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Memes and Meaningful Input

When I look back at my college experience studying abroad in Germany, I think it's quite silly, perhaps even charming, how I learned the lingo of my peers. At the time, I had already been studying German for about three years, but I considered myself quite a poor speaker and writer of the language. My sentences were stunted, I felt like my mind was using a flashlight to search for the next word to use, and I had trouble following what my aunt, a native German speaker, was saying to me during breakfast. I slowly began learning more and more German through the lectures I was taking and my language courses. However, progress felt like... a lot of conscious effort.

At the time, Facebook was still quite popular, and I was actively engaging with the new friends and friend groups I had made through social media. While scrolling through my feed, I suddenly stumbled upon a secret gold mine: memes in German.

I started reading all sorts of memes, searching far and wide across different Facebook groups, and I noticed something interesting: I was learning, quite easily, all sorts of new phrases and words. Granted, these words were not strictly academic (or even very polite), but when I started using these words and phrases with German acquaintances, there was a sudden spark in their demeanor. Suddenly, their speech became more animated, and they engaged with me in a different way. At first, they were cordial and perhaps a little reserved, but whenever I started talking about memes or meme-related phrases, it was as though a wall melted and a bridge grew wider. Not only were they friendlier, but conversations flowed more naturally, and their interest in talking with me increased.

That experience led me to keep a keen eye on something called the Zeitgeist, which literally translates to the "spirit of the times," though I have always enjoyed thinking of it poetically as the "time ghost." Although not strictly related to memes, it does relate to a shared collective experience of something current and relevant that people understand, either consciously or subconsciously. More practically, what I am referring to is a collection of social norms, shared experiences, and a collective "language of symbols" brought about by memes, which were, at that time, still a burgeoning language of their own.

These days, people can communicate entire feelings with a GIF or JPEG alone, and these images often carry culturally ubiquitous meanings.

After learning about Stephen Krashen's Comprehensible Input Theory, it all made sense to me. Memes were highly contextualized social phenomena that, between English and German, were culturally similar enough to be almost one-to-one in meaning and context, just with different words and expressions. I was already familiar with social media and meme culture, so it made perfect sense that memes became a gold mine for my language-learning journey. They were highly comprehensible, engaging, and they opened the door for me to receive even more input through the conversations and relationships they sparked. From my own personal experience, this theory simply makes the most intuitive sense.

However, there may be some credence to two other relevant theories, though I honestly do not find them as compelling, or rather, I find them somewhat incomplete when compared to Krashen's theory. Michael Long's Interaction Hypothesis essentially posits that by interacting with a language, people gradually acquire it through those interactions. I think there is something to be said for this in relation to my own experience. I would find a meme, acquire a new phrase or verb, and when I used it with other Germans, I discovered I was, in fact, using it correctly, which led to a positive feedback loop of interaction with the language. However, I do not think it was my use of the words or phrases themselves that mattered most. Rather, it was my ability to understand their meaning and context well enough to intuit their proper social usage. Once I used them appropriately, they provided me with rich, contextualized conversations that expanded both my vocabulary and my social understanding of the German language.

The next theory, which helps explain certain parts of my experience but about which I nonetheless remain unconvinced, is Merrill Swain's Output Hypothesis. This theory proposes that one of the primary ways people learn a language is by testing hypotheses about correct language use and gauging their accuracy by observing the effects their utterances have on others. However, that would imply that the memes through which I acquired so much vocabulary required me to say or use them before I could understand them, which simply was not my experience. I understood them intuitively through their context alone, and knowing when to use them came naturally based on social expectations and my existing knowledge of the language and culture.

I think all three theories have something important to contribute to our understanding of second-language acquisition. Each has its merits when applied in different contexts. However, I still find Stephen Krashen's work to provide the simplest and most intuitive explanation, one that aligns not only with my own experience as a second-language learner but also with my experience as a teacher. I see the most progress in my students when their exposure to English is comprehensible, meaningful, and culturally relevant. Once they have a way to understand the material, it naturally shows up in their writing, their speech, and their projects.