Attitudes and emotions through written text: The case of textual deformation in Internet chat rooms

Spanish Internet chat rooms are visited by a lot of young people who use language in a very creative way (e.g. repetition of letters and punctuation marks). In this paper, several hypotheses concerning the uses of textual deformation assess their communicative usefulness. The goal of these hypotheses is to check whether these deformations favour a more accurate identification and evaluation of the senders’ underlying attitudes (propositional or affective) and emotions. The answers to a questionnaire indicate that despite the supplementary level of information that textual deformation provides, readers tend not to agree on the exact quality of the sender’s underlying attitudes and emotions, nor do they tend to establish degrees of intensity related to the quantity of text typed. However, and despite this evidence, textual deformation seems to play a part in the eventual quality of chat users’ interpretations of the messages sent to chat rooms.Los chats españoles de Internet son visitados por muchos jóvenes que usan el lenguaje de una forma muy creativa (ej. repetición de letras y signos de puntuación). En este artículo se evalúan varias hipótesis sobre el uso de la deformación textual respecto a su eficacia comunicativa. Se trata de comprobar si estas deformaciones favorecen una identificación y evaluación más adecuada de las actitudes (proposicionales o afectivas) y emociones de sus autores. Las respuestas a un cuestionario revelan que a pesar de la información adicional que la deformación textual aporta, los lectores no suelen coincidir en la cualidad exacta de estas actitudes y emociones, ni establecen grados de intensidad relacionados con la cantidad de texto tecleada. Sin embargo, y a pesar de estos resultados, la deformación textual parece jugar un papel en la interpretación que finalmente se elige de estos mensajes enviados a los chats.The research for this paper has been supported by IULMA (Instituto Interuniversitario de Lenguas Modernas Aplicadas)

Identity-related issues in meme communication

Internet memes are an example of the trend of replicability and spread of discourses through the Net within today’s participatory culture. On paper, memes are instances of humorous discourse that abound on the internet, are replicated or altered, and then transmitted to other users. However, in this paper the focus is not on its humorous side, but on how every single stage of meme communication entails a greater or lesser impact on the user’s self-concept, self-awareness and overall identity. The paper addresses five stages of meme communication and possible ways in which these stages influence the user’s identity

Towards a pragmatics of weblogs

The weblog has emerged as one of the most dynamic means of Internet communication, in which users upload whatever piece of information they consider might arouse other users’ attention. Many articles and books have already addressed this new communicative phenomenon, but so far the weblog has not been addressed in purely cognitive-pragmatic terms. This article provides a first relevance-theoretic pragmatic analysis of the discourse of weblogs and their communicative qualities and limitations.El weblog ha surgido como una de las formas más dinámicas de comunicación, en la cual los usuarios de Internet “cuelgan” cualquier información que consideran que puede atraer la atención de otros usuarios. Ya se han escrito muchos artículos y libros sobre este fenómeno comunicativo, pero hasta ahora el weblog no ha sido analizado en términos puramente pragmático-cognitivos. Este artículo proporciona un primer análisis pragmático desde la teoría de la relevancia del discurso de los weblogs y sus cualidades comunicativas y limitaciones.The research for this article has been supported by IULMA (Instituto Interuniversitario de Lenguas Modernas Aplicadas)

El papel del contexto en la comunicación por Internet

Setenes Jornades de Foment de la Investigació de la FCHS (Any 2001-2002

Propositional attitude, affective attitude and irony comprehension

According to relevance theory, irony comprehension invariably entails the identification of some opinion or thought (echo) and the identification of the speaker’s dissociative attitude. In this paper, it is argued that it is also essential for hearers to identify not only that propositional attitude, but also the affective attitude that the speaker holds towards the source of this echo so that an optimally relevant interpretive outcome is achieved. This notion comprises feelings and emotions of a non-propositional quality which affect the propositional effects obtained in ironical communication. The paper further argues for the need to incorporate non-propositional effects into the traditional propositional object of pragmatic research.This research was supported by EMO-FUNDETT research project, a coordinate project funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (FFI2013-47792-C2-1-P)

Towards a Pragmatic Taxonomy of Misunderstandings

The increasing emphasis given to the pragmatic perspective in the studies of everyday conversation over the last few decades has uncovered the reality which lies behind everyday conversation: the fact that communication is subject to risk and effort, and that we understand each other through continuous fallible hypotheses about our interlocutor’s intended interpretation. In this study, I address misunderstandings from a pragmatic (mainly relevance-theoretic) approach and analyse the reasons why they occur in face-to-face interaction. The main hypothesis underlying this paper is that all the possible varieties of misunderstanding can be accounted for in the outcome of the combination of three preliminary continua: intentional vs. unintentional; verbal vs. nonverbal; and explicit vs. implicit, which yields a taxonomy of twelve possible cases

