What is a meme? What is in a meme? What does ‘living in/with memes’ actually mean? What do memes mean to human beings dwelling in a life-world at once connected and fragmented by the internet and social media? Answers to and ways of answering these and other meme questions that arise in social events represent human assistance in or resistance to meaning making. A pragmatic perspective on internet memes as a way of seeing in social life experience offers a unique window on how meme matters in mediated (inter)actions turn out to be inextricably intertwined with human beings’ presencing and essencing in the life-world. Ultimately, this volume seeks to reveal what and how serious if not unsayable concerns can be concealed behind the seemingly humorous, carefree and colorful carnival of internet memes across cultures, contexts, genres and modalities. This book will be of some value to anyone keen on the dynamics of memes and internet pragmatics and on critical insights that can be garnered in kaleidoscopic multimodal communication. Originally published as special issue of Internet Pragmatics 3:2 (2020).

Elda Weizman, Bar-Ilan University:
This volume is a stimulating addition to the study of internet memes, their discursive, transformative and emancipatory power, and their impact on social practices across genres and contexts. Eminent scholars build a rich picture of this fascinating discursive activity, representing a wide array of conceptualizations, such as multimodality, intertextuality, humorous incongruity, stance-taking, conventionalization and common ground. The book is a most welcome contribution to the growing body of research on internet pragmatics, and, in a wider sense, to socio-pragmatics in general.