 0th space that, when blended with the other n input spaces labelled
#A1#–#An#, results in the space #A#

[A]
[A]

[A]
[B]

Red colouring

The projection of the element [A] from one space into another space
{[A] <IS SOMEHOW RELATED TO> [B]}
A clash or an element that results from a clash

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1. Introduction: Why bother analyzing memes?

1.1

Introduction

Communication, that is to say, transmitting complex meaning from one person to another, is
a completely impossible task that we humans manage to engage in with high proficiency and
an incommunicable degree of success almost constantly. It involves compressing infinities of
processed sensory information into a finite shareable form, expanding that finite form back
into infinity, and negotiating between communicators to ensure that the two infinities are
similar enough to satisfy both parties; all of this occurring constantly and in wildly brief time
scales. Considering the vastness and fluidity of sensory experience, any success at all seems
miraculous. And yet, attempting this task – and indeed succeeding in it – is one of the
fundamental defining traits of humanity as a species, to the extent that humans are compelled
to perform this impossible task, even when the primary biologically evolved method – speech
– is too limiting. Unlike all other animals, humans invented a means to accomplish this task
when separated by time, space, (dis)ability, environment, or other limitations. And then,
when technology cybernetically connected all (kinds of) humans in existence and they

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achieved other means for packaging and transmitting meaning such as images or videos,
humans immediately turned to applying these new packaging materials to this impossible
task of communicating. Now, humans can be separated by immense spaces – literally, if they
are in outer space or on another celestial body – and still have a means to communicate with
other humans by sharing text, images, and other mixed modalities via the internet.
In this chapter, I briefly present the background behind internet meme culture and
communication as well as my interest and goals as an internet/digital citizen and linguist. I
also present my contribution to the gap in linguistic scholarship surrounding memes by
treating memes as multimodal conceptual blends in the same school of thought as Dancygier,
Vandelanotte, Geeraerts, Zenner, and others (Dancygier & Vandelanotte 2017; Dancygier &
Vandelanotte forthcoming; Geeraerts & Zenner 2016; Vandelanotte & Zenner 2018; Zenner
& Geeraerts 2018). I do this in order to propose a functional proto-typology for meme
categorization, drawing in particular on the work of Fauconnier & Turner (2002) for my
analysis. I then outline the scope of my argument and establish working definitions for
internet memes and other related terms. Finally, I outline the structure of the thesis.
1.2

Background

1.2.1 My interest
To the extent that language is about communication, and communication is about connection,
nothing in the past century has influenced language more than the internet. During the Covid19 pandemic, I, an American, responded meaningfully in an online gaming community’s
Discord chat using the image in example (1.1) – without speaking or typing – to a digital
comment made by a Dane. Simultaneously, a Kiwi, a Persian, a Frenchman, and an
Argentinian, all presumably located in their home countries, received my meaning and
continued the conversation. I participated in a communicative act and shared a cultural
encounter with others spanning every inhabited continent except Africa even though no two
of us shared a country of origin and only two of us shared a native language. Despite the fact
that we were about as disconnected as humans on earth could possibly be due to our physical
distance and to being in a global pandemic lockdown, we were able to laugh at a joke about
an experience the six of us shared because of communication via meme. Without the internet,
this communicative event would have been impossible (disregarding the fact that I likely
would never have met these people).

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Startling pursuer

Until the past few years, linguists have treated language as something that occurs
exclusively in biological or physical modalities. Real-time communication occurs via voice
or hand signs, and delayed communication occurs via printed or engraved text. However, the
ubiquity of the internet has resulted in a kind of cybernetic culture, a blend of analogue and
digital that has provided a new modality for communication: digital media. This new
modality has allowed for reliable preservation, instant modification, and rapid transmission
of cultural content in ways that have never previously been possible, and this is true of
nothing more so than the internet meme.
1.2.2 Prior research
As the internet developed into Web 2.0, i.e., websites began to prioritize participatory usergenerated content, it evolved into a new medium for communication and socialization. This
evolution of the internet’s social relevance affected offline culture certainly, but a new
possibility for subculture participation emerged, one that exists primarily in the digital realm.
This originally allowed people who did not prefer active, in-person socializing to socialize
with others who have similar preferences, and from this connection rooted in disconnection,
new social practices (that would be out of place, perhaps, in in-person interaction) managed
to flourish. This expanded into a culture (and many subcultures) that allowed people to
ritualistically communicate the shared experience of not being social (Nissenbaum &

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Shifman 2022). This inherent irony was not lost on the participants in this culture and its
many subcultures; and much (and in some cases all) of the communication that occurs in
internet culture is ironic or sarcastic in its unmarked form and only serious in its marked form
(Katz & Shifman 2017; Trillò, Hallinan & Shifman 2022; Tulloch 2023).2
The communication style that developed out of this new communication medium
across a new communication modality – blending text and image, and later video and audio –
demonstrates these similar traits of irony- and humour-centred style. However, since
connection-in-disconnection and novelty also act as core values of this culture and its
subcultures, internet memes tend to demonstrate these traits as well, especially the less
formulaic and more phatic variety.
The term meme is not new; Richard Dawkins (1976) is usually credited with coining
the English word due to the popularity of his book The selfish gene, but the concept may in
fact be far older. For Dawkins, a meme is a cultural replicator which facilitates the
preservation, modification, and transmission of cultural information, analogous to how the
gene facilitates biological evolution. Dawkins intended the word to be a multilingual pun:
Meme rhymes both conceptually and phonetically with the established term gene while also
invoking the semantics of the French même ‘same’ and the first syllable of the Greek
mimema (pl. mimemata) ‘imitated.’ After internet users began using meme to refer to certain
kinds of digitally transmissible content, psychologist Limor Shifman defined internet memes
as “digital content units with common characteristics, created with awareness of each other,
and circulated, imitated, and transformed via the internet by many users” (2014).
The memetic history of the meme meme is quite a bit more complicated. Biologist
Richard Semon proposed a more general concept of the replicator in 1904, writing in German
well before Dawkins and using the term mnema, after Mneme, the Greek muse of memory
(Laurent 1999). The philosopher Christopher Morrissey (2024) proposes an even earlier
origin, arguing that Plato’s notion of mimemata could be rendered in English as ‘meme,’

Consider for example the subreddit r/askreddit’s “serious” tag for posts that disallow sarcastic responses and
its lack of a “nonserious” tag. In this thesis, in the interest of maintaining this ironic informality, I have
explicitly re-presented memes as I came across them, meaning I have preserved poor cropping or low image
quality (unless it directly hindered meaning communication) where possible. This is a critical part of the meme
aesthetic, and artifacts such as poor cropping and quality deterioration help reinforce the idea that these images
are transmitted rather than created.
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perhaps even more accurately than its usual (and famously unsatisfying) rendering of
‘imitation.’ This is particularly compelling considering how deeply both mimemata and
internet memes are separately associated with art and creativity. Morrissey goes on to suggest
that Aristotle’s notion of the enthymeme as a “rhetorical syllogism” (Mirhady 2007) designed
to elicit “emotionally-charged enjoyment” may in fact serve as a “concise formulation of the
basic phenomenon of an Internet meme” (Morrissey 2024: 3). Dawkins’s memes spread
without conscious intention, and Internet memes (like enthymemes) depend on some degree
of intention from both interlocutors. Further, several anthropologists (Blackmore 2008;
Pescheck 2010; Kirby 2013; MacWhinney & O’Grady 2013; Zehentner 2019) have
compared linguistic constructions to socio-cultural memes à la Dawkins (1976), and Dawkins
himself agrees that it is critical to avoid conflating these two definitions of meme, as the
“internet meme is a hijacking of the original idea” (Marshmallow Laser Feast 2014: 4:15). In
other words, internet memes are inappropriate examples of Dawkinsean memes, but the fact
that we use Dawkins’s term meme to refer to internet memes is itself an excellent example of
a Dawkinsean meme, with the notion of mimemata having been transmitted from Plato to us
entirely of its own “desire” to persist and be transmitted.
As memes developed as a communication mechanism and internet culture continued
to intertwine more and more deeply with offline society and culture, memes became
increasingly important to communication in general, and people outside of the original
online-only subcultures began using memes to increase their communicative impact.
Corporations are adapting meme-stylings into their corporate identities and marketing
campaigns (e.g., corporate social media picking performative fights with each other),
governments and private citizens are using memes to disseminate information and
disinformation (e.g., the entire digital landscape during COVID), and more “mainstream”
media is commenting on this cultural trend directly (e.g., late night talk shows featuring or
even creating memes) or indirectly (e.g., the television show The Boys featuring a major plot
point where memes are used as a weapon). Memes have become a modality of
communication in their own right – in addition to spoken, written, and signed communication
– complete with their own grammar, semantics, pragmatics, discourse structures, genres, and
even intertextuality (Dancygier & Vandelanotte 2017; Vandelanotte & Zenner 2018; Zenner
& Geeraerts 2018; Dancygier & Vandelanotte forthcoming).

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1.2.3 Objectives
Linguists and anthropologists have begun researching digital communication, but
understanding this new mode grows increasingly more important by the day. The recent
pandemic demonstrated this starkly: For the first time in history, neither spoken nor written
communication was the primary method of communication for humanity at large; rather,
digital communication has filled this role. Sure, we used our voices and constructed textual
messages, but we also sent meaningful images that we viewed via screens, and our spoken
and sung communication was digitized and transmitted by microphone and speaker instead of
atmosphere alone. The mere possibility of entirely cybernetic communication is scholastic
imperative enough to treat memes seriously, but for much of 2020–2021, I can count on one
hand the number of people with whom I interacted without any digital interface.
For many people, internet and/or meme culture may be their primary participative
socialization method already. For Millennials and Gen Z, many of our earliest chosen
friendships were made online or fostered by the internet, and online dating is now a default
method for meeting romantic prospects. Personally, many of my acquaintanceships are
maintained almost exclusively by digital interaction. Regarding the situation in (1.1), I was
able to share a joke – that most other Americans would not have found funny – with people
from five other continents. In that interaction, my social role was defined entirely by my
digital culture, not by my national, political, or religious culture, or any other trait from
analogue culture.
The birth of memes as a communication mode and their rise to prominence cannot
be ignored, and their study stands to do more than address the quirk of human socialization
that is our urge to utilize anything as a transmitter of meaning (Vandelanotte & Zenner 2018;
Geeraerts & Zenner 2016; Dancygier & Vandelanotte forthcoming). I suggest that, with Web
2.0 prioritizing user-generated content,3 for the first time in human history, we are witnessing
the birth of a semi-permanent communication modality while another semi-permanent
communication modality was also present (digital communication while written
communication was present). It is possible, likely even, that understanding memes will

Note that we may very well be entering the era of Web 3.0 soon – or we may already be there – due to the
ubiquity of AI-generated content.
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provide answers concerning the emergence and development of natural language, answers
that until previously were lost to history and observation.
In this thesis, I intend to establish a technique for analyzing memes as linguistic
elements of internet communication and culture that is based heavily in both descriptive and
cognitive linguistics, hopefully leading to a typology for internet memes with further
research. Additionally, I seek to highlight the fundamental importance of conceptual
relationships and interactions (function content) instead of individual insular, modular
components (form content) when communicating in this culture (and, indeed, in all cultures).
Finally, I intend to prompt future researchers to undertake the enormous task that is
explaining the way we meme.
1.3

The problem

1.3.1 Significance
Memes have taken the internet, and therefore all of modern culture, by storm. They have
become a ubiquitous component of conversation in nearly every mode to the extent that
memes that have never existed (at least graphically) may be described in text messages or
voice communication. They are fundamental pieces of communication, but they cannot easily
be reduced to words or sentences or any atomic piece of verbal utterance, at least not a single
atomic utterance that can get repeated through use to become its own word or construction.
Memes are made of something different than words, but they still function to transmit
meaning.
Memes have increasingly affected popular culture in recent years, to the extent that
they have served as a primary source of news for certain groups of people, especially notably
during the 2016 US election, the Covid-19 pandemic a few years later, and the global
conflicts that have escalated since. This has prompted linguistic investigation using multiple
frameworks, particularly within the fields of cognitive linguistics and relevance theory.
These treatments have yielded interesting results, but no treatment has offered a reliable
organizational scheme for categorizing memes.
Because memes change so rapidly, many folk categories have arisen. These
categories have allowed scholars to analyze the communicative processes taking place when
people use memes to transmit meaning; however, this tendency toward rapid change has
rendered these categories neither timeless nor predictive. Until now, these categories have

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used formal or circumstantial features for delineation (e.g., key words like when or no one:,
genres such as Advice Animals or Wojak, or internet eras like early 2000s, 2010s, etc.), but
these folk categories provide little insight into how memes work or what they are doing, and
so they offer little to the process of descriptive meme analysis. In fact, these categories may
instead obscure the process, as in cases where the inherent subversion required for meme
success involves subverting even the basic formal “rules” that prototypical category members
must follow.
Although meme form is directly observable, form lies.4 This has left memes – and
internet communication more generally – under-researched and lacking organization,
although this is changing rapidly, as I discuss in Chapter 2. Linguistics has limited
scholarship resembling a typology for memes; instead, the scholarship consists of useful but
disconnected cognitive linguistic descriptions of meme function. Linguists know memes are
important, but the scholarship at present only describes memes’ infinitely variable function
without descriptively categorizing them using a reliable technique that can account for their
inevitable future evolution. Linguistics overall has yet to adopt a rigorous method for
analyzing memes as a communication method in relation (and/or contrast) to spoken, written,
and signed language.
1.3.2 Proposed solution
If linguistics has any hope of describing how memes transmit meaning and why they do this
so effectively for so many people, linguists must find a way to construct categories that take
into account how memes work fundamentally and how the subversion works. Like with
investigating verbal communication, linguistics must look past observable content (sounds,
words, memes) and ask questions about unobservable content (cognition, meaning), but
linguists can only test answers by looking at the resulting observable content again. In order
to make general claims about memes that reveal trends that remain true for periods longer
than weeks or months, linguistics needs categories that divide communicative instances
based on function rather than form.

4

For more detailed argumentation, see Nietzsche (2008). Even when formal information is as explicit and
straightforward as possible, it still necessarily does not tell the whole story of the infinities of functional content
present in meaning; therefore, form necessarily lies.

THE WAY WE MEME

9

Constructing a typology using function-informed categories requires a framework or
set of frameworks that:
1) does not restrict form based on modality constraints,
2) makes claims about the mechanisms of cognition, and
3) allows for, and in fact encourages, boundless subversion.
I propose that Fauconnier & Turner’s (2002) Conceptual Integration theory (CIT), working
alongside relevant subdisciplines within cognitive linguistics, both meets these requirements
and meshes with the rest of the findings that prior linguistic research has uncovered about
meme communication. Therefore, I draw from existing multimodal-friendly cognitivefocused linguistic disciplines to establish a framework for interacting with memes. I use CIT
to examine how meaning occurs cognitively, focusing especially on the importance of
connecting ideas (i.e., conceptual blending) to meme vitality. I use Construction Grammar
(CxG) to examine the semiotic components of meme constructions and how form and
function work together to communicate semantic information, especially in a modality that
allows for and even demands rapid change over time. Finally, I use Relevance theory (RT) to
examine how these multimodal constructions transmit their semantic content as they occur in
their digital environment. After presenting my analysis, I argue that future research should
further incorporate cognitive sociolinguistics in order to verify my results. Ultimately, I argue
that cognitive linguistics offers the necessary tools for analyzing and categorizing
multimodal digital communication despite constantly evolving forms in order to better
understand the way we meme.
1.4

Definitions

1.4.1 Terminology
To mitigate terminological ambiguity, I establish working definitions for some key terms
which I use in my analysis and discussion.
First, I must identify what I mean by meme in this thesis. I begin with Shifman’s
(2014) definition of memes, but her definition includes culturally transmitted entities that
may lack a communicative purpose. I go a step further for the purposes of this thesis: A
meme must be an attempt by one internet user to communicate something to another, i.e., a
native meme speaker in the target demographic must be able to identify a free translation of
its meaning. When used as a verb, to meme means to communicate in the same tongue-in-

THE WAY WE MEME

10

cheek manner that is associated with memes, often for the purpose of causing someone to
react. While memeing usually involves transmitting memes, they are not a strict requirement.
I refer to anyone who is able to intuitively identify the nuanced meaning of most
memes with a high success rate as being a native meme speaker. This intentionally implies
that I view memes as something like a language, which is potentially true but perhaps
misleading. Insofar as a language is any set of culturally agreed upon norms that facilitate
meaning representation and communication, memes fit that definition. I do believe that this
definition is a bit too broad, but there is something intuitively understood regarding the
cultural conventions associated with memes, and the native speaker is someone who has
these intuitions. I am not here to argue extensively for memes being in and of themselves a
language, but I do believe they are something linguistic; so I think it is sensible to call
anyone intuitively fluent in their communicative use a native speaker.
The notion of the concept is helpful to address the semantic packaging of any given
utterance. A concept is some intended meaning-entity that is stored mentally. I do not mean
to address the actual physical means by which the brain stores an idea (i.e., the neurological
functions), but rather to assign a name to whatever meaning is stored. Whether it is bundles
of properties, necessary and sufficient conditions, or some other descriptor, the concept is the
base unit of meaning storage (i.e., the stuff of cognition). When a construction or lexeme is
retrieved from the constructicon or lexicon, the entry that is found (or indexed, perhaps) is
the concept.
When I refer to meaning, I mean “whatever it is that is meant,” which is to say that
meaning is the entire complex interconnected mental network, or at least the critical
components thereof, that one interlocutor intends to have another interlocutor share in order
to have achieved successful communication. I distinguish between meaning and form, but I
decline to comment on whether I believe it is distinct from form. For an excellent description
of what I mean by meaning, consult the first chapter of The way we think (Fauconnier &
Turner 2002: 1–13).
I use mode and modality, also called channels of communication in the literature, to
refer to distinct categories of formal content in conjunction with the medium in which that
content is encoded, e.g., text versus speech versus image versus recorded audio versus signed
language, etc. In this thesis, I use the term modality quite liberally; it is entirely possible that

THE WAY WE MEME

11

one modality could be an image from one domain while a second modality is an image from
an unrelated domain. For example, (1.2) depicts anywhere between five and ten modalities
according to my definition.
(1.2)

Trolley paradox

Critically, the image portion of (1.2) that includes the trolley tracks, the distressed person,
and the lever5 are certainly all the same modality because the image containing those
elements comes from the domain of the trolley problem meme frame. However, the images of

5

Cf. the original trolley problem meme image, shown in Figure 1.1 and the original thought experiment first
proposed in Foot (1967).

THE WAY WE MEME

12

Sisyphus, the Grand Hilbert Hotel, and the Ship of Theseus6 – in this case superimposed over
images of the trolley, the group of five people, and the single person, respectively – are
debatably of the same or different modalities as one another (are they from the domain of
philosophical paradoxes or are they from the domains of mythology, mathematics, and
philosophy separately?), but they are certainly from a different modality than the unmodified
portions of the original trolley problem meme image, shown in Figure 1.1. The text Sisyphus
is rolling … Is Sisyphus happy? is a distinct modality from the image content, except that
some kind of text describing the particular iteration of the Trolley Problem pictured is
expected in any given instance of a trolley problem meme. Further, the bottom portion of the
meme, including the image taken from the television show The Good Place (2016) and the
textual dialogue attributed to the character Chidi, while certainly different modalities from
one another (i.e., image and text respectively), are as a unit a distinct modality (a reaction
image, i.e., an image which can be used to indicate some specific emotional reaction to an
online utterance) from the entirety of the trolley problem meme content immediately above it.
All of these modalities – however many they may be – come together as a single meme.

Figure 1.1 Original trolley problem exploitable image (Prinz)
It is possible to count the modalities present in (1.2) using either scheme given in Table 1.1,
as well as several others.

6

In addition to the Trolley problem, this meme refers to three famous paradoxes: Sisyphus from Greek
mythology and later Camus (2018), Hilbert’s Grand Hotel (Ewald & Sieg 2013), and the Ship of Theseus from
Plutarch’s Life of Thesesus and Hobbes (1656).

THE WAY WE MEME

13

Table 1.1 Possible modality counts for example (1.2)
I.

Trolley problem meme

1

1

a. Text

2

2

b. Exploitable image

3

3

c. Paradox images

4

i.

Sisyphus

5

ii.

Hilbert Hotel

6

iii. Ship of Theseus

7

II. Good Place reaction image

8

4

a. Image

9

5

b. Text

10

Finally, I need to define some social media platforms located digitally on the
internet that are often used for meme transmission. Facebook is a multipurpose social media
platform that uses a black-box algorithm to curate user-generated content ranging from text
posts to images to video. While its original demographic was Millennial college students, it
has expanded to include members of Gen X and older, although meme-specific groups
usually skew younger. Twitter7 was a blurb-length text-based social media platform that
allowed image attachments to 140-character text posts; in fact, many memes that have a
profile picture, a handle in the format @name, some text, and a reaction image are the direct
result of users screenshotting and sharing these short Twitter posts, called tweets. Until 2023,
its demographic range was generally similar to Facebook’s, and post content could vary from
personal musings to celebrity comments to news article links. Reddit is a more anonymityfriendly multilayered social mega-community comprising mini-communities called
subreddits, whose names follow the format r/subreddit_name. Until 2023, subreddits were
largely allowed to moderate their own content, provided it was not outright hate-speech. Its

7

At the time of drafting, Twitter was still called Twitter, but by the time of publication, it will have changed its
name to X. The Internet generally regards Twitter’s time pre-X as a distinct era from its current status. Since I
did not acquire any memes from the so-called X, since most media still refers to it as “X (formerly Twitter)” or
“X/Twitter”, and since its demographics have shifted substantially since its change in ownership, to the extent
that I refer to the platform at all, I have continued calling it Twitter.

