Home Age and gender differences in meme humor: a multimodal variationist mixed-method approach
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Age and gender differences in meme humor: a multimodal variationist mixed-method approach

  • Inke Du Bois ORCID logo EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: October 11, 2024
Multimodal Communication
From the journal Multimodal Communication Volume 13 Issue 3

Abstract

Digital humor expressed through memes plays a vital role in facilitating social interaction in online environments. This paper reports on age and gender-related differences in multimodal digital meme humor from users aged 14 to 93. Its aim is to investigate how visual and textual elements, psychological humor types and digital humor types vary among smartphone users of different age and gender groups. The multimodal corpus was compiled from memes that were shared by 250 BA English and senior citizen students at a German university and their relatives and friends. The memes were annotated with the Covid-19 topic (e.g. lockdown, mask requirement, vaccination) and the sources of visual origin (e.g. cartoon characters, animals, politicians). Also, a previously non-multimodal psychological humor framework (Martin, Rod A., Patricia Puhlik-Doris, Gwen Larsen, Jeanette Gray & Kelly Weir. 2003. Individual differences in uses of humor and their relation to psychological well-being: Development of the Humor Styles Questionnaire. Journal of Research in Personality 37(1) 48–75) was applied to the memes. To determine the linguistic multimodal digital humor types, Vásquez, C. 2019. Language, creativity and humour online. London). Terminology was employed for annotation. The statistical analysis reveals only slight gender differences concerning all variables. Significant differences were found concerning both multimodal humor frameworks, language usage, canvas and humor themes across all age groups. The interconnectedness of the codes is captured in a qualitative analysis of select memes to underscore the semiotic dynamics of multimodal humor.

Keywords: multimodal humor; variationist; meme; gender; digital communication
Corresponding author: Inke Du Bois, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany, E-mail:

Funding source: Department of Language and Literature, Bremen University

Acknowledgments

This research would not have been possible without the BA English speaking cultures students and senior citizen students of Bremen University who submitted the memes as research participants. It would have not been possible without my research assistants, the MA English speaking culture graduate students who helped with coding, annotating and discussing the data in weekly meetings: Hande Akin, Ekaterina Buchkinskaya, Megan Dwinger, Hasan Mir Sabbir, Jesco Oentrich, Svetlana Smolina, Yooju Sun, Shuting Le (China), Amal Johns (India/Malayam), Chadi Allam (Lebanon/Arabic), Hasan Mir Sabbir (Bangladesh/Bangla) Alina Azarteva (Russia). Kate Stollmann gave helpful comments on language issues. I would also like to thank Julian Du Bois whose expertise in Generation Z memes were the inducement to start the data collection for this project with my students. I am grateful for John Bateman’s great expertise and support with some of the statistics. Further, I would like to thank Sigrid Norris for her inspiring work on multimodal communication. Finally, I would like to thank the editors and reviewers for their helpful comments. Mistakes and misinterpretations of any positions presented remain solely the responsibility of the author.

  1. Research ethics: Not applicable.

  2. Informed consent: Not applicable.

  3. Author contributions: The author designed the research project, conducted the table calculations, the descriptive statistical analyses and wrote the research article. The data was curated and coded by the research assistants and the author.

  4. Use of Large Language Models, AI and Machine Learning Tools: None declared.

  5. Conflict of Interest: The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

  6. Research funding: Licenses for the MAXQDA 2020 software were funded by dean Marcus Callies of the Department of Languages and Literatures, Bremen University, Germany.

  7. Data availability: Not applicable.

References

Abdel-Raheem, Ahmed. 2021. Reality bites: How the pandemic has begun to shape the way we, metaphorically, see the world. Discourse & Society 32(5). 519–541. https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265211013118.Search in Google Scholar

Barontini, A. & K. Ziamari. 2022. Sociolinguistic representations of variation in Moroccan spoken Arabic: Discourses, practices and internet memes. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2022(278). 155–180. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2022-0010.Search in Google Scholar

Alamàn, Ana Pano & Ana Mancera Rueda. 2016. Humor and advertising in Twitter: An approach from the general theory of humor and metapragmatics. In Metapragmatics of humor. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/ivitra.14.03alaSearch in Google Scholar

Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1981. The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Trans. by Michael Holquist, Caryl (eds.), Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.Search in Google Scholar

Barbieri, F. 2008. Patterns of age‐based linguistic variation in American English 1. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12(1). 58–88. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2008.00353.x.Search in Google Scholar

Bateman, John Arnold. 2008. Multimodality and genre: A Foundation for the systematic Analysis of multimodal documents. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1057/9780230582323_5Search in Google Scholar

Bateman, John Arnold. 2017. Triangulating transmediality: A multimodal semiotic framework relating media, modes and genres. Discourse, Context & Media 20. 160–174. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2017.06.009.Search in Google Scholar

Bateman, John Arnold. 2022. Multimodality, where next? Some meta-methodological considerations. Multimodality & Society 2(1). 41–63. https://doi.org/10.1177/26349795211073043.Search in Google Scholar

Bell, Alan. 1984. Language style as audience design. Language in Society 13(2). 145–204. https://doi.org/10.1017/s004740450001037x.Search in Google Scholar

Bell, Nancy & Salvatore Attardo. 2010. Failed humor: Issues in non-native speakers’ appreciation and understanding of humor. Intercultural Pragmatics 7(3). 423–447. https://doi.org/10.1515/iprg.2010.019.Search in Google Scholar

Bischetti, Luca, Paolo Canal & Valentina Bambini. 2021. Funny but aversive: A largescale survey of the emotional response to COVID-19 humor in the Italian population during the lockdown. Lingua 249. 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2020.102963.Search in Google Scholar

Boxer, Diana. 1993. Complaining and commiserating: Exploring gender issues. Text-Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse 13(3). 371–396. https://doi.org/10.1515/text.1.1993.13.3.371.Search in Google Scholar

Chiaro, Delia & Raffaela Baccolini. 2018. Gender and humor: Interdisciplinary and international perspectives. New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Dawkins, Richard. 1976. The selfish gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Dimock, Michael. 2019. Defining generations: Where millennials end and generation z begins. Pew Research Center 17(1). 1–7.Search in Google Scholar

Du Bois, Inke. 2010. Discursive constructions of immigrant identity. A sociolinguistic trend study on long-term American immigrants. Frankfurt/New York: Peter Lang Publishing.Search in Google Scholar

Du Bois, I. 2019. Linguistic profiling across neighborhoods: Apartment search with German, Turkish and US-American names and accents. Journal of Language and Discrimination 3(No 2). https://doi.org/10.1558/jld.39973.Search in Google Scholar

Du Bois, Inke. 2024. Multimodalität in der digitalen Kommunikation: Memes und animierte GIFs in sozialen Medien und Messengerumgebungen. In F. Vogel & J. Androutspoulous (eds.). Handbuch Sprache und digitale Kommunikation. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.10.1515/9783110744163-011Search in Google Scholar

DuBois, Inke, Hande Akin, Hasan Sabbir Mir, Megan Dwinger & Ekaterina Buchiminska. 2021. How does memetic communication and humor about Covid 19 differ across groups? 11th humor research conference. Texas: Texas A&M University, 26–27.Search in Google Scholar

Dundes, Alan. 1987. At ease, disease – AIDS Jokes as sick humor. American Behavioral Scientist 30(3). 72–81. https://doi.org/10.1177/000276487030003006.Search in Google Scholar

Dorst, Aletta. 2011. Personification in discourse: Linguistic forms, conceptual structures and communicative functions. Language and Literature 20(2). 113–135.10.1177/0963947010395522Search in Google Scholar

Dynel, Marta & Fabio Poppi. 2018. In tragoedia risus: Analysis of dark humour in post-terrorist attack discourse. Discourse & Communication 12(4). 382–400. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750481318757777.Search in Google Scholar

Dynel, Marta. 2020. COVID-19 memes going viral: On the multiple multimodal voices behind face masks. Discourse & Society 32(2). 175–195. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926520970385.Search in Google Scholar

Fauconnier, Gilles & Marc Turner. 2003. Conceptual blending, form and meaning. Recherches en communication 19. 57–86. https://doi.org/10.14428/rec.v19i19.48413.Search in Google Scholar

