KAREN MEMES AN ANALYSIS OF IDENTITY ASCRIPTION AND IDEOLOGY REPRESENTATION = PHÂN TÍCH DANH TÍNH được gán CHO KAREN và hệ tư TƯỞNG THỂ HIỆN TRONG MEMES về KAREN

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF LINGUISTICS & CULTURES OF ENGLISH-SPEAKING COUNTRIES GRADUATION PAPER KAREN MEMES: AN ANALYSIS OF IDENTITY ASCRIPTION AND IDEOLOGY REPRESENTATION Supervisor: Vũ Thị Hoàng Mai Student: Nguyễn Hải Âu Course: QH2017.F.1.E1.SPCLC HÀ NỘI – 2021 ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA NGÔN NGỮ VÀ VĂN HỐ CÁC NƯỚC NĨI TIẾNG ANH KHĨA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP PHÂN TÍCH DANH TÍNH ĐƯỢC GÁN CHO KAREN VÀ HỆ TƯ TƯỞNG THỂ HIỆN TRONG MEMES VỀ KAREN Giáo viên hướng dẫn: Vũ Thị Hoàng Mai Sinh viên: Nguyễn Hải Âu Khóa: QH2017.F.1.E1.SPCLC HÀ NỘI – 2021 ACCEPTANCE PAGE I hereby state that I: (Nguyễn Hải Âu, QH2017.F.1.E1.SPCLC), being a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (programme) accept the requirements of the College relating to the retention and use of Bachelor’s Graduation Paper deposited in the library In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan or reproduction of the paper Signature Nguyễn Hải Âu May, 4th 2021 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my most sincere gratefulness to all individuals whose contribution is an irreplaceable part of my thesis First, I would like to send my greatest thank to my supervisor, Mrs Hoang Mai, who has been giving me concise and critical comments, reminding me to overcome my procrastination and patient with my lack of knowledge and trivial mistakes I also would like to thank Mrs Hanh Hoang for providing me with valuable resources and carefully responding to my stupid questions Had it not been for her materials, I would not have finished even half of this thesis I also want to give appreciation to Ms Thanh Ha, Ms Quynh, and other teachers, who have given me constructive feedbacks and great guidance English education is my major but choosing to conduct research on ICC issue with teachers from ICC subdivision is definitely my right choice Besides, I would like to thank my classmates in 17E1, who have shared the exhausting yet rewarding college life with me The best thing I ever did during my time in university is passing the fast-track program entrance test to be selected as a 17E1’s member To be honest, most things I learned at college is from my colleagues My gratitude also goes to my family for helping me with housework and encouraging me in study and life At last, I would express thankfulness to my beloved friends, my teammates in ETDC, AIESEC, my ex-roommates for being with me all the time, enduring my complaints, cheering me up by all the ways they can My thesis could not be completed without the support from any of you i ABSTRACT Karen memes have become a trending phenomenon among English speaking countries recently However, there has not been many studies focusing on analyzing how Karen’s identity is constructed in these memes Accordingly, this research illustrates Karen’s identity framed in Karen memes and the ideologies these memes manifests by applying an adaptation of Shifman’s typology of memetic dimension and drawing on framework from rhetorical criticism as well as visual rhetoric Imagebased memes directly featuring Karen as the main character are collected on Reddit websites, in a subreddit called r/Fuck You Karen Text, images and context of the memes are analyzed through critical discourse analysis The results reveal four main aspects of Karen namely: being an anti-masker, being anti-science, taking “I would like to speak to your manager” as a catchphrase and being racist There are also some other characteristics that can be witnessed in small numbers of collected memes Not only the memes have amusement purpose but they also serve as a reflection of society and a weapon to criticize immoral behaviors ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS i ABSTRACT ii LIST OF FIGURES v LIST OF TABLES v CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale of the study 1.2 Aims and objectives 1.3 Significance of the study 1.4 Scope of the study 1.5 Organization of the study CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Memes and Internet memes 2.2 Karen memes 10 2.3 Ideologies and Internet memes 14 2.4 Semiotics and Internet memes 15 2.5 Theoretical framework 16 Rhetorical criticism 16 Internet memes and visual rhetoric 17 CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY 19 3.1 Data collection 19 3.2 Data analysis 20 Elaboration of Shifman’s typology of Memetic Dimension by Wiggins 21 CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS 24 Anti maskers 24 Anti-science 28 iii “Speak to the manager.” 34 Being racist 36 Other 40 CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION 41 Discussion of Findings 41 Implications of Findings 43 Limitations and Orientations for Future Research 44 REFERENCES 45 APPENDICES 51 APPENDIX 51 APPENDIX 53 APPENDIX 54 APPENDIX 55 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page Figure 2.1.1 Is this a pigeon? Figure 2.1.2 The Ancient Aliens memes Figure 2.1.3 The Rock driving Figure 2.2.1 Joematar’s tweet on the Karen’s appearance in the 11 party Figure 3.1 The Swole Doge and Cheems meme 21 Figure 4.1 Wearing mask is a personal choice 24 Figure 4.2 Karen with people having severe health condition 25 Figure 4.3 Karen’s grandfather’s disappointment 26 Figure 4.4 Karen can be men too 27 Figure 4.5 A Karen free country 28 Figure 4.6 The Swedish doctor 29 Figure 4.7 Tuxedo Winnie the Pooh 30 Figure 4.8 Karen lacking scientific knowledge 31 Figure 4.9 Karen as