THE WAY WE MEME

14

users span the widest demographic range, with specific subreddits dividing demographics
more consistently than the site itself. Reddit is known for its nearly unlimited breadth of
potential content categories, and the only measurable restrictions depend on the requirements
set by individual subreddit moderators. Figure 1.2 offers a folk understanding of the
difference between Twitter and Reddit.

Figure 1.2 Demographic differences between Instagram, Twitter, and Reddit
Discord is a chat platform that allows participants with specific shared interests and
in specific communities to interact in topical community-internal chat megathreads related to
any topic a given community thinks is important or interesting. These communities are
almost entirely unregulated by Discord, so the only content curation is whatever community
moderators decide to exclude. Tumblr is a user-curated blog platform whose users are
primarily neurodivergent 2SLGBTQIA+ people born in the 1990s and early 2000s. Although
far less popular now than it was in its heyday, Tumblr tends to revolve around fan
communities for popular media, but this is more likely an artifact of its original
demographic’s interests when it launched rather than a specific goal of Tumblr itself. Like
Twitter, Tumblr is another source from which text-image pairs are often cropped before
circulating as memes.
In addition to these definitions, I have also provided several definitions pertaining to
cognitive linguistics in Chapter 2 and to CIT in Chapter 3.
1.4.2 Scope
I cannot interact with every variety of meme. For the purposes of this thesis, I analyze only
certain “straightforward” instances of memes that exemplify how a functional-semantic
analysis answers meaningful questions about meaning much more accurately and

THE WAY WE MEME

15

consistently than a formal analysis would. I also apply some restrictions on numbered
examples as suggested by Rule #1 of the subreddit r/memes:
1) No unedited images, gifs, webcomics, or videos
2) No screencaptures of funny or repeatable text-only social media posts
I am also largely unconcerned with whether my analyses are “correct,” only that
they are useful and repeatable. I have worked to curb the weight my intuitions play in
prompting conclusions, mostly by confirming content that was generated by my own
intuition, such as free translations, with other native meme speakers and online databases
such as Know Your Meme. I am also only attempting to show that a fairly reliable categorydividing line can be drawn somewhere in the memescape by using functional analysis where
formal analysis can only throw up its hands and stare into the void. Fortunately, as Figure 1.3
depicts, the internet has provided a means for the void to stare back.

Figure 1.3 Why researchers should not ignore the void
1.5

Structure

The structure of this thesis is as follows. In this Chapter, I have introduced the background
information necessary to frame my research. In Chapter 2, I review the literature concerning
the major topics I cover, including Relevance theory, Construction Grammar, and Conceptual
Integration theory. In Chapter 3, I outline Conceptual Integration theory further and how I
have adapted it for my analysis. In Chapter 4, I present my functional analyses of several

THE WAY WE MEME
meme case studies using my analytical technique. In Chapter 5, I discuss some of the
findings from Chapter 4, including some implications that arise. Finally, in Chapter 6, I
conclude by addressing the limitations of my research, summarising my findings, and
proposing future research directions.

16

THE WAY WE MEME

17

2. Literature review: Cognitive linguistics as a foundation
for meme analysis

2.1

Introduction

Cognitive linguistics operates according to the principle that language is primarily about
communication, and the discipline seeks to unite potentially disparate subfields of linguistics
under this principle. The meat of my analysis rests heavily on Mental Space theory and
Conceptual Integration theory (CIT), and I also refer to Construction Grammar (CxG) and
Relevance theory (RT) when the need arises. CIT focuses on how one mind8 moves between
form and function, but since I am working with forms that are not typical “utterances”
transmitted by sarcastic mind-reading interlocutors who are not typically “talking,” I
occasionally need to address either semi-syntactic form concerns using CxG or to invoke
terms from RT, which has tackled the problem of meme irony to a greater extent than other
cognitive linguistic subfields have so far. In this chapter, I overview how these three major
subdisciplines within the family of Cognitive linguistics have treated memes: first, how RT

8

I address the relationship between CIT and the term mind in §3.2.2 and Figure 3.2.

THE WAY WE MEME

18

has discussed pragmatic concerns, then, how CxG has addressed form concerns (without
ignoring function), and finally, how Mental Space theory and CIT have accounted for the
complexities of meme semantics.
2.2

Review

2.2.1 Relevance theory
Although Relevance theory (RT) as a field does not technically fall under the purview of
Cognitive linguistics proper according to some relevance theorists, the disciplines are
sufficiently complementary for my purposes (Tendahl & Gibbs 2008). RT was first proposed
by Sperber & Wilson (1986), and has since been expanded on and developed by many others
after becoming perhaps the dominant pragmatic framework in linguistics. RT attempts to
describe how communicators transmit and arrive at meaning using the principles of
minimising cognitive processing effort and maximising relevance (1986). On this view,
communication is ostensive-inferential, meaning the speaker wants the hearer to understand
that the speaker intends to communicate some information, and that the speaker believes that
the current information the hearer possesses ought to be enough for the hearer to infer the
speaker’s intended meaning (1986).
RT lends itself reasonably well to interpreting pragmatic considerations of internet
memes, especially when the sociocultural context of a specific kind of meme is known (or
easily identifiable). This is because RT focuses on cognitive processing effort instead of form
content as the decision-maker in meaning-encoding, As such, much of the discussion of irony
and humour and how they connect memes to cultural participants comes from relevance
theorists, especially Francisco Yus. Yus has extensively explored irony (1998; 2000; 2016b;
2018c; 2023a; Yus Ramos 2000) and humour (2003; 2008; 2011; 2012a; 2012b; 2013a;
2013b; 2016a; 2017a; 2018b; 2022; 2023b; Yus Ramos 1996) in popular culture including in
meme communication (2001; 2017b; 2018a; 2019; 2020; 2021a; 2023b). Several relevance
theorists have explored the pragmatics of Covid-19 memes in various sociocultural contexts
(Ambrose & Idegbekwe 2020; Yus & Maíz-Arévalo 2023). Elle Diedrichsen (2019) has
explored common ground in memes; Samuel Joshua (2020) has explored the discourse
effects of humour and irony; Chaoqun Xie (2020a; 2020b) and Kate Scott (2022) have
explored memes as metaphors. Charles Forceville (1994; 1996; 2005; 2008; 2014; 2020;

THE WAY WE MEME

19

Forceville & Urios-Aparisi 2009; Forceville & Clark 2014; Forceville & Sanchez-Querubin
2022) has also discussed how image-form connects to meaning-content.
However useful, I find that many or most relevance theoretic approaches adhere too
strongly to a fundamental binary distinction between form and function, especially Wilson,
who defends a distinction between even the natures of form and function (Sperber & Wilson
2005), and I believe relevance theorists tend to give form more prevalence in the
communication process than it should rightly possess. This, however, is becoming less
common as RT becomes more mainstream, and some relevance theorists oppose this binary
distinction quite vocally (LaPolla 2003). Still, many relevance theorists treat pragmatics as if
the following occurs: 1) form somehow packages function (although incompletely), 2) the
speaker transmits form to the recipient, and then 3) the recipient unpacks function from the
transmitted form based on relevance concerns (Sperber & Wilson 1986). However, many
memes quite obviously provide minimal or intentionally false formal information with
enormous amounts of functional meaning apparently not packaged within, so a view that
treats form and function as both processed internally (perhaps, say, form prompting for
function) fits the data better.
Additionally, memes often intentionally violate the principle of minimizing
cognitive processing effort, so in much the way RT addressed why some of Grice’s (1975)
maxims might be flouted, perhaps someone should address why RT’s primary principle
might also be flouted.9 Still, RT defines some useful terminology for referring to pragmaticlevel information that I do not intend to discard, especially common ground and incongruity
resolution, both of which are highly relevant to meme communication. LaPolla’s (2003)
notion of conventionalization as both preferable and superior to lexicalization and
grammaticalization, while not unique to RT by any means, is indispensable for my analysis.
2.2.2 Construction Grammar
Construction Grammar (CxG) is a family of syntactic frameworks that operate under the
claim that it is not words but constructions that act as the basic unit of transmitted
communication. CxG has its roots in the works of Charles Fillmore (1988; Fillmore, Kay &

9

RT might contend that this principle cannot be purposefully flouted in an instance of successful
communication. I am inclined to agree; however, instances of communication such as (4.7) and (5.7) seem to
intentionally violate this principle as part of their communicative success.

THE WAY WE MEME

20

O’Connor 1988), George Lakoff (1977; 1987), Adele Goldberg (1995), William Croft
(2001), and Ronald Langacker (1987). While the different sub-theories possess some
distinctions, the central idea behind each is that constructions are emergent pairings of form
with meaning (Langacker 1987; Goldberg 1995) identical to general semiotic signs, and
these constructions are inductively acquired rather than created (Croft 2006), so they operate
under principles either similar to or exactly the same as Darwinian replication.
Due to this shared behaviour, it is theoretically appropriate that I and other linguists
see CxG as useful to analyze internet memes. Because the definition of construction is
simple and inclusive, it is apparent that anything that fulfils its criteria ought to be reasonably
treated as a construction under CxG. Barbara Dancygier, Lieven Vandelanotte, Eline Zenner,
and Dirk Geeraerts (in different pairings) have argued that instances of multimodal
communication, internet memes in particular, ought to be treated as constructions (Geeraerts
& Zenner 2016; Dancygier & Vandelanotte 2017; Vandelanotte & Zenner 2018; Zenner &
Geeraerts 2018). Zenner & Geeraerts (2018) in particular have argued for the usefulness of
CxG in part because constructions, like memes, are noncompositional and depend on insider
knowledge for part of the process of meaning-construction; i.e., CxG assumes the need for
input from sociolinguistics. This is especially necessary for addressing memes as they
depend more obviously on socio-pragmatic features than other, more prototypical examples
of linguistic communication. Because CxG does not claim that constructions must be made
of words as the primary form component, CxG is much less restrictive concerning which
modalities it can attempt to describe; that is to say, CxG is largely modality-independent and
allows analysis of wordplay and similar creative processes across modalities. CxG naturally
lends itself to describing multimodal form-function composites, of which memes are a prime
example.
However, CxG struggles to provide a comprehensive description of meme grammar
extending the kinds of work performed by Zenner & Geeraerts (2018) except in the most
instantaneous synchronic analyses of highly prototypical memes,10 primarily because the
meme forms available for meme communication change so much faster than the word forms

10

This shortcoming is fairly ironic since CxG lends itself so well to discussing diachronic linguistic evolution in
written, signed, and spoken language, especially from a usage-based perspective (cf. Bybee & McClelland
2005; Barðdal 2008; et al.).

THE WAY WE MEME

21

available for verbal communication do. Because of this, only the most abstract (and functionaware!) construction descriptions can work to offer any kind of typology or categorization
system for meme communication, but without a reliable way to address how form and
function relate, a purely CIT analysis would only be able to address the what and almost no
how or why. In short, CxG is a wonderfully necessary tool for meme analysis, but on its own
it tells us less about meme communication than any given syntactic framework does about
verbal communication.
Because CxG is so friendly with multimodality and because it necessarily considers
both formal and functional content simultaneously, I invoke it in my analysis. It is an
excellent starting point, but it tends to focus on how speakers use functional content rather
than how the content itself functions. That is to say, CxG is necessary but not sufficient for
meme analysis.
2.2.3 Conceptual Integration theory
Conceptual Integration theory (CIT) was first proposed by Gilles Fauconnier & Mark Turner
(2002), and Turner updates and clarifies some points and eliminates some redundancies in his
later (2014) works. CIT is founded on Fauconnier’s earlier (1985) Mental Space theory,
which describes how minds package bits of information, unpacking and repacking highly
complex networked information about other highly complex networked information.
Essentially, Mental Space theory asserts that minds construct spaces where these networks
can interact, and these spaces can be expanded or compressed as necessary. The theory
focuses on how the mind constructs meaning, that is to say, how “the high-level, complex
mental operations that apply within and across domains when we think, act, or communicate”
work together to allow meaning to result (Fauconnier 1997: 1). CIT builds on this idea
further, and it argues that minds not only use these spaces but also blend the networked
information contained within them via a complex process of projection, composition,
completion, and elaboration.
In order to allow meaning to emerge via conceptual integration, the mind establishes
two distinct input spaces, which it populates with a network of information packets that are
projected into the space. Components present in these spaces are joined by relations, or
“coactivation-bindings” (Fauconnier & Turner 2002: 40), which the mind has bound together
based on some conceptual link. Depending on how useful or relevant the mind determines

THE WAY WE MEME

22

these components and relations to be, some are once again projected either into an
intermediate generic space containing a generic version of a framing situation or directly into
a blended space where the mind can scan the new blended network for implications that
might “fall out” as emergent meaning. These blends can be as simple as blending a single
entity with a category in order to draw conclusions about that entity’s potential relationships
to other entities or as complex as blending two culturally embedded concepts to prompt for
an ironic conclusion in an advertisement. CIT holds that this process is fundamental to every
kind of cognitive process, and it can explain how and why grammatical categories form, why
some words “feel” one way while others “feel” another way, or even why tasks like vision,
translation, and locomotion are so simple for humans and yet so nearly impossible for
computers (Fauconnier & Turner 2002).
CIT’s explanatory power and flexibility have encouraged many cognitive linguists
to use it to analyze all kinds of data in all kinds of modes; and in situations where form must
be discussed as well, CxG often supports CIT. Fauconnier and Turner have both collaborated
with George Lakoff (Lakoff & Turner 1989; Fauconnier & Lakoff 2009) to address how CIT
handles metaphor.11 Barbara Dancygier (2002; 2008; 2009; 2011; 2012; 2016b; 2016a;
2017), Lieven Vandelanotte (2009; 2015; 2021; Dancygier & Vandelanotte 2009; Dancygier
& Vandelanotte 2016; Dancygier & Vandelanotte 2017; Dancygier & Vandelanotte
forthcoming; Dancygier & Vandelanotte forthcoming), and Eve Sweetser (1996; 2001; 2010;
Dancygier & Sweetser 2014; Dancygier & Sweetser 2005) have all utilized CIT to analyze
monomodal and multimodal communication, including internet memes.
CIT’s flexibility does, however, come with a downside: It does not address the
neurochemical mechanics of its operations. This is not an especially huge problem for now;
the technology to fully test the details of many of its operations does not yet exist. For that
matter, much of cognitive linguistics suffers from a similar weakness, in that it inherently
attempts to describe something that is literally unobservable. For now, and for my analysis

11

If Morrissey (2024) is correct about the relationship between internet memes and the intuitive-emotional
reasoning of Aristotelian enthymemes (see §1.2.2), then CIT is especially appropriate for analyzing meme
communication. Aristotle’s characterization of emotions as logoi enuloi ‘en-mattered statements’ corresponds
quite strongly to the cognitive linguistic notions of embodiment and metonymy, and certain examples such as
“anger is a boiling of the blood surrounding the heart” (Kennedy 1991) would be right at home as examples in
Lakoff (1987) or Kövecses (2005), had Aristotle not been writing millennia earlier.

THE WAY WE MEME

23

especially, outlining kinds of operations instead of mechanics of operations is all that is
necessary, and at that CIT excels.
CIT possesses a core feature that makes it extremely helpful for addressing memes
as opposed to communication in other modalities: Memes often present space-building forms
directly to their intended recipient. This probably does minimize cognitive processing effort,
but it is significant to all of cognitive linguistics that presenting space-builder forms with a
touch of framing and stance-taking information does in fact minimize cognitive effort. If CIT
truly is as powerful a tool for handling memes as I believe it is, then this usefulness hints at
something about the nature of cognition that verbal language has not been able to uncover.
Because of how powerful CIT is, it runs the risk of potentially over-describing everything,
and thus explaining nothing (Gibbs 2000; Coulson & Oakley 2001). Due to its power and
functional focus, I argue that CIT is necessary but not sufficient to address meme
communication.
2.3

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have established why I have chosen to use cognitive linguistics, specifically
the subdisciplines of RT, CxG, and CIT, for my analysis, and I have outlined the current state
of the literature regarding meme analysis. In the next chapter, I build on this foundation by
exploring CIT in more detail and outlining my technique for applying CIT to memes in order
to work toward a functional typology for meme categorization.

THE WAY WE MEME

24

3. Theory: Accounting for lies via conceptual integration

3.1

Introduction

Due to their increasing popularity and importance to all aspects of modern culture, memes
have recently become the new frontier of linguistic research. Many researchers and lay
people have tried to organize memes, and an equally great number of potential systems have
been formally published or informally suggested. However, no one seems to be able to agree
on what system works best, and none of the systems currently in place have any predictive
power. Linguists lack a typology for memes, and the reason for this is not difficult to
identify: Memes evolve too quickly and possess far too many varieties of form (and
allowable forms!) to be treated like the communication methods we traditionally understand
as language. Further, every aspect of meme culture is thoroughly saturated with irony to the
extent that native speakers can almost always identify unironic and improperly ironic memes
(especially advertisements disguised as memes) immediately. Therefore, whatever
framework I adopt in order to begin creating this typology must be able to consistently
handle rapid change, emergent meaning, and infinities of form and mode, but it also must
arbitrate outright disagreements between form and function when a given meme utilizes
extensive form-level irony. I propose that CIT is sufficiently flexible to address the semantic

THE WAY WE MEME

25

complexities of memes, and, further, I propose that, when used in tandem with CxG and
taking into account critical notions from within RT, CIT has the power to outline a robust
functional analytical technique eventually leading to a typology for meme communication.12

Figure 3.1 Warning about proliferating standards (Munroe)
In this chapter, I outline how CIT elements appear in meme form, addressing blends,
spaces, frames, relations, compressions, and blending mechanics. Then, I provide some of
Fauconnier & Turner’s (2002) prototypical examples of integration networks in action.
Finally, I outline the rationale behind my proposed technique and provide memes that
illustrate positive and negative examples of two of my three proposed analytical criteria.
3.2

CIT elements

In order to begin addressing memes, I first need to define and exemplify the key CIT
elements that I use to analyze memes. The most critical elements are blends, spaces, frames,
relations, clashes, and compressions (Fauconnier & Turner 2002).
3.2.1 Blends
Blends are imaginative situations that we mentally assemble as we attempt to conceptualize
and understand new information. When blending, we apply some characteristics from one
scenario and some characteristics from one or more other scenarios and by using analogy,
intuition, and other imaginative mental techniques, attempt to complete and elaborate mental
information regarding what implications might arise in the blended situation. The scenarios
from which we selectively apply characteristics are spaces and frames, and the characteristics

12

Ideally, we do this without running afoul of the error that XKCD warns of in Figure 3.1.

THE WAY WE MEME

26

are connected by relations. At face value, this is apparently straightforward, but as
Fauconnier & Turner (2002) repeatedly demonstrate, the process is remarkably complex.
3.2.2 Spaces
Spaces are necessarily amorphous and difficult to define, but in general, a mental space is a
conceptual packet of information “distinct from linguistic structure but built up … according
to guidelines provided by the linguistic expressions” (Fauconnier 1997: 7). To use Set theory
a bit more metaphorically than Fauconnier does, spaces are the curly braces and available
empty space between them containing (but not necessarily including or being defined by) the
elements within. Mental spaces are the stage that the mind13 conjures for conceptual
interactions to play out on, and they can be thoroughly populated by a massive number of
conceptual elements, or they can be largely bare with only a few conceptual elements. Any
blend must have at least two input spaces or there is nothing to blend, and memes are no
different. Often (but not always) memes utilize two modalities to differentiate the two most
significant input spaces, but this is not the primary defining feature that separates spaces.

Figure 3.2 Addressing the dangerous assumption of the mind

Fauconnier & Turner (2002) throw around the term mind like it’s a given. For reasons that the somehow far
less problematic 2009 version of Kanye expresses in Figure 3.2, I try to avoid mind except when I’m directly
paraphrasing them.
13

THE WAY WE MEME

27

I treat each collection of clearly related formal elements within a meme as the formal
space-builder stimulus for a given space. Note that the collection of formal elements is not
the space, but instead it prompts the mind to build (or recall) the space, similar to how the
lexical identifier bird is distinct from but utterly, fundamentally, and inseparably related to
the concept BIRD. The collected elements within the meme prompt the mind to construct the
related space (the same semiotic process as bird → BIRD). Critically, because the mind is an
imagination machine using fluid and fuzzy categories, there is theoretically no limit to what
elements can be contained within a space, so a space absolutely can contain one or more
entities, other spaces, or entire blends.
3.2.3 Frames
Frames are organizing packages of networked information that provide structure (including
boundaries) to spaces. According to Fauconnier (1997), a single frame is a network of
mutually dependent conceptual elements such that, were one element not present, the entire
network would fall apart.

Figure 3.3 Humorous clashing frames for the #ZESTY STRAIGHT ENTITY# space
For example, a hypothetical space containing the elements [ZESTY] and [STRAIGHT] might be
describing either a particularly prepared fried potato or a particular person’s apparently
unique sexuality. Applying either the frame #FRIES# or #PERSON# to said space imposes a

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structured network on the elements, and if any of the elements in that network were missing,
the frame would lose its meaning. The humour of many internet memes comes from applying
conflicting frames; for example, Figure 3.3 depicts a meme whose humour relies on applying
both #FRIES# and #PERSON# to the space containing [ZESTY] and [STRAIGHT].
A space can have any number of frames, including zero (Fauconnier & Turner 2002).
Some formal features of memes act as clear, undeniable frames, such as the boundary of the
image, the boundary between the meme and extra-memetic information like OP’s username,
and the boundary or boundaries between subcomponents of the meme, like panels of a comic
or the separation of modalities. However, there is a more elusive variety of frame that is less
obvious but equally as crucial: the semantic-level organising frame for at least one input
space. For memes, at least two of these framed input spaces should arise by the time the
blend has been fully run, but sometimes fewer frames will be clear at the beginning. Usually,
native speakers of memes consider the two (or more) final frames to be the meme’s topic(s),
so a meme shared within the Reddit community r/lotrmemes should have at least one frame
come from a domain related to Lord of the Rings (often but not always the image), a meme
shared within r/adhdmemes should have at least one frame come from a domain related to
ADHD (often but not always text), etc.
In this thesis, I distinguish between conceptual (semantic) and formal frames, but this
is not because I believe there is an inherent division; rather, it is because I believe this
distinction to be helpful in some cases since so-called formal frames are more obvious and
less dependent on insider knowledge. A more helpful distinction lies in how
conventionalized a certain framing prompt has become. Formal frames use juxtaposition to
indicate frame separation, a highly conventionalized technique,14 but I do not wish to claim
that juxtaposed elements are more or even differently framed than elements that are framed
using other techniques, nor do I wish to claim that juxtaposition defines framing to any
extent. For example, sequential images in a comic strip, consecutive paragraphs in a thesis,
lexical elements with grammatical cases, and the conceptual information identified by Merck
and Viet Cong in Figure 5.2 in §5.3.1 are all equivalently framed. However, that same
conceptual content from Figure 5.2 is framed differently from the conceptual content

14

Refer to Johnson’s (1990) notion of the LINK schema.