Flecha Ortiz, Jose A., Maria A. Santos Corrada, Evelyn Lopez & Virgin Dones. 2021. Analysis of the use of memes as an exponent of collective coping during COVID-19 in Puerto Rico. Media International Australia 178(1). 168–181. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878x20966379.Search in Google Scholar

Gal, Susan. 1978. Peasant men can’t get wives: Language change and sex roles in a bilingual community. Language in Society 7(1). 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404500005303.Search in Google Scholar

Gal, Noam, Limor Shifman & Zohar Kampf. 2016. “It gets better”: Internet memes and the construction of collective identity. New Media & Society 18(8). 1698–1714. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444814568784.Search in Google Scholar

Goffman, Erving. 1981. Forms of talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Search in Google Scholar

Gonot-Schoupinsky, Freda & Gülcan Garip. 2021. The covid-19 pandemic as an opportunity for positive psychology to promote a wider-ranging definition of humour and laughter. The Palgrave Handbook of Humour Research. 459–478. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78280-1_23.Search in Google Scholar

Grundlingh, Lezandra. 2018. Memes as speech acts. Social Semiotics 28(2). 147–168. https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2017.1303020.Search in Google Scholar

Günthner, Susanne. 2013. Negotiating identities in communication among migrant youth in Germany. Insulting remarks as a communicative pattern for creating co-membership. In Multilingual Identities in migration contexts. New global Perspectives on immigrant discourse. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Search in Google Scholar

Harari, Tali Te‘eni, Yaron Sela & Liad Bareket-Bojmel. 2022. Gen Z during the COVID-19 crisis: A comparative analysis of the differences between gen Z and gen X in resilience, values and attitudes. Current Psychology. 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03501-4.Search in Google Scholar

Holmes, Janet & Miriam Meyerhoff. 2008. The handbook of language and gender. Oxford: Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar

Ilbury, Christian 2020. “Sassy queens”: Stylistic orthographic variation in twitter and the enregisterment of AAVE. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 24(2), 245-264. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12366.Search in Google Scholar

Knisely, Kris & Eric Russell. 2024. Redoing linguistic worlds: Unmaking gender binaries, remaking gender pluralities. In Critical language and literacy studies, 30. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.10.21832/9781800415102Search in Google Scholar

Knobel, Michele & Colin Lanshear. 2007. Online memes, affinities, and cultural production. A New Literacies Sampler 29. 199–227.Search in Google Scholar

Kress, Gunther & Theo Van Leeuwen. 2020. Reading images: The grammar of visual design. New York: Routledge.10.4324/9781003099857Search in Google Scholar

Kuipers, Giselinde. 2002. Media culture and internet disaster jokes: Bin laden and the attack on the world trade center. European Journal of Cultural Studies 5(4). 450–470. https://doi.org/10.1177/1364942002005004296.Search in Google Scholar

Labov, William. 1972. Some principles of linguistic methodology. Language in Society 1(1). 97–120. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404500006576.Search in Google Scholar

Labov, William. 1990. The intersection of sex and social class in the course of linguistic change. Language Variation and Change 2(2). 205–254. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0954394500000338.Search in Google Scholar

Lakoff, Georg & Marc Johnson. 1980. Conceptual metaphor in everyday language. The Journal of Philosophy 77(8). 453–486. https://doi.org/10.2307/2025464.Search in Google Scholar

Lakoff, Robin. 2006. Language, gender, and politics: Putting “women” and “power” in the same sentence. The handbook of language and gender 78. 161–78.Search in Google Scholar

Lampert, Martin D. & Susan M. Ervin-Tripp. 2006. Risky laughter: Teasing and self-directed joking among male and female friends. Journal of Pragmatics 38(1). 51–72. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2005.06.004.Search in Google Scholar

Limor, Shifman & Dafna Lemish. 2011. Virtually blonde: Blonde jokes in the global age and postfeminist discourse. In The Handbook of gender, sex and media. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.10.1002/9781118114254.ch6Search in Google Scholar

Martin, Rod A., Patricia Puhlik-Doris, Gwen Larsen, Jeanette Gray & Kelly Weir. 2003. Individual differences in uses of humor and their relation to psychological well-being: Development of the Humor Styles Questionnaire. Journal of Research in Personality 37(1). 48–75. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0092-6566(02)00534-2.Search in Google Scholar

