Memes, Literature, and

Language
● Are they important?
Are they just harmless, humorous
images meant to make you chuckle
or laugh?
Are they art? Are they literature?
Can they be engaged with
academically?
Can they shed light on how we
perceive each other and the world
around us?
What about their language? Is it
just internet-speak or actual
innovation/development of
language?
History of Memes

● Term coined by Richard Dawkins, an

evolutionary biologist
● Any sort of idea, theme, or meaning passing
from person to person within a culture
● Memetics is a field of study dedicated
exclusively to this phenomenon
● Meme studies is now also an academic field
of study, with courses being offered by the
University of California in Berkeley,
Cambridge University, etc.
Memes and Intertextuality

● Intertextuality is the way that one text

influences another.
● This can be a direct borrowing such as a
quotation or plagiarism, or slightly more
indirect such as parody, pastiche, allusion,
or translation.
● Memes on the internet are by design
images and/or text of popular narratives
● They mix and combine different
films/books/music video and use them to
express feelings/to inform/to mock/
Memes and Intertextuality (cont’d)

● they can often serve as devices that

innocuously broach a taboo topic that
otherwise may be hard to start talking
about.
● they can pack serious, thought-provoking
content under the veil of their surface
humor
Memes and
Advertising
● Memes are mostly found
floating on the internet, on
popular social media such as
Instagram, Twitter and
Facebook, Reddit.

● They are shared, usually

without credit; and commented
upon, modified further, memed
further by participation of their
viewers.

● Anyone can use them/fit their

own meaning into them. Are
memes socialist?
 Memes and
Advertising (cont’d)
● But because memes can reach
anyone, they are also now used
as part of, if not fully, the
advertising strategies of many
corporations.

● Word of mouth transmutates to

Word of Meme. They humanize
corporations, bring them down to
the level of the consumer.

● That “hey we too are just like

you. Buy our stuff!” They speak
our language, yet they also
inform it in the first place.
It says: “has this distracted you from overwhelming
existential dread lol”
Memes and
Advertising (cont’d)
● They obscure our capacity for
choice by making it for us.
“Hey don’t we all just love
to be watching Netflix while
we procrastinate haha”
-netflix producers

● Because nobody except the rich What they’re saying is

has a choice under capitalism. “GIVE US MONEY haha”

● Memes in advertising become

their tools, means of distribution.

● They sell you the idea of a

subculture, community you want
to part of. You are not just a
consumer, you’re a cool
consumer.
This particular meme itself
asks whether meme on
billboards are advertising,
which they are effectively.

● In effect, we are their

advertisers.
Memes and Language Politics

● There will never be enough words in any language to describe accurately the agony of human
existence. It is a feat entirely impossible because language eludes us as much as it frees us.
● “To shape a silence while breaking it.”- Toni Morrison
● Shakespeare wrote it “That which we call a rose. By any other name would smell as sweet”.
So if I could go back in time and call a table a cheese, no one would be any the wiser. Words
do not embody the meaning we ascribe to them. And that’s fine. We don’t really need them to
do that. What we need them to do is to shape our realities in communication.
● You don’t know your own reality so you don’t know what it is that you want to say.
Memes and Language Politics (cont’d)

● You do know your reality but you are unable to speak.

● You know your reality and you can speak but what language do you use to speak.
● These are things central to her novel, the language is local, it isn’t an imitation of the white
man’s speech and it does not explain itself. It forces you to understand it as it exists without
catering to you. It stand on its own merits.
● Soniah Kamal, Unmarriageable. It is a retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in Pakistan
and while it is a good read and has something wonderful to offer in terms of identities and
cultures and how many of them come together, the thing that stood out to me most was the
translations and the explanations.
Memes and Language Politics (cont’d)

● While there are various theories on how colonialism has affected our identities and our speech patterns and our
language even, it doesn’t really answer the question of our identity now. It is not enough to be post-colonial,
what is Pakistani now? What is Pakistani literature going to read like now? What are we going to broadcast on
our media now?

● This is why contemporary writers attempt to destroy language in trying to reveal their truths, why diaspora
writers struggle to write as both subject and object, why feminist writers create female characters who are not
eternal victims of their circumstances, why I include Urdu in my writings as do many important writers I cannot
currently name and why language is becoming so experimental. Being slaves to rules and diction does not help
us write our lives better, it only turns us into people we are not. But breaking down the language, creating our
own version of it is what makes it our own, the acceptance that yes, this is ours to change and create from and
with.
Fin.