Smartphone Communication: Interactions in the App Ecosystem 1032060662, 9781032060668

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Smartphone Communication

This book offers a unique model for understanding the cognitive underpinnings, interactions, and discursive effects of our evolving use of smartphones in everyday app-mediated communication, from text messages and GIFs to images, video, and social media apps. Adopting a cyberpragmatics framework, grounded in cognitive pragmatics and relevance theory, it gives attention to how both the particular interfaces of different apps and users’ personal attributes influence the contexts and uses of smartphone communication. The communication of emotions – in addition to primarily linguistic content – is foregrounded as an essential element of the kinds of ever-present paralinguistic and phatic communication that characterises our exchange of memes, GIFs, “likes,” and image- and video-based content. Insights from related disciplines such as media studies and sociology are incorporated as the author unpacks the timeliest questions of our digitally mediated age. Aimed primarily at scholars and graduate students of communication, linguistics, pragmatics, media studies, and sociology of mass media, Smartphone Communication traffics in topics that will likewise engage upper-level undergraduate students. Francisco Yus is Full Professor at the University of Alicante, Spain, and guest professor at Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, China. He is currently the head of the Inter-university Research Institute of Applied Modern Languages of the Valencian Community (IULMA) at the University of Alicante as well as Head of the Research Group Professional and Academic English.

Routledge Studies in New Media and Cyberculture

Women and the Digitally-Mediated Revolution in the Middle East Applying Digital Methods Chiara Bernardi The Discursive Power of Memes in Digital Culture Ideology, Semiotics, and Intertextuality Bradley E. Wiggins Digital Media, Sharing and Everyday Life Jenny Kennedy Digital Icons Memes, Martyrs and Avatars Yasmin Ibrahim Artifcial Intelligence in Cultural Production Critical Perspectives on Digital Platforms Dal Yong Jin Loving Fanfction Exploring the Role of Emotion in Online Fandoms Brit Kelley Posthuman Capitalism Dancing with Data in the Digital Economy Yasmin Ibrahim Smartphone Communication Interactions in the App Ecosystem Francisco Yus For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Studies-in-New-Media-and-Cyberculture/book-series/RSINC

Smartphone Communication Interactions in the App Ecosystem

Francisco Yus

First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Francisco Yus The right of Francisco Yus to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-032-06066-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-06067-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-20057-4 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003200574 Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

To my supportive family: Pilar, Mónica and Javier

Contents

List of figures List of tables Acknowledgement 1 Introduction: the smartphone phenomenon

ix xi xii 1

PART I

Pragmatics, cyberpragmatics, and smartphones

11

2 Relevance theory, internet pragmatics, and cyberpragmatics

13

3 Contextual constraints and non-propositional effects

27

4 Smartphone communication and app usability

43

PART II

Smartphone-mediated discourse and communication

55

5 Texting: from SMS to smartphone messaging

57

6 Phone calls and video calls are (surprisingly) also enabled

107

7 New narratives and storytelling on the smartphone

119

PART III

Media on the smartphone

141

8 Media on the smartphone: images

143

9 Media on the smartphone: video and animation (GIF, sticker)

173

viii

Contents

PART IV

The interplay between the physical and the virtual

193

10 Livestreaming: the case of Twitch

195

11 Location-based smartphone interaction

211

12 Towards online–offline congruence: social networking apps

231

13 Concluding remarks and future projections

270

References Index

275 307

Figures

1.1 The evolution of smartphones with some representative devices per year. 3.1 A chart of extended cyberpragmatic research. 5.1 Pragmatic implications of contractive and expressive textisms. 5.2 An example of misunderstanding in the use of emojis. 5.3 SM conversation in which emoji substitutes verbal elements of the message. 5.4 A conversation including an instance of emoji without function. 5.5 WhatsApp conversation made up of emojis. 6.1 Evolution of human interaction and socialisation (adapted from Wellman 2001). 6.2 Overlapping mutual cognitive environments (inspired in Schlote and Linke 2010: 124). 7.1 Evolution of cybergenres (Shepherd and Watters 1998). 7.2 Spanish Twitter thread by Noe T. 8.1 Visual explicature from a panel in the comic book Exit. © Nabiel Kanan. 8.2 User–audience contiguity (through an image) on social media. 8.3 A cyberpragmatics of the selfie. 8.4 Visual explicature and visual implicature in selfie-based communication. 9.1 A cyberpragmatics of (first-order) video-related communication. 9.2 The smartphone app Bilibili. 10.1 A cyberpragmatics of livestreaming on Twitch. 10.2 The Twitch interface (desktop and smartphone). 10.3 Three sample chat box interactions on Twitch. 10.4 “Global” system emotes on Twitch. 11.1 Facebook check-ins.

