CONTEXT, DISCOURSE ISSUES AND COMMON GROUND STRATEGIES IN SELECTED DIALOGIC INTERNET MEMES

Abstract

Dialogic Internet Memes (DIMs), which aid communication of social interests and opinions on Social Networking Sites (SNSs), are used to share previous experiences and negotiate common ground through various contexts. Extant studies on social media interactions among Nigerians have been on text and image memes, humour and multimodality, with little attention paid to the mutual knowledge that foregrounds humour or multimodal effects. This study was, therefore, designed to examine DIMs among Nigerians, with a view to determining their pragmatic appropriateness. Istvan Kecskes’ Socio-cognitive Approach to Common Ground, complemented by Anita Fetzer’s Context Types, served as the framework, while the descriptive design was adopted. Instagram was purposively selected owing to its richness in DIMs. Fifty text-only dialogic Internet memes were purposively selected from four Instagram handles: @SavageReplies (19), @unilaghappens (9), @funnynaijapics (17) and @chiefZaddy (5). These handles were selected because of their relevance and robustness in DIMs. Data were subjected to pragmatic analysis. All the Instagram handles manifested essentially similar pragmatic features. Four context types were identified: socio-economic, religious, academic and medical contexts. These contexts were determinants of the common ground that existed in the sharedness of the DIMs. The second participants retrieved prior knowledge through indexical expressions. Current participant selected next participant based on the amount of information in the interlocutors’ linguistic repository of the selected discourse. The adjacency pairs in the dialogues were mostly question/question (indirect answer), question/answer (direct answer), statement/question and challenge/reaction. Six discourse issues were identified: poor economic environment, (un)employment, religious (non)commitment, character referencing, (in)effective communication and intentional ambiguity. These discourse issues showed the subtle debates that pervade the Internet because Instagram permits participation and interactions on online contents. Three common ground-sensitive strategies characterised the selected DIMs: evocation of common sense, exploration of culture sense and reliance on formal sense. Evocation of common sense was projected through the awareness of the general usage and the attendant pre-existing or mutual knowledge of lexical items that are usable and valid in the world. These lexical items are denotative in the context of use. Exploration of culture sense was deployed through the display of knowledge of normative behaviour, beliefs and values of a particular social and geographical setting. Through exploration of culture sense, the linguistic environment of interactants was identified to be within the three major languages (Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo) spoken in Nigeria. Reliance on formal sense probed the general knowledge of the system of language and the mutual knowledge in Instagram through passing of information, performing an action and expressing emotions. Dialogic Internet memes, as used by Nigerians, are largely dependent on the negotiation of common ground and the understanding of context. They are deployed to activate and enhance pre-existing knowledge without which interpretation will be difficult.