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263238

Will Smith Slapping Chris Rock: a Cognitive Semiotic Analysis of an American Humorous Image Macro

Article

Last updated: 05 Jan 2025

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Tags

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Abstract

This study aims to present a cognitive semiotic analysis of Will Smith Slapping Chris Rock humorous image macro in American English. The data under examination is collected from knowyourmeme.com, Google Images and Pinterest. It consists of 5 image macros. Semiotic analysis is based on Berger's notion of code violation, McCloud's taxonomy of text and image relations, visual analysis (image editing techniques), and an analysis of textual features of top and bottom texts of the image macros; the last two represent visual and verbal causes of humor. As for the cognitive analysis, it applies Fauconnier & Turner's Conceptual Integration Theory. Semiotically speaking, data analysis reveals types of image and text relations, causes of humor, types of image photoshopping and distinctive textual and visual features. Cognitively, the examined data highlights how, from a meme maker's point of view, the human mind is astonishingly skillful in integrating already existing mental spaces to create new structures and how, from a meme receiver's / reader's point of view, the human mind can also deconstruct new never seen before structures to their basic mental spaces, thus understanding what intended to be communicated.

DOI

10.21608/ejlt.2022.162261.1011

Keywords

Humorous image macros, American English, code violation, taxonomy of text and image relations, Conceptual Integration theory

Authors

First Name

Nada

Last Name

Mohamed Helmy

MiddleName

Hassan

Affiliation

Department of English language, Faculty of Al-Alsun, Minia University

Email

nada.hassan@mu.edu.eg

City

Minia

Orcid

0000-0002-3246-4294

Volume

8

Article Issue

2

Related Issue

36826

Issue Date

2022-07-01

Receive Date

2022-09-11

Publish Date

2022-07-01

Page Start

64

Page End

99

Online ISSN

2314-6699

Link

https://ejlt.journals.ekb.eg/article_263238.html

Detail API

https://ejlt.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=263238

Order

263,238

Type

Research in linguistic and literary studies

Type Code

2,266

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Egyptian Journal of Linguistics and Translation

Publication Link

https://ejlt.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Will Smith Slapping Chris Rock: a Cognitive Semiotic Analysis of an American Humorous Image Macro

Details

Type

Article

Created At

23 Jan 2023