230116 The Metapragmatics of Online Genres (S) (WiSe 2024/2025)

In our contemporary communication culture, people ubiquitously engage in talking about discourse or language per se. This phenomenon is referred to as 'metadiscourse' or 'metalinguistics'. By analogy, 'metapragmatics' is a research tradition which is interested in how and why interlocutors comment reflexively on their own or others' language use, thus negotiating meanings and norms of communication in highly specific communicative contexts. For that purpose, they draw on various linguistic devices, ranging from discourse markers, stance adverbials and multiple forms of reported speech to lengthy discussions about the way they have been talking with each other.

In this seminar, we will focus on a variety of 'traditional, reconfigured and emergent' (cf. Herring 2013) online genres and platforms and explore different conceptualizations of the term 'metapragmatics'. Putting on a metapragmatic lens, we will critically re-address core-pragmatic concepts (e.g. speech acts, conversational implicature, im-/politeness theory, deixis, etc.) as they are instantiated in discursive exchanges online. In particular, we will learn to identify and systematically analyse genre-specific forms and functions of metapragmatic comments, which serve as a key to reveal users' communicative intentions and expectations.