INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

Memes provides an interesting way to deliver a message or any information

with a sense of humour on the internet culture. Since memes spread virally, most of

people tend to spend most of their time scrolling memes. Even the researcher used

to read memes on the social media every day. Many people on the internet describe

a “meme” as a term to describe a pair of image and text that allow us even the meme

creator to feel like we have partaken of a shared cultural moment. While according

to Dawkins (1989), “A meme is formally defined as “an element of culture or

system of behaviour that might be considered has been passed from one individual

to another by non-genetic means, especially imitation”. A meme brings cultural

identities that could be delivered from one mind to another, through writing or

speech. Meme has been through processes that replicate most humour. During the

process, memes with its hilarious amusement and experiences have successfully

gone viral and influential for some people.

When memes deal with education, there are already hundreds of teachers

who engage their students using memes. The researcher once downloaded an

application called “Teach Learn Lead”, it is a teacher community from around the

world. Some researchers use the application for reasons (www.teachlearnlead).

When the researcher was involved there, she knew that some teachers claimed that

they used memes to connect with their students in the classroom.

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 When the researcher was in CIAPL (Current Issue in Applied Linguistic)

classroom, the lecturer asked the students to create memes for several topics. She

also used it to boost students’ motivation to learn the subject using quotations in the

form of pictures and texts which include memes too. As a student, the researcher

really enjoyed the way her teacher introduced the topic or boosted motivation which

led the discussion using memes. The researcher was glad to say that her vocabulary

acquisition was also improved through the daily routine of reading Internet memes.

That is why the memes have brought her to conduct this research.

A meme brings current internet culture and various vocabulary in it. There

are a lot of websites and social media that offer memes such as Facebook,

KnowYourMeme.com, Instagram and 9GAG. Probably 9GAG is one of the biggest

platforms for internet memes that provides memes collection. The researcher

always found new vocabulary on 9GAG memes such as troll, legit, slender, grumpy,

brace, throwback and so on. Not only familiar with the vocabulary in memes,

memes also made the researcher familiar with the current internet culture,

particularly native English speakers’ culture. It makes communication with English

speakers easier.

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 Some of the memes are used to express different ideas which help us build

vocabulary in different contexts. For example, the idea of memes could be about

viral topics, contradiction about politics, hindsight (when you understand

something after it has already happened) and a lot more. The researcher was

concerned about vocabulary in memes, since sometimes it has cursing words.

Sometimes memes also use poor English or improper grammar to make the sentence

funny. For instance, someone created memes intentionally using different words

and misspelled them, causing confusion like “there”, “they’re” or “their”.

Research Question

The aim of this research was to investigate the vocabulary profile in memes.

The research question is, “What is the vocabulary profile of vocabulary used in

memes?”

Aim of the Study

The purposes of this study are:

(1) To identify the vocabulary profile in memes using a vocabulary profiler.

Teachers will get useful information about the vocabulary profile in memes

and information about the proper level of vocabulary in memes from the

lexical analysis results. It helps teachers to decide students’ comprehension

level of vocabulary in memes.

(2) To find out the implications and the potential of using memes in education.

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Scope of the Study

In general, the study about memes (memetics) brings new phenomenon in

the modern way of studying. Some of the expressions are using low-frequency

words, but the teachers do not know yet the proportion of high frequency and low

frequency of the lexical used in internet memes. This study aims to find the lexical

proportion in memes based on four levels of vocabulary in 9GAG.

There are two media needed to conduct this research: (1) Ray Chan’s

website or 9GAG (www.9GAG.com) and (2) Tom Cobb’s website

(www.lextutor.ca). The first website was used to collect the sample of memes. The

website provides various online memes with different topics such as school, teenage

life, comic and new trend. To conduct this research, the samples were taken

randomly without choosing specific topics. The second website was to identify the

lexical item in memes based on four levels: (1) the first 1,000 most frequently used

(K-1), (2) the second 1,000 most frequently used (K-2), (3) the words which were

included in the academic wordlist (AWL), and (4) the words which were not

included in the previous categories (off-list).

