LINGUISTIC AND PRAGMATIC POTENTIAL OF ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ENVIRONMENTAL INTERNET MEMES

Abstract

The study deals with English-language Internet memes which communicate environmental issues. The material for the study was taken from Reddit, which is used to share topical memes on the Internet. The study analyses the linguistic and pragmatic potential of English-language environmental Internet memes and describes their visual pattern and verbal component. It is shown that after reframing, the visual template of viral Internet memes becomes a means of attracting attention to environmental issues. While keeping the same visual template, new lines, captions, and headings referring to environmental issues can be added to the verbal template; in some cases, environmental Internet memes are created specifically to explain the negative consequences of human economic activity or to evaluate environmental stunts. The author determines the set of relevant strategies and tactics based on the lingvopragmatic model, characterizes the verbal and non-verbal means ensuring their implementation. It is found that dominant strategies are the strategies of drawing attention to environmental issues, informing; argumentation; intimidation; creating a comical effect; development of a stereotype of environmental behaviour, which are implemented by tactics of focusing attention, reducing the situation to an absurdity, and negative prediction. Considering the identified communicative strategies, the typology of environmental Internet memes is proposed, and five main linguopragmatic types are identified: informing, persuasive, intimidating, humorous, ironic-sceptical. The relevant linguistic means to implement communicative tactics in English-language environmental Internet memes are colloquial vocabulary, idioms, professional vocabulary (environmental terms), synonyms, antonyms, metaphors, imperatives, present participle, colloquial syntactic constructions, expressive syntactic means: antithesis, question-answer constructions, anaphora, epiphora, and ellipsis.