Axelle Van Wynsberghe

5,999 words

Internet Memes New Cultural Metalanguage:

a Case Study of Pepe the Frog
Anthropology of Language Research Project
“YOU LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE A GROUP OF INTERNET MISFITS MEME-MAGICKED A CELEBRITY
MADMAN INTO THE WHITE HOUSE WITH THE HELP OF AN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DEITY.”
—A.T.L. CARVER (2017)

The above citation may seem completely absurd and irrational, but a large group of people on the
internet have drawn such conclusions due to the ironic, humorous and satirical nature of internet memes
and the memetic thinking that their forms and characteristics allow. In this study, I will be using the
theory of memetics in order to analyze the emergence of internet memes as a new cultural metalanguage.
I will be conceptualizing them as ‘superhighway hieroglyphics’ based on their pictorial format and
historicity in deriving meaning from their own referentiality. I will argue that their forms allow them to
communicate more particular emotions and understandings of culture than other forms of language permit
in the form of ‘feels’. Throughout the course of this essay, the study of memetics will be outlined and its
most problematic assumptions revised in an effort to refine certain terms and concepts. This study of
internet memes will additionally be contextualized within an understanding of today’s rhizomatic and
networked organization of cyberspace. I will argue that this has led to the development of the internet
meme as a new cultural metalanguage which is able to translate contemporary ‘feels’. Pepe the Frog will
be used as a case study to showcase how the networked and rapid nature of internet memes allow users to
create new kinds of utterances which communicate complex cultural thoughts and feelings. Lastly, the
impact of this study on language and evolution discourse will be briefly examined.

Background

I. The Study of Memetics

The field of Memetics has held many tensions and incongruencies since its inception, with Susan
Blackmore and Richard Dawkins being its most prominent proponents. There have been many criticisms
of Blackmore and Dawkins’ comparisons between the meme and the gene, and the proposition of the
meme as a cultural replicator which functions under the principles of natural selection. According to
Dawkins, replicators are ‘anything in the universe which interacts with its world, including other
replicators, in such a way that copies of itself are made’ (as cited in Aunger, 2000: 9). The main issue with
Blackmore’s conception and theory of memes is that of the agency she attributes to memes and the
unsound analogy she makes between genes and memes. Her view of memes as autonomous entities that
replicate in their own right gives memes an unsound amount of agency and decentralizes the subject. We
become simply ‘meme machines’, vehicles that the memes use to replicate. In her decentralization of the
subject, Blackmore decreases the potentiality of the subject and increases that of the meme. This view,
however, fails to acknowledge the subject’s agency in the production of memes. There is also a vagueness
to the meme concept that cannot be overlooked. Jaron Lanier states: “Are memes a rhetorical technique, a
metaphor, a theory, or some other device? Depending on who you talk to, they can be so wispy as to be
almost nothing. (…) They make no predictions and cannot be falsified. They are no more than a
perspective.” (as cited in Aunger, 2000: 2). Blackmore does not define the meme’s boundaries, form, or
characteristics, instead stating that they could be a story, habit, or way of doing things—anything that is
an imitable ‘unit of culture’. Susan Blackmore writes that “These memes have an internal structure that
ensures their own propagation,” yet does not hint towards what this ‘internal structure’ might consist of.
(Blackmore, 2000: 66). By taking the word meme away from the taxonomy of language, she makes it
stand above language as an organizing principle. For Blackmore, god never died—he was just always a
meme. Seeing memes as a ‘unit of culture’ is additionally problematic because they are a highly variable
and always-already shifting manifestation of culture. Furthermore, although Blackmore’s newly suggested
term ‘teme’ could be applied to the study of internet memes: 1) culture doesn’t really care whether it is
copied by human or machine, 2) it invites a high level of technological determinism, and 3) the ‘teme'
itself cannot be aptly isolated from the meme in the first place (Tyler, 2010). Her conception of the meme
as a replicator and as an extension of the gene as first replicator, also contains many theoretical fallacies.
According to Dennett, memes cannot be replicators because they do not have high fidelity replication,
they are not bounded entities, and can be influenced by human decisions unlike in Darwinian theory
(Aunger, 2000: 4). Dawkins posits that memes spread through imitation, but as Plotkin states“Schemas
and social constructions arise out of the operation of memory and abstraction. They have nothing to do
with ‘learning to do an act from seeing it done.’” (Blackmore, 2000). Blackmore and Dawkins’ analogy
between genes and memes is additionally not a viable one. Blackmore’s theory relies upon a startling kind
of biological reductionism which claims to reveal all of culture as a Darwinian process. However, as I
have outlined, memes are subject to high rates of mutation, are highly influenced by conscious human
activity, and are cannot aptly be distinguished from one another enough to consider them as autonomous
entities.