This research was conducted for about three weeks. It took approximately

one week to collect the samples. There are 2.187 words of collected in the memes.

It took around one month to analyze the lexical items in memes using a vocabulary

profiler and created tables.

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Significance of the Study

This study concerns about the frequency levels and the implications of using

memes for teaching and learning using a vocabulary profiler. It will give ELEP

lecturers some ideas of how memes can be used for teaching in EFL classrooms.

This research demonstrated the result of the lexical analysis of memes using

a vocabulary profiler for teachers to help them see its potential. Hopefully, the

results could be beneficial to classify the language level of a text, find the text

difficulties and create new learning materials based on the objectives method by

using memes.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

The History of Memes

In 1976, the term “meme” was first used by Richard Dawkins in a book with

a title The Selfish Gene which explained how cultural information spreads. Based

on his book, the etymology of the word “meme” comes from the

Greek, mimēna (which means “imitated”) and gene. According to Brodie (1996),

“memetics has uncovered the existence of viruses of the mind, which are infectious

piece of our culture that spread rapidly throughout the population, altering people’s

thoughts and lives.” Brodie added his statement that meme evolution happens

because our minds are good at copying and innovating ideas, behaviours, tunes,

shapes, structures, and so on.

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 People have many ways to spread culture, particularly memes. Starting with the

one of the earliest internet memes, dancing baby in 1996 and hitting meme apex

until now. Knobel and Lankshear (2007) defined internet memes as the rapid uptake

and spread of a “particular idea presented as a written text, image, language ‘move,’

or some other unit of cultural stuff’”. To conclude, internet memes deliver a fun

idea/ way of culture with context, words, images, meanings, symbols, popular

culture and so on.

The Study of Memetics

A “science of memes” (“memetics”) has been proposed (Lynch 1996) and

numerous web sites devoted to the meme exists on the internet. After more than a

decade of sporadic and stuttering growth, memetics were understood as “the

theoretical and empirical science that studies the replication, spread and evolution

of memes” (Heylighen & Chielens, 2009, p. 1) began to take shape as an active

research program, drawing scientists from many fields in the 1990's

(Hull, 2000). The fact is that internet memes have become part of our vocabulary.

Since it is virally spread, the researcher can’t deny that most people tend to share

and use memes as a new form of language.

The study conducted by Kariko (2013) found that through internet memes,

people are capable of teaching a language in the most effective way. The reports

about studying memes and their cultural impact have now become a legitimate area

of research for some institutions of higher learning. The study conducted by Kariko

deals with the semiotic meaning of internet memes. how the image and caption are

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used to create meanings to provide entertainment to users accompanied by a variety

of texts to create meanings that provide universal emotions.

Diachronic Linguistics and Vocabulary in Memes

According to Dainas (2015), “the study of linguistics on the internet is still in

its infancy, but the potential for the field is endless”. This means that academic

research about linguistic on the internet memes is still in the beginning, even though

the opportunity to develop the study is very large. Dainas added that people who

communicate through technology must cope with many difficulties related with

textual conversations. This means they tend to have lacks of tone, intonation,

gesture in writing. It leads to misunderstanding because of the uncertainty meaning.

However, the fact is that communication through the internet is still incredibly

successful and viral.

Diachronic linguistics is often difficult because it deals with changes that take

place over hundreds of years and the data available from the past centuries is very

sparse and heavily edited (Dainas, 2015, p. 5). It will be interesting to look at the

language changes of the internet memes, particularly those with linguistic elements

sped up over months and years.

Zipf’s (1949) law states that the frequency of a word is inversely proportional

to its rank in a frequency table. In other words, the most frequent word is twice as

frequent as the second most frequent word and three times as frequent as the third

most frequent word in natural language (Dainas, 2015, p. 6). There are previous

linguistic studies analysing about memes, but none of these studies concerns about

the frequency of words in memes. This study will look at the examples of

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vocabulary in memes and measure the lexical richness of texts using a vocabulary

profiler. It is important to identify the vocabulary profile used in memes because by

facilitating an appropriate assistance for the students, it will help them to acquire

vocabulary easily during the course. Concerning about what the English’s learners

need, teachers can be more engaged with their students in the classroom. The study

will focus on analyzing lexical frequencies and new vocabulary used in memes.