3 36 61 80 90 93 94 110 116 122 137 144 154 161 165 174 183 197 200 203 204 225

x

Figures

12.1 Facebook app interface (left) and Messenger app for interactions (right). 12.2 Stickers and emojis in replies to users’ posts on Facebook. 12.3 Some of the multimodal humorous discourses shared on SNAs during the coronavirus pandemic. 12.4 Paralinguistic digital affordances on Facebook plus recent coronavirus-related reactions. 12.5 Image-based interactivity triggers. 12.6 Dialogue cross-cutting the physical–virtual realm and group-identity effects.

233 241 244 250 261 267

Tables

8.1 Identity-related constraints–effects correlations mediated by images. 10.1 Questions on Twitch (summarised from Ask et al. 2019). 10.2 Some popular Twitch emotes described. 11.1 User’s environmental orientations between physical and virtual contexts (Misra and Stokols 2012).

159 196 206 213

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Bryn Moody for his stylistic suggestions on a draft of this book. I would also like to thank the Routledge editorial team, Suzanne Richardson, Tanushree Baijal, and Emma Sherriff, for their outstanding job at editing this book.

1

Introduction The smartphone phenomenon

1.1 The ubiquity of smartphone communication Nowadays it is almost impossible to walk on the street without coming across someone typing on their smartphone. These devices are ubiquitous, much more than first-generation mobile phones. Unlike those mobile phones, smartphones are small-sized computers that people use for myriad purposes, beyond the oral or video conversations that initially constituted the main point of mobile phones compared to today’s massive use of apps. In the smartphone era, communication between humans has not decreased; talk has, though. The app ecosystem on smartphones, as labelled in the title of the book, offers users a whole range of options for interaction beyond traditional phone calls. Certainly, the number of options for interaction and communication that we are currently offered through smartphone apps has soared in comparison to previous devices: “persistently internet-connected smartphones afford communication patterns as complex as those available on the personal computer. Additionally, they offer possibilities for access to online information as well as various forms of content consumption and production, including multimedia and games” (Bertel 2013: 6). The smartphone can be considered a metamedium, as proposed by Márquez (2017), a platform which houses many old and new media. Similarly, Jansson (2013, in Pettegrew and Day 2015: 124) proposed the term mediatisation for a transformation brought about by technology that not only influences our communication but also reflects how other social processes become inseparable from smartphone technology and dependent on it across a broad variety of domains and at different levels. Finally, such devices fit the label of polymedia (Madianou 2014, 2020), understood as an environment of communicative opportunities that functions as an “integrated structure” within which each individual medium is defined in relation to all other media (thus fitting the label app ecosystem proposed in this book). This kind of interrelated structure satisfies the need for imbrication and complementation between apps that we find on smartphones nowadays. Indeed, in polymedia “the emphasis shifts from a focus on the qualities of each particular medium as a discrete technology to DOI: 10.4324/9781003200574-1

