The Modes of Visual Rhetoric: Circulating Memes as Expressions
2014; Routledge; Volume: 100; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/00335630.2014.989258
ISSN1479-5779
Autores Tópico(s)Misinformation and Its Impacts
ResumoAbstractThe speed, scale, and shape of digital circulation pose numerous challenges for rhetorical analysis that seeks to analyze image-texts in context. This paper develops a framework for the rhetorical analysis of Internet memes through the concept of modes. Analyzing memes requires a shift in focus from the actual (texts and contexts) to the virtual (the capacities for affect and affection structuring an encounter). What makes such memes recognizable and, hence, circulable is a shared, virtual mode structuring all subsequent actualizations. The examination of Fail/Win demonstrates that the analysis of modes can be assisted by a number of rhetorical concepts as long as modes are understood as collective, emergent expressions. It also shows that the Fail/Win mode is better understood not as the representation of specific rhetors but, instead, as an expression of control society that advances both a dystopian view of humans reduced to performing rote operations and a utopian, ideological gesture promising that success remains possible nevertheless.Keywords: Visual RhetoricModesAffectControl SocietyMeme Notes[1] Knowyourmeme.com, “Fail,” Knowyourmeme.com, accessed September 29, 2014, http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/fail.[2] Knowyourmeme.com traces the Fail meme back to 1998. See Knowyourmeme.com, “Fail,” Knowyourmeme.com, accessed September 29, 2014, http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/fail. 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