Lexical in Memes

Lexicon or vocabulary could be defined as words, including a single item and

phrases or chunks of several words which convey a particular meaning the way

individual word do. Vocabulary addresses a single lexical item, words with specific

meanings and also includes lexical phrases or chunks (Lessard-Clouston, 2013, p.

2). In this area, the use of lexical in memes will be a variable to be processed and

analysed. The research will also mention the implication of lexical analysis related

to ELT context. According to Přecechtěl (2016), “When teachers want their learners

to learn new words, they should know what to focus on”. He added that a word has

aspects that teachers need to be aware of. In contrast, this paper reports the

vocabulary frequency used in memes.

Connotative Meaning

The language in memes such as replication, imitation and variation were a

pointing as the user's intention (Xinrong & Kui, 2013). This is because the internet’s

environment allows the users to create or read memes for easier variation, selection,

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and heredity of memes. Thus, memes make lexical contribution to the environment

in which it appears, especially on connotation. A connotation or signified itself is

the meanings or beliefs that are attached to a specific image or sign. These meanings

or beliefs are highly subjective and culturally dependent (Barthes 1957:113).

According to Preez and Lombard (2014), “Memes carry connotations, values and

judgements, while the connotations attached to the memes one shares are then

associated with one's online persona/profile”. It means that memes can be used to

symbolise or connote the persona of a person. Hence, the language on in memes on

the internet are made based on a person’s character and carries a normative

connotation regarding what are seen as rational ways of forming these opinions.

However, in the process of communication, the readers can recognize the

connotations of memes. It will provide the expected result of reaching the main idea

of the text.

Vocabulary Profiler and Memetics

According to Johnson & Zalenski (2008) “Lexical analysis or scanning is

the process where the stream of characters making up the source program is read

from left-to-right and grouped into tokens. Johnson & Zalenski added that “Tokens

are sequences of characters with a collective meaning”. In this study, a lexical

analysis refers to the process of converting a sequence of character in memes using

a computer program or vocabulary profiler into a sequence of tokens. Lextutor.ca

breaks down texts according to word frequency in the language at large, as

represented by their frequencies in a corpus, not their frequencies in the text itself.

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It is a program that can be used by copying the text into the program (Astika 2014).

The analysis showed the percentages of type of words families according to the four

frequency levels: K1 words, K2 words, academic words, and off-list. Shortly, it is

a tool that allows checking whether a piece of text contains words from a vocabulary

listed. This paper deals with lexical frequency used in the memes. According to

McNeill (2013), “The classic version of the software provides a profile of a text’s

lexical content by grouping the vocabulary items into four categories: (a) words

from the first 1000 frequency level, (b) words from the second 1000 frequency

level, (c) words included in the Academic Wordlist (AWL) (Coxhead 2000), and

(d) words not included in the previous three categories, i.e. “off-list” ”. The

researcher collected 150 different examples of memes to be analyzed using a

vocabulary profiler. The result showed automatically whether the words were

included in the four categories or not. This tool is very beneficial for the teachers to

determine text difficulty faced by their students. Regarding to this study, a

vocabulary profiler were used to check the vocabulary frequencies in memes.

We live in a new digital era where young learners tend to spend most of the

time scrolling memes on social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and

so on. We find a lot of new and popular vocabulary in memes every day and often

use them when interacting with others on the internet. Therefore, teachers should

be aware of the use of memes in teaching since popular vocabulary can be easily

absorbed by students rather than language used in classroom. One of the reasons to

use the web for linguistic research is that it provides up to date information on

popular language use (Dainas, 2015, p. 9). Dainas added that this is particularly

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important if a researcher wants to study internet linguistics which, as stated

previously, changes far faster than everyday normal language. The researcher used

a website called 9GAG to collect examples of internet memes since it is an online

platform and social media which provides collections of internet memes. 9GAG

constantly posts some memes with specific topics such as school, trending topics,

politics, comic, teenager, and a lot more.