2

Introduction

an understanding of new media as an environment of affordances” (Madianou and Miller 2012: 170). Framed within this app ecosystem, smartphones give people enhanced opportunities to strengthen personal relationships via more efficient relational coordination. As Pettegrew and Day (2015: 126) stressed, new technologies such as smartphone apps are reshaping various forms of communication and workplace relationships along with everyday forms of talk. Such advances in the digital age form a collective dimension of interpersonal communication that fully centres technology on our day-to-day experiences. Similarly, Wei and Lo (2006) proposed six gratifications arising from smartphone use: information seeking, social utility, affection, fashion and status, mobility, and accessibility. At the very heart of this new media ecosystem lies the app as the quintessential unit of smartphone management. Especially for younger generations, apps serve as the gate through which they conceptualise the world they live in. This ecosystem of smartphone apps entails that users can pursue a wide variety of goals with their devices and add new apps when new personal needs turn up in the future: “Users decide what a smartphone is for themselves, rather than just adopting a given product” (Jung 2014: 300). As Gardner and Davis (2013: 8) emphasised, whatever human beings might want should be provided by apps; and if the desired app still does not exist, it should be devised right away; and if no app can be imagined or devised, then the desire simply does not (or at least should not) matter. The smartphone has invaded face-to-face interactions too. People often look at their smartphones for a substantial amount of time and dismiss those around them in their physical environment, often causing uncomfortable situations. Reid (2018: 5) states in this respect that we have normalised our techno-lives: “We have come to accept that smartphones lurk in the background of every conversation and interaction, and we rarely expect full attentiveness from one another. We excuse our smartphone habits as important and necessary, constantly making justifications for their presence.” Two main aims underlie this book. On the one hand, it aims to describe the issues involved in the production, communication, and interpretation of discourses on smartphones, additionally providing a theoretical, (cyber) pragmatic account of the kinds of interaction that are sustained through these devices. On the other hand, the book ultimately aims to find an explanation to why people find smartphone communication so interesting, why users get so addicted to information and interactions on these devices even though they are often trivial, cues-filtered and lacking means of contextualisation; why users dismiss the rich face-to-face environments around them and prefer to remain glued to the smartphone screen, isolating themselves from the physical world and living their digital lives so intensely through these devices instead. The smartphone, undoubtedly the most pervasive and influential 21stcentury invention, was born in 2007 when the first iPhone appeared in the

Introduction

3

market with its app-mediated interface managed on a touchscreen and with the possibility to download apps. Since then, as shown in Figure 1.1, many other companies have copied or developed this kind of interface; and the evolution of these devices has been amazing. The smartphone is not just a mobile phone; it can actually be described in more accurate terms as a portable personal computer (Masur 2019: 187). Indeed, smartphones offer apps for any user’s need (synchronous messaging communication, social networking, email, location-based services, camera, photo editing, video . . .) in a single device. This app ecosystem, together with internet connectivity and their capacity to track users’ location, stand out as the three key features of smartphones nowadays (Bertel 2013: 13). With the countless apps that are available to download on smartphones, users can take advantage of these devices for entertainment, search for information, and/or use apps to maintain relationships. This device is also optimal to achieve hedonic goals, when users are bored and just want to “kill time.” As such, smartphones have proved to be addictive in two realms. Firstly, addiction to the smartphone itself, with users carrying the device with them at all times as an extension of their bodies (a digital companion in the words of Carolus et al. 2019), and causing nomophobia (fear of not having the smartphone with them); and secondly, addiction to the apps installed, which causes fomo (fear of missing out, that is, fear of not accessing all the barrage of information provided by these apps, for instance, missing out on the latest news about the celebrities that the user follows). Both addictions (to the device and to apps) can be easily understood given the range of interactive and communicative options that the smartphone ecosystem offers, which may include voice-based audio files, written

Figure 1.1 The evolution of smartphones with some representative devices per year.

4

Introduction

messages (i.e. typed and often oralised using what will be labelled as text alteration in Chapter 5, in conjunction with visual aids such as emojis, stickers and GIFs), pictures, videos, and links or other digital content, to quote but a few. Depending on the app through which these types of communications take place, the content can be extremely private and sensitive (e.g. in dyadic messaging conversations) or non-sensitive and public (for instance, when posting a publicly available picture on a photo-sharing platform such as Instagram for others to see and comment on).

