Ideational Meaning and Morality in the Internet Memes of 9gag about the Interaction between Teacher and Students

Abstract

As multimodal text, Internet memes encompassing verbal and visual elements have a significant function in producing meaning both independently and inherently. In addition, they are not only used to entertain the reader through humorous messages, but also used to convey moral message. This research investigated the ideational meaning and the critical message in the internet memes related to the interaction between teacher and students in teaching and learning activities. It was conducted to reveal experiential and representational meaning; inter-semiotic logical relations; the portrayed events; and the implied problems as criticism to both teachers and students contained in these Internet memes. They were obtained from Instagram account of @9gag. Focusing on the ideational meaning, it applied three theories, namely, transitivity system, representational component of visual grammar, and inter-semiotic logical relations. It also applied the theory of relevance to reveal the critical message behind these internet memes. Several studies, related to the internet memes both in multimodal discourse analysis and pragmatic study, have been conducted. Nevertheless, this present study is the development of those studies using different approach. Specifically, this study focused on internet memes concerning teachers and students interaction which have never investigated before. The results revealed five kinds of verbal processes; five kinds of visual processes; six logical relations between caption and image; five portrayed students’ behaviours; nine problems implied in student figure; and six problems implied in teacher figure. Through this study, the readers are expected to understand both wisdom and un-wisdom messages of criticism in the Internet memes.