The Relationship Between Memes and Education

Every educator has their own perspective of about education. We need to find

out what is going on in digital learning. Education, technology, and culture should

be viewed as a whole in the learning process since the development of technology

and culture is very crucial for future education. According to Knobel (2005) “there

are any number of reasons for taking memes seriously, but chief among these is to

arrive at a better understanding of cultural evolution...”. Thus, the relationship

between memes and education has much to offer researchers in order to get better

understanding of cultural information.

The use of Memes in Education

How could certain ideas of memes connect or engage students in the

classroom? Students may learn new materials contained in memes they found on

the internet. Meme analysis can trace how certain memes (mind viruses) were

acquired, find out the effects of these memes have on decision-making, mindsets

and actions, and ethical decisions that need to be made to pass on, or not pass on,

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certain memes to other minds (Knobel, 2005). This study examines the lexical items

in memes to find out the implication of memes for ELT context and the contribution

for education.

The Use of Memes in ELT

Focusing on teaching visual literacy using memes in the language class, this

paper will find out the lexical items in memes by looking at the frequency of words

used and decide whether it would be proper for teaching. Teachers should be

creative to teach their students in the new digital era. Since memes provide pictures

with catchy phrases, teachers can engage more with their students in ELT

classroom. Shifman (2014) argued that memes were selected for their ability to

create multiple opportunities to develop visual and critical skills in the language

classroom since they are virally-transmitted cultural artefacts with socially shared

norms and values.

This section demonstrates the previous study that conducted to seek the benefit

of memes for students. According to Romero, Elena & Bobkina, and Jelena, (2017),

“Representing often allows students to make sense of their learning and to

demonstrate their understanding”. Based on their result and analysis which

conducted in 2017, all students involved in the workshop (100%) mentioned the

need to enhance visual literacy in the language classroom and a vast majority of

them (95%) pointed to the suitability of memes as a genre to meet secondary school

students’ motivational needs. Most of the participants (92%) stated that memes

could be useful to catch students’ attention and consolidate the content while

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reinforcing and integrating all of the skills. To conclude, it is significant to

encourage students by navigating them to the world of visual communication such

memes. Besides that, identifying opportunities for language development is vital to

help them evolve in this new digital era of literacy.

Previous Studies

Similar studies have been conducted by researchers about a vocabulary

profiler in Satya Wacana Christian University. The researchers used different

samples like English Textbook, IC textbook, graded readers and so on. Putri (2016)

has been conducted profiling vocabulary of graded readers used in Satya Wacana

Christian University. The purpose of her study was to identify the vocabulary

profile of the graded readers used in the Faculty of Language and Literature, Satya

Wacana Christian University. The result of her study indicates that the use of graded

readers in extensive reading course was quite appropriate to the course although the

total of high-frequency words (K-1 & K-2) was less than the expected.

Another research that has been conducted is entitled The Vocabulary Profile

of English Short Story Books at the Library of Satya Wacana Laboratory Schools.

Lie (2016) conducted this study to profile the vocabulary that were not covered and

the token (word) recycling index in the English short story books in Satya Wacana

School’s Library. The result of the study showed that the vocabulary profile was

significantly correlated with the grades. However, lexical analysis of vocabulary in

memes using a vocabulary profiler has not been done. Thus, I decided to conduct

this research by analyzing lexical items in memes using a vocabulary profiler.

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THE STUDY

The Context of the Study

This study emphasized on identifying the vocabulary profile used in memes

and the implication in education. Thus, this study aimed to profile the vocabulary

in memes and analyze whether it might potentially facilitate in language learning.

To reach the objective which has been set, the texts in memes will be analyzed using

lexical profiler available at Tom Cobb’s website (www.lextutor.ca). The study was

conducted in about three weeks. The result of lexical analysis in memes is expected

to support the ELT teachers to classify the language level of a text, determine the

text difficulties, comprehend the implication of memes in education, and create new

learning materials based on the objective method.

