INTERNET SLANG AND MEMES USED FOR LEARNING: A CASE STUDY
INTERNET SLANG AND MEMES USED FOR LEARNING: A CASE STUDY

Summary/Abstract: With the evolution of technology, especially of the internet, and the wide-spread access to it by society, it has become increasingly easier for people to engage with humor on the internet, especially in the shape of memes. Memes are ubiquitous on the internet, from individual profiles of people to pages dedicated to the marketing of business, as well as out of the online space, in advertisements on television. As academic language is often considered by people in the early years of their academic journey (such as college freshmen) hard to decipher and a barrier in learning in their field of specialisation, a new phenomenon has started being noticed, namely the use of memes and viral material used and modified as content for specialised domains, designed to make learning easier and more engaging for the audience. The present paper aims to analyse specific social media platforms centered around language, where memes and other forms of viral content are used to create educational content for the audience. The paper will focus on English-language memes (such as “Language Nerds” on Facebook), as well as a few Romanian pages (such as “Meme cu suculenţă juridică”, also on Facebook) where content is curated with the purpose of creating humor targeted at people aware of certain specialised fields and the terminology used. The comments left on the posts will also be analysed in order to grasp the reception of the content.

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