The Semiotics of a Slap: Metafunctional and Visual Grammar Analyses of Meaning-Making in Selected Macron Memes

Abstract

This study examines eleven “Macron Slap” memes circulating on X (formerly Twitter) between May 26 and May 31, 2025, to analyze how humor, irony, humiliation, gendered power inversion, and ideological commentary are produced through complex processes of multimodal semiosis. Grounded in Halliday’s ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions, and supported by Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual grammar and Barthes’s concept of anchorage, the analysis demonstrates how the memes transform a single embodied gesture into a globally recognizable semiotic phenomenon circulating across international digital networks. Meaning is shown to accumulate through four analytical groups: Causal, Action, Reaction, and Intertextual Representations. This framework reveals how each redesign resemiotizes the original gesture and extends its interpretive range. Ideationally, the slap functions as a shifting signifier moving from a fictional domestic scene to a symbolically charged commentary on gender, authority, and political vulnerability. Interpersonally, gaze, posture, gesture, and evaluative captions position viewers within a shared stance of humorous appraisal. Textually, salience, framing, sequential pairing, and verbal anchorage stabilize the preferred readings and bind the meme sequence into a coherent multimodal narrative. A key semiotic feature of the cycle is its intertextual expansion, in which appearances by Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and globally circulating cultural templates recontextualize the slap within broader semiotic frameworks of public embarrassment and contested masculinity. Overall, the study illustrates how participatory media employ multimodal redesign to resemiotize political figures and generate ideological meanings that resonate across diverse cultural contexts.