Samples

The number of samples needed was about 150 memes with random topics.

It took approximately three weeks to collect and rewrite the memes. There were

2.187 words and it was selected from 9GAG. The criteria of memes should be:

1. Understandable and generally funny.

2. Minimum five words in each meme.

3. Not containing cursing and abusive words.

Data Collection Instruments

To conduct this research, there were two instruments used. The first is a

website called 9GAG, an online platform which provides a collection of memes.

The second is “Complete Lexical Tutor” that can be accessed at www.lextutor.ca.

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It is a computer program that helps researchers to analyze text or group of words

into categories regarding the frequency of word used.

Data Collection Procedures

The researcher collected the data using sampling technique. It required the right

decision to download the memes. There were three steps in collecting the data from

the internet. The steps to collect the data were observing, classifying, and

downloading the memes. The researcher did an observation about the memes on

9GAG. Some memes can be sarcastic and contain abusive and cursed words, thus

the researcher needs to classify and filter the proper memes. The researcher had to

select and download150 memes which were suitable with the sampling criteria.

Data Analysis Procedures

In analyzing the data, the researcher needed to transcribe all the text in

memes, since memes are in the form of text and image. To profile the vocabulary,

the researcher used Lextutor.ca. Below are the steps to use lextutor.ca:

(1) Visit www.lextutor.ca

(2) Copy and paste the text and click SUBMIT_window. The vocabulary

profile will show the number of words in the text that are categorized in the

following four frequency levels: (1) the list of the most frequent 1000-word

families, (2) the second 1000, (3) the Academic Word List, and (4) words

that do not appear on the other lists.

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 (3) Transcribe the result in Ms. office word using a table that presents the

vocabulary list used in memes for each category (K1, K2, AWL word, and

off list)

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

The first part of this section presents the overall vocabulary profile in

memes. It shows the proportions of the vocabulary frequency classifications. The

second part shows the example of vocabulary list of K-1, K-2, AWL, and Off-List.

The second part of this section shows the implication of memes in education.

Vocabulary Profile in Memes

The number of samples that have been analyzed were about 150 memes with

random topics. It was selected from 9GAG. There were three criteria of memes that

have been chosen. First, they were understandable and funny. It had at least 5 words

and did not contain cursing and abusive words.

There are four types of words that were presented and analyzed using a

vocabulary profiler. According to Nation (1990), there are four types of word

frequency. The first is high frequency words. It is usually called as K1 and K2 in

the vocabulary profiler. High frequency words are mostly found in all kind of texts

(Cooper, 2002). K1 has a range from 1-1,000 words and K2 has a range from 1,001-

2,000 words. The words in K1 are divided into two parts, function and content

words.

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 Function words give grammatical meaning in a sentence such as

determiners, pronouns, prepositions, conjunction, auxiliary verbs, and particles

while content words have literal meaning (Saville and Troike, 2006). The second

type is academic words or AWL (Academic Words List). Nation (1990) adds that

AWL is the words that occur around 800 times or 8% in most kind of academic

texts. The last type is off-list words. Nobert and Diane (2012) said that off-list words

do not belong to any other kind of words (K1, K2, and AWL). The words that are

included in this type are the proper name, other languages, or misspelled words.

Proper names are used for persons or place such as Mark Zuckerberg or

Belgium. While other languages can be defined as slang or informal words on the

internet that occur in memes. For instance, epic, an expression term to shows cool

things, app which stands for application, and legit which means legitimate or legal

that can be dig a lot more in Urban Dictionary on the internet.

In my samples, words which are used for a joke of a cat will be sound like

“He doesn’t protecc, He doesn’t attac, but He constantly to ask for additional

snacc” Cat: I’m sowwie hooman”. The word protecc, attac, and snacc are

misspelled words which were intentionally created by the meme creator. The

correct noun should be “protect”, “attack”, and “snack”. Besides that, the words

“Sowwie Hooman” should be “Sorry Human”. It is also intentionally created to

make the meme funnier.