an anti vaxxer 32 Figure 4.10 Ellen DeGeneres as Karen 33 Figure 4.11 Karen being rude to the waiter 34 Figure 4.12 This is America 35 Figure 4.13 Karen as an American 36 Figure 4.14 Karen’s racism towards black people 36 Figure 4.15 Karen and affectation 37 Figure 4.16 Karen pampering her children 39 LIST OF TABLES Table Page Table 4.1 Number of memes for each Karen’s identity v 23 vi CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION This chapter presents a brief overview of Karen memes and the rationale for me to research this trendy meme Moreover, it explains the aims and objectives, the significance, and the scope of the study The research questions are also included here 1.1 Rationale of the study These days, it has become common to see a funny picture, which is regarded as meme by Internet users on social platform such as Facebook, Instagram,…The term “meme” was introduced by Dawkins (1978) as a cultural unit spread among people Internet memes are described by Shifman (2014) as diffusion of items such as jokes, videos, images, gifs, and websites via person-to-person through the Internet Internet memes vary in many aspects including the central character demonstrated in the memes and people often differentiate this enormous meme pool by giving them a name, which is normally about the meme’s main character Karen memes are one of them In the mid-summer of 2020, a famous pizza franchise in New Zealand and Australia announced a promotion offering free pizza to women named Karen if they could share with the company in 250 words how they were one of the "nice ones." This pizza chain did not randomly pick this name In recent years, Karen has become a popular meme among English speaking countries, referring to a woman, usually white, belonging to the middle or upper class, having negative attitudes and behaviors from being privileged However, a series of events happened unexpectedly in 2020 has elevated the Karen memes’ fecundity level In May 2020, a footage containing racist acts of a woman named Amy Cooper was uploaded In this video, Chris Cooper, a black birdwatcher, was going for a walk in Central Park when he saw an insurance agent Amy Cooper with her unleashed dog When Chris asked this woman to leash her dog as it is the park requirements, Amy Cooper, who is white, surprisingly reported to 911 and exaggeratedly told the emergency that "there’s an African American man threatening my life” even though Chris Cooper showed no sign of threats This video immediately went viral and CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION The last chapter will provide readers with a summary of the research’s findings as well as discussion about the aforementioned research questions Also, the implications of the finding were included Besides, this chapter will discuss the limitation of this study as well as provide suggested orientations for future research on Internet memes Discussion of Findings This study investigates into Karen memes based on two research questions mentioned above to discover how Karen’s identities are constructed in those memes and the ideologies Karen memes embodies Thirty-one memes generated in 2020 with high rate of reactions were collected and analyzed according to Shifman’s typology (with Wiggins’s adaptation to non-video memes) Three elements of each meme including: content, form and stance were investigated Some memes were remixed from a specific template while the others are pictures taken in reality, but they all have texts included These are cultural practices utilized by meme creators to express their viewpoint, attitudes and political opinions (Ding, 2015) Thanks to the participatory culture on Reddit and the meme literacy of subreddit’s members, the selected memes can spread widely among communities, build up Karen’s identities and generates intercultural communications beyond physical limitations Four characteristics of Karen were noted namely: Being anti-maskers, being anti-science, taking “I would like to speak to the manager” as a catchphrase and being racist Besides, Karen overly pampering her children is also identified, but not many memes feature it reaching high number of reactions These Internet memes convey the attitudes of users against people without masks, people being narrow-minded, people having negative attitude towards the working class and racial conflicts Based on the analysis of each meme in the previous chapter, I discovered a theme relating to Karen’s identity construction and negotiation Apparently, the characteristics of Karen listed above not distinctively belong to women Moreover, the “Karen” portraying in the collected memes are not always women and the texts in 41 each image itself not reveal any clues about the appearance of Karen Therefore, the fact that people ascribe people with “Karen’s behavior” to a female name somehow triggers an indication of sexism Basically speaking, there are two types of sexism which are Benevolent Sexism and Hostile Sexism The first one is more favored and often viewed as more tolerable than the other thanks to its disguise as chivalrous tone (Huang, Davies, Sibley, & Osborne, 2016) Benevolent Sexism origins from the belief that women need to be seen as the weak and needed protection from men due to their frailty (Hideg & Ferris, 2016) Men holding benevolent sexism notion might express their objection to women in leadership positions and they suppose that home is where women belong to This assumption led to the belief that woman’s “highest-calling” is motherhood and being a mother is an ultimately essential part of women (Huang, Davies, Sibley, & Osborne, 