MAXQDA. 2020. Software for qualitative data analysis. Berlin, Germany: VERBI Software.Search in Google Scholar

Mehl, Matthias & James Pennebaker. 2003. The sounds of social life: A psychometric analysis of students’ daily social environments and natural conversations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84(4). 857. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.84.4.857.Search in Google Scholar

Milner, Ryan M. 2016. The world made meme: Public conversations and participatory media. Cambridge: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/9780262034999.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Mocarski, Richard & Sim Butler. 2016. A critical, rhetorical analysis of man therapy: The use of humor to frame mental health as masculine. Journal of Communication Inquiry 40(2). 128–144. https://doi.org/10.1177/0196859915606974.Search in Google Scholar

Neuland, Eva & C. Efing. 2023. Soziolinguistik der deutschen Sprache: eine Einführung, Vol. 4455. Tübingen: Narr Verlag utb.10.36198/9783838544557Search in Google Scholar

Nezlek, John B., Peter L. Derks & John. Simanski. 2021. Relationships between everyday use of humor and daily experience. Humor 34(1). 21–39. https://doi.org/10.1515/humor-2020-0073.Search in Google Scholar

Norris, Sigrid. 2019. Systematically working with multimodal data: Research methods in multimodal discourse analysis. Boston: John Wiley & Sons.10.1002/9781119168355Search in Google Scholar

Ostrower, Chaya. 2000. Humor as a defense mechanism in the Holocaust. Tel Aviv: Tel-Aviv University PhD thesis.Search in Google Scholar

Pauliks, Kevin. 2021. Memeing against mainstream. An analysis of dank memes and the pictorial (counter-) practices of meme culture. In Annual conference of Internet Researchers: selected Papers of internet research. AoIR.10.5210/spir.v2021i0.12006Search in Google Scholar

Pomerantz, Anita. 1984. Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In Anita Pomerantz, Joan. M. Atkinson & John Heritage. Structures of social action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511665868.008Search in Google Scholar

De la Rosa-Carrillo, Ernesto-Leon. 2015. On the Language of internet memes. University of Arizona PhD dissertation. http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/556817.Search in Google Scholar

Rogers, Richard & Giulia Giorgi. 2023. What is a meme, technically speaking? Information, Communication & Society. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2023.2174790.Search in Google Scholar

Romaine, Suzanne. 2006. Variation in language and gender. In Janet Holmes & Miriam Meyerhoff (eds.), The handbook of language and gender. Oxford: Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar

Samant, R., K. Balchin, E. Cisa-Paré, J. Renaud, L. Bunch, A. McNeil & J. Meng. 2020. The importance of humor in oncology: A survey of patients undergoing radiotherapy. Current Oncology 27(4). e350. https://doi.org/10.3747/co.27.5875.Search in Google Scholar

Sankoff, Gillian. 2019. Language change across the lifespan: Three trajectory types. Language 95(2). 197–229. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2019.0029.Search in Google Scholar

Schmidt, Axel & Konstanze Marx. 2017. Interaktion und Medien. In Sprachreport 33, 4, 22–33. Mannheim: IDS Verlag.Search in Google Scholar

Shifman, Limor. 2012. Memes in digital culture. Cambridge: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/9429.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Stöckl, Hartmut & John A. Bateman. 2022. Multimodal coherence across media and genres. Frontiers in Communication 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2022.1104128.Search in Google Scholar

Tannen, Deborah. 1994. Gender and discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Trudgill, Peter. 1972. Sex, covert prestige and linguistic change in the urban British English of Norwich. Language in Society 1(2). 179–195. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404500000488.Search in Google Scholar

Vásquez, C. 2019. Language, creativity and humour online. London: Routledge.10.4324/9781315159027Search in Google Scholar

Vásquez, Camilla & Erhan Aslan. 2021. “Cats be outside, how about meow”: Multimodal humor and creativity in an internet meme. Journal of Pragmatics 171. 101–117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2020.10.006.Search in Google Scholar

Waters, Cathleen & Sali Tagliamonte. 2017. Is one innovation enough? Leaders, covariation, and language change. American Speech 92(1). 23–40.10.1215/00031283-4153186Search in Google Scholar