The linguistic-cognitive essence of virtual community

One of the objectives of the so-called cyberpragmatics is to determine the inferential strategies of contextualisation which Internet users perform when they produce and interpret other users’ messages. Leaving aside a static view of context, according to which communicative exchanges take place in a pre-determined spatial-temporal location, today’s view of context is much more dynamic, of inferential nature, and which starts immediately after the linguistic input has been decoded. Besides, there are multiple sources from which the inferential system can gather information, whose activation is guided by the general search for relevance to which human minds are constantly geared. In previous research, this dynamic view of context has been useful in order to explain communicative strategies such as the ones taking place in chat rooms or through e-mails. In this paper, our attention will be focussed on strategies of contextualisation which are intended to form and stabilise the user’s thoughts on virtual community. Again, it will be shown that dynamic strategies of contextualisation are needed so that stable information on community can be not only stored in the user’s mind, but also shared with other users who belong to the same community. The key to this on-going and negotiated storage of information on community membership lies in sustained communicative interactions in a sufficiently lasting time span

Towards a pragmatics of weblogs

The weblog has emerged as one of the most dynamic means of Internet communication, in which users upload whatever piece of information they consider might arouse other users’ attention. Many articles and books have already addressed this new communicative phenomenon, but so far the weblog has not been addressed in purely cognitive-pragmatic terms. This article provides a first relevance-theoretic pragmatic analysis of the discourse of weblogs and their communicative qualities and limitations.El weblog ha surgido como una de las formas más dinámicas de comunicación, en la cual los usuarios de Internet “cuelgan” cualquier información que consideran que puede atraer la atención de otros usuarios. Ya se han escrito muchos artículos y libros sobre este fenómeno comunicativo, pero hasta ahora el weblog no ha sido analizado en términos puramente pragmático-cognitivos. Este artículo proporciona un primer análisis pragmático desde la teoría de la relevancia del discurso de los weblogs y sus cualidades comunicativas y limitaciones.The research for this article has been supported by IULMA (Instituto Interuniversitario de Lenguas Modernas Aplicadas)

Analyzing jokes with the Intersecting Circles Model of humorous communication

Speakers of jokes are aware of the human cognitively rooted relevance-seeking inferential procedure (Sperber and Wilson 1995) and predict (i.e. metarepresent) the interlocutor’s steps leading to a valid interpretation of the utterance(s) in the joke. Specifically, speakers can predict (a) the accessibility to certain information which builds up a proper scenario for understanding the joke (make-sense frame), (b) the inferential steps taken to turn the words uttered into contextualized meaningful propositions (utterance interpretation), and (c) the awareness of cultural stereotypes regarding professions, nationalities, connoted places, sex roles, etc. (cultural frame). This inferred information (a-c) is exploited to generate humorous effects. In previous research (Yus forthcoming), the Intersecting Circles Model was proposed. It comprises seven types of jokes depending on whether the joke only relies on one of (a-c) or on combinations of them, which entails analyzing the extent to which (a-c) play or do not play a role in the generation of humorous effects. In this paper, 1000 jokes are analyzed and fitted into a type or combinations of (a-c). Several interesting humor-generating patterns are also isolated inside the seven preliminary joke types covered by the Model

El discurso de las identidades en línea: el caso de Facebook

La identidad suele dividirse en personal y social. En investigaciones anteriores, he propuesto una división tripartita que incluye una identidad interactiva que, en cierto modo, actúa como “fuente de alimentación” para la identidad personal y social. La importancia de estas tres identidades en el entorno de la comunicación virtual ha variado dependiendo de cómo Internet ha ido evolucionando y se ha ido imbricando (e hibridando) en nuestras vidas cotidianas. En la actualidad, los “sitios de redes sociales” como Facebook o Tuenti ofrecen un entorno ideal para el moldeado de identidades y el discurso de los usuarios, en su variedad textual, visual o multimodal, es esencial para gestionarlas. En este artículo se analizarán las entradas de Facebook y el discurso exhibido en ellas, así como el impacto de estas entradas y los comentarios que estas generan en las identidades de los usuarios.Identity is typically divided into personal and social. In previous research, I have proposed a three-fold distinction that includes an interactive identity which, to a certain extent, plays the part of “feeds” for personal and social identity. The importance of these three identities in the virtual world has varied depending on how the Internet has evolved and has imbricated (and hybridised) in our ordinary lives. Nowadays, social networking sites such as Facebook or Tuenti offer an ideal environment for identity shaping and users’ discourse, in its textual, visual or multimodal varieties, is essential to manage it. This article analyzes a number of Facebook entries, together with the discourse used therein, and also the impact that these entries and the comments they elicit have on users’ identities