“And with us is Brother Morgan”: A cognitive semiotic analysis of a humorous stock character macro in Egyptian Arabic

Document Type : مقالات بحوث مبتکرة

Author

Department of English Language - Faculty of Al-Alsun - Minia University

Abstract

The current study discusses one type of image macros, namely stock character macros in Egyptian Arabic. The data consists of 5 stock character macros. The data analysis is based on three theoretical bases: Berger’s Code Violation, McCloud’s taxonomy of image and text relations in comics and Fauconnier and Turners’ Conceptual Integration Theory. The study aims to explore and investigate the humorous nature of stock character macros; how humour is created semiotically; how different signs interact, either equally or subordinately, to produce laughter; and how texts and images are compressed, projected, and blended to create new humorous meanings. The study also aims to define the unique textual and visual characteristics of this type of memes in Egyptian Arabic, a different culture that was not investigated before in such a context. One dimension of the current study is to present a linguistic analysis of a widely recognized but academically underrepresented digital artefact such as image-macro memes. The current study also focuses on the role of images in such a multi-modal construction. The results reflect causes of humour, types of text and image relations, and the unique textual and visual features of the data in question. Cognitively speaking, the ability of the meme maker’s mind to use already existing mental spaces to create new creative blends and the ability of the meme receiver/reader’s mind to decode and deconstruct the never seen before blend into its basic mental spaces to understand what needs to be communicated are highlighted.

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Journal of Languages and Translation
Volume 10, Issue 1
January 2023
Pages 40-61

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