Wiese, H. & A. Labrenz. 2021. Emoji as graphic discourse markers. Pragmatic Markers and Peripheries 325. 277.10.1075/pbns.325.10wieSearch in Google Scholar

Wiggins, Bradley. E. 2020. The discursive power of memes in digital culture: Ideology, semiotics, and intertextuality. Routledge.10.4324/9780429492303Search in Google Scholar

Wiggins, Bradley & Bret Bowers. 2015. Memes as genre: A structurational analysis of the memescape. New Media and Society 17(11). 1886–1906.10.1177/1461444814535194Search in Google Scholar

Wildfeuer, Janina. 2017. Diskurssemiotik = diskurssemantik + multimodaler text. In E. W. B. Hess-Lüttich, H. Kämper, M. Reisigl & I. H. Warnke(Hg) (eds.). Diskurs – semiotisch. Aspekte multimodaler diskursforschung, 189–210. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.10.1515/9783110489057-009Search in Google Scholar

Wolfers, Solvejg. 2020. Team Cohesion as a discursively negotiated process: An ethnographic Study of a professional football team (Doctoral dissertation). Warwick: University of Warwick.Search in Google Scholar

Yus, F. 2021. Incongruity-resolution humorous strategies in image macro memes. Internet Pragmatics 4(1). 131–149. https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00058.yus.Search in Google Scholar

Yus, Francisco & Carmen Maíz-Arévalo. 2023. Interpreting Covid-related memes. The Pragmatics of Humour in Interactive Contexts 335. 6. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.335.01yus.Search in Google Scholar

Supplementary Material

This article contains supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/mc-2024-0051).

Received: 2024-05-07
Accepted: 2024-07-22
Published Online: 2024-10-11

© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Research Articles
  3. The salience of students’ body language during in-person and online lectures at a Canadian university
  4. “Let’s talk divorce”: a multimodal critical discourse analysis of Oduduwa secessionist discourse
  5. A multimodal analysis of the English-to-Arabic adaptation of Disney’s “The Bare Necessities”
  6. Investigating pausing and gesturing patterns in children with and without developmental language disorder
  7. Language politics and prestige in The Walled City: an exploratory study of the linguistic landscape of Intramuros, Manila
  8. Harmony in diversity: exploring cross-linguistic, cross-cultural and multimodal dimensions of temporality within tourism discourse
  9. The semiotics of red-tagging: hateful affects against the community pantry movement
  10. Age and gender differences in meme humor: a multimodal variationist mixed-method approach
  11. Imagined versus practiced professional identity development: a multimodal (inter)action analysis of a Chinese novice english teacher
  12. Essay
  13. Adapting and extending multimodal (inter)action analysis to investigate synchronous multimodal online language teaching
https://doi.org/10.1515/mc-2024-0051
Keywords for this article
multimodal humor; variationist; meme; gender; digital communication

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Research Articles
  3. The salience of students’ body language during in-person and online lectures at a Canadian university
  4. “Let’s talk divorce”: a multimodal critical discourse analysis of Oduduwa secessionist discourse
  5. A multimodal analysis of the English-to-Arabic adaptation of Disney’s “The Bare Necessities”
  6. Investigating pausing and gesturing patterns in children with and without developmental language disorder
  7. Language politics and prestige in The Walled City: an exploratory study of the linguistic landscape of Intramuros, Manila
  8. Harmony in diversity: exploring cross-linguistic, cross-cultural and multimodal dimensions of temporality within tourism discourse
  9. The semiotics of red-tagging: hateful affects against the community pantry movement
  10. Age and gender differences in meme humor: a multimodal variationist mixed-method approach
  11. Imagined versus practiced professional identity development: a multimodal (inter)action analysis of a Chinese novice english teacher
  12. Essay
  13. Adapting and extending multimodal (inter)action analysis to investigate synchronous multimodal online language teaching
Sign up now to receive a 20% welcome discount
Institutional Access
How does access work?
Have an idea on how to improve our website?
Please write us.
© 2025 De Gruyter Brill
Downloaded on 26.9.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/mc-2024-0051/html
Scroll to top button