The first table presented the examples of four types of words. Table 1

presents the example of vocabulary in memes which is included as the words from

the first 1000 frequency level. Please refer to Appendix A.

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 According to Montgomery (2007) “Vocabulary intervention involves three

tiers: Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3”. K1 words include basic words that students can

acquire in their daily life through speaking, listening, writing, or reading. In this

case, students can acquire them by reading memes on the internet to achieve the

Tier 1. The total of K1 words that appear in memes was 493 words. The second

table below presents the example of vocabulary in memes which include the words

from the second 1000 frequency level. Please refer to Appendix B

Montgomery (2007) stated that tier 2 is used for mature language users. It

has multiple meanings and is used in many settings. The total of K2 words that

appear in memes was 93 words. Table 3. below presents academic word list in

memes. Please refer to Appendix C.

AWL word is included in tier 3 which the vocabulary was classified as low

frequency. The words in academic list are usually specific to classes (Montgomery,

2007). The academic words list is sequenced by four major word classes which are

nouns, verb, adjectives, and adverb. Academic words mostly occur in academic

texts (Nation 1990, p19). In this case, memes that have been analyzed were taken

randomly. Some vocabulary in memes are not included as an academic text. There

are academic word lists that appears in memes even though not as much as in

academic words like textbook/ material books. The total of K2 words that appear in

memes were 18 words only. The vocabulary in memes which is not included in K1,

K2, and AWL list or called off-list table is shown in table 4. Please refer to

Appendix D.

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 The total of off-list words were 97 words. This happens because of several

reasons. After being analyzed, there are four reasons. The first reason happened

because memes were intentionally created with misspelt words to deliver the joke.

The second, memes were mostly using slang words which are not found in formal

dictionary. The third is because the occurrence of unintentional typos by the meme

creators. The last one is because the words are not frequently used or appeared.

Overall Vocabulary Profile in Memes

As shown in figure below, each frequency level shows the lemmas/ families,

types, tokens, and cumulative words. The first percentage was K-1 or NGSL_1

word with total lemmas 73.36%, followed by K2 or NGSL_2 words 17,69%, and

NGSL_3 AWL for 3.58%.

Table 5. Overall Vocabulary Profiler in Memes

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To put it simply, it has been clarified with the table below:

Freq. Level Lemmas/F Types Tokens Cumulative

amilies

K-1 WORDS 73.36% 67.07% 87.57% 87.57%

K-2 WORDS 17.69% 12.65% 4.68% 92.25%

AWL 3.58% 2.45% 0.95% 95.00%

OFF-LIST ?? 13.20% 4.91% 99.91%

Total 503+? 100% 100% 100%

Based on the result which is shown on the table above, the first row shows

three terms; family, type and token. The term lemmas/family is the head word. For

example, ask, asks, asked, asking are forms of the same of lexical unit with ask as

the lemma. The term type separates types of words. For example, the word existence

and extreme are different words and type. While the word ruin, ruins, and ruined

are considered as the same type. The term token refers to the total number of words

in a text. For example, there are run [4], back [1], give [4], answer [2], so the total

of tokens is [11].

Table 5 shows the most frequency words used or K-1 was 73.6%.

Meanwhile, the additional K-2 word in memes was 17.69%. K-2 cumulative

percentage of the word coverage was 92.25%. This is a good estimate for good

comprehension of reading. Learning vocabulary in another language needs to

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understand written texts between 95% (Laufer,1989) and 98% (Hu & Nation, 2000)

of words. To understand a meme requires 98% comprehension of the entire

vocabulary. Therefore, it could be said that the level of vocabulary in memes are

moderate to be comprehended. However, based on the findings, only 3.58% of

vocabulary is included in the academic word list (AWL). Since memes are quite

different from textbook, the academic words may not be plenty as much as in the

textbook. If we take a look at memes in educational topic, the academic words will

