The Blending of Bending: How We Engage with the World of Avatar: The Last Airbender through Memes

IF 2.2 3区文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS

Metaphor and Symbol Pub Date : 2022-06-27 DOI:10.1080/10926488.2021.1973868

Thomas Van Hoey

引用次数: 0

Abstract

ABSTRACT People often use memes to express their ideological stance on real world events. This study departs from a recent COVID-19-related meme which makes use of elements known from the animated television series Avatar: The Last Airbender (ATLA) and Avatar: Legend of Korra (LOK), and asks how it came to be and how stance is conveyed through them. After acknowledging the impact of the series, conceptual blending theory is adopted to investigate the worldbuilding of the macrocosm in ATLA. This is identified as a correlative network, which acts as the blended space of multiple input spaces consisting of intertextual references. The world of ATLA then functions as a new input space which is updated with modern elements, resulting in the blend of LOK. Minor blends are identified in the hybrid animals that occupy the fictional world. Lastly, it is shown how the selection of a particular input element for participation in meme blends already conveys an ideological stance, rather than only emerging through readers’ eyes.

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弯曲的融合：我们如何与阿凡达的世界接触：通过Memes的最后一次空气弯曲

摘要人们经常使用模因来表达他们对现实世界事件的意识形态立场。这项研究不同于最近一个与新冠肺炎相关的模因，该模因利用了动画电视剧《阿凡达：最后的气弯者》（ATLA）和《阿凡达：Korra传奇》（LOK）中的已知元素，并询问了它是如何形成的，以及如何通过它们传达立场。在认识到该系列的影响后，采用概念融合理论来研究ATLA中宏观世界的世界建构。这被识别为一个相关网络，它充当由互文参考组成的多个输入空间的混合空间。然后，ATLA的世界充当了一个新的输入空间，它被现代元素更新，从而产生了LOK的混合。在占据虚构世界的混合动物中，可以识别出微小的混合。最后，研究表明，选择一个特定的输入元素来参与模因融合，已经传达了一种意识形态立场，而不仅仅是通过读者的眼睛出现的。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Metaphor and Symbol Multiple-

CiteScore

2.90

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Metaphor and Symbol: A Quarterly Journal is an innovative, multidisciplinary journal dedicated to the study of metaphor and other figurative devices in language (e.g., metonymy, irony) and other expressive forms (e.g., gesture and bodily actions, artworks, music, multimodal media). The journal is interested in original, empirical, and theoretical research that incorporates psychological experimental studies, linguistic and corpus linguistic studies, cross-cultural/linguistic comparisons, computational modeling, philosophical analyzes, and literary/artistic interpretations. A common theme connecting published work in the journal is the examination of the interface of figurative language and expression with cognitive, bodily, and cultural experience; hence, the journal''s international editorial board is composed of scholars and experts in the fields of psychology, linguistics, philosophy, computer science, literature, and media studies.