Kiedy potencjalnie nieśmieszny tekst zaczyna bawić? Kilka słów na temat wizualnych i werbalnych elementów memów internetowych

Abstract

The author of the present work focuses on showing that an internet meme (defined here as a graphic unit composed of a visual and verbal part) can be seen as an extension of traditional joke thanks to its visual part. A meme illustrates the content presented by its graphical part. A question if the visual part of a meme intensifies the humourous effect evoked by the text (verbal part of meme) will be analysed. If that is the case, to what extent it contributes. Also, it is shown that the verbal part of internet memes is not always humourous by nature. Hence, they not always can be called jokes. One of the aspects of the work are memes whose verbal part has a potential to evoke a humourous reaction (some verbal parts of memes analysed here are short jokes or one-liners, commonly accepted as funny, even if they weren’t presented with any graphic). However, some verbal parts of examined memes do contain an element conducive to humourous reaction but do not contain comprehensive information about the subject (what ist the grammatical subject of the sentence?) or other information that is necessary to put the text in some wider context (what the text is about?). Therefore, such texts would not be understood if presented without any additional visual element. The aim is to elicitate, how the visual part of a meme enables a complex understanding of its verbal part and, consiquently, makes the whole unit funny.