Exploring Gender Stereotypes and Shared Presuppositions in Pakistani Social Media Memes

Abstract

The research aims to examine how gender stereotypes in Pakistan are constructed, reinforced, and challenged through presuppositions in social media memes. The paper applies the Presupposition Theory by Stalnaker (1974) to ten viral Pakistani social media memes from Instagram and Facebook to identify the shared background assumptions that render these texts readable without any explanation. The findings reveal that Pakistani expectations of gender are expressed implicitly through implied cultural knowledge, encompassing the beliefs that women’s lives revolve around marriage, that emotional labour is an implicit expectation of women, and that fear of victimization by men structures women’s behaviour. These assumptions mirror social norms and serve as a tool of critique, especially in the feminist online community, which is dominated by humour and irony to confront patriarchy. The article reveals that memes are concise and powerful forms of discourse, which shape the common perception of gender relations through shared social experiences. These findings also contribute to the growing body of knowledge in digital pragmatics since they demonstrate that presupposition is an important tool for meaning-making in Pakistani online culture.