Humour in The Midst of Pandemic: Critical Discourse Analysis on Covid-19 Related Memes

Abstract

This study aims to reveal the implicit meaning contained in memes related to Covid-19 through Van Dijk's critical discourse analysis approach. This meme is taken from social media and several websites that contain a collection of memes that are focused on pictures and writing in Indonesian and English. The results showed that through the text dimension, the macrostructure of the Covid-19 meme has four sub-themes, namely the naming of the coronavirus, wearing masks, violations of guarding distance, and rules of doing activities at home. The Covid-19 meme superstructure has four schemes, namely 1) a scheme starting from the main idea pattern followed by supporting ideas, 2) a scheme with a supporting idea pattern first then the main idea, 3) a scheme with the main idea pattern without supporting ideas and titles and 4) a visual scheme. Next, the Covid-19 meme microstructure consists of syntactic, semantic, stylistic, and graphic elements, which all elements are needed to show the form of sentences of causality, implicit meanings, comparative and satirical language styles, and the use of visual and written graphics for meme readers. Furthermore, through the dimension of social cognition, Covid-19 memes contain cognition or knowledge related to the Covid-19 pandemic conditions that are owned by meme-makers and meme readers. Finally, through the dimensions of the social context, the Covid-19 meme has a moral background and an indiscipline attitude towards health protocols, as well as trade and business competition due to the impact and influence of the Covid-19 pandemic.