I propose to view memes as a representation of culture which is derived from and returns to the
human mind—the subject being at the center of meme creation and dissemination rather than
decentralized from it. Blackmore’s new term ‘teme’ is attractive, but I will not be using it in my research
due the problematic reasons that have been outlined above. Although digital technologies may offer new
tools for ‘reproducing’ memes, the process remains the same—it is not the autonomy of the meme as
‘cultural replicator’ or the autonomy of the machinery as ‘technological replicator’ but rather the
collective adherence to certain concepts and ideas based on their social currency that affords them more
success or spreadability. Contrary to Blackmore’s conception of memes as autonomous replicators, which
have a close similarity to genetic evolution, we can see memes rather as being culturally reproduced and
done so in a context and person specific manner. Memes don’t have a history separate to culture, they
have a history because of culture. Memes are only ‘infiltrating our minds’ when we make sense of them,
putting the subject at the center of memetic propagation. Pepe the Frog as a signifier is dependent on the
cultural variables that are reflected in its use, the cultural context in which it is wielded, and the semiotic
universe that the interlocutors share and in which the speech act takes place. A variety of signified
meanings can thereby emerge. Shifman uses the term ‘stance’ to showcase the variety of ways in which
the memetic content can be approached—such as the position addressees take towards a text, its linguistic
codes, and other potential speakers—and helps to determine who is entitled to participate, the tone and
style of communication, and what the communicative function(s) of the speech act is (2013: 40). In
addition, he shifts Dawkins’ memetic theory into one which takes into consideration the mutation rate of
internet memes: viewing memes as groups of content items. This cultural view of memes sheds light on
the evolution of language, which relies on the collective acquisition of ‘memes’ in order to be manifested,
but also showcases the process by which linguistic differentiation may take place between groups of
interlocutors due to the ways in which language shifts according to the variety of shared semiotic
universes. Due to the instantaneity of the potential for collective acquisition in the digital sphere, the
internet meme can lead to new insights on this linguistic process. The dimension of imitation in memetics
can be observed through the usually consistent recognizable characteristics of internet memes despite
their highly variable nature, but imitation is does not encompass the whole memetic process as Blackmore
and others may argue. Indeed, as Knobel and Lankshear state, “What was apparent after studying these
memes was that Dawkins’s “fidelity” feature of memes is perhaps better understood in terms of
“replicability” where online memes are concerned. Many of the online memes in this study were not
passed on entirely “intact” in that the meme “vehicle” was changed, modified, mixed with other
referential and expressive resources, and regularly given idiosyncratic spins by participants.” (2007: 208).
I propose to see the meme as a group of content items which represent culture, and are reproduced using a
variety of cognitive functions and processes.

Research Aims and Objectives

Firstly, I will aim to utilize my revised form of memetic theory in order to gain a stronger
understanding of the linguistic characteristics and functions of internet memes. Secondly, I will aim to
isolate what is uniquely communicated through memes as opposed to through other forms of language,
and understand how the sociocultural context in which it emerged may have prompted the necessity for it
as a cultural metalanguage. Thirdly, my focus on internet memes will also aim to contribute to debates on
the evolution of language; revealing the ways in which language acquires meaning only through
collective ascription to viewing certain concepts as groups of content items.

