dc.description.abstract |
Dialogic Internet Memes (DIMs), which aid communication of social interests and
opinions on Social Networking Sites (SNSs), are used to share previous experiences and
negotiate common ground through various contexts. Extant studies on social media
interactions among Nigerians have been on text and image memes, humour and
multimodality, with little attention paid to the mutual knowledge that foregrounds humour
or multimodal effects. This study was, therefore, designed to examine DIMs among
Nigerians, with a view to determining their pragmatic appropriateness.
Istvan Kecskes’ Socio-cognitive Approach to Common Ground, complemented by Anita
Fetzer’s Context Types, served as the framework, while the descriptive design was
adopted. Instagram was purposively selected owing to its richness in DIMs. Fifty text-only
dialogic Internet memes were purposively selected from four Instagram handles:
@SavageReplies (19), @unilaghappens (9), @funnynaijapics (17) and @chiefZaddy (5).
These handles were selected because of their relevance and robustness in DIMs. Data were
subjected to pragmatic analysis.
All the Instagram handles manifested essentially similar pragmatic features. Four context
types were identified: socio-economic, religious, academic and medical contexts. These
contexts were determinants of the common ground that existed in the sharedness of the
DIMs. The second participants retrieved prior knowledge through indexical expressions.
Current participant selected next participant based on the amount of information in the
interlocutors’ linguistic repository of the selected discourse. The adjacency pairs in the
dialogues were mostly question/question (indirect answer), question/answer (direct
answer), statement/question and challenge/reaction. Six discourse issues were identified:
poor economic environment, (un)employment, religious (non)commitment, character
referencing, (in)effective communication and intentional ambiguity. These discourse
issues showed the subtle debates that pervade the Internet because Instagram permits
participation and interactions on online contents. Three common ground-sensitive
strategies characterised the selected DIMs: evocation of common sense, exploration of
culture sense and reliance on formal sense. Evocation of common sense was projected
through the awareness of the general usage and the attendant pre-existing or mutual
knowledge of lexical items that are usable and valid in the world. These lexical items are
denotative in the context of use. Exploration of culture sense was deployed through the
display of knowledge of normative behaviour, beliefs and values of a particular social and
geographical setting. Through exploration of culture sense, the linguistic environment of
interactants was identified to be within the three major languages (Yoruba, Hausa and
Igbo) spoken in Nigeria. Reliance on formal sense probed the general knowledge of the
system of language and the mutual knowledge in Instagram through passing of
information, performing an action and expressing emotions.
Dialogic Internet memes, as used by Nigerians, are largely dependent on the negotiation
of common ground and the understanding of context. They are deployed to activate and
enhance pre-existing knowledge without which interpretation will be difficult. |
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