Internet-Memes als multimodale Sprechakte in öffentlichen Diskursen anhand von Beispielen aus Antwortthreads von @realDonaldTrump

Abstract

Internet memes are highly relevant for digital communications but there is not much re-search about their pragmatic uses. Besides being texts, memes are also multimodal speech acts. They are very similar to the speech acts Searle described, but there are some differ-ences. The communicative function of memes is in accord with Keller’s principle for social success, which is aimed for by all speakers. It is shown that people on Twitter use memes as speech acts when replying to Donald Trump’s Tweets. The difference between meme speech acts and traditional speech acts is their emphasis on the expressive function. While the meme speech acts can take any of Searle’s described functions, there is almost always an expressive element to be found.