Research Questions

1. What is the social function of the emergence of memes? What can memes communicate that other
forms of language may not be able to communicate?
2. Can we conceive of internet memes as a new cultural metalanguage? How do memes make reference
to and utilize other forms of language to communicate more complex ideas, thoughts, and feelings?
3. In what ways does conceptualizing of internet memes as ‘superhighway hieroglyphics’ productive in
order gain a deeper understanding of the way in which it is used to communicate in cyberspace? In
what ways does the meme’s historicity shape what is signified? How does this conception of internet
memes affect current discourse on the nature and evolution of language?

Methodology & Method

The concept of the signifier and the signified is one of the core principles of semiotics. Ferdinand
de Saussure’s semiotic framework will be used to analyze Pepe the Frog memes as cultural texts and
‘superhighway hieroglyphics’. According to Saussure, the signifier creates the signified by the meaning
that it triggers in us. Saussure’s claim that ‘the point of view precedes the object’ implies that due to
meanings derived from utterances laying in the human perspective, the study of phonetics, grammar,
lexicon, and so on, are restricted in their view of language (Harris, 1997: 14). I take this as a starting point
in order to take a more social constructivist view of language, using semiotic and discourse analysis as my
methods. Discourse analysis was used in order to follow the changes in social currency that Pepe the Frog
went through depending on the context in which it was used. I used the social media spaces of Reddit and
Tumblr to explore the ways in which internet memes were used as communicative devices. I examined
how internet memes can hold conversations throughout a thread, and also how they can hold a more
fragmented and networked cultural conversation on a given topic—such as white nationalism, or
terrorism. I used the amount of ‘likes’ or ‘upvotes’ of certain posts as well as their respective comments
sections in order to gauge the interaction between users. Other threads which discussed Pepe the Frog
memes and their meanings were also used in order to gain deeper insight on how online audiences can
understand and use the memes in conflictual ways. I chose three examples of Sad Frog and Feels Good
Man Pepe the Frog memes in order to conduct a short semiotic analysis, and will also describe the results
of my broader research in cyberspace in the section below.

Description of Results

Know Your Meme, 2017

 The data used in this study can be conceived of as various ‘meme pools’. Shifman’s conception of
memes as a group of content items is more accurate than Blackmore and Dawkins’ conception of memes
as a unit of culture, as is showcased by the pluripotent characteristic of Pepe the Frog. The meme can be
considered to have a specific set of characteristics: pink lips, green skin, bug-like eyes, and an often
disgruntled expression. The group of content items definition is also helpful in coping with the variety of
sub-categories that Pepe the Frog memes can carve out depending on their more specific characteristics;
several of these categories are the ‘Feels Good Man’ Pepe, ‘Feels Bad Man’ Pepe, Smug Frog, Angry
Pepe, Nu Pepe and Rare Pepe (Know your meme, 2017). Some of the categories that emerge are not
based on physical characteristics, but based on situational or emotional alterations. Part of the adoption
criteria of new Pepe the Frog characteristics which can constitute their own ‘subcategory’ seems to be
their potential for mutation through remixing and and through their adaptability to other cultural contexts.
However, these recognizable characteristics are not ‘fixed’ through simple imitation, as users oftentimes
stretch them to the limits of their recognizability as a creative, humorous, and ironic exercise. Some
fundamental characteristics of Pepe the Frog may also disappear when other aspects of the image are
recognizable enough. For example: he may be depicted in a different color than green with redneck Pepe
or rare Pepe; his whole face may be obscured with one of his recognizable hand gestures in the
foreground suggesting his presence, and so on. This further underscores the pluripotent capability of Pepe
the Frog to signal new and varied meanings. Pepe the Frog as a character is constituted by user’s
recognizability of particular circulating Pepe the Frog characteristics. Variability in the Pepe the Frog
meme may take place as aesthetic, situational, and emotional variability, to name a few. Pepe the frog
additionally embodies several non-physical characteristics which are assumed by users who view memes.
He is considered to be full of regrets and shame, misogynist and racist, cynical, bitter, angsty, aggressive
and bitter. These are often signified in the memes that I have analyzed, but there are also many Instagram
or Facebook memes which depart from this description of Pepe by using him as a more basic canvas upon
which to ascribe their own meanings through text.

