MEMES OF MEDICAL DISCOURSE

Abstract

Polycode humorous genres attract the attention of readers and researchers primarily due to their viral nature, the codependence of the verbal and visual parts, and the presence of a precedent series, which requires a presuppositional base from the reader to achieve a comic eff ect. The study was carried out on 200 texts of Internet memes in Russian, containing medical vocabulary, visual images of a doctor and patient, medical instruments and premises. The novelty of the proposed research lies in the consideration of the features of memes as a polycode genre of medical discourse, the identifi cation of characteristic features of the verbal and visual series, and for the fi rst time, wandering stories at the level of text and image. Institutional medical discourse remains a relevant research topic in modern linguistics, since the researcher is involved in doctor-patient communication and has no idea of the completeness of the linguistic description of this communication due to the constant updating of texts containing medical topics, vocabulary, and visuals containing medical symbols. The study showed the variety of topics of Internet memes of this group: discussion of a doctor’s competencies, features of paid and free treatment, training at medical universities, moral and ethical aspects of a doctor’s activity, as well as non-medical social problems expressed with the use of medical symbols and vocabulary. Memes dedicated to discussing the social signifi cance of the medical profession are also frequent. The verbal range of the polycode text of a medical Internet meme includes a language game at the lexical and phonetic levels, precedent texts, and terms. The visual series contains precedent images, the repetition of photographs is used with or without zoom, and may be presented as a comic book model.