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Know your Meme? In less than five years, internet-based memes, quotes and phrases have become the proverb of the computer age. Good Guy Greg, Scumbag Steve, Lazy College Senior, Me Gusta, LOLCat, selfies, and their derivatives are ubiquitous, if short-lived, elements of online communication worldwide. Quotes from the Philosoraptor to the Annoying Facebook Girl are shared in online and offline contexts, and phrases like “Keanu is sad” or “You had one job” take on additional (and often opaque) meaning.
Their complex nature makes memes an intriguing field for linguistic research. As phraseologisms in a broad multimodal context they belong to a large field of other recurrent, formulaic units in language, such as collocations, clichés, idioms, routine formulas or proverbs. In this seminar, we will try to describe memes, quotes and other web-based phraseologisms by collecting and analyzing examples in the existing research context. We will also explore their history and use, their role in language, their significance for discourse types and styles, as well as their treatment in databases of various kinds. A list of topics for presentations and research will be available in the first seminar session. The accompanying voluntary tutorial offers students individual advice on the topics discussed in the seminar. Near the end of the semester, a paper conference will be held to make sure students are headed in the right direction with their term papers. For detailed course requirements please also consult the respective module descriptions. |
