A Frame-Semantic Analysis of Textual Memes Generated from Woltze's The Letter: A Cognitive Linguistic Perspective
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33806/ijaes1284Keywords:
cognitive linguistics, frame semantics, image macro, scenes, textual meme, Woltze’s problem picturesAbstract
The present paper adopts a qualitative methodology to address the various frames and scenes activated while textually memeing an image macro, specifically, Woltze’s problem picture, The Letter. To achieve this objective, the researcher is to employ Fillmore’s (1976, 1982) Frame Semantics. The data consists of a single image selected following the jurors’ feedback and submitted to purposively selected female students from the Department of English-College of Education for Women-University of Baghdad, using a Google form. The study has concluded that having activated a similar frame does not necessitate sharing a similar number of elements and/or referents. There is no one-to-one correspondence between the activated frame and the scene. Identifying a similar frame does not guarantee having a similar scene. The same image macro can yield multiple construals that are semantically and visually constrained. The emotions generally lean towards the negative side, with an occasional mild sense of humor. Not all the figures in the image have been used in frame and scene construction; rather, the focus has been only on the things that pulled the participants’ attention. The overarching frames share the sense of having a problem, thereby reflecting the problem picture genre.
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