ANALYSIS OF ASSOCIATIVE MEANING IN MEMES AT HISTORYMEMES.

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Introduction

Background of study

Language is a communication tool used by people to express their feelings and thoughts,

through language people can convey what they want. By communicating, people can express the

ideas, opinions, information, and so on. Language of communication is the most complete and

effective way to convey ideas, messages, intentions, feelings and opinions to others (Walija,

1996:4).

As a branch of linguistic, semantic is defined as the study of meaning. Semantics is the

study of meaning in words and sentences, in the simple meaning semantics is the study to

explain how the speakers of the language understand sentences. According to Palmer (1981, p.

1), semantics is the technical term used to refer to the study of meaning, and since the meaning is

a part of the language. From the definition of semantics, we know that all the sentences have

meaning. That is an essential part of the study in semantics. Semantics is also related to the

relationship between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs, symbols. Semantics has many

types, but the researcher will concern with the associative meaning.

Associative meaning is the meaning of words or sentences that has a connection with the

relationship of word or sentences with condition out of the language. Associative meaning is a

type of meaning that analyze the words, phrases, and sentences in the written or spoken

language. Associative meaning can be defined as unstable meaning and has variants of individual

experience (Leech, 1974: 18). The associative meaning of an expression has to do with the
individual mental understanding of the speaker. In addition, it is the meaning of words that have

a connection or the relationship of the word with the condition beyond the language.

In Semantics: The Study of Meaning (1974), British linguist Geoffrey Leech introduced the term

associative meaning to refer to the various types of meaning that are distinct

from denotation (or conceptual meaning), connotative, thematic, social, effective, reflective,

and collocative.

The Researcher choose memes as the object of research because today's memes are very

attracted by people from various circles, memes have their own charm compared to another

humorous story. In Indonesia, memes began to be widely known in 2014 until now. Based on its

development, memes do not only function as a conveyer of humor only, but many also use

memes as a tool for advertising and as a device for criticism. Memes bring up stories that are

currently hot discussed, so that people are interested in reading it, besides that the choice of

words used by the author in memes, making memes have their own charm so that become very

popular. The language in memes is also what makes memes so popular. Memes can be

understood by readers because memes are equipped with sentence text, as an explanation of the

image on the meme.

Meme is a medium to convey humor in the form of pictures, photos, and some characters

taken from phenomena that occur in society. Dawkins (2006) asserted that meme is an idea

which takes the form of behavior, lifestyle, belief, fashions, etc., which is imitated and

propagated to be diffused from one to another individual within social culture or subculture

through interaction by using several media, such as writings and photographic images.

Moreover, Oxford online dictionary also defines this cultural artifact as "image macro" which

signifies the particular usage of photographic image and catchphrase to evoke the humorous
effects. Memes are also considered as a form of digitization from the participatory culture of the

internet.

Internet memes, an increasingly popular phenomenon, are normally images that spread

online. They are continuously shared and altered by internet users to form communal running

jokes. Having first emerged in the 2000s and drastically changed in style over time, the digital

nuggets of humor are now an inescapable part of youth culture. Although the first instances were

basic, universally appealing pieces of online comedy, memes have become a unique artistic

medium in which complex cultural experiences are conveyed through both form and content,

layered with irony and intersexuality.

Instagram is one of popular social media in the world. Social media Instagram is a

relatively fast medium for delivering messages and the information cannot be lost because

Facebook will store the information that has been uploaded until the user deletes it themselves.

Not only personal information, but it can be in the form of memes, news, and even e-commerce

are done quickly through Facebook. Downloaded information often goes viral in cyberspace.

Information is often considered viral if it is considered attractive, original, spontaneous, and easy

to imitate. Thus, viral can transmit information, events, news and more in a very short time and

in a wide information dissemination process. For example, communities that like to make

memes, where they will compete to create memes that later go viral on social media.

On Instagram, there are so many account that posting memes, one of that is

historymemes.ig. historymemes.ig currently has 17.7k followers. So, changes in social behavior

have now changed compared to before the existence of social media.

 One of the distinguishing features of the historymemes.ig account, which has content in

the form of identical images of countries in the world created by memes, is done through

sentence and dialogues that contain elements of humor or satire. Due to the unique content,

memes posted by this page always receive a lot of likes and responses from their followers.

This research uses Geoffrey leech’s theory to analyze the various types of associative

meaning that contained in the object of research.

The researcher chose Instagram because this social media offers many interesting

features that people can use. Of the many features offered, most are widely used for

entertainment and communication facilities. For example, meme on Instagram social media offer

more entertainment to the public with memes that present jokes or even have social value.