Abstract
This paper studies how internet memes in the context of China are the result of complex semiotic remixing practices and how these multimodal practices offer opportunities for identity work. It offers a situated perspective on the processes that underlie the creation of Chinese memes (Biaoqingbao), the ways in which these memes mediate the digital practices of members in a student community, and how these students find opportunities for identity work. This study takes a social semiotic (Kress, Gunther R. 2010. Multimodality: a social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. Taylor & Francis) and Mediated Discourse Analysis approach (Scollon, Ron. 2001. Mediated discourse: The Nexus of practice. Routledge; Scollon and Scollon 2004; Norris, Sigrid & Rodney H. Jones. 2005. Discourse in action: introducing mediated discourse analysis. London: Routledge) to analyze biaoqingbao as the mediate the social interaction within a light community. The data was collected using a form of digital ethnography. The memes studied in the current paper are unique in two ways. First, they combine both local and global people, places, objects and discourses deploying both Chinese and English texts and effectively create semiotic trajectories between highly localized digital meme practices and more global mainstream meme practices. Second, the practices of producing, sharing and remixing these memes are exclusively situated in a distinct light community and offer important opportunities for multimodal identity performance.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Introduction to the special issue
- Research Articles
- Digital writing, recreated orality, and identity: domestication and exoticization of multilingual speech on Chinese social media
- Geographies of discourse revisited
- Multimodal creativity and identity in digital discourse: meme practices in China
- Mind maps as multimodal and multilingual literacy practices in Chinese private universities
- Dialogues of materiality: unravelling the agency of discourse and objects
- Visualizing identity: multimodal and multilingual practices in international student organizations’ on-campus artifacts
- Moin Moin is schon Gesabbel: constructing Northern German identity in commercial Instagram posts
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Introduction to the special issue
- Research Articles
- Digital writing, recreated orality, and identity: domestication and exoticization of multilingual speech on Chinese social media
- Geographies of discourse revisited
- Multimodal creativity and identity in digital discourse: meme practices in China
- Mind maps as multimodal and multilingual literacy practices in Chinese private universities
- Dialogues of materiality: unravelling the agency of discourse and objects
- Visualizing identity: multimodal and multilingual practices in international student organizations’ on-campus artifacts
- Moin Moin is schon Gesabbel: constructing Northern German identity in commercial Instagram posts