be found more. Nevertheless, it may be needed for the students to be able to

understand the off-list words even though those words occur infrequently (low

frequency words). This is because to learn four categories and low frequencies in

memes does not enough acquire the whole vocabulary. Moreover, students should

learn some off-list words in memes that might necessary to be used in the classroom

or the real world and internet culture. Teachers should also pay attention to the off-

list words in order to create crucial words that are appropriate for students’ level in

the category. According to Astika (2014), “the ease and convenience offered by the

vocabulary profile may help alleviate some of the teachers‟ teaching burden in

selecting vocabulary items that are appropriate to the students‟ current knowledge

of English”. In conclusion, by knowing the vocabulary that appears in memes,

teachers could consider and select the appropriate memes for students’ development

in learning language, specially to teach vocabulary.

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Pedagogical Implication

Memes have a huge potential for language learning. The enhancement of

visual literacy such as memes could contribute to the positive development of

language skills. The vocabulary in memes use moderate vocabulary which have

98% of the words for comprehension. This means that memes as a visual literacy

are potential to facilitate students in learning vocabulary.

This study has tried to raise teachers’ awareness to consider language

learners who need visual literacy through memes. The implementation of memes in

the classroom will be beneficial for students in a wider context. The memes

comprehension is intended to help students to validate their observation context

related to text and meaning. Furthermore, they can understand the interpretation

and analysis of images according to the visual materials discussed from the cultural

and social context, relevant information, humour, and some other aspects.

Memes bring an alternative way of communication and media literacy in

learning. Additionally, teachers can also provide a cost-effective way to deliver the

message to their students through memes in an interesting way. Nevertheless, in

teaching language, teachers can teach their students to obtain the skills by using

different structures according to the context to express the same thought through

memes. Teachers can also teach students to use idiomatic English expressions in

memes such as connotative meanings to communicate various thoughts with other

people. Future researchers can also focus on the integration of visual literacy in the

ESL classroom.

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 CONCLUSION

The purpose of this study was to show the result of vocabulary profile in

memes. From the overall results, this study showed the proportions of the

vocabulary frequency classifications. The result shows the percentage of K-1 words

(1-1000) was 87.57%, K-2 words (1000-2000) was 4.68%, AWL words was 0.95%

and the percentage of off-list words was 4.91%. Vocabulary in memes investigated

in this study had 98% of the words for comprehension which indicated that the

memes used moderate vocabulary.

This paper also provides an alternative of teaching students using memes

based on the data. The images and captions in memes can create new meanings and

messages at the same time. There are still a lot of things to dig from memes which

are related to linguistic aspects and media literacy. However, this study focuses on

limitation area that emphasizes on the vocabulary profile and implication of memes

for education.

By knowing the result of lexical analysis in memes, the researcher hopes that

teachers will consider to use memes as a media literacy in the classroom to support

the teaching process as an alternative way to deliver message to the students. The

researcher also hopes that both teachers and students have the willingness to see the

potential of memes and its benefits in a larger area, not only for the lexical items

but also the cultural information, social messages, and values. Additionally, the

researcher hopes that teachers can also decide the appropriate vocabulary to be

taught, written or orally based on the lexical analysis result in memes. In conclusion,

23
more research on other lexical analysis, study of memes, and other levels are

expected to be conducted. They will be beneficial for the teachers to enhance their

teaching literacy as a media for communicating with their students and support the

classroom environment.

24
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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to express my special thanks to God for always blessing me

from beginning study until the end of my thesis submission. After that, I would like
to express my deepest appreciation to all those gave me support to complete this
thesis. I want to thank for English Department of Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana
where I had been spending my golden time learning English and gave me
remarkable experiences. I have to express my deep regards to my Supervisor Prof.
Dr. Listyani for her stimulating suggestions, monitoring, and encouragement during
the consultation time. My gratitude for second reader Prof. Dr. Gusti Astika who
gave me suggestions or inputs for better improvement for this thesis.

