Online language: A study on referencing in memes on social media

Abstract

The recent technological revolution has provided new forms for communication between people and has given rise to an interactive and dynamic language called online language. Accordingly, this study investigates the use of referents in the multimodal texts that are present in online language. Its objective is to understand how people use referencing in multimodal texts to describe the referential linguistic aspects that are characteristic of the digital meme genre. Barton and Lee (2015), Cavalcante (2019), Cortez e Muniz da Silva (2020), Dudeney, Hockly and Pegrum (2016) and Ribeiro (2018) are used in the construction of the theoretical framework. Methodologically, this article offers a descriptive analysis of two “memes in Brazilian Portuguese” that have circulated on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results point to the relevant role of linguistic analysis and description in the production and reading of texts that circulate in cyberspace, which allows understanding the language in use in online environments.