36.820, Reviews: Explorations in Internet Pragmatics: Rickert (2025)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-36-820. Sat Mar 08 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.820, Reviews: Explorations in Internet Pragmatics: Rickert (2025)

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Date: 08-Mar-2025
From: Marie Rickert [marie.rickert at ru.nl]
Subject: Discourse Analysis, Pragmatics; Explorations in Internet Pragmatics: Rickert (2025)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/35-2671

Title: Explorations in Internet Pragmatics
Subtitle: Intentionality, Identity, and Interpersonal Interaction
Series Title: Studies in Pragmatics
Publication Year: 2024

Publisher: Brill
           http://www.brill.com
Book URL: https://brill.com/display/title/69958

Editor(s): Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen, Lotta Lehti, Kristin V. Lexander,
Mikko T. Virtanen, Chaoqun Xie

Reviewer: Marie Rickert

SUMMARY
The volume “Exploration in Internet Pragmatics – Intentionality,
Identity and Interpersonal Interaction“, edited by Sanna-Kaisa
Tanskanen, Lotta Lehti, Kristin Vold Lexander, Mikko T. Virtanen and
Chaoqun Xie, brings together studies about interactional dynamics on a
variety of internet platforms. It is divided into three sections:
“Exploring Intentions and Intentionality“, “Exploring Identities in
Action“, and “Exploring Interpersonal Interaction“.
The section “Exploring Intentions and Intentionality“ features studies
aiming to unravel meanings of language users (intentions) and
linguistic acts (intentionality). This operationalization, based on
Haugh and Jaszolt (2012 ) is first introduced in the global
introduction to the volume (Chapter 1), jointly written by the
editors, and is consequently implemented throughout the first
chapters. In Chapter 2, “Intentionality Marketing in Online Consumer
Reviews of Books: Constructing Ordinary Expertise”, Tuija Vianen and
Charlotte Stormbom examine online book reviews. They find that review
authors use pragmatic means to display ordinary expertise when
recommending books, which makes them relatable to their readers.
Chapter 3, written by Dominika Beneš Kováčová and titled “‘He ain’t
never gonna be shit’: Cancel Culture and the Functions of Hashtags
#NameIsCanceled or #NameIsOverParty”, presents the case study of the
cancellation of the YouTuber James Charles, achieved through hashtag
use, amongst other means. Subsequently, Chapter 4 “Pragmatic
Macrocategories and Microstrategies in Research Project Homepages:
Meaning-Making through Verbal and Visual Devices“, written by Daniel
Pascual, provides insights into online self-presentation on research
project websites. Particularly, it presents multimodal strategies of
self-presentation and communication with readers (hyperlinks). The
section is closed by Anita Fetzer’s chapter "’It’s a very good thing
to bring democracy erm directly to everybody at home’: Participation
and Discursive Action in Mediated Political Discourse". Fetzer
discusses the ways in which members of society become participants in
UK parliamentary debates mediated through the Parliament’s social
media channels. She concludes that the pertinent mediated
meaning-making processes foreground ‘ordinariness’ and private-domain
meanings while they background ‘elite’ institutional meaning-making
processes.
The section "Exploring Identities in Action”, in turn, presents
studies dealing with the affordances and constraints of internet
communication for constructing identities. The studies particularly
focus on the dimension of collective identity and disidentification.
Ritesh Kumar’s and Bornini Lahiri’s chapter "Aggression and Misogyny
in Hindi and Bangla: A Study of YouTube Comments“ studies the latter.
The authors demonstrate how YouTube commentators create particular
identities through online aggression and hate speech against women and
LGBTQ+ groups. These face threats also serve as a way for commentators
to display a ‘masculine’ identity and, in doing so, align with other
misogynist users, creating a certain in-group. The creation of an
in-group and group cohesion is also under investigation in Krisztina
Laczkó’s and Szilárd Tátrai’s chapter, titled "Deictic Operations of
the Construal of Community Identity in Computer-Mediated Discourse“.
The study focuses on the use of pronouns, particularly first-person
plural to construe offline groups that the online-addressees get
excluded from. Similarly, collective identity is at stake in  Henri
Satokangas’ chapter "Construction of Disciplinary Identities on
Wikipedia“. Satokanga analyzes how identities of scientific
disciplines are construed through their Wikipedia pages, which often
integrate reported speech of different sources and genres. Satokanga
sees a field’s research objects and goals, as well as methods and
relationship to other fields, as dimensions of the discipline’s
co-constructed identity. Like this, he asserts, Wikipedia becomes a
site for a field’s identity construction.
The last section, “Exploring Interpersonal Interaction“ presents
studies about the co-construction of social action in mediated
settings, including the ways in which multimodal resources are used
for relational work in these settings. It is opened by the chapter
“Forms of Address as Indicators of Interpersonal Relations in Two
Types of French Online Political Discourse“ by Eva Havu (Chapter 9).
This chapter analyzes how contributors in online newspapers and
discussion forums use nominal and pronominal forms of address
(‘tu’/’vous’). Havu finds variation in the use of T and V across
different online settings, with V being commonly used in comments on
blogposts and T being the standard in discussion forums. The following
chapter, “Cross-Modal Management of Trolling during Live Streaming on
Periscope: A Micro-analysis“ by Mian Jia, takes a more conversation
analytic approach again when examining how livestreamers and viewers
handle instances of trolling within the cross-modal framework of
livestreams. While written trolling tends to be jointly ignored,
trolling via phone-in disturbs the progressivity of ongoing
interactional projects more. Participants, therefore, do make it
