SYNTACTIC AND MULTIMODAL REPRESENTATION OF IDEOLOGY IN NIGERIAN ‘TINUBUNOMIC’ INTERNET MEMES

Abstract

Internet memes as principal semiotic practices through which internet users engage in political participation have been explored from varied dimensions. Despite the growing body of linguistic research, the memeification of Tinubunomics (a category of PIMs) on social media sites has received little or no attention in the literature. By implication, Tinubunomic meme discourse is largely unpopular among academic scholars, specifically linguists. This study is, therefore, a leadoff exploration on Tinubunomic discourse in linguistic scholarship which draws insights from Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) socio-semiotics, van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach to critical discourse studies and Neuendorf et al.’s (2014) multiple senses of humour (SOH). Thus, it investigates the syntactic and multimodal representation of ideology in Nigerian ‘Tinubunomic’ internet memes. To achieve this, the study identifies the linguistic and semiotic resources in the memes; explores the interplay between the linguistic elements and semiotic resources depicting participants in the memes; and illuminates the ideological meanings underlying the humour rhetoric. Data for this study consist of verbal-visual humorous internet memes that centre on Tinubunomics, and shared on Tiktok Lite, Whatspp, Instagram and Nairaland between June 2023 and June 2024. The study hypothesises that there is no significant relationship between the syntactic and multimodal features of Tinubunomic internet memes and the ideological positions they express about Tinubu economic policies. Findings unearthed that syntactic elements in the memes range from words, catchphrases to sentences; while images and colour were utilised as semiotic resources; both the syntactic elements and the visual elements worked together as multimodal ensembles to produce repetition, allusion, ironic sarcasm, name-calling, and foregrounding. Also, it was discovered that the memes presented Tinubunomics dark and disparaging humours that serve the ideological dual purposes of denigrating Tinubunomics as impoverishing economism while emphasising in positive terms Nigerians’ resilience in the face of oppression. Based on these findings, the hypothesis is hereby rejected. The study concluded that Tinubunomic meme strategically combines syntactic features and multimodal resources like satire and visual metaphor to construct and circulate competing ideologies that either legitimize or contest Tinubu’s economic policies. The study will be a rich addition to the expanding body of literature on the semiotic affordances of humour discourse in political internet memes. KEYWORDS: Humour, Ideology, Internet Memes, Multimodal representation and Semiotics Tinubunomics.