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Article

Open Access

Conceptual Blending and Meme Humor on the Internet: The Example of COVID-19 Publicity Posters in Chinese Microblogging

Author(s)

WANG Lei

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DOI:10.17265/1539-8072/2023.06.002

Affiliation(s)

Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, China

ABSTRACT

Internet memes, as multimodal cultural products disseminated through the Internet, usually take the form of short videos or images that express humor or satire. The creation and dissemination of humor in memes are both creative and complex, and the successful perception of meme humor reflects humans’ universal thinking capacity. Based on the theoretical framework of conceptual blending, this paper selects a set of COVID-19 publicity posters from the official Weibo account of China Guangzhou Fabu (Guangzhou Internet Information Office), analyses the multi-level structure of Internet memes, and explores the dynamic cognitive process in the interpretation of humorous memes to reveal people’s ability to make simultaneous analogies and integration between elements in different mental spaces.

KEYWORDS

conceptual blending, Internet meme, humor, COVID-19 prevention and control

Cite this paper

Sino-US English Teaching, June 2023, Vol. 20, No. 6, 217-226 doi:10.17265/1539-8072/2023.06.002

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