| Memes have become an online wildfire, spreading to every nook and cranny of
microblogging sites. This study investigated the role of memes in Nigeria’s sociopolitical and
economic discourse on X (formerly Twitter). It adopted Kenneth Burke’s Pentad, along with
multimodal, discourse, and semiotic frameworks for data analysis. The research gathered fifty
memes and used purposive sampling to select ten with similar features. The study found that
Nigerians use memes humorously yet persuasively to convey their perspectives on sociopolitical
and economic issues. It also revealed that the selected memes are context-dependent. Furthermore,
it was discovered that Nigerians employ multimodal tools, such as linguistic and visual elements,
to create memes. They code-mix English with indigenous Nigerian languages in their meme
captions. The study highlighted that the memes include captions in Standard British English,
Nigerian English, Nigerian Pidgin, and Yoruba. Finally, it concludes that the role of memes in
online sociopolitical and economic discourse cannot be overemphasized, as they serve as vital
tools for sociopolitical and economic discourse on social media.
Keywords: memes, Nigeria, rhetoric, multimodality, visual rhetoric, sociopolitical discourse |