Resumen

ABADIA, Iván. ‘Vamo a calmarno’. Los memes como dispositivos de referencialidad comunicativa. Cuad. Cent. Estud. Diseñ. Comun., Ensayos [online]. 2023, n.119, pp.104-132.  Epub 30-Jun-2023. ISSN 1853-3523.

An image is shared in a social network. Instantly, many people are able not only to see it, but they can, through their digital devices, save it, edit it, and even share it. A long time later, the image is published again, but now, it has a filter, a couple of low-quality editions, and a text that accompanies it in a sarcastic tone. It travels the web again, but this time, millions of people read it, laugh at it, and save it to be shared later in future conversations. Like this small example, thousands of images are created every day and can ‘speak’ in several contexts, without any limits and even crossing geographical and linguistic borders. This digital phenomenon, named ‘meme’ (a term adapted from sociology) is commonly related to mockery and parody, and academically speaking it has been studied from different positions, but mainly from linguistics and discourse analysis. More in visual terms, memetic replication processes are more related to viral, highly creative communicative exchanges, which tend to ignore stylism and seem, in many cases, to talk about their relationship of meaning with an original (any original), rather than focusing on humorous or entertaining discourses. Thus, this article (the result of a Master's project in Communication Design at the University of Buenos Aires) is presented as a study on the definition of memes as reference practices, through the proposal of a metalinguistic model that allows us to explain how these images relate to the communicative processes in which they are involved. Likewise, a contribution is made to the definition of the digital meme as a theoretical concept and other/new categories of understanding are proposed regarding the use of memetic images in digitally mediated communicative practices.

Palabras clave : Meme; Internet meme; Digital image; Social networks; Referentiality..

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