showing 14 related works from this author
Chapter 9. Relational practices on commercial Facebook wall interactions
2019
Conflict management in massive polylogues: A case study from YouTube
2014
Abstract The aim of this paper is to examine how conflict begins, unfolds and ends in a massive, new media polylogue, specifically, a YouTube polylogue. Extant research has looked into how conflict begins, unfolds and/or ends. However, to our knowledge, the models and taxonomies developed so far have not been applied to the analysis of the mediated conflict of massive polylogues. Drawing on the difference between methods of analysis that are natively digital versus those that have been digitized, i.e., they were developed for off-line research and then migrated on-line, one of the goals of this paper is to test whether non-natively digital, extant models and taxonomies, if digitized, would …
Teaching linguistic politeness: a methodological proposal
2003
The aim of this article is to explore theoretical and methodological aspects of the teaching of pragmatics in a second language. Taking as point of departure the pragmatic continuum, which includes pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics, we focus on the promotion of sociopragmatic knowledge in classroom contexts. More specifically, it is argued that a revised contextual and interactional view of Brown and Levinson¿s (1987) model of linguistic politeness, related to such notions as genre and politeness systems, offers suitable tools of pragmatic description for use in teaching and learning second languages. We start with a brief overview of linguistic politeness from a socio-cognitive framewo…
On-line polylogues and impoliteness: The case of postings sent in response to the Obama Reggaeton YouTube video
2011
Abstract The overall aim of this paper is to investigate impoliteness in a particular on-line polylogal setting – YouTube postings (c. 13,000 words) triggered by the ‘Obama Reggaeton’ video, which was released during the 2008 US democratic primaries. This is done through integration of quantitative/qualitative analytic tools and of (im)politeness1 and (im)politeness 2 approaches. A two-prong experimental study is used in order to examine impoliteness realisation and interpretation in the corpus. Findings reveal clear patterns in the realisation of impoliteness strategies, including a preference for on-record impoliteness saliently oriented towards attacking the positive face needs of one's …
Morality, Aggression, and Social Activism in a Transmedia Sport Controversy
2022
This article examines how the interconnections between morality, aggression, and social activism are discursively articulated in two data sets: a face-to-face sport controversy and a corpus of evaluative online comments in response to reports of said controversy. The study adopted a combined transmedia, critical, and intersectional perspective that revealed the divergent interpretations of the controversy as an aggression that threatened the moral or a case of activism in defense of the moral. Thus, competing moral and social frameworks were found to lie behind social division and suggested the need for intersectional awareness and critical views on the complex and unstable distinctions bet…
A cross-cultural investigation of email communication in Peninsular Spanish and British English. The role of (in)formality and (in)directness
2013
This paper examines the email discursive practices of particular speakers of two different languages, namely Peninsular Spanish and British English. More specifically, our study focuses on (in)formality and (in)directness therein, for these lie at the heart of considerable scholarly debate regarding, respectively (i) the general stylistic drift towards orality and informality in technology-mediated communication, and (ii) the degree of communicative (in)directness – within broader politeness orientations – of speakers of different languages, specifically an orientation towards directness in Peninsular Spanish vis-à-vis indirectness in British English. The aim of this paper is thus to invest…
Social Interaction in YouTube Text-Based Polylogues: A Study of Coherence
2012
Since YouTube was launched, its emblematic video-sharing facility has attracted considerable attention as a social networking system of cultural production. In addition to vlogging, YouTube offers a text facility through which YouTubers share and negotiate opinions. However, research into the latter is scarce, especially within language-based disciplines (Androutsopoulos & Beiβwenger 2009; Zelenkauskaite & Herring 2008). This article contributes to addressing this imbalance by focusing on YouTube text-based ‘conversation’ (Herring 2010a). Specifically, it examines coherence in a corpus of YouTube postings in Spanish. Although coherence has been the object of much academic debate in other fo…
Introduction to Analyzing Digital Discourse: New Insights and Future Directions
2018
In the introduction, we have embedded our overview of the contributions to this volume within a narrative that reviews past and extant research on language and digital communication. We have taken special care to highlight the ways in which each chapter advances the field. In order to do so, we have carefully identified new methodological and empirical insights put forth by the different authors. Specifically, we have highlighted the steps contributors to this volume have taken to help establish the so-called third wave of research, and these steps point to future directions in which to expand the field of language and digital communication.
Openings and closings in Spanish email conversations
2011
Abstract Despite the increasing interest scholarly research has shown in the study of computer-mediated communication, there is still a need to investigate the empirical validity of assumed homogeneity of language usage over the net and focus on the social diversity and variation that characterizes any communication. With this in mind, the present paper is an investigation into the stylistic choices that a particular group of email users made when engaged in a specific activity type. More specifically, it explores the variation in the discourse practices employed to open and close emails in conversation alongside the institutional power of participants and the interactional position of each…
'Maleducados/Ill-mannered' during the #A28 political campaign on Twitter: A metapragmatic study of impoliteness labels and comments in Spanish
2020
AbstractThis paper approaches the study of conflict through an examination of Spanish metapragmatic labels and comments of impoliteness on Twitter. The aim is twofold. It first aims to confirm the attributed importance of the labelmaleducado/ill-mannered in the specific context of Twitter and of digital discourse more generally, on quantitative and comparative grounds; then, it investigates this label, and the metapragmatic comments where it occurred, in a contextualized corpus of tweets compiled during the political campaign of Spain’s General Elections of April 28, 2019. The study draws from fivead hoccorpora specifically compiled from Twitter, and a general corpus of Spanish digital disc…
Relational work in multimodal networked interactions on Facebook
2018
Abstract The paper argues that the notion of Relational Work (Locher and Watts 2005) needs to be expanded to be able to account for sociability in the networked interactions afforded by social platforms such as Facebook. Thus, the aim of this paper is to explore how the nature of networked interactions impacts the emergence of relational practices therein. Importantly, Relational Work is a language based framework whereas networked interactions are highly multimodal. By applying Norris’ (2004) multimodal framework to the analysis of a Facebook wall event, we show how key sociability functions are carried out by semiotic modes other than language. Furthermore, the analysis shows how relation…
Domestic violence and public participation in the media
2013
Recent research suggests that as a social public problem, domestic violence is sustained in a number of social contexts that naturalize violence against women through gendered discourses and ideologies of male violence. This paper examines domestic violence vis-à-vis public participation in the media. In doing so, it seeks to explore the social public aspects of domestic violence and to investigate whether the gendered discourse of male violence is also sustained through the new electronic spaces of public participation. To this end, a corpus of unsolicited digital comments – a form of ‘citizen journalism’ – to a British online newspaper was compiled and analysed. This paper draws from rese…
(Im)politeness in Service Encounters
2017
This chapter examines sociopragmatic research on commercial service encounters. It offers a precis of the studies that have utilised service encounters as a vehicle to examine (Im)politeness manifestations. It addresses the methodological advantages of the service encounter as a relatively formalised interactional site in which sociability and efficiency are managed, hence as a locus for the emergence of (Im)politeness orientations. The chapter traces the evolution of (Im)politeness research and discusses the complexities of capturing (Im)politeness practices in transformation: from face-to-face and telephone-mediated encounters to newer communicative arenas resulting from technological adv…