ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to show how an analytical framework that combines multimodal, semantic and pragmatic analysis can account for the way in which demotivators function as communicative acts. A demotivator is a conjunction of an eloquent picture or photo with a caption which comments on its content, which usually produces an ironical effect. In what follows I address the origin and definition of demotivators, the evolution of their socio-communicative function, the categorisation of demotivators by area of focus, and the relation between the linguistic and the visual components of demotivators. The empirical material includes demotivators created by members of the Polish-, English- and Russian-speaking communities. A corpus of over 1,000 items has been gathered. The items were retrieved from the following websites: https://demotywatory.pl/" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">https://demotywatory.pl/, https://www.demotivators.ru" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">www.demotivators.ru, https://www.demotivers.com" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">www.demotivers.com, and the social networking service Facebook. The study provides evidence that demotivators should be treated as a discrete category of units which have the potential to develop in pragmatic and multimodal directions.
