Towards a cyberpragmatics of mobile instant messaging [In: Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics 2016: Global Implications for Culture and Society in the Networked Age. Ed. Jesús Romero-Trillo. Berlin: Springer] (original) (raw)
Related papers
2017
According to relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1995), information (a set of assumptions in its terminology) is relevant if it satisfies two conditions; firstly, it should generate a substantial amount of interest (positive cognitive effects in its terminology); and secondly, its processing should demand as little mental effort as possible. In my opinion, this pair of conditions should be supplemented with the notions of contextual constraint and non-intended non-propositional effect. As will be argued in this paper, this RT extension is particularly appropriate for the analysis of Internet-mediated communication, since nowadays we are witnessing a turn into what has been labeled phatic Internet, massive exchanges of messages with little informational relevance but enormous impact on users' feelings of connectivity and sociability, among others. The aim of this paper is to apply this proposal of extension to mobile instant messaging (specifically WhatsApp) and explore some of the constraints and non-propositional effects that play a role in the eventual relevance of WhatsApp interactions, which typically generate relevance from these non-propositional effects and not from the prototypical object of pragmatic research, namely the propositional content of the messages in the shape of explicatures and/or implicatures.
Cyberpragmatics. Internet-Mediated Communication in Context
2011
Cyberpragmatics is an analysis of Internet-mediated communication from the perspective of cognitive pragmatics. It addresses a whole range of interactions that can be found on the Net: the web page, chat rooms, instant messaging, social networking sites, 3D virtual worlds, blogs, videoconference, e-mail, Twitter, etc. Of special interest is the role of intentions and the quality of interpretations when these Internet-mediated interactions take place, which is often affected by the textual properties of the medium. The book also analyses the pragmatic implications of transferring offline discourses (e.g. printed paper, advertisements) to the screen-framed space of the Net. And although the main framework is cognitive pragmatics, the book also draws from other theories and models in order to build up a better picture of what really happens when people communicate on the Net. This book will interest analysts doing research on computer-mediated communication, university students and researchers undergoing post-graduate courses or writing a PhD thesis.
Reflective of both changing times and transforming communicative practices, Ciberpragmática 2.0 is a timely and profound revision of Yus' original book, Ciberpragmática (Yus, 2001). Included with revised versions of the original five chapters are three additional chapters which reflect changing discursive behaviors occurring in digitally mediated spaces. These include pragmatic analyses of blogs, social networking sites (e.g., Tuenti), and microblogging (e.g., Twitter), as well as avatar-mediated communication. The book concludes with a chapter examining the future of pragmatic analysis of digitally mediated discourse. Ciberpragmática 2.0 remains the first volume of its kind written in Spanish and, as predicted by Bonilla in his 2003 review of Ciberpragmática, is ''universally recognized. . .as a classical reference work on the language of computerized communication'' (p. 639). Overall, the volume is well written, comprehensive, global, and reflective of the type of pragmatic considerations relevant to evolving human communication in both digitally mediated and non-mediated contexts. The book reflects a strong foundation in cognitive models of pragmatic analysis, specifically Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1995), as well as innovative thinking related to the consideration of digitally mediated discourse.
Pragmatics and its Interfaces, eds. Cornelia Ilie and Neal R. Norrick. John Benjamins, 2018
Pragmatics addresses central features of human communication, specifically how interlocutors fill the gap between what is said and what is eventually communicated. The aim of this chapter is to review several applications of pragmatics to Internet-mediated communication, and to assess how the mediated, virtual nature of this communication requires analyses beyond those based on physical, face-to-face scenarios. On paper, two broad and apparently incompatible premises constitute the foundation of these distinct applications. On the one hand, Internet-mediated communication " makes no difference " for a pragmatic analysis, in the sense that we do not have specific cognitive mechanisms to interpret online discourses that differ from the ones used in face-to-face communication. On the other hand, though, Internet " makes all the difference " for pragmatics, since the inferential gap-filling made by Internet users, intended to turn online texts (e.g. typed utterances) into valid interpretations, is influenced by the interfaces used for interactions and the range of contextual support that users can access in the interpretation of these online discourses. This chapter will review several existing pragmatic analyses of Internet-mediated communication but with an emphasis on a cognitive pragmatics (cyberpragmatic) framework (Yus 2011a).
