Internet meme as a multimodal phenomenon of the German Internet-discourse

The article discusses internet memes as new phenomenon of multimodal internetdiscourse. By analyzing recent memes in the german-speaking internet community, a typology of memes is created. That is to say, unimodal verbal or visual internet memes and multimodal verbal-visual memes. Conversely, the multimodal verbal-visual memes can be divided into static ones, in which the visual component is a statical picture, and dynamic ones, in which a video segment acts as visual component. An internet meme contains usually verbal and visual components, together forming its communicative-pragmatic sense. The transformation of certain information into an Internet meme presupposes its decontextualization, that is, its extraction from the initial situational, social and linguistic context, and its recontextual-ization in the new communicative conditions. In this case, the process of generating of the meaning of the Internet meme occurs as a result of a collective semiosis. The dissemination of the Internet meme on the Internet is stimulated by its ability to evoke an emotional response among the recipients of discourse. The integrity of the Internet meme as a new discursive practice is provided by its specific formal and content characteristics. Formally, the Internet meme has a standardized form and is usually built from an expressive picture and an inscription in large type. Substantively, the Internet meme is characterized by such features as inter-discursivity, the "viral" distribution, their variability and their limited intelligibility due to the orientation of specific memes towards specific groups of recipients. The latter feature necessitates the examination of internet memes as a precedent phenomenon with highly specific national and cultural connotations. The knowledge of the background linguocultural context, pointing to the precedent situation, is a necessary prerequisite for correct interpretation of the meme and achieving the desired communicative effect.

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