Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2025
This chapter turns to labelling memes, where some images may develop into full-blown Image Macros, while others remain non-entrenched. Here, the textual component is different from both when-memes and from the typical Image Macro memes. In typical labelling memes, parts of a depicted scene are labelled with words or phrases which do not describe anything in the image, but instead collectively call up a different frame. Well-known examples discussed include the Is This a Pigeon? meme, and the Distracted Boyfriend meme (DBM), showing a man turning over to admire an attractive passing woman (dressed in red), while the woman (in blue) whose hand he’s holding looks on indignantly. This scene of a change in attention and preference – a choice for a new and attractive opportunity – gets to be applied to unrelated choices and new preferences. Labelling itself can sometimes be visual again. Overall, we stress the constructional properties of DBM – with strong argument structure-like properties – alongside the role of embodied features (emotions and attentions expressed in facial expressions and posture) and the figurative, similative meaning often arrived at compositionally.
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