Feels Good Man’ Pepe

(Funnyjunk, 2015)

(Tumblr, 2016)
Analysis The original ‘feels good man’ In this image, Pepe the Frog The ‘Feels Good Man’ Pepe
text box from Matt Furie’s parodies Kim Kardashian’s expression is altered and
comic book is remixed with ‘Paper’ cover, in which she anthropomorphized in this
Pepe’s face and Spongebob strikes this exact pose. There frame. This scene reflects
Squarepants. This scene in is a sense of ridicule implicit current discourse on high
Spongebob Squarepants is in the image, and also an levels of inequality in
evocative of the feelings of element of irony and satire America today and implicitly
innocence and magic that can present in Pepe’s expression. hints at the greed or
be recalled from watching the The desire for Pepe to ‘break psychopathy needed to
show. The layering of these the internet’ in the same way succeed. In addition, it relates
three deterritorialized that Kim Kardashian ‘broke to a wide section of the
elements—the spongebob the internet’ was evident in population which is made to
scene, Pepe face, and comic the comments below the feel inferior and undesired in
book bubble, create a new image. society. Another meme
image. The signified character, Wojak, is in the
meanings that can be derived scene—he signifies a ‘pleb’
from this image depend on or ‘hipster’ who is a
the viewer’s relationship with ‘friendless virgin’ but went to
these characters and to the college. There is a narrative
show Spongebob of societal division in which
Squarepants, but the meme all characters lose. All
itself also encompasses new characters are plagued by a
meaning as a sign as it sense of cognitive dissonance
circulates on the web. and defeat, and must play
terrible characters to go
through the difficult emotions
of postmodern life. The above
image was a remix of the
image below, which has also
grown from previous images.

Sad Pepe

(Openclipart, 2008) (Imgur, 2016) (Tumblr, 2015)

Analysis This is the ‘original’ template Pepe the Frog crying memes Other characters are often
for the ‘Feels Bad Man’ denote deep existential crises merged with the face of Pepe
Meme, which was initially over strong emotions. They the Frog to signify meta-
created as an offshoot of the can be used genuinely or cultural meanings. In this
‘Feels Good Man’ meme. ironically. In this case, the case, Pepe the Frog is merged
This sign signifies a general text indicates a reference to a with a Pokémon character.
downtrodden emotion that well-known phrase. This The text additionally refers to
has become incredibly phrase has also spawned a a quote from Pokémon,
relatable to large amounts of variety of similar ‘they say which adds a culturally-
users online. you are what you eat’ Pepe specific ‘feel’ to the image
the Frog memes in which a that viewers can relate to. In
plethora of different this case, many fans of the
associations are made. Here, show can relate to the feeling
the meme signifies for an of a Pokémon not being
intense feeling of personal chosen, and feel resonance
shame and disappointment. with the ‘sad frog’ emotion.
The illustrative style
additionally enhances Pepe as
a more realistic character.

Rare Pepe

(Tumblr, 2015) (Tumblr, 2016) (Tumblr 2015)

Analysis Rare Pepe’s often have This meme was accompanied This meme consists of
interesting textures layered by the caption △ ＤＩＧＩ hundreds of emojis, which
on the character. This image ＴＡＬ ＦＥＥＬＳ △ are used to illustrate Pepe the
additionally contains a and was in a GIF format. In Frog. Pepe’s recognizable
caption which entices the this rendition, Pepe has lost features arise due to the
viewer to spread the meme. his color green and certain simplicity and particularity of
Blackmore’s account of spam other definitive features but his expression, allowing for
emails as ‘memes’ resonates his expression is still so recognition.
with this image, as they are relatable that the image is
both spread on the basis of instantly recognizable.
‘avoiding bad luck’ and attain
a viral character.

