Abstract
Background. Now the notion of a meme has become an integral part of the information space. Memetics is considered to be as an interdisciplinary science of memes, emphasizing its links with biology, psychology and cognitive science. However, it is worth noting that the image attached to the meme is often created and distributed with the help of lexemes, and therefore has a linguistic nature. Purpose. The purpose of the study is to investigate the process of using memes as units of cultural information transmission from the point of view of psycholinguistics. Methods. Contextual interpretative, descriptive, content-and intent-analysis. Results. Most of all, memes are distributed with the help of separate lexemes. Often, the fixing an image by word is spontaneous. However, sometimes this process happens artificially, if it is necessary to form a certain appraised judgment of these or others phenomena. For example, Russian propaganda was artificially created by the meme “polite people” (Rus. vezhlivyie liudi) who had to transform the image of the soldiers of the Russian army from the occupiers into “rescuers”. For this purpose, positive images were fixed to the word combination polite people, and information reports on the actions of Russian soldiers were accompanied by lexemes with positive semantics: normal, intelligent, polite ones. Hence, it was an effective way to neutralize the negative impact of the context of soldiers + weapons + occupation. Such an influence on the consciousness of the speaker through the use of certain lexemes determines the linguistic nature of a meme. Conclusions. Thus, the study gives grounds for determining the following results: memes are the notion of linguistics, since they are actualized mainly with the help of words or lexicalized compounds; the popularity of a meme depends on the simplicity and clarity of its image. The main functions of the meme are: informative, entertaining, aesthetic, emotional, function of cultural memory, propaganda, function of actualization. Article received 24.10.2018
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