A cognitive pragmatics of the phatic Internet
Emotion in Discourse, 2019
Phatic interpretations are typically defined as those arising from an intention to create and maintain ties and social bonds, to exhibit desire of sociability towards others, rather than an intention to transfer substantive information. As such, they are not typical instances of communication in which the eventual relevance is centred upon the value of explicitly communicated content. This kind of phatic interpretation is important, since nowadays we are witnessing the so-called phatic Internet, in which the propositional content transferred to other users is increasingly irrelevant but the effects that this content generates (in terms of feelings of connection, of sociability, of group membership, of friends' acknowledgment and mutual awareness, etc.) are utterly relevant. In this chapter, it will be argued that it is mainly feelings and emotions that are generated from phatic interactions (and phatic implicatures may also be derived), which demands an extension of the scope of analysis and new terminology. Specifically, the term phatic effects will be proposed and applied to Internet-mediated communication. These effects are devoid of the qualities of intentionality and propositionality, but are nevertheless essential to our understanding of why many users spend hours exchanging (apparently) irrelevant content with one another through the Net.
Ciberpragmática. El uso del lenguaje en Internet [Cyberpragmatics. Language Use on the Internet
Journal of Pragmatics, 2003
At the end of the nineteenth century the symbolist poet Rimbaud urged us to ''be absolutely modern'', while a hundred years later the cyberguru Negroponte (1995) suggests that we should ''be absolutely digital''. From a communicative point of view, the digital human being (typically, an individual who lives in a sophisticated metropolitan area of a prosperous first-world country) is an on-line person who interacts technologically with similar people in a virtual community environment. As happened with the telephone in the past, this new telematic way of communicative life is modifying human relationships as we know them today; and changes may well be greater in the very near future, when technology allows the normalization of virtual interactive encounters by means of multimedia conferencing and other telecommunicative advances unimaginable at the present time. As Yus recalls in his book, in our continuous interaction with the environment on which our lives depend, human beings have progressively adapted, first to the natural world, later to the industrial world, and now to the telematic world. At each one of these three crucial cultural points, humans have had to enrich and adapt their linguistic and communicative abilities to face new cognitive challenges. In this respect, Castells (1996) wrote: ''New Information Technologies are radically transforming the contemporary world at all levels: economy, society, culture, and everyday life''. It stands to reason that linguistics can't remain unconcerned about these changes. Linguistics must explore the characteristics of emergent e-communicative modalities, and must answer new questions that demand new positions and new explicative models. Consequently, this novel technological communicative scene generates new linguistic concerns and new research frameworks which, little by little, are appearing in specialized journals and books, like the case in point, Ciberpragma´tica (Cyberpragmatics) by Francisco Yus (University of Alicante, Spain), the first book in Spanish that makes a global proposal on these topics, and the very first book that analyses on-line human communication from the pragmatic viewpoint.
Years ago, Internet was a mere complement to our physical activities, a limited text-based environment we had to log onto, a poor cues-filtered scenario for human communication. Nowadays, by contrast, Internet is hybridised and imbricated in our daily lives. We do not log onto the Net since we never really get disconnected from it. Instead of paying to get Internet connection, today many users would rather pay to get disconnected from it. Besides, we do not need computers to access the Net; we carry it with us on our mobile phones. As a consequence, we now devote an enormous amount of mental activity and time to obtaining information and communicating with others online, either through text or with the aid of pictures, video and multimodal combinations of verbal and visual inputs. The development of Internet use has increased radically and nowadays, with the aid of smart phones and tablets, it is accessible everywhere.