In addition, a thank you for families who gave me support to complete this
thesis. Thank you for my best friend who has fixed my laptop in the middle of my
thesis progression. Also, I thank my boyfriend who gave financial support, spirit,
and motivations. Again, thank you for those who have filled the last study in Satya
Wacana Christian University.

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 APPENDICES

APPENDIX A

Table 1. The words first 1000 frequency level (K1)

K1 list shows the example of vocabulary in memes which have a range from 1-

1,000 words.

A About Account Act Actually Address After

Afternoon Always Am An And Andrew Answer

Any Anyone Anyway Are Argument As Ask

At Attack Attention Avoid Back Bad Bank

Bar Be Beautiful Because Bed Been Before

Beginning Behind Better Between Body Both Box

Broken Bus But Buy By Call Came

Can Car Career Cause Change Child Class

Clean Clock Close Come Comment Computer Contact

Conversation Cost Could Country Course Create Damage

Dating Day Degree Describe Die Direction Discover

Do Doctor Dollar Done Down Dream Drink

Drive Drop Drug During Each Eat Education

Else End English Enjoy Enough Enter Even

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Everest Every Explain Eye Ace Fact Fail

Fast Father Favorite Feeling Feminist Few Feel

Field Fight File Find Finish Fire First

Flies Floor Fly Focus Food For Forget

Friend From Front Fun Function Future Get

Girl Give Go Gonna Good Google Grandpa

Green Group Guy Hair Half Happen Hard

Have He Health Hear Heart Heartbreak Hello

Help Here Hey Home Hot Hour House

How Human I Idea If In Instead

Into Is It Job Just Keep Kid

Kill Know Land Last Late Laugh Leave

Let Life Like Listen Live Long Look

Lose Love Low Make Many Marvel Me

Meet Men Message Messi Mind Minute

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APPENDIX B

Table 2. The words from the second 1000 frequency level (K2)

K2 list shows the example of vocabulary in memes which have a range from 1,001

– 2,000 words.

Absolutely Ad Additional Advice Afford

Amazing Angry Attach Attract Bag

Blame Borrow Boss Bottle Bottom

Brain Burn Cat Chart Chip

Climb Collect Comfort Confuse Contribute

Copy Count Cry Drive Dry

Educate Email Empty Entire Error

Existence Extra Extreme Fans Fat

Funny Grade Hang Hate Hide

Hurt Joke Left Lesson Math

Meanwhile Mistake Neck Negative Neighbor

Nobody Obvious Online Partner Personally

Presentation Proud Rare Refuse Reject

Reply Rush Sad Secret Sentence

Seriously Shoe Shot Smoke Spelt

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Status Straight Sweet Text Tie

Tired Tonight Topic Transfer Trust

Twice Via Video Weak

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APPENDIX C

Table 3. Academic Word List (AWL)

AWL list shows the example of academic text that occurs in Memes.

Antibiotic Assignment Backwards

Bacteria Blank Correctly

Grammatical Gravity Headquarter

Homework Importantly Infinity

Interviewer Plugged Pronouncing

Scroll Sneeze Syllabus

Tense

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APPENDIX D

Table 4. Off-List

Off-List shows the example of words that do not belong to any other kind of

words (K1, K2, and AWL).

Accidentally Aout App Askes

Asleep Attac Backseat Bacwards

Belgium Blackboard Blanket Bravest

Bye Cashier Charger Chop

Chopsticks Cockroach Constanly Crush

Darling Delete Demon Desperately

Dishwasher Dissapear Donate Don’t

Drowning Epic Erasess Evacuating

Fbi Genuinely Gym Headphone

Hungry Hyped Idk Internet

Karate Kinda Legit Memes

Meow Messy Mimis Misiter

Morph Mosquites Mosquito Mustache

Nap Ninjas Nonsense Obesity

Outfit Passionate Pigeon Previews

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Procrastinating Protecc Quizlet Screenshotted

Seee Shit Sibling Snacc

Soap Sucks Sunglasses Sunshit

Tabs Texted Toilet Undersatand

Unhealthy Vegans Vet Wallpaper

Wallpaper Worship Youre

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APPENDIX E

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