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This study investigates the communicative practices in English and German online discussion fora as exemplified by two thematically related sample threads. Combining first- and second-order approaches to (im-)politeness, the paper focuses on the question of how participants use intergroup rudeness as a means of in- and outgroup construction and examines how intergroup rudeness is metapragmatically negotiated as the discussions unfold. The results show that intergroup rudeness as well as metapragmatic comments are handled very differently in the two communities explored. Suggesting cultural preferences, there is a much higher degree of interactivity and a clear preference for negotiation at an interpersonal level in the German discussion group; its English counterpart favours negotiation at an intergroup level. Both threads provide metapragmatic evidence that the frequent use of rudeness tokens does not automatically make rudeness an accepted norm.

Due to its genuinely participatory practices, quotations in Wikipedia entries are dynamically and collectively negotiated and revised by members of the broader public against the background of Wikipedia's central editing principles. Hence, quotations are an essential elaboration site of competing encyclopedic and participatory practices. This paper aims to show how Wikipedia authors, in modifying the context, focus and perspective of source material, engage in complex processes of framing and reframing of the source material and their participatory activities. These framing activities not only concern the quote-worthiness of source material and users' academic and/or participatory aspirations, but are also carried out at an interpersonal level and thus contribute to new dimensions of public encyclopedia-writing and reflective participatory discourse “from below”. To scrutinize these processes, this paper examines the types and functions of quotations in two highly contested example articles (Nation and Brexit) and their respective Talk-sections as retrieved in September 2017 (Nation) and December 2017 (Brexit), with a total of 49500 words. Corresponding to the two different discourse environments, contributors to both articles use quotations primarily in their indexical and argumentative functions. By contrast, quotations in the Talk-section mainly serve interpersonal and metapragmatic functions, sometimes intertwined with argumentative functions.

Introduction: Research on the discursive construction and representation of dementia has mainly focused on often problematic public mainstream discourses in which persons living with dementia (PWD) and their family care partners (FCPs) usually do not get a voice. This study aims to highlight differences between public mainstream and FCPs’ discourses, in order to provide a more differentiated picture based on detailed linguistic analysis. Method: The study analyzes FCPs’ discursive construction of PWD and their own role in the caring process in forum interaction in Talking Point, a public support platform managed by the Alzheimer’s Society (UK). The study applies a combination of categories well established in qualitative (Critical) Discourse Analysis, namely, semantic topoi and the so far less often utilized semantic category of clusivity. Results: The study reveals that FCPs, although resorting to some of the problematic mainstream discourses, exploit a more finely grained range of lifeward-oriented alternative discourses contesting dominating mainstream discourses.

Web 2.0 applications such as virtual online discussion fora have created a new form of public discourse beyond the mainstream media with new formats of public intercultural encounters , where the negotiation of intercultural conflicts is closely intertwined with the highly individualised and affective mutual- and self-construction of complex virtual cultural identities. In these fora, users often position themselves and their opinions in open opposition to broader cultural and social norms and contest mainstream media narratives, thereby also establishing an indirect link between public online and mainstream media discourse. Our study addresses two questions: Firstly, which linguistic strategies do participants use in order to construct themselves and others as members of a minority/majority culture and how do these constructed identities relate to mainstream media content? Secondly, how do participants position themselves vis-a-vis the mainstream media and what stances do they take towards mainstream media news coverage of long-term intercultural ethnic conflicts. To do so, we examine two threads from the public online discussion board UKDebate and one thread by the BBC -run Have your say , which deal with intercultural problems in the UK unfolding between UK-citizens and migrants and refugees from various cultural backgrounds. Our semantic analysis of users’ techniques of (self-)referencing and predication related to discourse topoi shows that participants use similar techniques when criticising mainstream media news-coverage and reception, but develop distinct group-specific patterns in shaping their respective cultural in- and out-groups. Furthermore, the discussions show similarities in the construction of minority groups between postings taking a majority perspective and tabloid news-coverage.

This study investigates an area of interpersonal pragmatic meaning in which the specific framing conditions of public Internet message boards seem to be particularly relevant: patterns of responses to rhetorical questions as one aspect of the negotiation of the rhetorical force of such questions among the participants in a discussion. Rhetorical questions are complex linguistic structures which are described in terms of a set of characteristic pragmatic features, including their answerhood (Ilie 1994, 1999). An analysis of approximately 900 postings to 22 English and 22 German Internet discussion threads on a range of comparable topics showed that rhetorical questions are often subject to negotiation by the participants in an interaction. The responses to such rhetorical questions play a crucial role in this process. This work examines all textual responses to questions that were interpreted as rhetorical and describes their structural patterns and frequency of use as well as different types and functions in the English- and the German-speaking groups. It also discusses the different patterns of use against the background of more general observations on communicative styles and practices across the two language communities.

This paper attempts to show that a cognitive perspective of the Gricean concept on the conversational maxims opens new perspectives on two problems which have not been dealt with in detail in the original model and in most successive work on conversational implicature: speaker activity and a cognitive underpinning of the maxims of conversation. As pinpointed in section, the first problem is the need for a shift in focus towards the actual production of linguistic utterances fulfilling or flouting the maxims in particularized conversational implicature. The second problem is explaining how the adherence or non-adherence to the maxims can be conceptually accounted for on the basis of some general cognitive principles. While section is devoted to a cognitive re-evaluation of the speaker's perspective, section will discuss some recent pragmatic developments, such as Levinson's notion of pragmatic marking in generalized implicature, which can be applied to particularized conversational implicature and fruitfully underpinned by more general cognitive principles. Section will present an outline of some basic cognitive principles involved when speakers fulfill or flout the maxims. In the course of the paper it becomes clear that both current pragmatic research and cognitive analysis contribute to a new understanding of Grice's ideas.

This study focuses on political discourse among laypersons in public Internet-based political discussion groups and analyzes emotive communication as a product, which is viewed as a continuum including both emotional attachment and emotional detachment. It analyzes 11,000 words of discussion in 180 contributions produced by a total of 65 participants of three political message boards with regard to a selected range of linguistic token features signaling emotional commitment. The results obtained are compared to their frequency in private conversation and newspaper registers to determine where the message boards range within the scale of related registers. The findings are discussed against the background of the framing conditions of political message board communication.

International audience; La sémiotique est définie par Umberto Eco comme "forme supérieure de la stylistique" et "modèle de toute critique esthétique". Aux yeux du sémioticien, le style n'est pas réductible à la dimension lexicale et syntaxique du discours (objet de la stylistique entendue dans son acception restrictive) mais doit être entendue comme une stratégie discursive. Eco tend à identifier le concept d'auteur "modèle" avec celui de style défini de la sorte. Le sémioticien se propose ainsi de décrire et d'analyser la "machinerie du style". Il ne définit pas le discours comme un système d'écarts par rapport à la langue commune mais comme l'accomplissement de toutes les virtualités du langage. Si la théorie textuelle tend à définir des invariants, la critique doit quant à elle mettre en lumière les variables, ce qui relève à proprement parler de l'invention stylistique.