2016) Among the selected data, there are several memes featuring Karen in a role of mother, antivaccine mother and overly pampering mother in particular The meme creators indirectly suppose that it is the mother who decides not to have the kids vaccinated, who pampers their kids and accept all their enquiries Back to the Hostile Sexism, for people who are hostile sexist, women are thought as manipulative, indignant and managing to control men by feminist ideology and/or sexuality (Chisango, Mayekiso, & Thomae, 2015) It can be easily figured out that Karen in all memes is portrayed as furious women, who place themselves on a higher position than the working class and people from different races, thinking that other people must meet her demand It is the Hostile Sexism that can be detected through these memes One more finding that is worth noticing is the way anonymous people employed Karen memes as weapons to defense or criticize the oppressing class Scientifically, it can be regarded as subversive memes By closely analyzing the collected data, I can identify two strategies that are exploited: The first one is to point out the discrimination in our society such as racial discrimination, linguistics discrimination, class discrimination; the second one is to directly/indirectly criticize Karen’s behaviors and people having Karen’s behaviors Those people can be 42 generalized, or they can be real individuals with powers such as Ellen DeGeneres or Donald Trump Thank to social platform, the meme creator can get their results spread, understood and discussed Although political content is restricted on this subreddit and no campaigns or manifestations were executed, Karen memes made the oppressed voices heard Implications of Findings This research presents a close investigation of Karen memes collected on Reddit platform Apart from providing detailed information of Karen memes and Internet memes, it also depicts Karen’s identities which are constituted by Internet users, identifies the ideologies these memes carry within and reveals how Reddit members utilize Karen memes as the subversive tool to criticize the dominating class As mentioned in the Chapter Two, the popularity and accessibility of Internet has granted many people chances of participation This act of discussion has kept the memes alive Through the identities construction, negotiation process in Internet memes, people can behold the reflection of society Accordingly, this research is expected to have some positive influences First, as its findings revealed a comprehensive depiction of Karen memes in particular and Internet memes in general, the research hopes to partially improve readers’ social literacy such as aiding them to acknowledge famous meme templates, explaining them the meaning of each symbols or metaphor in the memes, broadening their knowledge about the story and events behind each meme and be mindful about the cultural elements which they intend to add when constructing memes themselves Thus, I hope that the readers not only regard Internet memes as a form of entertainment with ridiculous pictures and sassy texts but view them as a visual art and think about them critically and laterally Second, as I have mentioned the subversive usage of Internet memes above, I hope that people can start to use them as a weapon to raise their voice about controversial issues nowadays With its power, Internet memes are expected to have considerable potential to foster social justice movements (Ding, 2015) Third, this study is expected to enhance participants’ consciousness of discrimination elements 43 underlying in Karen memes They can be racism or sexism as analyzed in the discussion These elements can be identified in several facets of life and in Internet memes, they lay beneath the humor of images (Ding, 2015) Last but not least, this thesis has some moral values like educating readers about Karen’s behavior and avoid behaving like them Limitations and Orientations for Future Research Firstly, to obtain a manageable data pool, I had to narrow down the scope of the study to only one subreddit, which deprived the opportunity to exploit memes in other social platforms such as Facebook, Tumblr or Instagram The r/Fuck You Karen subreddit has about 1.3 million of members and the way those people constructing Karen’s identities can differ from participants on the platforms mentioned above Facebook also has similar participation scheme like Reddit as people can give different reactions, comment and reply comment, so it can be an ideal area that future study can consider Second, the collected data are only memes generated in 2020 Memes is a social phenomenon that reflects events and realities taking place each day Therefore, for memes creating in 2021 or 2019, there must be valuable information that worthy exploring Conducting research in a larger scale of time to have a more complete picture of Karen is my 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ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA NGƠN NGỮ VÀ VĂN HỐ CÁC NƯỚC NĨI TIẾNG ANH KHĨA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP PHÂN TÍCH DANH TÍNH ĐƯỢC GÁN CHO KAREN VÀ HỆ TƯ TƯỞNG THỂ HIỆN TRONG MEMES VỀ KAREN Giáo viên hướng dẫn: Vũ... study entitled: ? ?Karen memes: An analysis of identity ascription and ideologies representation. ” 1.2 Aims and objectives These days, with the availability of the Internet, people can have access... chapter provides an adequate understanding of memes and a brief definition of related concepts such as memes and Internet memes, semiotics, ideology The theoretical framework for analysis is also