engleski

Addressing pragmatics in social media research: a proposition of key notions and questions

Social media are multimodal computer-mediated platforms for creating and sharing information, ideas and opinions. The focal point of social media is 'user-generated content' – the high level of interactivity that is implied in such communication platforms enticed a sort of a paradigm shift in contrast to the traditional media. Social media has seen a rapid increase not only in the number of particular platforms, but also in the number of users, as well as the amount and the outreach of the content. They have become a common medium of communication for a large portion of the population, including private and professional users. In many cases the line between the offline and the online or between the individual and the user is rather blurred. We perform, negotiate and act on our roles and statuses in our offline lives according to a whole variety of norms, traditions and contexts and in doing so we use our most precious tool – language. Many questions have arisen with the development of social media and their everyday influence. Questions of interest in this research are as follows: what is the status of language in the social media?, what is the interaction like between language and the visual content that is created and shared via social media?, which of those helps or brings into question the trustworthiness of the content?, and how is the interaction achieved and performed between participants on social media? Social media accounts of several individual users will be analyzed. All users will be interviewed in order to find out more about their practice and how they self-reflect on their own practice. The notions of 'context', 'identity', 'performativity', 'trustworthiness', and 'intention' will be put forth as carefully selected terms in order to show not only the multifaceted nature of the new media, the communication they have enabled and the conventions they have influenced, but also to push forward the potential of pragmatics to collaborate with other relevant disciplines that bring forth the interaction of language, society, culture and their individual participants.

pragmatics ; social media ; language ; context ; identity ; performativity

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