텍스트형 밈(meme)의 인지적 절차와 담화적 효과 -관련성 이론을 중심으로-

초록

This study investigates Korean text-based memes found in KakaoTalk emoticon captions and explains how they are interpreted and what discursive effects they produce from a Relevance-Theoretic perspective. A dataset was built by collecting 999 emoticon sets from KakaoTalk popularity rankings, extracting their textual captions, and tagging them along functional, affective, and situational dimensions to identify representative and variant forms. Focusing on three expressions frequently used to reduce interactional costs in negative situations—‘kapein suhyeol (caffeine transfusion)’, ‘gennya? (You think so?)’, and ‘halmalhaan (I have a lot to say, but I won’t)’—the analysis describes interpretation as a procedural sequence: ostensive stimulus, contextual assumptions, explicature (basic/higher-level), implicature, and discursiveeffects. The findings show that text-based memes are not fixed-meaning sentences but inferential cues whose short templates strongly guide interpretation while allowing variability depending on which contextual assumptions are prioritized in a given scene. Specifically, ‘kapein suhyeol’ humorizes fatigue and invites empathy; ‘gennya?’ functions as an elliptical interrogative for indirect evaluation and correction; and ‘halmalhaan’ strategically withholds speech to curb escalation while signaling stance. Overall, this study reconceptualizes text-based memes as discursive cues that enable fine-grained interactional adjustment in digital communication.

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