engleski

Discourse Markers in Computer-mediated Communication: The Case of Abbreviations

In the growing literature on discourse markers (DMs), they have often been reffered to in various different names: discourse particles, discourse operators, pragmatic markers, discourse connectives, pragmatic connectives, sentence connectives and cue phrases, which shows us, even at first glance that there is still no consensus in the academic community on their status and function. Nevertheless, many studies on the use of DMs in spoken, face-to- face communication have been undertaken, and some main characteristics of them agreed upon. Yet papers on DMs in the context of computer- mediated communication (CMC) are still scarce. We believe that specific traits of computer- mediated discourse, caused by the medium of internet can give us a different perspective on the topic of DMs, and finally lead us to better understanding of their formation (grammaticalization, pragmaticalization), functions and status. Main hypothesis of this work would be as follows: abbreviations in CMC often serve a function of discourse markers. That function is above all pragmatic, and their neccesity and proliferation of their use in the CMC is a result of the internet characteristics. DMs are mostly used in a service of textual coherence, language economy and signalization of language functions , which is harder to achieve in CMC environment (e.g. lack of paralinguistic features, asynchronicity etc.) They have also been known to take on a function of discourse fillers or even prop- words (or hesitation forms), take part in personal or group idiom formation, and with that: formation of identities, establishing and maintaining social roles. Main goal of this paper is to show true potential of language creativity in the fluid context of the internet, through the analysis of polifunctional roles of CMC abbreviations. The very analysis has been made on a corpus of 600 online chat conversations (Hangouts, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp). Methodologically and theorethically speaking, the analysis has been grounded in main standpoints and tools of Conversation Analysis, Pragmatics, Interactional Sociolinguistics and Discourse Analysis.

discourse markers ; fillers ; abbreviations ; computer-mediated communication ; chat analysis ; discourse analysis ; pragmatics ; sociolinguistics

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