«Internet memes» and their types

Abstract

Internet memes-as one of the non-verbal tools are actively used in social networks at the present time.

This article discusses such a nonverbal tool peculiar to the language of social networks – Internet memes.

The emergence of an Internet meme is directly related to the complexity and development of the genre structure of the Internet. They are distinguished by rich semantics and high expressiveness. This feature of the Internet meme allowed them to spread quickly and widely in the Internet space.

The article proposed the definition of an Internet meme based on scientific literature. An Internet meme is a cultural code for a community of Internet users on a social network that reflects the order of life/network and aims to quickly transform personal communicative presuppositions into a creolized and textual type. An Internet meme is a complex mental structure transmitted through a network consisting of two parts: verbal (text) and para-linguistic (figure). These two parts, when integrated, offer the online community some idea related to the socio-social situation. Internet memes are divided into two groups: creolized memes (picture + text) and unified text memes. Creolized memes have a homogeneous semantic system, consist of two different structural levels: linguistic (verbal), visual (graphic, pictorial, sound, etc.), audio-musical, sound transmission of the linguistic side is also found in social networks. Text memes are structurally divided into the following groups: words-memes; memes from phrases; sentences-memes. The article will focus on the creation, types, values of these two groups.  The preservation of language culture in a social network also applies to Internet memes. The article gives its own recommendations on this issue.