Linguistic and sociocultural aspects of Quebec Internet memes

This article focuses on the linguistic and sociocultural features of Internet memes spreading in the information and communication space of the French-speaking province Quebec. The object of the study is memes posted on web portals or social networks as small-format comic texts. The subject of the study is their linguistic features, including territorial and sociocultural specifics. The integrity of a meme is determined by its content and formal characteristics, while the interaction of verbal and visual components forms its communicative and pragmatic potential. This interaction is supported by the means of expressiveness at different levels of language, including morphological, grammatical, syntactic and graphemic. The base of the study consisted of 75 French memes discovered during the year 2024, selected using a continuous sampling method. Resources for storing and disseminating Internet memes include blogging platforms such as ConneriesQc and social networks such as Facebook, Tumblr, etc. The choice of topics and the specifics of their interpretation are determined by the target audience of these resources, which allows us to consider an Internet meme as a precedent unit with specific cultural and national connotations. During the analysis, general (observation, description, analysis, synthesis, classification, comparison and quantitative counting) and specific linguistic methods were used: component analysis to describe verbal and visual elements, discourse analysis to assess the influence of the conditions of Internet meme realization on its versatility, contextual analysis for the linguistic interpretation of memes, as well as the method of textual interpretation. The scientific novelty of this study lies in the comprehensive approach to analyzing Internet memes as cultural phenomena, taking into account their linguistic features as well as sociocultural context. The results show that the choice of topics for Internet memes and their interpretation depend on the target audience of the platforms, which allows us to consider memes as precedent units with unique cultural and national connotation. The analysis revealed a significant influence of the interaction of verbal and visual components on the memes, as well as the role of expressive means in shaping their significance. Thus, this study emphasizes the importance of Internet memes as a communication tool in modern society and their ability to reflect the cultural characteristics of the residents of the French-speaking Canadian province Quebec.

Internet meme, humor, irony, Canadian culture, values, sociocultural aspect, French language, social issues, identity, Quebecers