When internet memes become a subject of research

First appearing in 1976, the concept of a meme was used by biologist Richard Dawkins to refer to an idea or habit that spreads from one person to another. With the rise of digital technology, the term has taken on a new meaning, now referring to images shared and repurposed online, often accompanied by text, which comment on current events, express an emotion, or describe a situation in a few words. But for Lieven Vandelanotte, professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, memes represent a new type of language. "Memes are not just illustrations. They combine text and image in a way that transforms how meaning is constructed," he explains.

A specialist in discourse and English linguistics, Lieven Vandelanotte has been studying reported speech and multimodality for several years, i.e., productions that combine several modes of expression, such as images and text. 

Thanks to his Francqui Research Professorship, obtained in 2023, he has been able to devote more time to this topic. "This position gives me the opportunity to further my research on multimodality and to finalize this book, a project I have been working on for a long time."

The goal of his work? To show that in memes, images play a linguistic role in their own right. "They can replace a word, complete a sentence, or express a point of view. They are a true grammatical component."

Among the memes he analyzes, Lieven Vandelanotte cites the famous Distracted Boyfriend: a man looks away from his girlfriend to admire another woman.
"This meme illustrates the idea of making a choice, changing preferences, turning away from one option to another. A similar idea is expressed by the meme called "Exit 12." An example that combines the two shows that users are well aware that these images are not really used to describe a scenario between lovers or a situation on the highway, but they perceive that different forms, with different images, can have more or less the same meaning."

Another example is the Good Girl Gina meme, where a smiling young woman is associated with phrases describing "positive" behavior. In the Gets mad at you / Tells you why version, the humor is based on the contrast with a sexist stereotype: the protagonist gets angry, but, contrary to the stereotype, she explains why. "In this case, the image acts as the subject of the sentence. It doesn't illustrate the text, it's an integral part of it and plays a full role in constructing meaning," emphasizes Lieven Vandelanotte.

He also mentions the category of when-memes, where a sentence beginning with When... ends with an image. For example: "When you're at a party full of people you don't know so you stay with your friend the whole time ," accompanied by a photo of a small koala clinging to a leg. "Here, the image completes the sentence. It does not directly illustrate the situation, but provides the conclusion, like a separate syntactic segment."

In recent years, Lieven Vandelanotte has participated in numerous conferences to present the results of his research on memes, but none were as original as the recent "Railway Aesthetics" conference. This conference took place on moving trains. Traveling from Vienna to Bucharest, then from Bucharest to Istanbul, the participants lived together in the train cars for the entire duration of the conference. Together with Justin Bai from the University of Colorado, he gave a presentation on the use of trains in internet memes and social media discourse, as in the attached example (a "when-meme" featuring the late chef Anthony Bourdain looking very cool, ironically reflecting the attitude of someone who manages not to be mocked by a French waiter).