There are two form of imitation involved in the processes of Pepe the Frog production and
exchange; one being mimicry and the other remixing. There remains a wide array of creativity, however,
in how the memes are produced. Some memes are produced based on written texts which serve as
‘narratives’ to the situations that Pepe the Frog will be put in within the meme. Others are produced in
direct response to other memes, slightly altering them in some way or coming up with witty responses.
Others yet arise out of analogous links between cultural references. The small pool of ‘Feels Good’ and
‘Feels Bad’ Pepe memes that are outlined above showcase the wide variety of ways that they are
appropriated. A large part of meme culture, however, is not simply the interest that lies in the content, but
also the way in which it is shared. There are precise moments in which it is appropriate or beneficial to
 share a particular meme. In fact, many users have their own meme stocks, from which they can deploy
relevant memes when the chance arises (see image). The
implicit ‘rules’ on how meme content should be created
and shared is very present online. Groups of 4chan and
Reddit users believe that the wider public does not
understand memes and misuses them. If it was used in
what they considered a ‘normie’, ‘ghetto’ or ‘chad’ way
on websites like Instagram or Facebook, it seemed to lose
what Bourdieu terms ‘subcultural capital’. However,
there are as many attempts to ‘save Pepe’ from white
nationalists and racist demagoguery as there are to to
save him from ‘normie use’. A tension therefore lies
between the different groups for what he should stand for
and the various cultural meanings that his character can
Tumblr, 2015 embody.

Discussion

I. Communicating ‘The Feels’

Pepe the Frog, and other successful internet memes, do not only communicate ideas or concepts,
but also allow for a semiotic awareness and interplay between interlocutors. They communicate what
written or oral language cannot accurately depict in the postmodern age—they communicate ‘feels’—
which are deep, oftentimes existential, emotions, thoughts and ideas. Memes rely on and use shared
cultural semiotic universes in order to create a discursive space in which users can communicate their
‘feels’. The variety of ‘feels’ illustrated by Pepe memes also have the ability to resonate with a wide
audience. One of the several reasons that Pepe’s ‘Feels Good Man’ and ‘Feels Bad Man’ memes are so
successful is because their faces are particularly evocative in their simplicity. This gives them a large
potential to be remixed and reimagined, whilst still retaining their respective charisma and overall tone.
Questions such as ‘What am I supposed to feel?’ or statements such as ‘Drowning in feels’ are indicative
of a Postmodern condition in which an overwhelming sense of detachment, disappointment and defeat
takes over (Know your memes, 2017). There is a strong nihilism often present within meme culture,
which is embodied in Pepe the Frog’s ‘Reasons to Live’ meme. The ‘feels’ that are expressed in Pepe the
Frog memes, however, do not only lie in the affective realm, they also engage with social discourse.
Furthermore, the meme has the ability to shape discourse, and many users argue that Pepe the Frog was a
major cultural factor in bringing light to Trump as a viable candidate, despite the ironic and extremist
undertones of these memes which originated in 4chan. Interestingly, however, the left-wing and the alt-
right can use Pepe the Frog simultaneously because its signifiers and signified are user and context
dependent. Matt Furie, the writer of ‘Boy’s Club’ and the original creator of Pepe the Frog, has stated
that: “It’s a really popular meme internationally. He’s really popular in China and Australia and all over
the world, and used to kind of encapsulate a lot of different emotions. I don’t think the alt-right has the
power to be able to reclaim him for their own. I think that Pepe as a meme and Pepe as kind of a symbol
for youth culture and internet culture, kind of transcends what’s going on right now in American politics.”
(CBC News, 2016). Pepe the Frog resonates with many users online and allows them to communicate
complex ‘feels’ that reflect both personal and broad cultural sentiments.

