Memes: from the senses to multimodalities in digital social networks

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This text aims, through review and dialogue with the literature in the area, to show that memes, a hybrid discursive genre native to the digital environment, are a powerful object for teaching multimodality and construction of meaning. In memes, there is a visual design that aggregates multiple languages ​​and expands the construction of meanings. In this way, it reflects on linguistic and digital education through visual design and the distribution of meanings socially recognized in the meme-text. Furthermore, promotes multiliteracies in the classroom from basic education to higher education, applying multimodality, which is a hallmark of online communication and interaction. It is concluded that the pedagogical way of the school tradition of teaching reading, seeking meanings from texts recognized in the culture of printed literacy, where the verbal was privileged for decades to the detriment of the visual, must open its borders and expand them to the point that the multiple matrices of languages ​​current on digital communication and social network platforms are incorporated into these repertoires, where the multimodality associated with visual design guarantees the resignification of meanings and ideologies contained in memes.

KEYWORDS: Memes; Language teaching; Multimodality; Social media.