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identified by semantics and pragmatics in example (3.3) because the image-modality content
of the Epic handshake meme is highly conventionalized, while the image-modality content of
the Now kiss meme is far less conventionalized.
3.2.4 Relations
Relations are the guideposts for how the mind blends elements within frames and spaces into
something that has the potential to be meaningful. They mentally bind one element to another
(Fauconnier & Turner 2002). Relations can arise implicitly from within spaces (inner-space
relations), usually due to mini-blends that come together to construct spaces, and often
utterly unconsciously to the thinker; or they can connect elements between spaces in crossspace mappings (outer-space relations). With memes, inner-space relations are usually
implicit (or at least we are expected to supply them as best we can without them being
explicitly called for), while outer-space relations can be explicitly depicted or supplied
intuitively during the blending process.
However, there is no guarantee that every conjured relation is valid, and when two
relations appear to be mutually incompatible, they clash. Clashing relations must be resolved
in order to be projected in the final blend. Often, this is invisible and insignificant: If a clash
occurs at a specific level (e.g., the original Ship of Theseus is not the same as the refurbished
Ship of Theseus), this clash may be resolved by a category-level framing element where the
clash is not present (e.g., the Ship of Theseus is still arguably the same Ship of Theseus).
Other times, the clash is significant but unimportant to the blend, and it can simply be
discarded and, therefore, it is not projected into the final blend. Fauconnier & Turner (2002)
provide only these two solutions, but, as Master Yoda expresses in Figure 3.4:

Figure 3.4 Master Yoda passes on ancient wisdom
Sometimes the clash is the meaning that emerges from the process of running the blend.
When this happens, the clash is maintained in the blend, and most often this occurs as either
an indicator of or the result of irony. If a clashing relation is explicitly depicted in the meme,

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it cannot be discarded when the final blend is run. Much of the humour and irony in memes
comes from an unexpected set of relations, clashing or not, being maintained in the final
blend when meaning emerges.
3.2.5 Compressions
Compressions are less important to distinguish in my analysis, but any kind of cognitive
component can be compressed (or expanded) into any other kind of cognitive component of
any degree of complexity. Usually they offer a global perspective or a more digestible scale
for human understanding (Fauconnier & Turner 2002). For the most part, there is little need
to call attention to all of these compression processes; in fact, if I were to attempt to do this
for every compression in the following case studies, I would not be able to complete even a
single one of the analyses because there are likely a near-infinite number of compressions,
expansions, and blends for each component of each case study. Fodor (1987) identifies this
pervasive infinity as the frame problem, yet, as Hemingway summarizes in Figure 3.5 and El
Arroyo confirms in Figure 3.6, this is just how mental networks work. Instead, to avoid this
notorious frame problem, I mention only compressions that are critical to understanding each
case study.

Figure 3.5 Ernest Hemingway addresses Fodor’s (1987) frame problem using poetry

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Figure 3.6 A restaurant sign acting as OP confirms Hemingway’s observations
3.2.6 The blending process
Since our inner world’s only access to the objective outer world comes through perception,
there currently is not a way to inject a whole space directly into a so-called mind, so all
communication requires prompting someone else to build a space and hoping that the
recipient’s semiosis process builds a space that is fairly close to what the communicator
wants their target to build. This process of resolving a blend’s emergent structure involves
four major operations, which Fauconnier & Turner (2002: 47–48) call projection,
composition, completion, and elaboration. Projection involves determining which form
components’ conceptual counterparts should be treated as conceptual elements that are
salient enough to be accessible in the blending process. Composition involves placing
elements into a space and any appropriate organising frame. Completion involves filling in
any necessary missing pieces when a frame demands more elements than were projected.
Elaboration involves extrapolating new information based on projected, composed, or
completed information. With a top-down blend, the projection and composition operations
occur for the most part in their entirety before completion and elaboration begin. With a
bottom-up blend, projection and composition occur in parallel with completion and
elaboration as completed and elaborated information will need to be projected and composed
back into the blend in order for the final blend to run properly. Figure 3.7 depicts the basic
structure of a conceptual blend, and §3.3 outlines this further.

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Figure 3.7 Prototypical blend structure (adapted from Fauconnier & Turner 2002)
In order for us to assemble meaning, we begin by identifying some connection (perceived or
presumed) between some entities, using a process Johnson (1990) calls the LINK schema.
Then, we attempt to structure these connections and merge them into something meaningful,
resulting in, hopefully, a successful blend.

Figure 3.8 The generic space as an organizing frame (Turner 2001)
This structuring process can occur in two ways, which Žolt Papišta (2022) calls top-down
and bottom-up. In short, top-down means the blending process starts with two input spaces

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and a conventionalized prompt that communicates structural information, and bottom-up
means the process starts with an input space and some relations and a non-conventionalized
prompt that demands structure be identified and applied from experience. Although the
generic space is called a space, it is helpful to think of it as framing information instead
(after all, a frame is a special kind of space), as Turner (2001) identifies in Error! Reference
source not found.. If a generic space exists, it imposes a minimal structural requirement on
the resulting blend, and whether we are told this minimal structure requirement or we intuit it
is the primary distinction between a top-down and a bottom-up blend.
3.3

Examples of conceptual integration

Finally, before moving on to my proposed technique, I present three of Fauconnier &
Turner’s (2002) examples of blends in order of least to greatest complexity. Of least
complexity is the simplex network, which maps specific entities to categories, often invisibly
and at the level of grammar. Next, the mirror network blends two input spaces with identical
frames often but not necessarily for non-figurative comparison. Finally, the double-scope
network blends two input spaces, both of whose distinct framing information are selectively
projected into the final blend; the most imaginative kinds of blending, including jokes,
complex metaphors, and indeed memes are double-scope or multi-scope blends. Fauconnier
& Turner (2002) do identify an additional blend prototype, the single-scope network, which
blends two input spaces where one space’s framing information gives the other space its
framing information; almost all prototypical conceptual metaphor-metonymies are singlescope blends. For my purposes, exemplifying this blend prototype is redundant: In this thesis,
every numbered example is a multi-scope blend. For a detailed discussion of the mechanical
differences between simplex, mirror, single-scope, and double-scope networks, see
Fauconnier & Turner (2002: 119–135).
3.3.1 Father simplex network
First, I present the simplex network that explains how we understand father (and FATHER).
We populate the first input space with a network of familial relationships – of course, this
network does not need to be natively present in our inner world; it can be learned inductively
through exposure to different kinds of families. The generic #FAMILY# network in the first
input space centres on the inner-space relation connecting [FATHER] to [DAUGHTER]. The
second input space contains whatever identifying information tells us who is the FATHER, for

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example, the statement, Paul is Sally’s father. Whatever we know about PAUL populates that
second input space, and an outer-space <IDENTITY> vital relation connects [PAUL] with
[FATHER] in #INPUT SPACE 1# (this is one kind of relation that the copula is can prompt for in
English). When the blend runs, we understand that the blend of PAUL and FATHER have
relationships in the real world that are not specified, but there is likely a MOTHER and an
OFFSPRING,

and there may even be SIBLINGS and FAMILY DYNAMICS and SEXUAL ACTIVITY or

DOCTOR VISITS

or DELIVERY ROOM or many other potential entities that were not present in

the original prompt. Yes, this example is deeply obvious, but that is a major part of CIT’s
point – this blending process is so fundamental to us that the most fundamental examples of
it are essentially invisible. Figure 3.9 demonstrates the structure of this network.

Figure 3.9 #FATHER# simplex network (Fauconnier & Turner 2002)
To briefly summarize Papišta (2022), we use simplex blends to understand category
relationships in two major ways: top-down and bottom-up. Someone telling us that Paul is
Sally’s father prompts us to construct a top-down blend in which we place [PAUL] and
[SALLY] into the [FATHER] and [DAUGHTER] roles of the #KINSHIP# frame/space; on the other
hand, noticing a resemblance between [Paul] and [Sally] and concluding PAUL IS SALLY’S

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FATHER

35

involves using a bottom-up blend to apply the #KINSHIP# frame because we have

observed and intuited that {[PAUL] <LINK-SCHEMA>15 [SALLY]}.
3.3.2 Buddhist Monk mirror network
A slightly more complex case involves trying to solve the following riddle (adapted from
Koestler 1964):
A Buddhist monk begins at dawn one day walking up a mountain, reaches the
top at sunset, meditates at the top for several days until one dawn when he
begins to walk back to the foot of the mountain, which he reaches at sunset.
Making no assumptions about his starting or stopping or about his pace during
the trips, prove that there is a place on the path which he occupies at the same
hour of the day on the two separate journeys.
Although there is a way to model this situation mathematically, a simpler and yet equally
correct solution is available via imagination using a mirror network. Let [[THE FIRST DAY’S]
[JOURNEY]] occupy #INPUT SPACE 1#, and let [[THE SECOND DAY’S] [ JOURNEY]] occupy
#INPUT SPACE 2#. These are obviously two different situations, but when we treat TIME as a
relation instead of a framing element, we can project the two JOURNEYs into a tentative
blended space, the #GENERIC SPACE#, as if they were made by two separate MONKs on the
same DAY. In order to do this, the inner-space relation of <IDENTITY> and the outer-space
relation of <TIME> have been compressed into a single inner-space relation, and the
<IDENTITY> relation connecting the [MONK] in #INPUT SPACE 1# to the [MONK] in #INPUT
SPACE 2#

has been suspended so that it does not project into the #GENERIC SPACE#. Once the

final blend runs, it becomes trivial to understand that, barring any supernatural intervention,
both monks must pass each other. Since the previous <IDENTITY> relation now also relates
TIME,

we can conclude that the monk (note that his <IDENTITY> relation is no longer

suspended now that the blend has finished running) must occupy the same place at the same
time on two different days.
Although this example requires consciously assembling the input spaces, it should be
obvious how much simpler it is to imagine and understand one monk’s hypothetical
interaction with himself in terms of two monks whose <IDENTITY> relation has been
suspended. At a mere suggestion, an unfamiliar and uncompressed concept, THE
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TWO TRAVERSALS OF A PATH SEPARATED BY TIME BUT NOT SPACE,

15

See Johnson (1990).

has

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become interpretable as a familiar and compressed concept, PASSING SOMEONE ON OPPOSITE
TRAVERSALS ON A PATH SEPARATED BY NEITHER TIME NOR SPACE.

It takes no convincing our

intuition that this is a reasonable answer, and the solution to the problem appears
immediately.

Figure 3.10 The Buddhist Monk mirror network (Fauconnier & Turner 2002)
Certainly, to the educated person, there may be an initial unwillingness to accept this answer
without testing, and this is fine; conceptual integration is not concerned with accuracy; it is
concerned with getting information to a scale that we as humans can readily interact with.
Figure 3.10 depicts the structure of this network.
3.3.3 Impotent Smoking Cowboy double-scope network
Third and finally,16 consider Figure 3.11, which depicts an advertisement (Beck 1999) from
an anti-smoking billboard campaign conducted in California in the late 1990s and early
2000s.

16

I have not exemplified a single-scope network here due to redundancy. For a brief example, #{[CIGARETTE]
<IS> [INCOMPLETE ERECTION]}# is a single-scope network in the form of a conceptual metaphor (cf. Lakoff &
Johnson 1980; Kövecses 2005), where the frame of #MALE ANATOMY FUNCTION# directly structures the
#CIGARETTE# space.

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Figure 3.11 Billboard advertisement featuring a cowboy with a drooping cigarette
The image depicts what at first glance appears to be a typical smoking cowboy, a stock
character prevalent in smoking advertisements of the era, and this information populates the
first input space, #VIRILE COWBOY#. However, the text WARNING: SMOKING CAUSES
IMPOTENCE and the image of a drooping cigarette indicate something different: that
SMOKING

is in fact connected to IMPOTENCE, even for the masculine and presumably virile

COWBOY.

Using this prompt, we construct the second input space, #IMPOTENT SMOKER# by

populating it with a [MAN] whose {[CIGARETTE] <IS> [INCOMPLETE ERECTION]}. The
#IMPOTENT SMOKER# is actually a blend of two other input spaces, #SMOKING MAN# and
#IMPOTENT MAN#. The #IMPOTENT SMOKER’S INCOMPLETE ERECTION# projects into the full
blend as the [[COWBOY’S] [{[DROOPING CIGARETTE] <IS> [INCOMPLETE ERECTION]}], and this
clashes with [[THE COWBOY’S] [VIRILITY]] in the #VIRILE COWBOY# space. This conflict
forces us to either accept, discard, or resolve the clash, and the advertisement instructs us to
resolve the clash by treating the #VIRILE COWBOY# space as false: The VIRILE SMOKING
COWBOY

does not exist. This overall process is quite similar to how internet memes

function,17 so it is appropriate that Fauconnier & Turner (2002) have already analyzed an

17

In fact, the primary distinction between this advertisement and an Internet meme is that at the time of the
advertisement campaign, the image was not was not distributed via the Internet and therefore was not readily
available for alteration and propagation by the average person.

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38

example with multimodal prompts for input spaces. Figure 3.12 depicts the structure of this
network of blends.18

Figure 3.12 Impotent Smoking Cowboy double-scope network
3.4

Category-determining criteria

Researchers and native internet users have suggested formal categories for memes with
varying degrees of seriousness. Journalist and psychologist Limor Shifman proposed some
meme categories in her seminal book Memes in digital culture (2014), and nearly every
linguist or anthropologist discussing memes in popular or academic contexts suggests at least
some kind of categorization system, whether based on image features, linguistic context,
topic, era, or hosting website (cf. the following: Freund 2013; Segev et al. 2015; Brause
2016; Cannizzaro 2016; Ciorli 2017; Dancygier & Vandelanotte 2017; Lou 2017; Zenner &
Geeraerts 2018; Diedrichsen 2019; McCulloch 2019; Ostanina-Olszewska & MajdzińskaKoczorowicz 2019; Ambrose & Idegbekwe 2020; Ariyoga & Rahyono 2020; Yus 2021b;
Scott 2022; Yus & Maíz-Arévalo 2023). Despite an abundance of prospective systems, these
categories offer little if any insight into how internet memes function as a mode of

18

For the sake of clarity, the #IMPOTENT SMOKING COWBOY# blend is double-scope because it is framed both by
#IMPOTENT SMOKER# and #SMOKING COWBOY# frames, not because there are multiple blends in the network.

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communication. Linguistics lacks a reliable method to begin making widespread and testable
claims about meme universals.
Formal categories can be useful for analysis, but if linguists intend to make any longterm claims about how these comparatively new communicative entities function, the
discipline needs a system that can extend into the future instead of one that needs to be
modified each time a new article needs to be written on a new sub-sub-sub-genre of meme
that has just arisen. This system needs to be able to ask well-defined questions that allow for
well-defined answers, and in doing so bridge the gap between form and function, but it must
let function be the final arbiter of those answers. In short, linguistics needs a typology that is
both rigorous and centred on a functional linguistic paradigm. However, there is a larger
hurdle between researchers and a useful meme typology: Unlike speech, text, and arguably
signed language, internet memes are both multimodal and nonlinear. This means that
linguists cannot simply adapt something like Greenberg’s (1963) universals, which uses word
order to identify its well-defined questions and answers; the chosen typology must somehow
account for the fact that there are no limits to meme form. And even if there were limits,
meme culture is intentionally ironic and subversive, and some of the most successful
subversions involve modifying form in an unexpected way: For the purposes of internet
meme analysis, form actively lies.
Fortunately, cognitive linguistics, and specifically CIT, offers ways to begin
searching for these well-defined questions without being fooled by wonderful, clever, and
inescapable lies. In order to begin moving toward this typology, I propose a meme prototypology whose fundamental criteria are outlined by the answers to three polar questions:
1) Multidimensional framing: Does the meme supply explicit framing in both
conceptual and structural dimensions?
2) Blending mechanics: Do we construct the blended space based on top-down
mechanics?
3) Form-function correspondence: Does the meaning suggested by form correspond
to the meaning suggested by both a free translation and functional analysis?
Questions 1) and 2) offer functional questions that can account for obvious formal
distinctions more accurately than a formal analysis could anyway, and question 3) addresses
how to handle cases where irony is so fundamental to interpretation that the meme’s form

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itself is intentionally lying to us. The answers to questions 1) and 2) naturally result in four
hopefully clearly named categories that run the entire gamut of possible form-function
correspondent organisations: unidimensional top-down, unidimensional bottom-up,
multidimensional top-down, and multidimensional bottom-up. If these categories are
meaningful, certain kinds of features ought to be present in top-down memes that are not
present in bottom-up memes and vice versa; likewise, multidimensional memes should
behave slightly differently than unidimensional memes. Question 3) is trickier, and I address
it in more detail in §Error! Reference source not found., §4.4, and §5.2.3.
3.4.1 Multidimensional framing
While all memes make use of framing in some fashion, some memes present a set of largely
parallel images (or image sets) that are intended to be interpreted with reference to one
another rather than with reference to other space-building elements. These sets of images as a
unit act as a single space that has been decompressed, and their juxtaposition functions such
that they work together to populate one input space, effectively causing the input space to
take on an extra dimensionality beyond the typical two. This new dimension may be time
(e.g., multiple frames of a movie are compressed into a space without losing the sense of
sequence), comparison (e.g., multiple categories or their prototypes are compressed into a
space without losing their distinctiveness), or anything that can be treated as a dimension,
running as its own mini-blend, that is compressed into a space.
Examples of memes that demonstrate multidimensional framing include manipulated
comic strips or serial movie frames, comparison memes where related ideas are assigned
categories, and reaction memes where a transition between multiple states plays a significant
role in meaning interpretation. In each of these cases, each input space is a full blend that has
not been completely resolved and compressed; in a sense, we must resolve a minimum of
three blends at once in order for the meaning to emerge. If a meme’s space-builder prompts
result in two input mega-spaces that are themselves minimally single-scope blends whose
composing input spaces can form outer-space relations with each other in the mega-blend, I
call that meme multidimensional; if a meme’s space-builder prompts instead result in the
typical two input spaces, I call it unidimensional. In this thesis, I have ultimately chosen not
to use this trait to divide categories beyond this chapter for several reasons, which I discuss
in §5.2.1. Still, I believe it is prudent to acknowledge this phenomenon for future researchers

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to examine should they attempt to tackle the frame problem by digging “deep[er into] the
analysis of rationality” (Fodor 1987).
3.4.2 Blending mechanics
Our capacity for blending is unbelievably marvelous in that we use completion and
elaboration to identify and even supply missing information. We must use these operations to
determine the structure of the final blend, but we do not always use these operations in the
same way for conventionalized and non-conventionalized meaning-construction cues. Some
memes prompt for two input spaces and demand that completion fill in the relations using
structure taken from a conventionalized form (I call these memes top-down), and other
memes prompt for spaces and relations in some non-conventionalized way (I call these
memes bottom-up) and demand that completion fill in the structure from our own experience.
I have taken the terminology from Papišta (2022), and even though he only argues for
applying this distinction to simplex blends, his descriptions of the mechanical distinctions
between top-down and bottom-up simplex blends appear to be quite similar to the
mechanical differences between two major kinds of meme-blends. Memes meet the same
criteria that Papišta (2022) uses to defend his argument: 1) we somehow apply the LINK
schema (Johnson 1990) to single out two elements for blending based on the assumption that
there should be a category that describes the elements’ relationship (although this category is
vastly more ad hoc for memes than for, say, KINSHIP) and 2) assuming LINK prompts us to
either bestow structure by mapping it from role-information to value-information or to
identify structure by searching for a subframe whose role-information matches what we
already know about the given value-information. I do not distinguish between role- and
value-information in this thesis because, while those terms are useful for clarifying simplex
blends, the multi-scope nature of memes means that the distinction between role and value is
substantially less clear-cut.19
That said, if the most straightforward understanding of a meme involves selectively
projecting elements and composing those elements into two largely complete input spaces
organized using a conventionalized prompt, I consider the meme to be top-down, and if the
most straightforward understanding of a meme involves selectively projecting elements using

19

For much better definitions and examples of terms and, indeed, an excellent article, see Papišta (2022).

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a non-conventionalized (or semi-conventionalized) prompt in order to compose and
elaborate two largely complete input spaces to be blended, I consider it to be bottom-up.
Note that bottom-up memes are not examples of single-scope blends in contrast to top-down
memes being multi-scope; in bottom-up blends, the conflicting frames provide overlapping
central structure to the final blend. Examples of bottom-up memes include any memes where
the construction of one input space relies on first making relations (such as novel labeling
memes) that require us to possess some kind of prior information to truly understand.
3.4.3 Form-function correspondence
The naïve view is that form and function ought to generally correspond to one another. In
this view, a lack of correspondence offers not only a categorizational challenge, but also an
interpretive challenge. After all, how can we possibly arrive at meaning if an utterance’s
form is not only unreliable, but intentionally misleading!? Addressing mismatches between
form and function has long been a goal of both semantics and the philosophy of language,
but the fundamental relationship between irony and meme communication forces the
problem of form-function incongruity into the spotlight. Memes that show a high degree of
form-level irony are not poorly formed; that is to say, a lack of correspondence is not noncorrespondence. Instead, this mismatch is highly intentional and in fact indicates anticorrespondence. This means that this trait is extremely hard to exemplify using a prototype
as its entire point is that it violates prototyping, but this also means that there are quite
possibly an infinite number of ways for this trait to arise, and I demonstrate three examples in
Chapter 4, specifically §4.4. I address this potential infinity further in Chapter 5, but
researchers should continue investigating and categorising the ways this can occur.
3.5

Examples of each form-function correspondent category

In this section, I present a prototypical example of each category of meme by identifying
explicitly what information presented in the meme’s form selectively projects into the blend
system. Figure 3.13, Figure 3.14, Figure 3.15, and Figure 3.16 depict the conceptual
structures of the four categories, referring to unidimensional top-down, unidimensional
bottom-up, multidimensional top-down, and multidimensional bottom-up, respectively. I
have provided a more detailed analysis of each of the following category prototype memes in
Chapter 4.

