When Words Fail, Memes Speak: The Weird and Wonderful Ways of Expressing Emotions

Abstract

This study examines internet memes as sociolinguistics artifacts that reflects the globalization’s  impact on digital communication.  Applying Jan Blommaert's Sociolinguistics of Globalization framework, this research examines how memes promote linguistic adaptation, cultural negotiation, and transnational trends. An in-depth qualitative research approach was adopted, utilizing content analysis to examine the meaning-making processes used within viral memes. The selected data set comprised of 50 memes collected from Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest and some generated using ChatGPT on topics such as linguistic adaptation and globalization. Only memes that have appeared in the past three years upon were taken into consideration, as these represent the contemporary digital discourse within which economic acts shaped by globalization occur. The analysis shows how memes draw on multiple linguistic resources in forms of code-switching, hybrid language forms, and localized adaptations in demonstrating how digital users interact with and alter global cultural flows. Thus, these findings widen the horizons of digital sociolinguistics in depicting how Chat memes serve as a vibrant space for linguistic innovation and cultural interaction.