II. Internet Memes as ’Superhighway Hieroglyphics’: A New Cultural Metalanguage

Internet memes, functioning within the ‘rhizomatic organization’ of today’s cyberspace, allow for
a different type of speech act—one which is no longer bound by spatiotemporal constraints and instead
takes place in ‘the space of flows’ and ‘timeless time’ (Castells, 1996). The internet can reach the
plugged-in human ‘collective conscious’ at an almost-instant speed. The speech act has become poly-
vocal and poly-temporal, which allows for a continuous kind of contextualization to occur alongside and
after the speech event—the speech act itself becomes a fragmented one, with the original event becoming
endlessly renegotiated within cyberspace. This process can easily be illustrated with the assassination of
Russian ambassador Andrey Karlov. Almost as instantaneously as the original event occurred, memes of
the event were created, and were more viewed and shared than news about the original event itself. The
unit of representation, or signifier, of the event—the variety of internet memes—heavily outpaced the
original referent of the signified event in terms of spreadability during several days. This occurrence
showcases what Deleuze and Guattari would call deterritorialization. Internet memes are defined by
Shifman as “a) a group of digital items sharing common characteristics of content, form, and/or stance,
which b) were created with awareness of each other, and c) were circulated, imitated, and/or transformed
via the internet by many users.” (2013: 41). Pepe the Frog can be seen as having the quality of being
pluripotent; and its ability to ‘mutate’ and ‘spawn’ new Pepe memes seems to rely upon these set
characteristics being reproduced and easily recognizable. Internet memes seem like a symptom of what
Francois Lyotard conceives of as the fall of great narratives and what some theorists now see as a ‘post-
truth’ and ‘post-political’ society—memes play with the possibility of truths and attempt to explore to
what degree absurd or analogous ideas can be made to ‘make sense’ or find appeal in cyberspace. The
temporary nature of internet memes showcases the ways in which linguistic concepts and
memorializations are always in a state of flux in accordance to the new contexts and information
available. Knobel and Lankshear’s findings posit that successful memes tend to be humorous, have ‘a rich
kind of intertexutality’, and contain anomalous juxtapositions. They state that “Overall, the playfulness
seen in most of these online memes—whether absurdist or aimed at social commentary—taps into shared
popular culture experiences and practices.” (217) Indeed, absurdity, playfulness, and free association,
seem to be the building blocks of what we consider to be internet memes. Their ‘incubation’ in webpages
such as 4chan, Tumblr, and Reddit allow for the memes to be endlessly curated as they emerge in other
spaces such as Facebook pages. As Shifman states: “memes may best be understood as cultural
information that passes along from person to person, yet gradually scales into a shared social
phenomenon. Although they spread on a micro basis, memes' impact is on the macro: They shape the
mindsets, forms of behavior, and actions of social groups.” (2013). The rhizomatic organization of the
internet, with its ‘space of flows’ and ‘timeless time’ allows high degrees of spreadibility, which is why
many refer to a successful meme as going ‘viral’. They are on an information superhighway, and the
internet’s database structure gives importance to the historicity of memes due to its recording of the
changes of this cultural artifact through time—hence the term ‘superhighway hieroglyphic’.