THE WAY WE MEME

Figure 3.13 Unidimensional Top-Down structure

Figure 3.14 Multidimensional Top-Down structure

Figure 3.15 Unidimensional Bottom-Up structure

43

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44

Figure 3.16 Multidimensional Bottom-Up structure
3.5.1 Unidimensional top-down
Example (3.1) depicts a highly prototypical unidimensional top-down meme, which I call
Bojack’s thesis. The meme is rather obviously divided into two distinct frames based on
modality: pure text at the top and pure image at the bottom. Figure 3.17 presents a high-level
overview of how the space-builder prompts instruct us to project information into the input
spaces.
(3.1)

Bojack’s thesis

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Figure 3.17 Frame structure of (3.1)
The text Me writing my thesis prompts for us to populate the first input space with
framing information coming from our own experience. This, of course, relies on our ability
to supply a sufficient and salient space, so we may need to do some composing, completing,
and elaborating to get this space ready; or, as in my case, this space might be highly salient.
Regardless, this is a reasonably complete space, and barring any future reinterpretation, it
stands on its own because of the conventionalized nature of the linguistic content that
prompts for it.
As a screen grab from an episode of BoJack Horseman (2014), the image projects
whole-cloth into the second input space, although we parse out some significant elements.
The details of this parsing and selective projection likely depend on familiarity with the
scene, e.g., BoJack matters, the used appliances matter, the lack of any writing implements
matters, but the burned ottoman, rain, and background content might matter, or they might
not. But if they do matter, the meme likely becomes funnier.20 Regardless, we project all of
the selected elements into the second input space, again forming a largely complete space.
The linguistic when cue coupled with the juxtaposed modalities is conventional enough to
suggest a framework for how to assign outer-space relations (assuming the situation
described in the when clause has a familiar structure), so this meme is top-down, and since it
does not present either input space in an uncompressed form, it is unidimensional.

For example, if right before writing my thesis, I’d lit a piece of furniture on fire during a drug-fueled bender,
this self-criticism might hit a bit closer to home even than it did during the process of writing this thesis.
Fortunately, I can say I do not need to select this particular potential projection.
20

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46

3.5.2 Multidimensional top-down
Example (3.2) depicts a highly prototypical multidimensional top-down meme, which I call
Development horror. The meme is divided into a minimum of four frames based on border
cues and modality distinctions: two text frames and two image frames. These frames are, in a
sense, parallel, because each “row” of the image (a text-image pair) features a cue for one
input space in text modality and a cue for one input space in image modality. If the textimage pairs were presented in “columns,” this would change nothing about the parallelism of
the image; likewise, it would still be parallel if the image were presented linearly: text,
image, text, image. What is significant is that the text-image pairs are roughly equal in
weight to one another and offer clues about how we should divide up the information. Figure
3.18 presents a high-level overview of how the space-builder prompts instruct us to project
information into the input spaces.
(3.2)

Development horror

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47

Figure 3.18 Frame structure of (3.2)
Although the two text prompts all prompt for their own input spaces, if the spaces are
assembled correctly, it should be fairly obvious to us that these are in a sense the same space,
just organized differently; that is, we construct a single-scope blend structurally framed by
which perspective we are using, and then we more or less leave the blend running. Both input
spaces for the blend that runs and stays running in the first input space are separated (but
constrained) along the so-called “dimension” of PERSPECTIVE – on one end of the
PERSPECTIVE

dimension is the [[USER’S] [PERSPECTIVE]]; on the other is the [[DEV’S]

[PERSPECTIVE]]. The first input space of the mega-blend is two whole spaces contained in one
space, yet both spaces have their own inner- and outer-space relations that point to elements
in the sub-spaces of the second input space of the mega-blend, but these sub-spaces also have
IDENTITY

relations pointing to their corresponding components in the other input space of the

single-scope blend.
The image content functions similarly. We selectively project the necessary image
content from the two scenes, but the juxtaposition clues us in to the fact that they should be
taken as related. We construct a second single-scope blend (taking a cue from the parallel
structure) that places the projected content from the first image and the projected content
from the second image into a second “running” blend where, again, the IDENTITY relations
occur between the two single-scope input space components with the blend occurring across,
again, the “dimension” of PERSPECTIVE. The double-scope blend’s “running” first input space
blend takes its network of networks of inner- and outer-space relations and projects outerspace relations to the second input space’s network of networks of inner- and outer-space

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48

relations, and once the final blend process is resolved, all three running blends can resolve.
The multidimensionality of function (not just of form) arises from the fact that the input
spaces are made of running blends that resolve in terms of each other, but the double-scope
network’s input spaces are taken from the selectively projected information from the meme
and its conventionalized framing information, rather than completed or elaborated
information that arises after the projection process completes, so it is still top-down despite
its complexity.
3.5.3 Unidimensional bottom-up
Example (3.3) depicts a highly prototypical unidimensional bottom-up meme, which I call
Shiba syntagmatics. This meme has two distinct modalities (image and text) but only one
obvious frame: the entire image. In a sense, the image is presenting us with a blend in
progress. If this were a top-down meme, the image would allude to something already
accessible to us, such as a conventionalized image or a caption from a piece of familiar
media, but this image does not do this. Instead, we must use our intuition, employing
completion and composition to select the content to project. Ideally, this should be
straightforward, as is the case with this meme: A dog is presumably playing with toys in the
shape of dogs.
(3.3)

Shiba syntagmatics

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49

Figure 3.19 Frame structure of (3.3)
Figure 3.19 presents a high-level overview of how the space-builder prompts instruct us to
project information into the input spaces.21
Depending on our intuition, we may be able to project more information into the first
input space, but the visual cues provide enough to compose a decently complete mental space
and frame. However, the text modality does not have sufficient conventionalized framing
information for us to form a complete space and frame out of the input space into which it is
projected. All of the information about the inner-space relations which we might choose to
project into the second input space come from that which we have already explicitly
projected from the image modality. There is no verbal or adverbial textual information
presented in the image, only nominal forms. Without the image, the only information coming
from the text modality is the three words, all nouns, and no relational information; they could
be anything. We are only able to identify the proper mental space from our experiences by
taking the network of structural inner-space relations from the image and trying to find a
similar mental space with similar structural inner-space relations. Without the image
modality’s information, the second input space is virtually empty. The framing information
for the second input space comes through completion and elaboration rather than pure
projection and composition, so it is bottom-up, and since the situation (although dynamic) is

I have included the text “now kiss” in the space-builder prompt because other uses of this image commonly
have this caption included, and we project this meaning into the space in conjunction with the image via
completion.
21

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50

presented using only one frame, it is presented in its compressed form, so it is
unidimensional.
3.5.4 Multidimensional bottom-up
Example (3.4) depicts a highly prototypical multidimensional bottom-up meme, which I call
Evil prescriptivism.
(3.4)

Evil prescriptivism

In example (3.4), the meme is divided into four frames, but the parallelism is less obvious
due to its linear presentation. In order to determine parallelism, we must identify the relation
between the two modalities: text and image. The first three frames obviously have image and
text, and we can conclude that the text over a black background is intended to be part of the

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51

fourth frame. The parallelism is not as obvious as in example (3.2), but (3.4) still presents
four images with roughly equivalent weight and roughly the same relationship between
modalities (image framing; text in place of certain pieces of content), so it is
multidimensional. Figure 3.20 presents a high-level overview of how the space-builder
prompts instruct us to project information into the input spaces.

Figure 3.20 Frame structure of (3.4)
There is an additional layer of complexity, though: Because of background
information, the two modalities in the image give us three modalities: image, text, and
conceptual audio, since we manage to call up some of the text as audio from our memory of
experiencing the movie while failing to call up other parts of the text as audio. This potential
third modality is more significant here than it is in example (3.1) because resolving the
incongruity between the original quote and the new text is what lets us identify which words
prompt for the second input space and which words are part of the image’s framing
information. The pure image content plus the unaltered audio content prompt us to summon
an input space fully composed by the act of remembering the RING REVEAL SCENE from The
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Jackson 2001), but it is not only the
compressed SCENE. Each line of dialogue, the positions of the characters, the details of the
props, etc. all matter, and they remain uncompressed – that is to say, running in a singlescope blend structurally framed by linear time – in the first input space.
As with example (3.1), the text modality prompts for the second input space, but the
only framing information comes from the image content. With only the text, we would have
difficulty determining what input space ought to be built, but with only the text that is
unconnected to the image content’s frame – Don’t end a sentence with a preposition,

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52

nonsense, and prescriptivists – it would be impossible. We can guess at the framing
information this is prompting for – in fact we do, but this is a completion task – but the meme
does not supply it outright in the same way that the memes in examples (3.1) or (3.2) do. It
may be linguistically presented, but it is not (yet) linguistic convention to express academic
distaste using the dialogue from this scene. Since the blends that compose the individual
input spaces must stay running in order for the outer-space relations to all connect properly,
this meme is multidimensional, and since the framing information for the second input space
is gained from completion and elaboration rather than pure projection and composition, it is
bottom-up.
3.6

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have utilized the principles of Conceptual Integration theory to construct a
functional typology for meme analysis based on whether a given meme’s corresponding
blend is constructed top-down or bottom-up and on whether its resulting blend corresponds
to the blend its form apparently suggests. I have also provided and briefly discussed
examples of each category. In the next chapter, I utilize these criteria and a technique I
outline in order to analyze this chapter’s prototypes in addition to three other less
prototypical meme case studies that demonstrate the negative of my third criterion, formfunction anti-correspondence.

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53

4. Analysis: Accounting for lies without losing the truth

4.1

Introduction

In this chapter, I apply the principles of CIT and the functional typology I outlined in Chapter
3 to seven meme case studies. First, I outline the methods I used for obtaining, categorizing,
and analyzing the memes I address. Then, I analyze in detail the memes I supplied as
examples for each category in the previous chapter. Finally, I analyze three memes whose
formal and functional content do not correspond to one another in order to highlight why a
flexible and robust functional typology proves more useful for linguistic study of memes than
a formal typology would. I also demonstrate that my typology fulfils these requirements and
can lead linguists to an accurate description of meme meaning and meme function.
In Chapter 4 and Chapter 5, I use first-person pronouns and the term OP in a
technically critical manner; refer to the frontmatter for details. I try to keep concept labels
lexically identical no matter what notation is used in order to imply that conceiving of a
given concept as an element or space or relation is conceiving of said concept as the same

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54

concept referred to by its given lexical identifier, just construed a certain way (e.g.,
[CONCEPT], #CONCEPT#, and even <CONCEIVE> refer to the CONCEPT called concept or
conceive).
4.2

Methods

I began collecting memes for my analysis starting as early as 2019 by asking friends to send
me any memes they thought I would find funny or would like to have analyzed. I also
continued my own regular internet browsing, cataloguing and storing (and sharing via social
media) memes that I considered worth sending to any friends. This helped to ensure that each
meme I analyzed met a minimum requirement of memetic success: sufficient fecundity to be
transmitted through at least two memetic generations, once from OP to a friend and once
from a friend to me or once from OP to me and once from me to a friend (Blackmore 1999).
I originally began categorizing memes based on semi-regular features that felt
intuitively useful to me as a native meme speaker, and once I identified some well-defined
polar questions rooted in CIT that produced categories similar to the ones I began with, I
reinterpreted my previous categories in the new well-defined terms. I have defined these
polar questions and their resulting categories in Chapter 3.
In order to analyze these memes, I follow five specific steps, which I provide below.
1.

I identify the meme’s context in reasonable detail by consulting internet archives such as
Know Your Meme22 for background information; in tandem with this process, I use my
native speaker intuition plus contextual information relevant to the specific instance of
that particular meme’s transmission in order to identify something like a free translation
of that particular meme.

2.

I identify the most generic or conventionalized framed space that I can treat as the first
input space, called #A#, and break it down into its basic elements and inner-space
relations.

3.

I attempt to identify another space, which I can treat as the second input space, called
#B#, and break it down into its basic elements and inner-space relations.

22

Know Your Meme (knowyourmeme.com) is not an academic source, but it is by far the most notable, wellmaintained, and well-cited archive of meme “etymology,” to the extent that we can apply this term to meme
communication.

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4.

55

Once I have identified both input spaces, I attempt to assemble any outer-space
connections (whether relations or projections) and attach them to their appropriate
elements.

5.

I identify any clashes that must be discarded, resolved, or maintained along with any
meaning that emerges, comparing the result to the original proposed free translation.

If it is possible to complete these five steps in order, I call the meme top-down. If attempting
to complete a step (especially the fourth step) requires recontextualizing one input space
based on previously framed information from the other input space via projection,
completion, or elaboration before the final blending process begins (i.e., if
conventionalization did not provide the second space’s structure), I call this variety of meme
bottom-up. In contrast to form-function correspondent memes, some memes defy the above
analysis process in ways that require specific kinds of knowledge in order to resolve
incongruities of meaning between form and function. When the resulting meaning and free
translation clash with the meaning suggested by conventionalized form alone, I call the
meme form-function anti-correspondent. These memes require either a) completing and
elaborating the information to be projected into the most generic or conventionalized space
or b) feeding the conventionalized meaning back into a new mega-blend as a modified input
space. I have continued using top-down and bottom-up terminology to refer to these anticorrespondent memes because the mechanical divide seems to be present, but I am not
convinced that it tells the whole story, and I would not be surprised if future research divides
the anti-correspondent category further or rejects the top-down/bottom-up division entirely.
Table 4.1 depicts how my typology categorizes the case studies I have analyzed in this
chapter.
Table 4.1 Proposed meme category schema
Correspondent

Anti-correspondent

Top-down

(4.1), (4.2)

(4.5)

Bottom-up

(4.3), (4.4)

(4.6)
(4.7)

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4.3

56

Form-function correspondent meme case studies

I begin my analysis by presenting form-function correspondent meme case studies because
they are usually the most forgiving for general audiences to interpret. Prototypical top-down
memes have high form-function correspondence, and the two primary input spaces are
framed using techniques that are also form-function correspondent. OP presents us with a
juxtaposed comparison, and we assemble the input spaces and implied relations such that a
meaningful blend can be run. Prototypical bottom-up memes similarly have high formfunction correspondence, but they require deconstructing one or more input spaces via
projection between input spaces #A# and #B# before the blending process finishes. OP
presents us with an incomplete partially blended space containing overlapping space-building
cues instead of juxtaposed input spaces, and from here we reverse-engineer the input spaces
and reconstruct a meaningful blend with the new information.
4.3.1 BoJack’s thesis
Example (4.1) presents a screen capture of a Reddit post containing the text Me writing my
thesis followed by a screen capture of a scene from the adult animated black comedy drama
television show BoJack Horseman (2014) captioned with the titular character’s dialogue
from that scene, “God, why are you keeping me from writing?” using Netflix’s caption font.
(4.1)

BoJack’s thesis

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57

The show, which ran from 2014–2020, focuses on the negative behaviour and broken
relationships of washed-up former sitcom star and anthropomorphic talking horse, BoJack.23
OP intends for us to interpret this meme to mean something along the lines of, While writing
my thesis, I foolishly acted like BoJack in the scene depicted below, and I blamed God for my
problems although I spent a substantial amount of time doing anything but writing.
Critically, one of the themes of the season containing the episode in question involves
BoJack’s being unwilling to admit that his problems are his own due to a self-destructive
level of unawareness, so since OP is able to identify this relation (and therefore lacks this
level of unawareness), there is an immediate clash that forces an ironic interpretation and
prompts the self-interpretation that supplies the sense of FOOLISHNESS in the above
translation. Figure 4.1 depicts a detailed diagram of the blend we have used to interpret this
meme.
To understand this example, we must construct #INPUT SPACE A# using a #WRITING
THESIS#

space from either our own experience or a generic estimation of a similar

experience. In my case, for obvious reasons, I was able to supply a highly salient #WRITING
THESIS#

space complete with [EGO], [[EGO’S][THESIS]], [WRITING], [DIFFICULTY],

[PROCRASTINATION], [NEGATIVE EMOTIONS], [ADHD], [EXPANDING TIMELINE], [LOOMING
DEADLINE],

and many, many other elements, but the only absolutely necessary elements are

those prompted by the text: [EGO], [[EGO’S] [THESIS]], and [WRITING]. Even if we have not
written (or attempted writing) a thesis ourselves in order to have an accessible #WRITING
THESIS#

space, we have probably experienced some variety of creative block sufficient to

supply a useful generic #CREATIVE PROJECT# space. In this case, we will need to perform
some additional blending operations to construct a meaningful #WRITING THESIS# space, but
the process involves either a simplex blend (for those of us who have experienced a writing
block) or a mirror network (for those of us whose variety of salient creative block is not
related to writing). Nonetheless, we have populated #INPUT SPACE A# minimally with the
given elements [EGO], [WRITING], and [THESIS] from the space-builder text. In projecting
[EGO], we also project salient elements from the #EGO# frame, including [SELF-AWARE]. We
also compose #INPUT SPACE A# with the following inner-space relations:

23

Horseman… obviously.

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Figure 4.1 CIT diagram for (4.1)

58

THE WAY WE MEME
•

{[EGO] <WRITES> [[EGO’S][THESIS]]}

•

{[EGO] <ATTEMPTS> [WRITING]}

•

{[EGO] <IS> [SELF-AWARE]}

59

In order to construct #INPUT SPACE B#, we must have exposure to either the image
with its caption (if the image has been conventionalized) or the scene depicted in the screen
capture. At the time of writing, I am not aware of this image becoming conventionalized;
however, OP posted this meme in the r/bojackhorseman subreddit, so it is safe to assume that
any potential meme viewers are sufficiently familiar with the scene to supply the new space
with its elements and framing information with help from the linguistic cues from the spacebuilder for #INPUT SPACE A#. BoJack and his desperate pose serve to supply [BOJACK] and
[DIFFICULTIES] as elements, and the text caption provides [GOD] and [PROCRASTINATING].
Contextual knowledge from the show provides [[BOJACK’S] [AUTOBIOGRAPHY]] and the fact
that he is not [SELF-AWARE] concerning his faults, along with many other elements, such as
[LOOMING DEADLINE] and [EXPANDING TIMELINE], which are salient and help flesh out #INPUT
SPACE B#

but add little in the way of interpretive value. With this information, we can

assemble the following inner-space relations in #INPUT SPACE B#:
•

{[BOJACK] <CAUSES> [DIFFICULTIES]}

•

{[DIFFICULTIES] <CAUSES> [PROCRASTINATING]}

•

{[BOJACK] <BLAMES> [GOD]}
o Clash: {[BOJACK] <DOES NOT BELIEVE IN> [GOD]}

•

{[BOJACK] <IS NOT> [SELF-AWARE]}

The framing relation {[EGO] <WRITES> [[EGO’S] [THESIS]]} prompts us to construct
outer-space Identity relations between [EGO] and [BOJACK] and between [THESIS] and
[AUTOBIOGRAPHY]. Depending on the details of #INPUT SPACE A#, the other contextual
elements from #INPUT SPACE B# may find <IDENTITY> relations, or they may instead relate to
the generic category of [PROCRASTINATION] and [DIFFICULTIES].24 We maintain all of these
projected elements and relations in the blend, but in doing so we create a complex network of
clashes between:

24

In the diagram, I have made #INPUT SPACE A# identical to the #GENERIC SPACE# because, although there is a
separation between [OP], [EGO], [[GENERIC][EGO]], and Me, the meme is talking about the events that populate
#INPUT SPACE A# as being generic events.

