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In:Approaches to Internet Pragmatics: Theory and practice
Edited by Chaoqun Xie, Francisco Yus and Hartmut Haberland
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 318] 2021
► pp. 47–74

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Chapter 2
Computer-mediated discourse in context

Pluralism of communicative action and discourse common ground

 | University of Augsburg, Germany
Published online: 21 April 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.318.02fet
Abstract
This paper examines the particularisation of the pragmatic universals of contextualisation, indexicality of communicative action and implicature in computer-mediated discourse. It adopts a discourse-pragmatic perspective to account for the interdependencies between the contextual constraints and requirements of the medium on the one hand, and the multilayeredness and hypertextuality of computer-mediated discourse on the other. Particular attention is given to the importation of context and provision of background information, and to their contribution to the co-construction of discourse common ground. Utilising data, metadata and metarepresentations from the coverage of a former refugee taking up a Lord Mayor post, the paper shows how the pragmatic universals undergo medium-specific particularisation and count as multiply contextual communicative actions with multilayered production and reception formats.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Context, contextualisation and indexicality of communicative action
    • 2.1Context and contexts, and types and tokens
    • 2.2Contextualisation cues and contextualisation
    • 2.3Indexicality of communicative action
  • 3.Pluralism of communicative action
    • 3.1Multilayered participation
    • 3.2Discourse common ground
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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