On a Cross-Cultural Memescape: Switzerland through Nation Memes from within and from the Outside
Streszczenie
This paper offers a cross-cultural contrastive study of what we term ‘nation memes’.
These are humorous internet memes which refer to a particular country/nation. Our
analysis of cultural scripts in memes related to Switzerland is based on a tripartite corpus of digital items shared by Polish, Swiss and international communities. By adopting a grounded-theory approach, we examine the prevalent scripts that represent the
Swiss and Switzerland from each of the three perspectives. The results of our qualitative study indicate that Swiss memes are based on experiential knowledge of life in
Switzerland, as well as a few stereotypes adopted by the Swiss about their own nation.
The Polish subcorpus addresses Switzerland from an outsider perspective by invoking well-known cultural scripts, similar to those on international websites, on which
Polish users sometimes scavenge. However, the Polish memescape uses scripts about
Switzerland to address problems and scripts specific to Poland. Importantly, nation
memes do not necessarily involve humorous disparagement, i.e. they do not always
take Switzerland/the Swiss to be the target at which to poke fun when building humorous superiority. Moreover, by referring to their own national vices, the Swiss and Poles
sometimes use cultural scripts as the basis for self-deprecating humour.
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