THE WAY WE MEME
•

{[EGO] <IS> [BOJACK]}

•

{0[1{2[3EGO]3 <IS>2 [3BOJACK]3}2]1 <CAUSES>0 [1DIFFICULTIES]1}0

•

{0[1{2[3EGO]3 <IS>2 [3BOJACK]3}2]1 <IS NOT>0 [1SELF-AWARE]1}0

•

{0[1{2[3EGO]3 <IS>2 [3BOJACK]3}2]1 <IS AWARE THAT>0 [1{2[3{4[5EGO]5 <IS>4

60

[5BOJACK]5}4]3 <IS NOT>2 [3SELF-AWARE]3}2]1}0
We absolutely must maintain all of these relations, but it is not possible for [EGO] to be aware
of their own inability to be [SELF-AWARE], especially when this lack of self-awareness is
specifically in regard to the relationship between [EGO] and [DIFFICULTIES]. This absolutely
must be irony, then, as an unironic interpretation requires either discarding or resolving that
clashing network. Since we are aware that OP is aware of this irony, we must assume that OP
knows they largely caused their own difficulties, and OP is therefore being critical of
themselves by comparing their perspective to BoJack’s. This irony emerges from running the
blend: OP is saying, I foolishly caused my own problems while working on my thesis and
don’t like to admit it. Also, I suspect that many of you understand this feeling and likely do
the same. Since example (4.1) presents us with prompts for both input spaces organized by
conventionalization, and the appropriate meaning emerges with no need to reinterpret either
space, example (4.1) is a prototypically form-function correspondent top-down meme.
4.3.2 Development horror
Example (4.2) depicts four panels: two with text on the left and two with images on the right.
(4.2)

Development horror

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Figure 4.2 CIT diagram for (4.2)

61

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62

Each pair of text and image could potentially be interpreted as a top-down meme, but the
meaning of the entire set of images only becomes clear once the two collections are
considered together; hence, this meme is multidimensional. The first dimension comprises
the text What users see via frontend in black text over a white background on the left and on
the right a picture of a brown-haired man in a teal shirt, blue pants, and brown shoes lying
on his back in a field on a sunny day and holding a blond child in a pink onesie over his
head. The second dimension comprises the text What dev see via backend in similar black
text over a similar white background on the left and on the right a picture of a city burning in
the background with people being attacked by small devils in pink onesies with bloody
mouths, yellow eyes, and fangs. OP intends for us to interpret this meme to mean something
along the lines of, Although applications typically look well-organized and straightforward
to users, the architecture in the background is usually chaotic and disorganized to the extent
that a responsible user would be afraid to use the application. Figure 4.2 depicts a detailed
diagram of the blend we have used to interpret this meme.
I found this meme while browsing the subreddit r/programmerhumor, which is
centred around application development and other technological concerns, and this is most
likely the sort of environment in which this meme will be shared. In fact, if it is shared
somewhere that does not have this context as ground, it will probably include a caption or
title that says something along the lines of An accurate depiction of app development. In any
case, the text and communicative context prompt us to populate and frame #INPUT SPACE A#
with elements and framing information for #APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT#, which includes
[DEVELOPERS], [USERS], [FRONTEND], [BACKEND], [APPLICATION], [ARCHITECTURE], [USER
EXPERIENCE], [CODE],

etc. However, we cannot stop here. The fact that OP presents us with

two sets of text-image pairs signals that we must contrast some elements of #APPLICATION
DEVELOPMENT# with

other elements in the same space but framed differently, so we must

also assemble a mini-blend comprising #INPUT SPACE A0# framed by #FRONTEND
EXPERIENCE#

and #INPUT SPACE A1# framed by #BACKEND DEVELOPMENT#. #FRONTEND

EXPERIENCE#

brings with it the elements [BEAUTIFUL], [VISIBLE TO USER], and [FEW BUGS];

#BACKEND DEVELOPMENT# brings with it the elements [CHAOTIC], [INVISIBLE TO USER], and
[MANY BUGS]. We therefore blend #INPUT SPACE A0# and #INPUT SPACE A1# into #INPUT
SPACE

A#, which is, as with example (4.1), functionally indistinguishable from a generic

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63

space.25 We project [DEV PERSPECTIVE], [CHAOTIC], and [MANY BUGS] from #INPUT SPACE
A1#, all of which clash with their corresponding elements [USER PERSPECTIVE], [BEAUTIFUL],
and [FEW BUGS] from #INPUT SPACE A0#, although these elements (or at least the fact that
they clashed with the elements from #INPUT SPACE A1#) also project into #INPUT SPACE A#.
Like the text on the left, the images on the right prompt us to assemble two
contrasting spaces for #INPUT SPACE B0# and #INPUT SPACE B1# to be blended into what will
become #INPUT SPACE B#. #INPUT SPACE B0# contains [FATHER], [CHILD], [MEADOW], and
[PEACEFUL]; and #INPUT SPACE B1# contains [VICTIMS], [DEVILS], [BURNING CITY], and
[VIOLENT]. When we partially blend these mini-spaces in order to create #INPUT SPACE B#,
the clashing <IDENTITY> relations between the respective elements reveal that both spaces
depict the same scene from opposing perspectives. These clashes arise from an incongruity
between a) how these elements project into #GENERIC SPACE B#, the generic space for
#SCENE# containing the elements [ACTIVE PARTICIPANT], [PASSIVE PARTICIPANT], [SETTING],
and [TONE] and b) shared identity markers like [GREEN SHIRT] and [ONESIE] between the
elements in the two mini-spaces for #INPUT SPACE B#. For example, [FATHER] projects into
#GENERIC SPACE B# as [ACTIVE PARTICIPANT] while [VICTIMS] projects into #GENERIC SPACE
B# as [PASSIVE PARTICIPANT], but the [GREEN SHIRT] shared by both elements facilitates an
<IDENTITY> relation between [FATHER] in #INPUT SPACE B0# and [VICTIMS] in #INPUT SPACE
B1#, resulting in a clash that forces a complete reinterpretation of the entire scene once #B0#
and #B1# are partially blended into #B#. Once we resolve all these clashes between how
participants are related, where the scene is set, and what the tone is, #INPUT SPACE B#
becomes something along the lines of #APPARENTLY PEACEFUL VIOLENT HELLSCAPE#. It is
not necessarily the case that the individual elements of the mini-spaces that feed into the
blend that will eventually become #INPUT SPACE B# will be foci of outer-space relations in
the mega-blend, but it is possible for this to occur because #INPUT SPACE B0# and #INPUT
SPACE B1#

25

remain in focus while we assemble the mega-blend’s outer-space relations.

Having #A# be functionally indistinguishable from a generic space is not a strict requirement of a top-down
meme, but it is extremely prototypical for this to be true. The actual requirement is that the space-builder for
#A# must use a conventionalized form to provide the structure for a generic space that will in turn provide
information regarding how to structure the final blend (Papišta 2022).

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64

Next, we assemble the outer-space relations between the #A# spaces and the #B#
spaces, including the following:
•

{[APPLICATION] <IS> [ {[FATHER] <IS> [VICTIM]} ]}

•

{[APPLICATION] <IS> [ {[CHILD] <IS> [DEVIL]} ]}

•

{[FUNCTIONALITY] <IS> [VIOLENT]}

•

{[EXPERIENCE] <IS> [MEADOW]}
o Clash: {[EXPERIENCE] <IS> [BURNING CITY]}

However, this does not tell the whole story, as these outer-space relations arise not from
comparing #A# to #B# but rather from comparing #A0# to #B0# and #A1# to #B1#, meaning
these spaces have their own distinct outer-space relations that project into #A# and #B# as
the relations given above.
When we finally run the mega-blend, we know to choose the dev’s perspective when
projecting elements with unresolvable clashes, but we can only do this because the dev’s
perspective is able to conceptualize the user’s perspective. As such, little bits of the user’s
perspective still make it into the blend because the user’s perspective is a little bit true. For
example, there is an inner-space clash between [MEADOW] and [BURNING CITY], but we
resolve this because the [MEADOW] is in fact beside the [CITY]; in the same way, the clash
between the [BEAUTIFUL EXPERIENCE] projected from #A0# and the [CHAOTIC EXPERIENCE]
projected from #A1# is resolvable because the user’s experience is metaphorically beside the
dev’s, but it is the dev who has the “truest” conception of the situation. Similarly, we know
that the participants are not really [FATHER] and [CHILD], but understanding that they appear
this way to the user makes their real relationship as [DEVIL] and [VICTIM] more meaningful,
and this not-quite-clash arises in the final mega-blend as the relation:
•

{0[1APPLICATION]1 <IS>0 [1{2[3{4[5CHILD]5 <IS>4 [5DEVIL]5}4]3 <ATTACKS>2
[3{4[5FATHER]5 <IS>4 [5VICTIM]5}4]3}2]1}0

This results in a meaning output that is something along the lines of, Although applications
appear to be beautiful and well-built scenic experiences between family members, the real
tragedy of backend development means that these supposedly peaceful familial interactions
are actually cleverly disguised yet horrific violent engagements between devils and victims,
and the ensuing chaos lies beyond the control of even the most skillful backend developers.
Since this meaning arises due to structural cues from conventionalized instructions like

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65

linguistic phrases and juxtaposition, example (4.2) depicts a top-down meme. While its
meaning is ironic, its irony is suggested by form rather than in contrast to form, so it is formfunction correspondent.
4.3.3 Shiba syntagmatics
In example (4.3), OP presents a scene in which a dog, a shiba inu, is playing with plastic toys
that are also shaped like shiba inu. The three words Pragmatics, Syntax, and Semantics,
printed in title case black-outlined white font, appear superimposed on the large dog, the left
toy, and the right toy, respectively.
(4.3)

Shiba syntagmatics

OP intends for us to interpret this meme to mean something along the lines of, The task of
doing pragmatics is functionally the same as playing the game “now kiss” with syntax and
semantics. Some specifics of the meaning, especially the details of whatever set of actions
defines DOING and PLAYING, are left up to us to supply in our own interpretation. Because the
image containing the large dog, the left toy, and the right toy is only semi-conventionalized,
it does not provide sufficient structure to fully frame a space for the elements presented in the
text modality; instead, we must check our experiences for potential conceptual frame
structures that could explain why OP might want us to agree that this observation is in some
way accurate. Figure 4.3 depicts a detailed diagram of the blend we have used to interpret
this meme.
In order to begin interpreting this meme, we fill in the contents of #INPUT SPACE A#
based on the information from the image modality, and the imagined situation acts as a frame
for #INPUT SPACE B#. The obvious elements from the image include [BIGGER SHIBA], [TOY A],

THE WAY WE MEME

Figure 4.3 CIT diagram for (4.3)

66

THE WAY WE MEME

67

and [TOY B], and the framing information comes from identifying that {[BIGGER SHIBA] <IS
PLAYING WITH> [[TOY A] AND [TOY B]]}

the way {[A CHILD] <PLAYS MAKE-BELIEVE WITH>

[DOLLS]}. This information comes in the form of a culturally entrenched frame network
#CHILD PLAYING MAKE-BELIEVE#, a global generic (acting as a generic space with minimal
elements [AGENT], [PATIENT A], [PATIENT B], and [GAME]) which we arrive at unconsciously
rather than depending on conventionalized information to supply. The meaning attained from
running this mini-blend establishes a number of inner-space relations, including the
following:
•

{[BIGGER SHIBA] <CONTROLS/PLAYS WITH> [TOY A]}

•

{[BIGGER SHIBA] <CONTROLS/PLAYS WITH> [TOY B]}

•

{[TOY A] <HAS EQUIVALENT STATUS WITH> [TOY B]}

•

{[NOW KISS] <INVOLVES> [BRINGING THE TWO TOYS TOGETHER]}

Other inner-space relations arise from the image information itself:
•

{[[BIGGER SHIBA], [TOY A], AND [TOY B]] <SHARE AN ESSENCE OF> [SHIBA]}

•

{[[BIGGER SHIBA], [TOY A], AND [TOY B]] <ARE DISTINCT IN> [MATERIAL]}:
o {[BIGGER SHIBA] <IS MADE OF> [DOG-NESS]}
o {[[TOY A] AND [TOY B]] <ARE MADE OF> [PLASTIC]}

These relations are reinforced by the mini-blend since the frame #CHILD PLAYING MAKEBELIEVE#

tells us that a playing child imbues a composing essence of [PERSONHOOD] into

their toys while being distinct in composing material ([FLESH] versus [PLASTIC]).
Instead of constructing #INPUT SPACE B# from parallel existing information as would
occur with top-down memes, we use the explicit outer-space relations and framing
information to assemble #INPUT SPACE B# from the ground up. The explicit outer-space
relations are:
•

{[BIGGER SHIBA] <IS> [PRAGMATICS]}

•

{[TOY A] <IS> [SYNTAX]}

•

{[TOY B] <IS> [SEMANTICS]}

The framing information indicates that the structure of #INPUT SPACE B# should include some
{[AGENT] <PLAYING> [A GAME]} and this {[GAME] <INVOLVES> [BRINGING TWO LIKE ENTITIES
TOGETHER]}.

The AGENT, labeled Pragmatics, must bring the two like entities Syntax and

Semantics together in play. If we have an entrenched mental space for #DIALOGUE BETWEEN

THE WAY WE MEME
LINGUISTIC SUB-DISCIPLINES#,

68
then we will call up this frame, along with its assumptions, and

apply both it and the #DOG PLAYING MAKE-BELIEVE WITH DOG-DOLLS# frame to the final
blend. Doing so, however, includes an inner-space relation between [LINGUISTIC SUBDISCIPLINE]

and some leftover framing information that results in something along the lines

of {[[MY] [LINGUISTIC SUB-DISCIPLINE]] <IS> [SERIOUS BUSINESS]}.
Finally, we can run the blend. At least one major piece of emergent ironic meaning
falls out as we perform an elaboration task in order to assemble the relation {[PRAGMATICS]
<IS> [{[SYNTAX] <NOW KISS> [SEMANTICS]}]}. Since we supply our own completely unique
#DIALOGUE ABOUT LINGUISTIC SUB-DISCIPLINES# space, any implicit inner-space relations
between the sub-disciplines do not have any substantial elements to clash with inside #INPUT
SPACE A#

or its frame; we bring these relations verbatim into the blend as it runs. Because of

this, it does not matter what we believe about the details of the relationship between
PRAGMATICS, SYNTAX,

and SEMANTICS; so long as the bare explicit relations are satisfied,

anyone (a relevance theorist, a frame semanticist, a generative grammarian, etc.) can agree
with and laugh at the meme’s message, so long as we agree that all these schools of thought
(and their members) are acting like children. Since most people who understand this meme
necessarily must be familiar with these clashing schools of thought, the meme encourages us
to maintain all these clashing relations (between their own #DIALOGUE BETWEEN LINGUISTIC
SUB-DISCIPLINES#

space and other possible yet clashing #DIALOGUE BETWEEN LINGUISTIC

SUB-DISCIPLINES#

spaces), which generates irony.

Since each of us supplies our own #DIALOGUE BETWEEN LINGUISTIC SUB-DISCIPLINES#
space, the individual relations we each identify may differ. Since I personally am a fan of
radical pragmatics and see myself largely as a practitioner of pragmatics, I maintain an
<IDENTITY> relation between [EGO] and {[A DOG] <IS> [A CHILD]}, a potential clash that
resolves easily through metonymy. This resolution works because dogs and children are
creatures who play without clear intention; that is, they do not know what they are doing.
This is further reinforced by meme intertextuality, which has a #PLAYFUL DOG# frame in
which dogs earnestly perform human activities without skill or intricate understanding,
instead just trying their best. On the other hand, a syntactician or semanticist with disdain for
pragmatics might maintain a relation between [FOOLISH ENDEAVOUR] and {[A DOG] <IS> [A
CHILD]}.

This invokes the #PLAYFUL DOG# frame in a different way and applies it to the

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69

blend differently, but it results in a similar outcome: poking fun at the complex relationship
between linguistic sub-disciplines, perhaps the way a [CHILD] might play with [TOYS]. This
deviant structure arises largely because the information given in the image modality has not
become sufficiently conventionalized to rule out all but one of the potentially conflicting
interpretations. Therefore, regardless of the detailed framing information present in each of
our unique #DIALOGUE BETWEEN LINGUISTIC SUB-DISCIPLINES# spaces, the meme means that
linguists who know enough to get the joke are, by definition, just playing and do not really
know what they are doing. We maintain all these relations after resolving most or all clashes
that arise, so this revelation is humorous (and a bit ironic because many linguists likely do
feel this way, at least a little, even if they have confidence that this imposter syndrome is not
entirely true).26
There is also the more straightforward case of irony that occurs at the sociolinguistic
level: OP created this meme, which means they believe that anyone who participates in this
kind of linguistic dialogue is a child who does not know what they are doing, but they must
have known enough about what they were doing to create the meme in the first place. In
other words, OP expects us to maintain a clashing double relation: {[OP] <IS> [NAIVE]} and
{[OP] <IS> [KNOWLEDGEABLE]}. Since [OP] and [OP] possess an <IDENTITY> relation, this
is certainly a clash, and it is certainly intentional; in fact, this self-deprecating brand of ironic
humour is nearly inseparable from meme culture to the extent that meme communicators
who do not self-deprecate are either considered not to be included within the in-group or are
adding a new layer of irony on top of the first one – they pretend not to be self-deprecating in
order to make themselves look foolish, which is in turn self-deprecating, and includes them
in the in-group.
Since this meme’s meaning arises from structure originating in our own experiences
rather than from conventionalized cues, example (4.3) depicts a bottom-up meme, and even
though we maintain plenty of clashing relations, these are the precise clashes we might
expect to maintain based on the semi-conventionalized use of the meme format, so this meme
is form-function correspondent.

26

This is true even of those of us clever enough to hold to radical pragmatics.

THE WAY WE MEME
4.3.4 Evil prescriptivism
Example (4.4) depicts a series of images that, when processed from top to bottom,
correspond to ordered frames from the movie The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the
Ring (2001).
(4.4)

Evil prescriptivism

In order, the pictures present Gandalf stooping to ask Frodo a question, a close-up of the
prospective One Ring held between Frodo’s forefingers and thumbs and glowing with

70

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71

presumably Elvish text, a shot of Frodo’s face looking down at the Ring with a blurry outline
of the Ring’s text projected onto his face, and, finally, a close-up of Gandalf attempting to
hide sheer terror. Each image contains some white text, again in order: Can you see
anything? below Gandalf’s face, Don’t end a sentence with a preposition immediately in
front of the Ring, It is some kind of nonsense above Frodo’s head, and It is the language of
prescriptivists which I will not utter here in front of a black background below Gandalf’s
face. OP intends for us to interpret this meme to mean something along the lines of,
Prescriptivism is an evil and nonsensical linguistic orientation, and secondarily (potentially)
that, It is silly to enforce the rule that you should not end a sentence with a preposition.
Figure 4.4 depicts a detailed diagram of the blend we have used to interpret this meme.

Figure 4.4 CIT diagram for (4.4)

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72

Properly arriving at this meaning requires that we be familiar with the dialogue
structure of the scene from the movie (or at least able to visualize the scene from the book).
For many internet natives, the scene depicted is iconic enough that the basic structure of the
#ONE RING REVELATION# space will spring to mind without too much effort, and we can use
this to frame #INPUT SPACE A#. However, OP does not present a single space-builder image
for #INPUT SPACE A#; instead, we must assemble #A# by blending the information from
space-builders for #INPUT SPACE A0#, #INPUT SPACE A1#, #INPUT SPACE A2#, and #INPUT
SPACE A3#.

The image content for #A0#, #A1#, and #A2# supply [GANDALF], the [RING] and

its [INSCRIPTION], and [FRODO], respectively; and contextual knowledge supplies the
elements [ELVISH], [MORDOR], [DIALOGUE FROM FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING]. These elements
are related via a complex network of inner-space relations, including but not at all limited to
the following:
•

{[GANDALF] <IS ALLIES WITH> [FRODO]}

•

{[[GANDALF] AND [FRODO]] <OPPOSE> [THE ONE RING]}

•

{[[THE ONE RING’S] [INSCRIPTION]] <IS WRITTEN IN> [[MORDOR’S]
[LANGUAGE]]}

•

{[MORDOR] <IS>[[EVIL] AND [DANGEROUS]]}

Since there is no framing information provided for #INPUT SPACE B#, we must
assemble this space using the relations provided. While other images from the same movie
have become conventionalized with extensive use,27 this image set has not. As with (4.3),
relation information superimposed on space-building information indicates critical outerspace relations, and [Don’t end a sentence with a preposition] acts this way. However,
multidimensional examples often use textually presented dialogue clashes to indicate critical
outer-space relations as well. In this case, the textual elements [nonsense] and
[prescriptivists] clash with the content of the original dialogue: [Elvish] and [Mordor],
respectively. We must identify or construct a mental space to bring into the blend as #INPUT
SPACE B#

that satisfies the network of inner-space relations between the elements projected

into #B# via these vital relations. Likely the most salient space that satisfies these

Cf. “One does not simply walk into Mordor” (Know Your Meme 2009) and Zenner & Geeraerts’s (2018)
analysis of this meme format and its conventionalized use.
27

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73

requirements is #LINGUISTIC DESCRIPTIVISM’S PERSPECTIVE OF PRESCRIPTIVISM#. #INPUT
SPACE B#

is now framed in terms of linguistic descriptivism.
When we run the blend, we use the organizing frames for both #A# and #B# to

structure it. We use the new framing information from #LORD OF THE RINGS#, which we have
identified as structuring the generic space, to assemble the relation {[PRESCRIPTIVISM] <IS>
[EVIL] AND [NONSENSICAL]} even though {[PRESCRIPTIVISM] <RESEMBLES> [GOOD THEORY]}.
We interpret this meme to mean something along the lines of, Not only is prescriptivism silly,
it is actively misleading (an academic evil), and we should work to oppose it, and to oppose
people who think it is not nonsense. Since this meaning arises from our own experience and
not conventionalization, example (4.4) depicts a form-function correspondent bottom-up
meme.
4.4

Form-function anti-correspondent meme case studies

Next, I present three form-function anti-correspondent meme case studies representing
potential degrees of anti-correspondence. The first meme case study involves using an
established construction in a novel, unusual, or ironic way. The second meme case study
involves using a meme format whose space-builder information inappropriately and
humorously instructs us to treat the other space-builder information as literal rather than
idiomatic. Memes of this type depend on familiarity with one or more subgenres or formats
of meme, and their humour lies in reframing the meaning-construction process while still
encouraging us to assemble a blend that someone might largely consider true, familiar,
agreeable, or mildly unironic, but we do not. Meanwhile, the third meme case study fails to
correspond even with some of our basic communicative assumptions. Instead of prompting
us to construct a meaningful or familiar blend, memes of this type prompt us to assemble a
nonsensical blend, perhaps without our realizing this nonsense at first glance. These
extremely anti-correspondent memes often mock the entire culture surrounding the topics of
one or both input spaces, usually mocking memes themselves. Resolving the blend for such
an anti-correspondent meme involves accepting a massive and absurd clash on the order of
THIS MEME IS FALSE.

It is prudent to note that anti-correspondence is distinct from formal or even
functional deviation from convention. Although Figure 4.5 depicts a meme whose image
content has been altered from its conventionalized form by replacing Drake’s head with a

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74

cat’s, it is not an example of a form-function anti-correspondent meme because it does not
reframe the meaning-construction process. Its essential meaning is still, Although A is
expected to prefer X, A instead prefers Y. Instead, the semiotic alteration aids in our stancetaking process and helps clue us into the proper discourse viewpoint space to occupy
(Dancygier & Vandelanotte 2016), resulting in its meaning ultimately corresponding to its
form.

