Marking online community membership

the pragmatics of stance-taking

Jonathan R. White

pp. 535-548

in: Alessandro Capone, Marco Carapezza, Franco Lo Piparo (eds), Further advances in pragmatics and philosophy II, Berlin, Springer, 2019

Abstrakt

Data from academic seminars conducted through Skype textchat is analysed in this chapter, and the focus is on examples of how users mark community membership. Membership is marked explicitly by using pronominals and the metonymic use of the seminar group name. It is also marked implicitly by using reduced forms, which are stereotypical examples of a textchat speech style. I argue that these are markers of stance-taking, where community membership is recovered pragmatically as a weak implicature. Dis-alignment with the community is also seen, as individuals can also implicate their independence as setters of linguistic norms.