Course Schedule and Catalog

Department: College Courses

Meeting: 7:00PM - 7:59PM T (22-AUG-2022 - 2-DEC-2022) 

Part of Term: Full Term - No WL Purge

Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory

Course Type: Lecture

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Method of Instruction: Face to Face

Credit Hours: 1

 

Section Max Enrollment: 19

Section Enrolled: 16

Waitlisted: 0 (Max 99) 

Current members of the waitlist have priority for available seats.

Enrollment data as of: 26-APR-2024 8:44AM

 

 

Final Exam: No Final Exam

 

Description: Within the last thirty years, the advent of the internet has allowed humanity to share information faster than ever before, including such information as those funny repeated text, image, and audio motifs commonly known as memes. Today, nearly all online communities employ memes to express ideas in humorous and relatable formats, packaging information in reproducible, variable templates reliant on a shared cultural knowledge much like language does. While cat photos with funny captions often make us laugh, how often do we stop and ask: What can internet memes tell us about the structures & functions of human communication, cognition, and society? This course analyzes the phenomenon of the internet meme as symbolic communication, applying methods and theories used in the field of linguistics to better understand the structure and function of memes. Through comparison of the “language” of internet memes to spoken human language, students will discover how memes convey meaning, evolve over time, interact with one another, and reflect upon the demographics of those who post them. This course emphasizes interaction with real data, requiring students to collect and analyze meme exemplars found on internet forums in weekly homework assignments. For their final project, students will create and present an analysis of a meme format (or formats) of their choice utilizing the theory and methods discussed in class.