Internet Pragmatics - Volume 2, Issue 1, 2019

Abstract

Internet communication has evolved a lot since it first became popular in the early nineties of the last century. Pragmatics has also evolved and has tried to come to terms with the non-stop changes that internet is constantly producing in our lives and especially in how we communicate and interact. We are probably now at a stage of internet development in which we can make some sound predictions regarding certain challenges that a pragmatics of internet communication will have to face in the next few years to deal with the radical changes that are taking place in today’s internet use. This article will be devoted to listing some of these research issues and to discussing what pragmatics can do to address them accurately, ranging from those issues centred upon the interpretation of online discourses to those involving interfaces and their options for contextualisation.

Abstract

The main argument put forward in this paper is that traditional linguistic genre theories neglect the importance of media and their modal affordances in the formation of new genres. It argues that media cannot be viewed as (passive) configurations of technical, semiotic, and cultural features which are chosen by actors/ rhetors in order to serve their communicative needs, but rather as mediators whose modal affordances actively influence communicators’ meaning making choices. In order to support this argument, it will be shown how forms of discourse representation gradually developed from a stylistic device in oral communication to a genre constitutive practice (e.g., in printed academic communication), and eventually became a genre of its own (as the practice of “sharing” content) in social media communication. In the analyses, the focus is on the interplay between modal affordances of the different media in which discourse representation formats are used, their formal properties, and pragmatic factors (like audience expectations in different communicative genres and situations). It is shown how innovative aspects of a medium influence formal features of discourse representation which in turn serve different communicative purposes in different genres.

Abstract

This article examines a corpus of private text messages collected in Birmingham and surrounding towns in 2015. We look specifically at pragmatic roles played by the vocatives we find in the corpus. Since text messages are sent to targeted recipients, vocatives are structurally redundant, and we review literature concerning vocatives in spoken and written data to first see what categories others have proposed for these functions. We then challenge some of these categorisations, identifying a new category of ‘focuser’ which we argue is akin to a summons in spoken language. We also examine the pragmatic value of vocatives in performing identity work for both sender and receiver. We finish by looking at gendered performance of identity as a case study in our corpus of how text producers construct themselves and others.

Abstract

Online participatory environments have become saturated spaces in terms of the opportunities that they offer for the display of different viewpoints and ideologies. YouTube, as a popular video-sharing and networking site, constitutes a new media space that invites both individual and collaborative stance-taking by participants who gather, virtually, to address a particular topic, issue or event depicted visually and discussed textually through the comments that are posted on the site. This interactional dynamics triggers a dialogic sequence of follow-ups through which stances are formulated following up on previous stances or counterstances. Against this background, this paper reports on a case study of individual and collaborative, and interdiscursive and intradiscursive stance-taking in participants’ comments to an online review focusing on the strategic use of direct (tactile) and indirect (inferential) references to evidentiality and their co-occurrence with argumentative markers. In this multilayered context stance-taking does not only contribute to evaluation but also to the construction of collective identities.

Abstract

The phenomenon of brain drain migration from Greece, also known as Greek neomigration, has acquired an astoundingly massive character due to the ongoing economic crisis in the country. Considering that a migrant’s identity is defined by a physical move from one place to another, this paper aims at exploring the discourse practices of place-making by Greek neomigrants, focusing on the role of social media in this endeavour. Drawing on discourse analysis (Myers 2010; Aguirre and Graham Davies 2015), identity construction theories (Blommaert 2005; Benwell and Stokoe 2006), environmental psychology (Proshansky, Fabian and Kaminoff 1983) and discourse-centred online ethnography (Androutsopoulos 2008), this study presents and discusses empirical data from a Greek neomigrant settled in the UK, who writes about his migration experience on his blog as well as on his Twitter and Facebook accounts. The analysis demonstrates that the Greek neomigrant place identity construction can be realized through a complex of linguistic and discourse strategies, including comparison and evaluation, construction of in-groups and out-groups, language and script alternations, entextualisation of other voices, and visual connotations. It is shown that, for migrants, social media constitute significant outlets for place-making, constructing place identity and asserting (or eschewing) belonging. In so doing, it also brings to the surface crucial social, cultural and psychological aspects of the current Greek neomigration phenomenon and confirms the potential of social media discourses to heighten awareness of neomigrants’ dis/integrating processes, placing discourse analysis at the service of global mobility phenomena.

This article reviews Discursive Self in Microblogging: Speech acts, stories and self-praise978-90-272-5665-2

This article reviews The Semiotics of Emoji: The Rise of Visual Language in the Age of the Internet978-1-4742-8198-0