interactionally relevant. The following chapter of the volume focuses
on an environment that is characterized by the written mode again. In
“Prefacing Initiating Actions with ja ‘and’ in Finnish Group
Messaging“, Aino Koivisto, Heidi Vepsäläinen and Mikko T. Virtanen
examine how participants in multiparty  Finnish group messaging create
continuity across turns. The chapter zooms in on the practice of ja
‘and’-prefacing, which is used to indicate that a previous sequence is
not being ignored, but also to link to a prior online or offline
sequence. Both online and offline interaction are also prevalent in
the multilingual workplaces Kristin Vold Lexander’s chapter (Chapter
12) focuses on. In “Relational Work in Digital Employer–Employee
Interaction at the Multilingual Workplace“, she discusses the
interactional functions of code-switching and practices of
multilingual and multimodal resources for relational work. The study
shows, among other results, that the choice of media (e.g., chat or
call) is part of relational work at the multilingual workplace.
EVALUATION
For many individuals and communities, internet communication has
become an indispensable part of daily life. It occurs in the private
domain with family and friends, in the work context with employees and
colleagues, and in the public sphere, e.g., in political debates.
Across these and other contexts, internet communication takes place in
various forms and formats, including instant messaging, exchange
forums, livestreams, websites, and social media. A strong point of
this edited volume is that it covers this broad range of contexts and
forms of internet communication. The variety of languages represented
in the interactional sections deserves a special mention (French,
Finnish, Norwegian, Hindi and Bangla, amongst others).
Complementing the research field, the volume takes seriously insights
from studies on computer-mediated communication, which demonstrate
that different forms of internet communication bring along specific
affordances and constraints. For example, Chapter 10 bases its
analysis on the cross-modal affordances of livestreams, identifying
different practices in chat vs. call-in. Similarly, Chapter 12
illustrates that employees consider the affordances of the mediating
channel (call vs chat) for Second Language speakers. Although the
volume covers a broad range of internet communication, the inclusion
of chapters on widely used formats such as video calls or key social
media platforms (e.g., TikTok or Instagram) could have further
enriched its depth and scope. Yet, it must be taken into account that
editors have to adhere to word limits and, in this case, chose to
integrate certain more innovative sites of inquiry (e.g., Wikipedia
articles, Chapter 8), which arguably adds to the novelty of the
research presented.
The introduction by the editors (Chapter 1) makes an excellent case
for the coherence of the volume. It breaks down the structure of the
book, presenting the three different sections and operationalizing the
key concepts of each section. While the introduction provides a
comprehensible operationalization of intention and intentionality, the
focus of the first section, the authors could have elaborated on
critiques of researching intention(ality), particularly from within
the Conversation Analysis community, where cognitive claims are
classically avoided. However, the concepts provide a clear red thread
through the first section of the book and pertain to a relevant
research area within pragmatics.
It is furthermore insightful that the volume combines different
research approaches (Pragmatics, Sociolinguistics and Conversation
Analysis). This allows readers to learn about a broad spectrum of
facets of internet communication, from forms of address (Chapter 9)
through the use of verbal and visual resources (Chapter 4), to social
and linguistic practices of doing relational work (Chapter 11, 12).
All chapters are written in such a way as to require some prior
knowledge of the field and/or method. Consequently, this book is
particularly interesting for scholars from the aforementioned research
fields. It can also be used in teaching in cases where students have
prior knowledge.
With the volume, the editors aimed to “elaborate on the insights that
[…] pragmatic explorations in internet-mediated practices and
interaction may shed upon the further development of linguistic
theory” (Tanskanen et al., 2024, p.1). Through the thorough
investigation of the three aspects of intentionality, identity and
interpersonal interaction, the volume offers relevant knowledge about
these dimensions, which are central elements of online as well as
offline interactions. Future work could explore how far the observed
practices relate to offline-interactional practices.
All in all, “Exploration in Internet Pragmatics“ offers highly
interesting perspectives on digital communication more generally and
on the aspects of intentionality, identity and interpersonal
interaction on the internet more specifically.
REFERENCES
Haugh, M., & M Jaszczolt, K. (2012). Speaker intentions and
intentionality. Cambridge University Press.
Tanskanen, S. K., Lehti, L., Lexander, K. V., Virtanen, M. T., & Xie,
C. (2024). Exploring Intentionality, Identity, and Interpersonal
Interaction on the Internet. In S.K. Tanskanen, L. Lehti, K.V.
Lexander, M.T. Virtanen, C. Xie (Eds.): Explorations in Internet
Pragmatics: Intentionality, Identity, and Interpersonal Interaction
(pp. 1-17). Brill.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Dr. Marie Rickert is a post-doctoral researcher at Radboud University
(Nijmegen/The Netherlands), where she works at the Center for Language
Studies and the Interdisciplinary Research Hub on Digitalization and
Society. Her current research project focuses on digital tools in
language education, mainly from an EMCA-perspective. Marie’s general
research interests concern language practices in educational settings,
linguistic diversity, as well as methodological and ethical questions
in Conversation Analysis and Linguistic Ethnography.



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