Figure 4.5 A modified Drakeposting meme that is in fact not anti-correspondent
4.4.1 This isn’t fine
Example (4.5) depicts the caption, When you’ve got to do a high executive function task with
a low dopamine reward: above two images of an anthropomorphic dog reclining at a table
with a cup of coffee.
(4.5)

This isn’t fine

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75

Fully understanding this example requires familiarity with the original unaltered image of the
same dog sitting in a burning room saying, “This is fine,” as Figure 4.6 depicts. This reaction
image is generally referred to as “this is fine,” and it contains two panels cropped from a
webcomic entitled Gunshow (Green).

Figure 4.6 Unaltered reaction image This is fine (Green)
When used as a reaction, the original image usually refers to FINDING ONESELF IN A TERRIBLE
SITUATION,

but that situation is so regular and common that one has become perpetually in

denial about how bad it is (or one has simply become accustomed to that level of horror).
Instead of this image, however, example (4.5) depicts the dog and its coffee outdoors under a
rainbow saying, “This is unbearable.” By sharing this image in an online ADHD community,
OP intends for us to interpret this meme to mean something along the lines of, The
experience of ADHD makes tasks that appear to neurotypicals as simply being outside on a
sunny day feel like being unable to escape a burning room, making the ADHD person’s
distress appear as ridiculous a reaction as the reaction depicted in the original image.
Figure 4.7 depicts a detailed diagram of the blend we have used to interpret this meme.
We assemble the first input space using the space-builder beginning with when.
Anyone familiar with both the clinical terms surrounding ADHD and the experience of
having it can call up a generic space containing a [TASK] with a [HIGH EXECUTIVE FUNCTION
COST]

and a [LOW DOPAMINE REWARD], [DOING THE TASK] and [YOU]. Doing this with ADHD

(especially unmedicated) is nearly impossible and requires inhuman amounts of selfmotivation to be maintained since the primary motivation and reward chemical, dopamine, is
not being produced in sufficient supply in our brain. For the sake of argument, let us suppose

THE WAY WE MEME

Figure 4.7 CIT diagram for (4.5)

76

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77

hypothetically that we are working on some kind of lengthy academic paper on an interesting
topic, but we will only receive a sufficient dopamine reward for completing massive steps of
the process, like finishing a whole chapter or draft or defense. Despite the fact that we are
someone who enjoys the process of analysis and the topic we are analyzing (in this case, say,
memes), even beginning the smallest part of the task (e.g., writing a paragraph or two about
assembling a meme’s input spaces and connecting relations) requires hours of internal selftalk, three prescription medications and two OTC medications, and four cups of coffee.
Without ADHD, this would still certainly be a difficult task, but the meme’s framing
information would not fit the situation since there would be nothing to correspond to the
[LOW DOPAMINE REWARD].
Assuming we have the appropriate knowledge, we can begin assembling #INPUT
Conventionally, the “this is fine” reaction image prompts a well-framed space

SPACE B#.

resembling #INPUT SPACE B0# with the minimal elements [DOG], [INSIDE], [FIRE], [FINE], and
arguably [UTTERANCE], but example (4.5) is missing most of these elements. We use the
projection task to project any applicable consistencies between the meme and the original
image into #INPUT SPACE B0’# and eventually #INPUT SPACE B# such as [the dog sitting at the
table], [the speech bubble], [the ironic speech act] corresponding to [DOG], [UTTERANCE],
and the inner-space clash between [UTTERANCE] and the element that will eventually map to
[FINE], respectively. Controversially, we also project noticeable inconsistencies into #INPUT
SPACE B#

such as the CLASHES between [RAINBOW] and [FIRE], [OUTSIDE] and [INSIDE], and

[UNBEARABLE] and [FINE]. These inconsistencies are determined using completion and
elaboration, but this occurs in a blend of #INPUT SPACE B0# and #INPUT SPACE B0’# that runs
and eventually results in #INPUT SPACE B# being mostly composed rather than still
uncompressed and running (multidimensional) or in need of reinterpretation prior to
composition (bottom-up). Further, the CLASHES resulting from the original inconsistencies
project into #B# as CLASHES rather than simply as ELEMENTS (hence their red colouring in the
diagram), but when the blend runs or when we focus on one element, it is more like
[{[RAINBOW] <INSTEAD OF> [FIRE]}] or [{[UNBEARABLE] <INSTEAD OF> [FINE]}]. Also,
although the reaction image is composed of two formal frames, these frames (albeit with fire
instead of rainbows) almost always appear together, so it should be safe to treat them as a

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78

single space-builder rather than two space-builders prompting for a multidimensional input
space.
Familiarity with the prototypical use of the reaction image in Figure 4.6 makes
assembling outer-space relations trivial, even with the modifications to the original image:
•

{[YOU] <IS> [DOG]}

•

{[TASK] <IS> [OUTSIDE]}

•

{0[1HIGH EXECUTIVE FUNCTION COST]1 <IS>0 [1{2[3RAINBOW]3 <INSTEAD OF>2
[3FIRE]3}2]1}0

•

{0[1LOW DOPAMINE REWARD]1 <IS>0 [1{2[3UNBEARABLE]3 <INSTEAD OF>2
[3FINE]3}2]1}0

•

{[DOING THE TASK] <IS> [UTTERANCE]}

The straightforward meaning prompted by form explicitly fails to resonate with ADHD
people; we discard it immediately and unconsciously. This is what ADHD looks like to
neurotypical (NT) people, and the meme works because we know the directly formcorrespondent meaning is inaccurate. To us, the room is actually on fire! We are actually
trapped in a room! We are expected to say that “this is fine;” yet we cannot. This meme in
fact does not depict what it is like “when you’ve got to do a high executive function task with
a low dopamine reward.” Instead, this meme depicts what a NT person tells us it is like
“when you’ve got to do a high executive function task with a low dopamine reward,” but we
are in the burning room, trying to sip our coffee (because caffeine helps the brain produce
dopamine), and doing our absolute best to say that “this is fine.” The feeling of BUILDING THE
SECOND INPUT SPACE WITH ALL THOSE CLASHES

is the same feeling as BEING TRAPPED IN A

BURNING BUILDING THAT LOOKS TO OTHERS LIKE A SUNNY DAY WITH FLOWERS,

but when we

perform the blend, we still maintain our sense of EMPATHY for the DOG WHO SHOULD NOT BE
IN THAT LOCATION.

This results in an “incorrect” meaning, but with “correct” structure. We

can assemble meaning that is something along the lines of, Despite what NTs express to us
and about us from their perception, the experience of those of us with ADHD makes tasks
that appear to NTs as simply being outside on a sunny day feel like being unable to escape a
burning room, making the ADHD person’s distress appear as ridiculous a reaction as the
reaction depicted in the original image. We understand that our distress appears to be
ridiculous, but we also wish that NTs would put in the effort to try to understand that our

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79

experience is truly distressing. Since this meaning arises from conventionalized cues from
linguistic structure and from unconventional use of a conventionalized image, example (4.5)
depicts a top-down meme, but the ultimate meaning is opposite to the meaning apparently
presented in the meme’s form, so it is form-function anti-correspondent.
4.4.2 Later alligator
Example (4.6) depicts a meme that appears at first glance to be a prototypical unidimensional
top-down meme. The text mode begins with when and outlines a situation in which we are
finally reunited with our alligator, and the image mode depicts an alligator happily receiving
pets. Initially, we expect this meme to mean something along the lines of When we go a long
time without seeing our alligators, both we enjoy petting them and they enjoy being pet.
(4.6)

Later alligator

If this were a form-function correspondent meme, we would expect the conventionalized
linguistic prompt to outline a generic space with structure that can be applied to a second
input space. However, the text mode fails to prompt for a salient input space using the
conventionalized instructions. Instead, we are only able to properly assemble spaces and a
blend with knowledge of the colloquial greeting, See you later, alligator. While the text
mode does prompt for the same kind of space as the greeting, it does not do so using
conventionalized means, either grammatical or colloquial.

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80

Figure 4.8 CIT diagram for (4.6)
The meme’s actual free translation is closer to, When my friend tells me, See you later
alligator, I envision a hand petting a cute alligator when they next see me, even if such an
image does not correspond to reality. Figure 4.8 depicts a detailed diagram of the blend we
have used to interpret this meme.
Instead of acting as a conventionalized linguistic space-builder prompt, the words
later, see, and alligator work together to populate #INPUT SPACE A# framed by #GREETING#.
Assuming we have this frame, we understand that the [RHYMING] component and the fact that
the [SPEAKER] is calling [YOUA] an [ALLIGATOR] help communicate that the [SPEAKER] is
affecting a [JOVIAL] tone to show that they are [SAD BUT HOPEFUL] and believe that
eventually circumstances will be such that {[SPEAKER] <SEES> [YOUA]} again. We then use

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this shared understanding and its associated relation as the space-builder prompt and frame
for #INPUT SPACE A’#.
The image and text modes work together as space-builders for #INPUT SPACE B#.
While the #GREETING# frame instructs us to discard the {[YOUA] <IS> [ALLIGATOR]} innerspace relation, #INPUT SPACE B# re-presents the [ALLIGATOR] element along with [YOUB] and
<PETS> as the inner-space relation {[YOUB] <PET> [ALLIGATOR]} and {[PETTING] <CAUSES>
[PHYSICAL ENJOYMENT]}.
We construct the following outer-space relations between #A’# and #B#:
•

{[YOUA] <IS> [ALLIGATOR]}

•

{[SPEAKER] <IS> [YOUB]}

•

{[SEEING] <IS> [PETTING]}

•

{[HAPPINESS] <IS> [PHYSICAL ENJOYMENT]}

Note that [YOUA] and [YOUB] do not share an <IDENTITY> relation; instead, we shift
perspectives when we consider to which entity the linguistic you refers in the meme’s text
and in the colloquial greeting’s text.
Running the blend is quite straightforward, except that rather than projecting the
elements from #A’# and #B# and blending according to our #REALITY# frame, we ironically
project the elements of #A’# into the blend as clashes (or at least as less “real” than the
elements of #B#) so that when clashes arise in the blend, we use the framing information
from #B# to solve the problem rather than using #A# as we would in an unironic situation.
Because of this ironic process, the meaning that emerges is, A silly and cute image of
someone petting an alligator is what I envision when someone wishes me goodbye with the
phrase, See you later alligator, even though I am aware this image does not correspond to
either of our experiences and they may not even intend for me to envision it in the first place.
We arrived at this meaning even though the form lied about its degree of conventionalization,
both in its capacity as a meme and in its text mode’s capacity as a space-builder. Memes with
when are conventionally supposed to correspond to reality, and this one explicitly does not,
so it is form-function anti-correspondent. It also fails to provide a generic space by which we
can reliably apply structure, and we must identify the appropriate organising frame from our
own experience before we can form the final blend, so it is bottom-up.

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4.4.3 Snake Pokémon
Example (4.7) is a reference to a semi-memetic trend in the r/pokemon subreddit and other
Pokémon communities where OP prepares a list of “attractive” Pokémon for all types of
people. The joke usually is that these sub-categories are silly and intentionally poorly
describing the Pokémon in that category (or attacking some overdone design trend from the
media, like snake Pokémon or poison Pokémon all belonging to antagonists).
(4.7)

Snake Pokémon

If example (4.7) were an ordinary member of this category, its free translation would be
something like, Isn’t it funny how snake Pokémon are divided into the silly categories of
grass, ground, dragon, and poison types? All of the conventionalized information in the
meme points us in this interpretive direction, but we are also conventionally expecting a joke,
and not only are those categories unfunny, they are terminologically precise Types. In
participating in this meme trend, OP ought to use intentionally ridiculous emergent
terminology to make fun of Pokémon. Since OP is unable to do this without using official
terminology, they appear not to be a valid member of the subreddit community, or “100% a
cop” as defined by Figure 4.9.

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Figure 4.9 Meme stating that all cops avoid "blue"
Alternatively, OP has somehow communicatively modified the meme format for an ironic
purpose. In this case, OP’s purpose is to communicate some meaning with a free translation
along the lines of, I have wasted your time, and this meme does not mean anything. Figure
4.10 and Figure 4.11 together depict detailed diagrams of the blends we have used to
interpret this meme.
We start with the conventionalized framing information for #UNOFFICIAL POKÉMON
CATEGORIES MEME#,

and that frame plus the space builder Snake pokemon tells us that we

should be looking for [ACCURATE] yet [RIDICULOUS] traits common to [SNAKE POKÉMON].
Then, the pictures of the groups of Pokémon, the [GRASS] type [SERPERIOR], the [GROUND]
types [STEELIX] and [SILICOBRA], the [DRAGON] types [RAYQUAZA] and [DRAGONAIR], and
the [POISON] types [ARBOK] and [SEVIPER], should act collectively as a projection into
#INPUT SPACE A#. However, there appears to be no joke here as these are ordinary categories;
in fact, these categories are proper nouns from the media referring to the fundamental
classification system of all Pokémon; this means the meme’s proposed categories are

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Figure 4.10 Failure CIT diagram for (4.7)

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Figure 4.11 Success CIT diagram for (4.7)

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extremely [ACCURATE], even more than its starting category of [SNAKE POKÉMON], so they
are not [RIDICULOUS] at all. We get to the first free translation without any work, which
appears to be, Yeah, sure, I guess it’s… interesting? that snake Pokémon have multiple types,
but there’s no joke here. We have to ask not only why this image has as many as 6500
upvotes and 339 comments, but why it is even here at all; if this was the entire joke, it should
have been removed by moderators for being low-effort content.
So, we must try again. We project the same information into #INPUT SPACE A#, but we
cannot rely on conventionalized information anymore, so we have to reach into our
experience and search for applicable structure for #INPUT SPACE B#. Eventually, the shared
frustration in the comments leads us to examine the post title in more detail. It contains the
word loss. This word innocuously accompanies the #POKÉMON# frame and its more generic
#PLAYER-VERSUS-PLAYER COMBAT# frame, but in meme circles the word loss often acts as a
space-builder for an entirely unrelated frame: #LOSS#. This frame calls up a reference to a
highly abstracted version of the comic “Loss” (Buckley 2008), but it does so in a way that is
undesirable to us. We are blindsided by the fact that #LOSS# has been brought into salience
against our will, usually along with seven lines arranged into four groups: a vertical line, two
vertical lines (the second slightly shorter than the first), two more vertical lines (of largely
equal height this time), and a vertical and a horizontal line. Figure 4.12 depicts the comic,
and Figure 4.13 depicts the abstracted pattern of lines. If we see that pattern, any chance for
meaning to fall out from running a blend is lost. We learn that a meme containing that pattern
was never a meaningful meme in the first place, which means that nothing from #INPUT
SPACE A#

projects into the final blend, so the blend fails due to clashes between any original

expectations and the fact that the meme is a #LOSS# meme, which, by definition, is
meaningless.
Once we have found this #LOSS# frame, we can (in fact, we must; we want to avoid
this framing action) apply it to #INPUT SPACE B#, including its elements four-panel space [+],
single vertical line in panel A [|], two vertical lines in panel B [||], two vertical lines in panel
C [||], and vertical line followed by horizontal line in panel D[|_], and critically, the idea that

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summoning this space is a waste of time because [THIS SPACE IS FALSE], and thinking about it
is akin to losing The Game, the object of which is to avoid thinking about said game.28

Figure 4.12 Original "Loss" comic (Buckley 2008)

Figure 4.13 Abstract image of the #LOSS# frame

28

Cf. losethegame.net, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(mind_game), and idle discourse at any
elementary school.

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If the content that we could project into #INPUT SPACE A# is organizable into the abstract
#LOSS# shape, given in Figure 4.13, we can (and must) assemble outer-space relations
between the corresponding forms in #A# and #B#, as in Figure 4.14:
•

{[APPARENT TITLE] <IS> [+]}

•

{[VERTICAL Serperior] <IS> [|]}

•

{[[VERTICAL Steelix] [VERTICAL Silicobra]] <IS> [||]}

•

{[[VERTICAL Rayquaza] [VERTICAL Dragonair]] <IS> [||]}

•

{[[VERTICAL Arbok] [HORIZONTAL Seviper] <IS> [|_]}

Figure 4.14 Example (4.7) with #LOSS# shape superimposed
Unlike examples (4.1)–(4.4) and even (4.5) and (4.6) in which meaning emerges
essentially immediately, example (4.7) functions a bit like a garden path sentence, requiring
even native speakers to exercise a conscious meaning-construction process that takes an
observable amount of time on the order of seconds or minutes. The fact that this process is
successful (or, perhaps, unsuccessful) combined with approximately 300 commented puns
using the word loss causes us to stop and experience a parody of the emotion depicted in the
original comic strip. The original meaning of this comic strip was, Miscarriages are too
painful for words. Unfortunately for Buckley, the internet circa 2009 hated any kind of

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sincere expression of emotion, so we (acting as a multitude of individual OPs) memed the
comic into semantic oblivion. Since then, the comic’s conventionalized meaning is no longer
consistent with its originally intended meaning, such that references to it in other memes
negate any kind of meaningful free translation other than, This meme format has become so
conventionalized and overused that it is becoming obvious and stale, similar to how we
viewed the “Loss” comic strip when it was first released. Because we put effort into
understanding this meme with no payoff, we experienced a “miscarriage” of meaningcreation, which is painful and unfortunate, and we should avoid it. However, this is also a
warning: If we are not careful to avoid overusing the non-Loss form component of this meme,
we run the risk of killing the entire meme format, not just one individual instance of the meme
made in bad faith. Example (4.7) has such a free translation, but the obvious space-builder
cues intentionally point us in the wrong direction first in order to make us work harder to
ultimately arrive at the intended meaning. I am hesitant to describe this meme as bottom-up
because no communicative meaning gets assembled in spite of OP’s ostension. And, while
conventionalization played a role in forming the meaning of the #LOSS# frame, we certainly
did not assemble this blend’s meaning by following its conventionalization cues, so it cannot
be top-down. This style of meme is hardly uncommon or obscure: Know Your Meme
published an article that called Loss “the internet’s greatest meme” (2017), and an enormous
amount of internet subculture participation involves creatively engineering situations which
are apparently meaningful but ultimately absurd and meaningless (Katz & Shifman 2017).
Though its mechanics may be unclear, what is clear is that (4.7) is form-function anticorrespondent.
4.5

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have analyzed seven meme case studies, demonstrating that my functional
typology is sufficient for use in descriptive meme communication analysis. I have divided
these memes into three functional categories: form-function correspondent top-down memes,
form-function correspondent bottom-up memes, and form-function anti-correspondent
memes. I have discussed meme dimensionality because it may eventually prove to be
important, but I have not used it to separate major categories since it depends on formal
features and has not provided any analytical insight. I have shown that, although memes
occur with a multiplicity of forms, even the memes that attempt to subvert the most basic

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rules of communication can be reined in and categorized using functional analysis. In
Chapter 5, I discuss some of the implications of what categorizing memes in this manner
means for understanding modern communication in addition to the underlying questions of
both language and meaning.

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5. Discussion: What the lies tell us about the truth

5.1

Introduction

In Chapter 3, I have outlined four potential categories that arise from a straightforward
analysis of meme form and proposed a functional method of analysis that results in the same
categories while accounting for the formal method’s inability to handle anti-correspondent
memes. In Chapter 4, I have demonstrated how my proposed method correctly categorizes
memes along the obvious formal lines while also accounting for irony that a non-functional
method would overlook. In this chapter, I generalize and defend the categories that have
arisen during my analysis, use my typology to make predictions about the relationship
between these categories and meme function, and demand that cognitive linguistics as a field
continue attempting to synthesize an interdisciplinary unifying theory of communication that
intersects with and is informed by research from related fields.
5.2

Category division criteria

I have argued that functional analysis proposes more reliable categories than formal analysis
by demonstrating that a functional analysis is able to address pragmatic information that a

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formal analysis cannot interact with. In order to do this, I have treated top-down, formfunction correspondent memes as the more “literal” variety of meme, similar to what I might
call “literal” verbal communication.29 These memes require the least amount of insider
knowledge to arrive at a satisfactory blend. When some conceptual framing information is
implied instead of being outright framed (whether by superimposing content or just outright
failing to supply it), the meme requires us to look into our memory for a compatible space
and associated frame, but we have little in the way of explicit feedback from the meme to tell
us if we have chosen a well-framed space. For insiders, this is not significantly difficult; for
outsiders, this is impossible. Form-function anti-correspondence is even more difficult for
outsiders to overcome, requiring us to possess not only a well-framed space and the ability to
identify it via brief prompting but also an expectation of what would happen when that wellframed space encounters potentially unfamiliar spaces. This is why I have called these
prompts “failures,” not because any mistakes have been made, but because I have framed my
questions as polar questions. They are in fact no more “failures” than metaphor and irony are
“failures” to correspond to literal meaning.
In analyzing and diagramming examples, I have identified three specific traits
corresponding to distinct diagrammatical structures: multidimensional framing, bottom-up
blending, and form-function anti-correspondence. I have provided theoretical descriptions of
these traits in §3.4, and in the following section I address how these traits appear in CIT
diagrams and why they suggest useful category divisions. I have re-presented the three
relevant polar questions immediately below:
1) Multidimensional framing: Does the meme supply explicit framing in both
conceptual and structural dimensions?
2) Blending mechanics: Do we construct the blended space based on top-down
mechanics?
3) Form-function correspondence: Does the meaning suggested by form correspond
to the meaning suggested by both a free translation and functional analysis?

29

See §6.4. I do not intend to claim or assume that more “literal” meaning is in any way the semantic “default.”