1.2 Main objectives and underlying hypotheses This book has as its objective to provide the first ever fully cyberpragmatic account of smartphone communication (Yus 2011a).1 If purely pragmatic analyses of internet-mediated communication are scarce (see Herring 2013b), such pragmatic analysis applied to smartphone communication is certainly even more scarce. Therefore, the ultimate aim of this volume consists in filling this gap existing in (cyber)pragmatic research. Its foundations can be identified in my theory of cyberpragmatics. According to the premise underlying this book, all smartphone-mediated communication can be explained by resorting to basic claims regarding a cognitive and inherently human search for relevance (also in their everyday smartphone interactions), paired with human reluctance to expend too much effort in these smartphone-mediated interactions. Broadly speaking, relevance theory (the theoretical foundation of cyberpragmatics) claims that, because our minds are relevance-oriented, we tend to focus our attention on what will most probably provide us with some interpretive reward, or expressed differently, on what is bound to be beneficial to us. Therefore, in smartphone communication users are also bound to show a biological tendency to pay attention to the most relevant stimuli on their smartphones, the ones that draw their attention more than other competing stimuli. At the same time, they will be discouraged if their smartphone interactions demand too much mental effort, for instance apps that demand too many taps on the screen to get to the desired information. However, as will be seen in the book, very often users are ready to spend additional effort in managing certain apps if they get some reward from these interactions that compensates for this extra effort. Secondly, relevance theory claims that all utterances have a number of possible interpretations, though not all of them are equally likely (i.e. equally relevant). An addressee will inevitably tend to select the most relevant interpretation. But when it comes to smartphone communication, the hypothesis is that the mediation of smartphone interfaces, or the fact that much information on these devices is typed and hence devoid of adequate contextual information, may make this interpretive decision harder or may demand increased effort when working out the intended interpretation. Thirdly, an underlying hypothesis suggests that studying smartphone communication by focusing only on the interpretations and eventual relevance of

Introduction

5

the propositional information contained in the utterances exchanged between users appears as a seriously limited approach to this kind of communication. Therefore, the book argues for the importance of completing and complementing the cyberpragmatic study of smartphone communication with two terms: contextual constraint and non-propositional effect (see Chapter 3). In a nutshell, contextual constraints may be defined as aspects which underlie smartphone acts of communication and users’ interactions (i.e. they exist prior to the act of communication) and determine their eventual (un)successful outcome. They frame, as it were, communication and have an impact both on the quality of interpretation and on the willingness to engage in future interactions. Non-propositional effects, in turn, refer to feelings, emotions or impressions which may or may not be overtly intended by the sender user, but which are nevertheless triggered by the act of smartphone communication. These add (positively or negatively) to the effects obtained from utterance interpretation (propositional content). The addition of these terms becomes essential if we want to understand why users interact to such an extent on their smartphones, why they shy away from oral interactions in physical settings, or why they resort to typed text even though more contextualised (and free) options, including phone and video calls, are available on the smartphone as well. Finally, this book will also take into account the construction and management of the relevance-theoretic notion of mutual manifestness – closer to more traditional terms such as mutual knowledge and shared knowledge, albeit with a different cognitive approach. In short, this notion refers to the intersection of the interlocutors’ accessible information at a specific stage of the dialogue in which they are engaged (Sperber and Wilson 1995: 40). Speakers have to guess and predict not only the characteristics of their interlocutors’ accessible contextual information, but also which part of that information is shared (mutually manifest). Successful smartphone interactions are normally the ones where contextual information plays a major part in revealing the information that is mutual or shared by the interlocutors. In sum, interlocutors often take for granted information to which neither of them has real access due to a lack of physical co-presence or miscalculated context accessibility in the addressee, and misunderstandings and miscommunication may consequently arise. The wrong assumptions of mutuality may be focused on the physical–virtual interface; by way of example, to assume that the other user has similar access to the information surrounding the “sender user” from their physical environment or from assumptions of usage codes involved in certain communicative strategies such as the use of emojis or text alteration. Some more specific objectives of the book are: [1] To study how users manage their communicative strategies and intended interpretations through smartphone messaging apps (WhatsApp, Snapchat, WeChat, Line, etc.).

6

Introduction

[2] To account for the implications of text alteration and the use of emojis when users inferentially fill the gap between what the other users type and what they really intend to communicate through messaging apps. [3] To provide a description of contextualisation as well as presumption of information mutuality in oral communication through the smartphone. [4] To assess the cyberpragmatic challenge posed by new narratives created on smartphones in terms of authorship, discourses, and varieties of readers. [5] To analyse the interpretive outcomes that arise from discourses such as text, image, video, (animated) stickers, and GIFs, together with their multimodal combinations. [6] To account for livestreaming on the smartphone, paying special attention to the portal Twitch. [7] To study the impact of the virtual–physical interface on how communication is managed, context is selected, and mutuality of information is predicted and accomplished through location-aware smartphone apps. [8] To account for the use of social networking apps on the smartphone.

