PERCEPTION OF SPANISH MENTALITY THROUGH THE PRISM OF HUMOROUS INTERNET MEMES

The research objective is the review of creolized Internet memes with verbal and graphic components in Spanish. The meme concept was for the first time formulated in 1976 by Clinton Richard Dawkins for designation of ideas which are transmitted by means of imitation and which use human mind as "carrier". This concept has been a little changed in comparison with the initial meaning and went viral in result of emergence and distribution of cybercommunication. Now the Internet meme is understood as the information (as a rule of comic character) created at electronic communication and spontaneously extending in virtual space. Considerable part of these memes is the creolized texts with verbal and graphic components that is caused by the written Internet communication; at the same time, creolized text as such became an object of researches in Russian and foreign linguistics from the last quarter of the 20th century. Thanks to great popularity of English and media availability, Internet memes not infrequently have international character that doesn't exclude certain specifics among representatives of various linguocultures in relation to certain topics (political humour, word-play, precedent sources). Within this article the short theoretical review of the concept "creolized text" based on works of Russian and foreign researchers, and also some phenomena, quite often observable in Internet memes (dephraseologization, erratography) is carried out. Some creolized Internet memes with verbal and graphic components, which are popular among Spanish-speaking users, are considered.