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5.2.1 Multidimensional framing
Multidimensional framing occurs when a meme appears to be formally subdivided into
multiple semiotically identifiable frames composed of the same or similar modalities or
modality compositions and organized in some way, and this occurs in addition to the already
double-scope framing necessary to form a meme. Multidimensional framing appears in my
diagrams as many-to-one form-function relationships organizable along a linear spectrum. In
these cases, the many entities are conceptually compressible into the one entity by applying
the proper frame to the specific information and blending it to create the general information
of the one entity. This appears to be a more obviously complex process than unidimensional
framing, i.e., when both of a meme’s input spaces are presented in their compressed forms.
Examples include (4.2) and (4.4) in contrast to (4.1) and (4.3), respectively.
I have drawn a theoretical category boundary in Chapter 3 using this trait, yet I have
not organized Chapter 4 using its guidance despite its producing obviously more complex
diagrams. While I do think multidimensionality is functionally critical to meme meaningconstruction, I do not believe it tells the whole story as I have defined it, and I therefore
believe it demands more research for several reasons that complicate the issue. First,
multidimensionality appears to be identical to an explicitly expanded compression, and there
are varied reasons why it might be valuable to decompress a compressed space beyond
making elements explicit (Fauconnier & Turner 2002). Second, other instances of
conventionalized framing, when decompressed, result in analyses quite similar to those in
which multidimensionality appears. For example, Figure 5.4 and Figure 5.5 depict two levels
of detailed analysis of example (5.1), and blending them in order to present all of the relevant
relations results in a distinctly multidimensional diagram. Third, in most cases of
multidimensional framing, native speakers treat a multidimensionally framed input space as
still being a single input space viewed from multiple perspectives rather than multiple input
spaces blended together (e.g., gifs, videos, movies, etc.). This suggests that the process of
blending a multidimensionally framed space may be as fundamental as the process of
blending the final meme-space, in which we use perhaps Johnson’s (1990) PATH schema
instead of or in conjunction with LINK. Since the modern internet facilitates video as a default

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modality30 while other communication methods do not (e.g., a PDF document or a printed
thesis), treating consecutive still images as somehow fundamentally distinct from a single
still image or from a single frame of video may indicate assumptions arising from too much
modality dependence rather than meaningful understanding arising from successful analysis.
Fourth, to the extent that multidimensional framing might involve distinguishing
conventionalized versus non-conventionalized cues, it may obfuscate whether the meme’s
blending mechanics are top-down or bottom-up. For example, the bottom-up (4.4) uses
perhaps the most conventionalized framing cue possible, listing the images consecutively,
while the top-down (4.2) would be just as top-down and arguably just as multidimensional if
it lacked the conventionalized linguistic cues and instead had only the two labels frontend
and backend. Fifth, and most relevant to this chapter, I have not been able to identify a sociopragmatic basis for dividing categories using only this trait. Just as Fauconnier & Turner
(2002) allow for multi-scope creativity without trying to explicitly define multi-scope blends
beyond single- and double-scope, I believe it is prudent to resist drawing a division between
unidimensional and multidimensional presentation, at least until a functional motivation
becomes clearer.
5.2.2 Bottom-up blending
Bottom-up blending occurs when we assemble a blend by intuitively applying framing
structure to the final blend based on non-conventionalized cues and our own internal
experience rather than applying framing structure based on conventionalized cues. For
memes, this results in explicitly presenting vital relations, usually by superimposing one
modality on another instead of by juxtaposing one framing space-builder cue with another
framing space-builder cue using a conventionalized technique. According to my analysis, this
results in a diagram in which the input spaces must be completed and elaborated using a
generic space in concert with information we already possess. Examples (4.3) and (4.4)
demonstrate this trait in contrast to the blending mechanics of the top-down examples (4.1)
and (4.2), which include conventionalized prompts to structure one or both spaces based on
the generic space.

I would not necessarily apply this only to the so-called “modern” Internet. Even prior to Web 2.0, one of the
earliest memes (albeit a non-communicative one) I can recall being passed around was a video of a dancing
baby transmitted via email and floppy disk; see https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/dancing-baby
30

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Bottom-up blending indicates a fundamental deviation in the blending process for the
memes that use it. Instead of applying framing structure using top-down mechanics, we are
working comparatively backward in some way. Papišta (2022) sees bottom-up blending in
simplex blends as intuiting a category from contextual information based on two presumably
related values, and bottom-up memes do this, but in a more complex way than simplex
blends do. Essentially, when we successfully assemble a bottom-up blend, we are identifying
an extremely complex ad hoc “category” into which both the meme’s well-framed space and
its poorly framed space fit. The category is not simplex like the one outlined in FATHERCHILD (cf.

§3.3.1). Instead, this ad hoc category is sufficiently well-framed such that it should

only have one entry – the fairly specific situation framed by the first space – but we cannot
deny the unexpected similarity in structure between the spaces, provided we have
experienced the second input space well enough to frame it ourselves. In a sense, OP is
suggesting that the ad hoc category should already exist as a salient simplex blend, even
though we have to assemble a multi-scope blend to complete the blending process. This
claim generally holds for many top-down memes as well, where OP has encoded instructions
for assembling this pseudo-simplex blend using conventionalized cues. OP’s general claim in
any given meme is something along the lines of, This situation is an example of a valid
global generic category that you and I unexpectedly have a framed space for, even though
this relationship and/or the category’s framed space is in no way an explicit global generic
category. Memes purposefully over-compress – they pretend to express seemingly simplex
concepts while in fact using multi-scope creativity. Unlike simplex blend mechanics,
however, meme blending mechanics correspond to different communicative purposes. Topdown memes enable OP to express what it is like to belong to a certain social group, and
bottom-up memes enable us to determine whether we belong to a certain social group in
order to receive a reward – or possibly even a punishment, as in the case of example (4.7) – if
we do in fact belong.31

31

I am hesitant to apply the terminology of top-down and bottom-up to the anti-correspondent category, but I
have chosen to do so without better terminology. If this is meaningful, I suspect that there is some other
functional category-defining trait missing from my analysis: either anti-correspondence needs to be subdivided
or bottom-up needs to be subdivided (or both).

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5.2.3 Form-function anti-correspondence
Form-function anti-correspondence occurs when elaborative information necessarily
contradicts the information which is presented in the formal content and projected into the
blend; these are specific instances where form is outright lying by presenting a counterfactual
situation as factual. Because humans are so good at handling counterfactuals (see Turner &
Fauconnier 1998; Fauconnier & Turner 2002; Turner 1997), the steps of this process are not
necessarily consciously performed, but a straightforward, unironic interpretation of the meme
will not result in the proper intended meaning. Examples of this include (4.5), (4.6), and
(4.7). In many cases of anti-correspondence, such as (4.5) and (4.6), it may not be
consciously clear to us where the counterfactuality lies without performing in-depth analysis,
but we should still resonate with the meme’s fundamental falseness: The meme is false in a
true way. Some examples, such as (4.7), may defy both top-down and bottom-up blending
mechanics entirely since their communicative purpose is to represent an intentionally failed
communication attempt: The meme is false in a false way.
Even more so than resolving bottom-up blends, successfully navigating anticorrespondence depends on belonging to the correct social group because even identifying
anti-correspondence in the first place requires proper membership. I do not mean to suggest
that this always involves consciously identifying the anti-correspondence, however.
Although (4.7) does involve conscious input, the correct interpretation of (4.5) actually
depends on unconscious and incorrect intuitive leaps that only members of the ADHD social
group make when using top-down mechanics to apply framing structure to the final blended
space. If we were not a member of the ADHD community (or at least an ally), we might
interpret the meme as a form-function correspondent top-down meme and even find it funny,
but we would do so by following the conventionally prescribed framing mechanics and
conclude that the meme identifies ADHD people as exaggerating their distress. Anticorrespondent memes present a socially determined barrier to understanding either the
meme’s meaning-content or its associated humour that is publicly identifiable to members of
the in-group, regardless of whether it is identifiable to us.
5.2.4 Inter-category concerns
Setting multidimensionality aside, bottom-up blending mechanics and form-function anticorrespondence both suggest socio-pragmatic reasons for their appearance in a given meme.

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A form-function correspondent top-down meme depends very little on social group
membership for meaning-communication aside from whether non-members of the relevant
social group find the particular meme funny. In fact, sometimes, top-down memes function to
communicate new categories to non-members of a social group, suggesting that the outsider
should consider expanding their own categories to include this new category, even if they
have no desire to join the relevant social group. If bottom-up mechanics appear without anticorrespondence, the meme likely functions more like an inside joke. It is unlikely that its
purpose is to explicitly exclude non-members; instead, it is funny for members of the social
group and meaningless or absurd to non-members. OP does not care whether we get it; they
only care to demonstrate that they get it. Failing to understand the meme does mean we are
missing some socially relevant framing information, but OP is not on the lookout for false
group participants.
Anti-correspondence, on the other hand, appears when OP is likely seeking to identify
false participants. This may not necessarily be a conscious goal, but with these memes, the
way we understand OP’s meaning answers whether we really belong. In an anticorrespondent meme that uses top-down mechanics, the way we process the conventionalized
information tells OP (and the other group members) whether we belong, and we only learn
that the meme was a test if we investigate. This specific combination appears fairly often in
communities featuring extreme self-parody (whether intentional or not), often called
circlejerk communities, where some conventionalized piece of information means one thing
in “public” and another thing in that community. For example, in most social circles, Hello
there is a perfectly ordinary conventionalized phrase to which virtually any greeting is a valid
and phatically successful reply, but to a member of r/prequelmemes, anything we reply aside
from General Grievous’s response to Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge
of the Sith (2005), depicted in Figure 5.1, proves to OP (i.e., the one who uttered, Hello
there) that we are not members of the same social group.32

32

In its current form, this is not explicitly a meme by my definition, but it is a prompt for a meme, and it serves
a similar purpose.

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Figure 5.1 Proper GREETING script for a member of r/prequelmemes
The conventionalized communication cue prompts for something specific instead of the
expected reply from a non-group member. Much of meme culture’s inherent irreverence lies
in anti-correspondence as well: We must understand the meme and find it funny in order to
be in the in-group, so there is a social pressure to find dark and repulsive content funny in
order to be accepted.
Navigating form-function anti-correspondence lets OP and other group members
know if we are valid group members, and successfully completing the process of bottom-up
blending rewards us for being valid group members. However, mixing the two traits causes a
new purpose to emerge: self-referential community criticism.33 This is not to say that topdown or form-function correspondent memes cannot be self-referential or self-critical; most,
if not all, memes do this to a certain degree. However, when both anti-correspondence and
bottom-up blending collaborate, for whatever reason, the purpose of the meme becomes to

33

I am hesitant to write positively about this even though I do enjoy it. Memes have a nasty and extensive
history of criticising communities that OP is not a part of while claiming to be criticising their own community
(e.g., see 4chan’s /b/ and /pol/ boards especially; the “intellectual dark web;” the “alt-right pipeline;” Evans
2018a; Evans 2018b; Lavin 2019). This tension between anti-correspondent and correspondent community
criticism has been present since the very beginning of meme culture, and it has cascading effects on meme
communication and society at large. For example, some meme speakers and journalists argue that without this
component of meme communication being so pervasive, Donald Trump would not have been elected (Olheiser
2016; Singal 2016), and a pro-Trump social media influencer is being federally prosecuted for election fraud
due to creating and transmitting memes that gave intentionally false voting instructions without indicating ironic
intention. It would be interesting to see future research regarding this.

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address how silly we (including OP) are. Some memes with only one trait or the other might
have this as part of their meaning, but the two occurring together means OP knows they are
silly, we know they are silly, they know we know they are silly, thinking they are silly is a
requirement of being included in the in-group, being in the in-group means also being silly,
and being in the in-group means knowing that being in the in-group means being silly, and
being unwilling to accept that means we are not welcome in the in-group. This can be a way
of expressing frustration, or it can be a call to exclude unwanted members, or it can act as a
prank, or it can be all of the above. This is a key part of and even the main purpose of
intentionally participating in a circlejerk community – being aware that what we and OP and
everyone else is doing is foolish. Sometimes OP is so openly foolish that they obscure the
meaning so deep within the meme that we have to invoke conscious thought to arrive at
meaning – and that may even result in punishment for our foolishness – but OP trusts that we
are sufficiently in the in-group – and therefore sufficiently foolish – that we can construct
their intended meaning anyway. The punishment is praise for being the “right kind” of
foolish.
5.3

Socio-pragmatic motivations

In this thesis, I have argued that it is fundamentally misleading to search for meme categories
based on formal differences, and I have shown why useful categories must be motivated by
function. Memes are significant as a communication modality in that all memes necessarily
possess at least some phatic function, but this does not mean that they possess only phatic
function: Many memes do indeed transmit non-phatic meaning-content in addition to their
phatic purpose. However, the surest sign of a failed meme is failed phasis, not failed
transmission of meaning-content. We may then say that phasis is a necessary but insufficient
condition of meme communication. The socio-pragmatics of memes really do determine
everything, but this is not because memes are only phatic; it is because memes are
necessarily phatic.
I have separated meme categories along pragmatic lines, and this has unsurprisingly
revealed sociolinguistic motivations: The most straightforward memes instruct us to use a
specific technique to blend some information given in the meme with other information
given in the meme; the least straightforward memes instruct us to blend some information
that may or may not be given with other information that may or may not be given using a

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technique that may or may not be given. Less straightforward memes act as a litmus test for
whether we meet certain requirements for already possessing spaces or frames that specify
information that OP considers salient. If we also consider this information salient enough to
access it, we can perform the proper blend and are members of OP’s in-group; but if we do
not consider this information salient enough to access it using OP’s prompts, we are not
members of OP’s in-group.
It is not a novel discovery that meme culture heavily values group membership (see
Chapter 1). However, this typology identifies group membership as the defining pragmatic
information motivating both formal and functional content. This is, I believe, a much
stronger claim, and makes a few predictions that, though difficult to test, ought to be
falsifiable. First, it suggests that correspondent top-down memes serve the purpose of
expanding group size (possibly by transmitting meaning-content) while bottom-up memes
reward current group membership, and anti-correspondent memes serve the purpose of
maintaining or reducing group size (or possibly apparent group size). Second, it suggests that
we should be able to identify trends correlating either group size or group size differentials
with the density (or popularity, perhaps) of top-down versus bottom-up and correspondent
versus anti-correspondent memes within a group. Third, it suggests that top-down memes
should be somewhat understandable by a wider variety of people than bottom-up memes, but
bottom-up memes should inspire a feeling of community membership in a subculture more
specific than meme culture when top-down memes do not. Fourth, it suggests that bottom-up
and anti-correspondent memes regulate group size in different ways or for different purposes
or for different kinds of groups.
I suggest, then, that memes serve three major purposes that unite community
membership and communication: they let us communicate that we belong, communicate
about what it means to belong, and most intimately and phatically, communicate by
belonging. All memes can communicate about belonging, but form-function correspondent
memes do not necessarily go deeper than this. When they do, they join form-function anticorrespondent top-down memes in both claiming and demonstrating that we belong. It is not
until we can proficiently create, understand, and distribute anti-correspondent bottom-up
memes that only the context of our group dynamics can be enough to transmit information.

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5.3.1 Communicating belonging
Until this point, I have taken memes’ inherent multimodality for granted. I have suggested
that both types of form-function correspondent memes (indeed, all memes to a degree) utilize
modality and framing to help identify spaces and relations. This is in theory true, but humans
in any social group have a fundamental need to communicate with one another, and a key
aspect of language involves finding a way to do so even if the supposedly necessary modality
is not present. Not all members of meme culture have constant access to the entirety of the
internet, but communicating via meme is a critical part of even analogue culture for many of
us. So how do we, and indeed how does my typology, handle situations where modality
juxtaposition cannot organize a meme’s formal elements? The answer, of course, has to do
with conventionalization through repeated use. Example (5.1) presents a case where OP uses
a podcast – a necessarily linear modality – to transmit a meme that ought to have required
two modalities to be understood. The meme prompt itself occurs immediately following the
timestamp [33:30] in the example.
(5.1)

Malicious medicine (Evans 2022 [32:45])
EVANS. Vioxx is a poster child for what’s wrong with the FDA and why I believe
FDA reform is so urgently needed. And if Dr. Graham’s calculations are
correct, if 60,000 people died from Vioxx, Vioxx killed more Americans than
Vietnam.
LIEB. Fuck.
EVANS. Like…
LIEB. Holy shit.
EVANS. Right?
LIEB. I mean –
EVANS. And based on just like who tends to get arthritis most likely, a number of
the people it killed probably survived Vietnam only to get iced by Vioxx.
They got merked34 by Vioxx.

Note that merked is an early 2000s slang term for ‘unceremoniously killed.’ Both Lieb and Evans are in the
demographic to use this term and have extensive experience writing jokes with that target demographic. This
pun is nearly impossible to make without belonging sufficiently well to this group.
34

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LIEB. Fuck me.
EVANS. They lived through a punji stick trap, but they couldn’t make it through
the new FDA.
LIEB. You lose to the Viet Cong and then you lose to Merck. That is…
EVANS. Yes.
LIEB. That sucks.
[33:30]
EVANS. Merck and the Viet Cong shaking hands with killing Americans.
LIEB. Fuck me, man.
This meme originally occurs in the audio mode: Robert Evans, the journalist and host of the
podcast Behind the Bastards (Evans 2022), expresses his thoughts while in conversation with
the episode’s guest, Matt Lieb. Evans argues for the need for FDA reform based on the
similarities in death tolls caused by a pharmaceutical drug manufacturer, Merck, and the
entirety of the Vietnam War. Figure 5.2 presents my rendering of the image that the podcast
audio alone conjures for us, a meme format resulting from conventionalized use of a
watercolor painting of a scene from Predator (1987), in which Dutch (Arnold
Schwarzenegger) shakes hands with his friend Dillon (Carl Weathers). Figure 5.3 depicts its
detailed CIT diagram, which I have altered slightly to make the top-down framing clearer.

Figure 5.2 Nonlinear rendering of the linearly represented meme Malicious medicine

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OP’s communication, though monomodal, succeeds because the image content he
alludes to, often called Epic handshake (cf. Know Your Meme 2013) or Predator handshake,
is highly conventionalized and easily accessible to native meme speakers using the identifier
shaking hands. The framing information provided by the conventionalized mental image
(whose actual modality, again, is recorded speech) says that Dillon’s arm labels #INPUT
SPACE A#,

Dutch’s arm labels #INPUT SPACE B#, and the shaking hands labels #CRITICAL

SHARED FRAMING INFORMATION#.

We can assemble these two spaces thanks to the space-

builders Merck and Viet Cong plus the very long discussion that Evans and Lieb have about
Merck and the very short discussion, presented in its entirety in (5.1), that they have about
the Vietnam War. By listening to the episode, we have had #INPUT SPACE A# being built
constantly for half an hour (nearly two hours if we finished previous episode first), with
Evans feeding us more and more and more framing information to be projected into this
space. The #VIETNAM WAR# frame for #INPUT SPACE B# is fairly salient for Americans in
general, but it is especially salient for the sorts of Americans who would listen to Behind the
Bastards.

Figure 5.3 CIT diagram for (5.1)

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The purpose of the blend is not to learn more about either of the input spaces; it is to
help categorize HOW BAD MERCK’S ACTIONS WERE, and the irony mostly comes from the fact
that a #WAR# frame generally includes the assumption that people will die, but #MEDICINE# is
for the explicit purpose of preventing people from dying. Despite lacking an obvious
linguistic cue, the Epic handshake image itself is still sufficiently conventionalized to result
in a top-down meme. As shown in Figure 5.4, the frame structure it depicts is remarkably
similar to a CIT diagram, and its conventionalized meaning allows us to categorize the
emergent meaning using a simplex blend depicted in Figure 5.5, confirming a top-down
analysis as opposed to a bottom-up one that might be suggested by a formal analysis.

Figure 5.4 Framed gloss map of meme Malicious medicine
In using this meme to transmit meaning (and laughing at this utterly horrifying
situation), Evans and his guest contextualize their dark humour. In demonstrating that they
are able to construct an ad hoc meme and use it in an impromptu way, they show familiarity
with meme culture, in which it is appropriate to express frustration and horror through dark
humour. They are able to do this in a linear, monomodal format despite the meme’s

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fundamental multimodality by referring to a highly conventionalized meme identifier. In
doing this, they transmit non-phatic meaning – a compressed comedic summary of hours of
podcast content – and phatic meaning – that they are not bastards, but Merck is – to other
meme speakers who received the communication.

Figure 5.5 Epic handshake simplex blend for the meme Malicious medicine
5.3.2 Communicating about belonging
When I was first outlining my basic categories to a meme-literate colleague and offering
some basic category exemplars, I told him I was tentatively referring to my categories as topdown and bottom-up, respectively. He gestured to my two prototype images35 and said, “Oh,
you mean memes and dank memes” (Frits Kuhn, personal communication, 2022). He
identified my essential category distinctions and their basic functions via intuition as a joke
simply by being meme-literate. He made this joke using terminology available to native

35

He was referring to (4.1) and (4.3).

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meme speakers whose connotations adequately describe the distinctions I am seeking to
make, and he did this in a split-second and with a punch line.
This intuition and its associated humour hints at the socio-pragmatic motivations I
outline above: If a meme requires us to possess information (or possess an understanding of a
specific piece of information as salient) that it is only possible to possess as a member of a
certain group in order for us to assemble its (completely trivial) meaning-content, the meme
is somehow low in straightforwardness; however, if the meme’s meaning-content can be
accessed and partially assembled without specific insider knowledge, it is possibly highly
straightforward. Top-down memes may have their meaning-content and pragmatic purpose
be largely overlapping, but bottom-up and anti-correspondent memes do not. While bottomup memes may communicate non-phatic information, successfully accessing the meaningcontent is the reward for attempting to access the meaning-content and succeeding, but OP is
unconcerned with whether any given individual succeeds. Top-down memes may be
inherently funny to us; bottom-up and anti-correspondent memes reward us for being a part
of the group that is able to find them funny. Bottom-up memes assume we and OP are on the
same page regarding context and allow OP to ignore anyone who is not; top-down memes
give OP the opportunity to supply context to us, but as a result, the meme probably makes a
less novel connection.
For example, in June 2023, internet meme speakers began circulating memes about
the investigation into the fate of the doomed Oceangate submersible. The first memes to
appear were primarily dark, morbid, callous bottom-up or anti-correspondent memes
mocking the presumed deaths of the people on board. Since OP and the memes provided
little or no context and the situation had not reached mainstream news outlets yet, OP was
implicitly encouraging us to research the background so that we could then have access to
sufficient information in order to find future memes of this type meaningful. This allowed
anyone who knew what was happening to be part of the group of people who knew
something about Stockton Rush, or the original expedition, or the rescue mission, or some
relevant aspect of the situation, implicitly excluding anyone who either had not done enough
research to have at least a basic grasp of what was happening or was unwilling to participate
in the darkly comedic and irreverent discussions that permeate meme culture.