The Pepe the Frog meme showcases that meme mutation is not only an inherent part of meme-
making and spreading, but does not take away from the fidelity to the aspects of the meme that are
important. Following Dawkins’ analogy of the telephone wire, participants will repeat the same sentence
whether the last person had a female voice or a french accent. This is not, however, because there are
certain fixed characteristics that never change, but rather because of the interlocutors’ understanding of
the group of content items that make up these characteristics in that context and at that point in time. In
addition, this mutation does not occur through a meme’s inherent desire to replicate, but rather through
the use of divergent thinking and creativity in the production of memes online. Indeed, ‘internet memes
are altered deliberately by human creativity’ (Saatchi & Saatchi, 2013). The kind of creativity that is
present in the realm of Pepe the Frog memes is also networked; multiple collaborators influence the
production of the meme depending on their skills. The role of creativity in language is often recognized in
linguistics due to the fact that despite having a limited exposure to language, an indefinite amount of new
utterances can emerge. This creativity also manifests itself, according to Chomsky, in the way in which
interlocutors will use new utterances in appropriate ways despite being in new contexts (D'Agostino,
1984). Due to the internet meme’s ability to: 1) refer, play with, and examine other forms of language in
a metalingual manner 2) sustain online ‘threads’ of communication based solely on meme exchange 3)
signify new meanings through the metalingual operations and understandings that they allow, and 4)
develop these meanings into wider cultural understandings through discourse online, internet memes
consist of a new cultural metalanguage. Barthes states that ‘any speech, as soon as it is grasped as a
process of communication, is already part of the language’ (as cited in Harris, 1987: 15). Interlocutors
engage with metalanguage in a more common way than they may realize; it is a necessary skill in verbal
development and the interpretation of signs as related to other signs is additionally a metalingual
operation that is learned from childhood (Jakobson, Rudy and Toman, 1962). However, as exemplified by
the ‘Feels Good Man’, Sad Frog, and Rare Pepe meme, internet memes do not only refer to other forms of
language such as text, icons, and symbols in order to examine them. They more importantly do so in a
way that allows them to carry on this conversation at a ‘meta’ level. This allows memes to acquire
meanings in their pluralities, depending on the signifiers that the addressee understands and how they
interpret these within their own semiotic universe. Internet memes allow for an interplay to take place not
only between referents and their representations, but also between the signs themselves. Through the
process of sharing, remixing, or creating internet memes, users also interestingly necessarily divulge their
own interpretations, which affords this cultural metalanguage an unprecedented self-awareness of the
various stages of meaning-making and conceptualization (Shifman, 2013: 43). The way in which the
internet meme challenges aspects of memetic theory also impacts academic discourse on the evolution of
language and universal grammar. Although language is dependent on the neural structure of the brain, it is
not because the brain has adapted to think ‘linguistically’, but rather that: ‘language has adapted through
gradual processes of cultural evolution to be easy to learn to produce and understand (Christiansen and
Chater, 2008: 490). Christiansen and Chater view languages as metaphorical ‘organisms’, that evolve in
 tandem with humans as ‘highly complex systems of interconnected constraints’ (490). According to them,
both the adaptionist and non-adaptionist views of language contain theoretical inconsistencies concerning
the genetic basis of universal grammar, resulting in a ‘logical problem of language’. For example, the way
in which proto-language could have evolved and become established as genetic code remains enigmatic
due to its variability. Nevertheless, language is relatively easy to learn
for small children and also remains reliable in many ways.
Conceptualizing of language as adapting to the brain’s pre-existing
non-linguistic structures and mechanisms overcomes this conundrum.
In short, Christiansen and Chater argue that “Language has been
shaped by the brain.” (2008: 491). This study of internet memes
showcases how new forms of language emerge and depend on both
the processes of imitation and creativity. In addition, it has been
shown how collective agreement to use or ‘spread’ memes contributes
Tumblr, 2015 to their use and conceptualization in culture, but also how these
meanings and uses shift over time and are never objective.

Future Directions

The field of memetics is still in its infancy, and although many theorists such as Blackmore and
Dawkins make enticing arguments, our current conceptualization of memes is too simplistic and
biologically deterministic. The field is also fragmented by theorists who either make bombastic claims
about memes as an explanation for all of culture, or who deem memes to have no productive academic
use. In addition, there is a wide gap between the understanding of memes in youth culture and the
conceptualization of memes that Darwinian theorists posit. The exploration of internet memes as
‘superhighway hieroglyphics’ can lead to a deeper understanding of memes as shaped by their historicity
and by the constant shifts in their ascribed meanings. This view of memes sets internet memes in the
context of digital culture’s ‘space of flows’ and ‘timeless time’, allowing for the investigation of how
memes navigate this space and the ways in which it affects the emergence of this form of language. This
new context allows for an interesting interplay between different forms of languages and different
understandings of culture of which Pepe the Frog memes can be considered cultural products.
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