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6 - Memetic Use of Personal Pronouns

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2025

Barbara Dancygier
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia, Vancouver
Lieven Vandelanotte
Affiliation:
University of Namur, Belgium
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Summary

This chapter considers the use of pronouns, and how they relate to such roles as Meme Maker, Meme Character (depicted in a meme’s image), and Meme Viewer (i.e. the ‘reader’ of a given meme). One illustration of how odd pronouns actually behave in memes is to consider the use of I, which does not refer to the Meme Maker, but is used to represent embedded discourses attributed to a depicted Meme Character. Just as curious is the use of me, in patterns such as Me Verb-ing, or Me/Also Me, which apparently instruct us to look for Meme Maker in the meme’s image, which in fact shows an unrelated Meme Character (possibly non-human, like an animal), such that the depicted character represents the experience of the Meme Maker. Such examples show that deixis is used in unusual ways in memetic discourse, to support the expression of viewpoint and stance targeted in the meme, rather than to identify specific referents.

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