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I first learned about the Oceangate rescue attempt from the meme given in example
(5.2), posted on the chess-themed circlejerk subreddit r/anarchychess on 21 June, but it was
not until 22 June that I became a member of the in-group by beginning my personal cursory
investigation due to the prompting of a second meme, given in example (5.3). Anticorrespondent memes are perhaps the most common variety of meme posted on
r/anarchychess because it is a circlejerk community parodying the r/chess community;
therefore, the one thing memes must not be about is on-topic, straightforward chess content.
Instead, the joke usually involves applying the #CHESS PUZZLE# frame to inappropriate spaces
or in inappropriate ways.
(5.2)

Grey to move and lose material

In the case of (5.2), OP presents an anti-correspondent top-down meme, with the spacebuilder for #INPUT SPACE B# offering a substantial amount of information, albeit without

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context beyond the space-builder for #INPUT SPACE A# telling us through conventionalization
that #B# DEPICTS A DANGEROUS SITUATION and through anti-conventionalization that #B# IS
NOT ABOUT CHESS.

Example (5.3) functions similarly, except the space-builders for #A# and

#B# are both divided between text and image modalities, but with similar conventionalized
and anti-conventionalized framing cues.
(5.3)

Titanic gambit

In response to the widespread popularity of the necessarily time-limited Oceangate
meme trend, participants in this meme trend received external criticism for sharing these
incredibly morbid jokes; after all, we were laughing at the presumed deaths of several people.
This began a dialogue about whether or not this was appropriate. As this conflict progressed,
the dialogue shifted from consisting of mostly anti-correspondent and/or bottom-up memes
within a community joking about the doomed submersible to consisting largely of formfunction correspondent memes transmitted between communities addressing the moral
reasoning behind spreading the morbid variety of memes.

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(5.4)

Activist orcas

(5.5)

Sinking double standard

109

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(5.6)

110

It’s always sunny at Oceangate

Examples (5.4), (5.5), and (5.6) demonstrate three inter-community communicative positions
and transmit their position’s meaning-content in addition to phatic content: They justify or
condemn group membership instead of only confirming it. (5.4) makes a joke about a related
news story while avoiding the topic of death, (5.5) references a related event in order to
suggest that laughing at the misfortune of the privileged is not as morally problematic as
ignoring the underprivileged dying in droves, and (5.6) asserts that the sorts of people who
are able to find themselves in this kind of situation have perpetuated sufficient evil that we
are no longer obligated to treat them with any respect.
I predict that something like this occurs again next time the inherent irreverence of
the meme-culture in-group collides with the humanitarian principles of society at large:
1.

First, the people in-the-know identify each other and themselves with anticorrespondent and/or bottom-up memes.

2.

Then, outsiders criticize their style of dark humour.

3.

Then, newcomer-friendly insiders try to open their group’s intentionally opaque
thought process through explicitly form-function correspondent bottom-up and topdown memes.

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111

Finally, the dialogue becomes a salient part of meme culture for the future so it can be
ironically referenced in later anti-correspondent memes to remind everyone of that silly
socio-cultural phenomenon we all experienced.

Consequently, this suggests that, to the extent that such a thing exists, the “default” variety of
meme is in fact bottom-up instead of top-down – top-down memes naturally come later to
help explain whatever experiential absurdity we are trying to identify as a meaningful and
fundamental category, which we hope to be shared by others in our social group.
5.3.3 Communicating by belonging
Linguistic communication depends on intuitive form-to-meaning mappings; after all, this is
what language is! Linguists (especially Relevance theorists) might want a typology to fall on
a two-dimensional plot with a form axis and a meaning axis, but memes do need at least a
third dimension, something along the lines of social purpose or manner.36 Some memes’
form-to-meaning mappings are intentionally obfuscated because these actually utilize formto-meaning-via-manner mappings where using the proper manner matters, and we can only
learn the proper manner by having belonged to the appropriate group long enough to acquire
this knowledge.
This is what I mean every time I say, “Form lies;” except it is also the case (at least
with memes) that function was often not what form was lying about in the first place. With
the most anti-correspondent memes, at least, form lies because the lie is a necessary part of
the truth. Herein lies the necessity of irony to memes: If there is no lie to untangle, there is no
barrier to understanding, and if there is no barrier to understanding, then anyone can
potentially understand. If the purpose of anti-correspondent memes is to identify members of
the in-group, there must be a barrier, and irony is the primary tool language offers that
provides a barrier to truth that can be avoided if the interpreter follows a certain interpretive
path. A meme without irony cannot exclude non-members because the meaning is accessible
to anyone. Irony takes us from “if you have the same ground as me, you can understand me”
to “if you can understand me, you have the same ground as me,” resulting in “if and only if
you can understand me, you have the same ground as me,” which helps demonstrate the
degree to which socio-pragmatic context must undergird any meme typology.

36

Cf. Peirce (1976) and the semiotic need for an interpretant.

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There is also the consideration that understanding a meme – i.e., resolving the
incongruity and achieving meaning-construction – literally releases reward chemicals in our
brains. Understanding releases dopamine, and belonging releases oxytocin.37 So, then, I offer
one last argument in favour of a radical socio-pragmatic interpretation of memes as
necessarily phatic group-identification markers (that are capable of transmitting non-phatic
meaning as well): example (5.7), taken from the subreddit r/me_irlgbt, which demonstrates
an egregious amount of form-function anti-correspondence to the extent that there is little, if
any, form for function to correspond to at all.
(5.7)

Emergent mirror

If you spent any time considering that example before continuing reading, especially if you
are reading this on paper or on a laptop, you might be thinking that I am attempting my own
irony in including this seemingly empty (or poorly cropped) example. On the contrary, this is
37

This helps explain the overrepresentation of neurodivergent people in meme culture: this is literally how we
get some of the dopamine that our brains do not physically supply. We do not get the dopamine rewards as
easily from analogue communication because the communicative “puzzles” like irony and idiom do not
necessarily work the same way.

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the correct example. It is quite ironic, though: It presents via formal information spacebuilders for zero input spaces. In other words, we must supply the entirety of both input
spaces, though the first is accidental. In transmitting this meme, OP has not prompted for
meaning, they have prompted for a situation in which meaning will accidentally occur.
If we were viewing this meme in the typical situation in which we would have
originally been exposed to it, we would be browsing Reddit on our smartphone, possibly in
dark mode. When a smartphone displays a black screen, the pixels are lit very little if at all,
and the phone’s screen is unintentionally able to act like a mirror. In this specific situation,
the “image” being “displayed” on the phone’s screen is our own confused face as we try to
interpret the confounding image lacking any context whatsoever. Most likely, we do see our
own face after a moment, and we chuckle to ourselves at HOW SILLY WE LOOK. This feeling of
LOOKING SILLY

stealthily populates #INPUT SPACE B#, but this will not become clear until

after a few more moments of reflection (pun very much intended).
Slowly, it becomes clear that our confusion is intentional: The image does not show
Reddit’s loading symbol, yet it has upvotes (indicating positive reception), so it must be
clever – r/me_irlgbt is not a circlejerk subreddit, so there is something meaningful here; there
is some ostension. Some of us will resolve the blend simply by knowing that the content we
browse is auto-curated (at least if we use this default Reddit feature) and that there has been a
recent trend in this community of posting selfies. For those of us who require additional
input, there are two options for gathering new information: 1) referring to the title, and 2)
referring to the comments. In r/me_irlgbt, there is a community rule requiring OP to title the
image according to the format “me[symbol]irlgbt,” where the symbol is either the underscore
‘_’ or an emoji that is tangentially related to the meme being shared. In this case, the symbol
is the mirror emoji ‘ ’. Finally, the blend drops into place: The meme was not a meme at
all; it was a mirror – and better still, because we were expecting a meme and did not get one,
our expectation has been subverted; however, OP did successfully communicate a specific
piece of phatic information to us, so given its socio-pragmatic purpose and success, the
emergent mirror was a meme all along! In fact, it is a community self-criticism – OP means
something along the lines of, We have enough selfies; you belong just fine without posting
anything.

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Aside from context (and ostension), the meme has zero components identifying it as a
meme, and that is both its lie and its genius. When I say this meme prompts for no input
spaces, I mean it uses entirely different modalities than any other example does. Its
modalities are not image and text, or text referring to a memory and text referring to a
memory, or anything even a little similar. We project, compose, complete, and elaborate its
input spaces with only a perception of SEEING ONE’S OWN REFLECTION IN A PHONE SCREEN,
the expectation that WE SHOULD BE LOOKING AT A MEME, the associated feeling of CONFUSION
resulting from not seeing a meme, and the contextual awareness that A SELFIE IS A
POTENTIALLY SUCCESSFUL POST IN THIS COMMUNITY.

A formal typology would be utterly

helpless in attempting to tackle this example; (5.7) possesses no formal elements. When
subversion for subversion’s sake is the goal, form does not only lie, form itself can be the lie.
However, function stays true throughout the meaning-construction process, at least to us
members who truly belong to the community.
We arrive at the meaning only by sharing an experience that OP orchestrated. While
all anti-correspondent memes involve communicating in large part only by using a proper
manner only obtained through extensive belonging, example (5.7) and its maximal anticorrespondence demonstrate that belonging to the group in fact is communicating with the
group (and being communicated with by the group). This is maximally phatic and maximally
intimate; it is our reward for both navigating all the lies and having been in the position to
navigate those lies in the first place.
5.4

Toward a cognitive sociolinguistic analysis by embracing lies

In this thesis, I have used cognitive linguistics to analyze the case studies in Chapter 4, but
essentially all of my conclusions have involved socio-pragmatics. This suggests the
following:
1) Cognitive linguistics is necessary and sufficient to propose answers to the question of
how to categorize memes.
2) Cognitive linguistics is necessary but not sufficient to test its proposed categories and
draw conclusions about them.
3) Cognitive linguistics suggests that there are no inherent categories, and a typology
needs to understand and accept that in order to propose useful categories.

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4) Categories in a functional typology proposed by cognitive linguistics ought to be
socio-pragmatically useful, not “correct.”
While cognitive linguistics is not opposed to this interpretation, this is still a strong claim,
and I am not certain that my evidence can completely back up the strongest interpretation,
but I have chosen examples that demonstrate “failures” at many or all “steps” of blending
and meaning-construction. Unless the steps themselves are inherent (and they certainly do
not seem to be; there is after all no “handbook” for meme meaning-construction), there seem
to be as many possible “kinds” of failure as there are “places” to fail, and none of these prove
entirely fatal to meaning-construction. If collective “failures” can identify potential category
divisions, and a “failure” can occur at any point in the process and in any way, it seems
reasonable that category lines could be drawn just about anywhere. Additionally, much of
meme communication involves creatively deviating from norms, meaning that the way some
meme is not like other memes is often more telling than the way some meme is like other
memes. There is only one way for something to be “the same” as something else, but there
are theoretically infinite ways for something to be “different” to something else. If this is
true, there are a theoretically infinite number of pluralities for meme form (function
notwithstanding), meaning that either there are an infinite number of inherent categories,
which seems rather unlikely, or there are no inherent categories, and analyses can create and
destroy them as needed.
One of the central tenets of functional linguistics is that analysis ought to show what
does happen, not what should happen, and with memes, what does happen is uncategorized
deviation and innovation. Both we and OP do follow rules, but most or all of the rules are
arbitrary, and not everyone agrees precisely on what the rules are as they are emergent.38
Therefore, when a typology proposes categories, there is no such thing as “perfectly correct.”
At best, these categories guess at what happens in people’s heads, and what happens in there
is emergent, flexible, and intuitive. Categories help us explain the hidden constraints around
what intuition is doing, but they cannot seek correctness because intuition does not try for
correctness. Intuition tries for usefulness, so typologists must also try for usefulness, or we
will certainly end up with an analysis full of the wrong kinds of lies.

38

“You used that meme [format] wrong” is a tremendously common comment below meme posts and replies.

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In my analysis and discussion, I have tried to supply examples that use a plurality of
modes and nonlinear forms to show how critical a multimodal approach is to meme analysis,
and I have tried to address where this analysis leads next: sociolinguistics. As I and many
others have asserted, memes are necessarily phatic, but a thorough analysis must be able to
address their pragmatic purposes beyond just phasis, and without sociolinguistics, this is
likely impossible. I am hardly the first to acknowledge this limitation of cognitive linguistics
proper, and some cognitive linguists have worked to address this shortcoming by proposing
that cognitive linguistics continue its interdisciplinary expansion into cognitive
sociolinguistics (Geeraerts, Kristiansen & Peirsman 2010). I expect that a sociolinguistic
perspective will provide support for the socio-pragmatic claims I have already made, as well
as add further clarification to cognitive linguistic analyses that address meme discourse in
order to explain the pervasive discourse-level irony on which I have only touched in my
analysis.
5.5

Conclusion

I have argued that my cognitive linguistics-based typology is expandable, useful for
describing the socio-pragmatics of memes, and yet still incomplete without further
interdisciplinary involvement, especially from cognitive sociolinguistics. I first addressed my
proposed typological categories and how they have arisen in my analysis. I then discussed
their socio-pragmatic implications beyond straightforward phasis and addressed how they
communicate group involvement. Finally, I have suggested why a cognitive linguistic
perspective on categories demands sociolinguistic involvement to answer the question of the
way we meme.

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6. Conclusion: How can we work toward a meme
typology?

6.1

Introduction

In this chapter, I enumerate my proposed proto-typology and contributions to cognitive
linguistics and the broader field of linguistics in general. Next, I reflect on and address the
limitations of both the typology and this research. Finally, I propose some future directions
for further research to explore.
6.2

My contributions

The most significant contribution I offer in this thesis is a repeatable technique (or at least a
framework) for functionally analyzing internet memes. I have argued that it is critical to
analyze memes from a functional perspective in order to avoid the many pitfalls associated

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with categorizing memes primarily by form. Considering the degree to which internet memes
contribute to the communicative landscape of modern culture, even when that
communication is occurring offline, having a technique for analyzing these nonlinear
multimodal constructions is both necessary and urgent.
I also have demonstrated how to use my proto-typology, including how it embraces
the inherent socio-pragmatic irony, contradiction, and disagreement between form and
function that is so fundamental to meme communication. As part of this demonstration, I
have analyzed seven meme case studies and highlighted how their form connects to their
meaning and how functional analysis is more reliable than formal analysis. I have utilized
this typology to make a few predictions: In essence, a top-down meme may be somewhat
interpretable to an outsider, but a meme that deviates from top-down framing and formfunction correspondence depends on insider knowledge as a critical socio-pragmatic
component for understanding that meme.
I have used this framework to identify function-based category boundaries that can
ideally be extended in the future to identify and create more detailed and useful categories for
further analysis. I have used my framework to address what a meme’s function is as well as
to propose answers for why a meme’s function is what it is. I have proposed some ways in
which my categories might be useful not only for analyzing memes but also for predicting
other information associated with a given meme’s context, including pragmatic and
sociocultural information.
Finally, I have created, defined, and exemplified some useful notation for meme
description and analysis (both textual and diagrammatical) based on Conceptual Integration
theory. Because memes are fundamentally different from verbal (spoken, written, signed,
etc.) language, the existing notation in linguistics, while useful, is insufficient to cover the
wide variety of modalities that can compose meme form and the nonsensical irony that can
arise in meme meaning.
6.3

Theoretical implications

The major implications my research has for the fields of cognitive linguistics and descriptive
linguistics involve functional analysis, interdisciplinary cooperation in general, and sociopragmatics in particular. First, I defend functional analysis instead of formal analysis. While
there is reason to formally analyze language and (eventually) memes, there is no way to

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make any reasonable progress without being able to address what kinds of formal features
can occur. Formal analysis has its uses, but it is misleading to begin there. Second, I offer a
method and rationale for interdisciplinary cooperation between some subfields of cognitive
linguistics, particularly Conceptual Integration theory, Construction Grammar, Relevance
theory, and cognitive sociolinguistics. Cognitive linguistics has always been
interdisciplinary, but I offer in this thesis actionable, practical, and predictive areas for
cooperation as well as some evidence for why this is especially necessary when addressing
meme meaning. Third, I address the overlapping cognitive and socio-pragmatic complexity
associated with memes. Cognitive linguistics cannot ignore the importance of phatic
information to meme communication. Linguistics as a whole has not ignored it, but formal
typologies must overlook it, while my typology depends on it.
6.4

Limitations

My research has a number of limitations in the areas of both methodology and analysis.
The analysis itself relies heavily on my own native speaker intuition, especially the
more a given meme deviates from the most prototypical top-down mechanics. I have worked
to confirm my conclusions using information given by other native meme speakers, so I
suspect that these analyses are repeatable, but comment sections and informal chats hardly
demonstrate rigorous academic repetition.
Similarly, many of my definitions lack clarity, especially where some category
boundary lies somewhere on a spectrum. For example, defining who counts as a native
speaker or whether an anti-correspondent meme is truly top-down or bottom-up is out of
scope. My definitions are sufficient for use in most circumstances, yet they crumble when we
look too closely at examples that exist quite close to the boundary line. I have worked to
make my definitions as rigorous and clear and well-defined as possible, and there are
certainly concrete, definable operations happening, but further clarity depends on further
research.
Also, this typology (trivially) assumes that correspondent top-down memes are the
most prototypical variety of meme, and this is almost certainly not true. While it is possible
that meme communication began that way, memes continue to exist because of their ability
to communicate phatic information, so semi-correspondent bottom-up memes – or even anticorrespondent memes – are in all likelihood the most “default” variety. I do not think this

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poses a particular challenge to this typology – we have no reason linguistically to assume that
the most “default” linguistic element will be the most “regular.” This negative relationship
between regularity and frequency arises constantly in descriptive linguistics, and we are only
better off when data disconfirm this trivial assumption.
6.5

Recommendations

In this section, I offer some recommendations for future research directions. First, my
technique and typology require further testing. Where my analyses break down, I hope other
researchers can identify weaknesses that point to more detailed ways to improve this
framework. While I suspect that future analyses will return similar results, including diagram
shapes, analysis paths, etc, the only way to know for sure is for more researchers to
investigate. If the results are not repeatable, there exists scope for more investigation, and
this, much like corpses displayed in glass coffins similar to the one shown in Figure 6.1,
remains to be seen.

Figure 6.1 Death may be certain, but our perspective is not
Cognitive linguistics must continue expanding its interdisciplinary reach when
performing meme analysis, as I have expressed in more detail in Chapter 5. I have reaffirmed
the bridging of some already interdisciplinary subdisciplines within cognitive linguistics, but
this has so far proven insufficient. The boundaries that have arisen from functional analysis

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are motivated by their pragmatic tasks, but they are largely phatic tasks, so cognitive
linguistics requires the sociolinguistic perspective. Cognitive sociolinguistics is more
equipped to answer the following questions that have arisen from this research:
•

How is it that these different kinds of memes regulate group size?

•

Can we show any causation between group size and ratios of how many memes of
each category occur in said group?

•

Do more phatic and less phatic memes function differently?

•

Can we further identify different categories based on other specifics of
sociolinguistic function?

•

Can we make any claims or predictions about social group life cycles based on
meme category ratios (or about meme-format life cycles based on category ratios)?

•

Can we find any patterns concerning meme category ratios and (kinds of) meme
topics?
It may also prove useful to continue subdividing meme categories further, especially

the ones I have called bottom-up and anti-correspondent. Pursuing this research might
answer the following questions:
•

Do these categories map reasonably well to proposed typologies of humour, such as
the one outlined in Yus (2008)?

•

Can we find formal features that are consistent among these other kinds of
categories?

•

Do these new categories still point to sociolinguistic concerns, or are there other
motivations?

•

Is there any kind of semiotic “phonology” we can identify that might help us
formalize meme categories?

•

How does the rapid life cycle of a meme or class of meme affect its usefulness in
communication?

6.6

Final summary

In Chapter 1 of this thesis, I introduced the background surrounding cognitive and descriptive
linguistic investigation into internet memes. Next, in Chapter 2, I reviewed the literature
surrounding some relevant disciplines in more detail. In Chapter 3, I outlined my theory and
proposed typology for analyzing internet memes. In Chapter 4, I analyzed seven meme case

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studies using my typology in order to demonstrate its usefulness. In Chapter 5, I discussed
some of the specific implications my research has for several relevant subdisciplines within
the greater discipline of linguistics. Finally, in Chapter 6, I concluded by reviewing my
contributions to the linguistic study of memes, including the limitations of this research and
recommendations for future research, which ever increases in importance in tandem with
society’s dependence on memes for communication.
Beyond this thesis, I hope that this research encourages linguists to 1) treat memes as
a naturally evolved variety of natural language expression, 2) treat natural language as a
naturally evolved variety of behavioural communication, and 3) treat functional information,
including so-called “failures” like irony and humour, as radical contributors to meaning, with
form acting more as a mostly reliable (or at least, somewhat predictably unreliable)
compression tool. Further, I hope to shine another light on the question of “what is language”
by investigating how multimodal communication functions similarly and differently to
monomodal communication. My final comment is a call to action for further interdisciplinary
research to continue unraveling the infinite complexities, fundamental lies, and emergent
truths that inform the way we meme.

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123

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