1.3 Overview of this book This volume is divided into four Parts. The first Part, Pragmatics, cyberpragmatics, and smartphones, supplies the theoretical foundations of the book and is made up of three chapters: Chapter 2 addresses basic ideas of pragmatics (especially relevance theory), internet pragmatics, and cyberpragmatics, offering a description of the main tenets included in these theories. Relevance theory seeks to answer two main questions regarding human communication (Carston 2009a): (a) how does the hearer/reader of an utterance arrive at the correct interpretation? and (b) on what basis does the speaker/writer choose a particular linguistic expression in order to communicate the meaning/thoughts they have in mind? These also become important for a cyberpragmatics of smartphone communication. This chapter likewise offers an introduction to internet pragmatics and cyberpragmatics. In turn, Chapter 3 deals with the aforementioned notions of contextual constraint and non-propositional effect, both of which will be present in every chapter of the book as a complement to more proposition-oriented cyberpragmatic analyses. Chapter 4 deals with the importance of app usability in today’s smartphone communication. Usability affects users’ processing effort when using apps, which clearly plays a part in the eventual relevance of the information accessed or interactions carried out through these apps. Part II, Smartphone-mediated discourse and communication, comprises three analyses of (mainly verbal) communication on smartphones. Chapter 5, which revolves around smartphone messaging, starts with an analysis of SMS texting. After that, a detailed examination of smartphone

Introduction

7

messaging is offered, beginning with interface- and user-related constraints that determine the users’ communicative activity on those messaging apps. The next sections address smartphone messaging discourse. The chapter ends with an account of non-propositional effects stemming from smartphone messaging use. Chapter 6 focuses on phone and video calls, one of the richest and most contextualised means of interaction on a smartphone, because the subtleties of the interlocutors’ voice and visual nonverbal behaviour (in the case of video calls) are available to lead users in the right inferential direction. The chapter also analyses smartphone use as one further step in the evolution of human communication and interaction from door-to-door communication to today’s smartphone-mediated communication between physically scattered interlocutors. Besides, the chapter highlights a proposal of four different layers of mutuality (mutual manifestness in relevance-theoretical terminology) existing between interlocutors having a conversation in a faceto-face environment and phone calls intruding on this offline conversation. Chapter 7 explains the specificity of new digital narratives on the internet, placing special emphasis on smartphone-mediated narratives compared to traditional printed narratives. After some insights into these narratives, several types of digital narrative on smartphones are analysed and contrasted with more traditional counterparts. Part III, which revolves around Media on the smartphone, offers a proposal for a possible cyberpragmatic analysis of such discourses. Lack of space prevents an account of all the media involved in smartphone communication, and therefore this section focuses on three types of media: image, video, and animated discourses (stickers, GIFs). Chapter 8 centres the analysis on images and possible types of communication sustained by means of these discourses. It starts with a proposal to equate inferential strategies typically suggested for utterances to the ones required to interpret images. The chapter continues, providing some historical background on camera practices before moving on to an account of possible contextual constraints influencing the use of images on smartphones. The chapter comes to an end with a long section devoted to selfies, about which a cyberpragmatic chart of steps is proposed. Chapter 9 in turn focuses on smartphone videos and their roles in smartphone-based acts of communication, together with an analysis of animated discourses such as GIFs and stickers. The chapter firstly proposes an analysis of online video, including the duality of first-order and second-order videocentred interactions. While the former is the initial act of video communication, the latter takes place when users share or forward the video on a different site, which entails different audiences, strategies of contextualization, and eventual effects. Its next section deals with the specific qualities of smartphone videos and their management through dedicated apps. Some smartphone-specific apps such as Bilibili and TikTok are analysed, together with some innovative multimodal discourses, for instance the overlay of

8

Introduction

video and text superimposed on the screen in the Chinese trend of danmu. The final part of the chapter is devoted to animated discourses: GIFs and stickers and their respective roles in the interactions where they typically appear. Finally, Part IV, The interplay between the physical and the virtual, is devoted to aspects that, one way or another, entail an interrelation between online and offline environments for communication and interaction purposes. Chapter 10 addresses livestreaming on the smartphone, paying special attention to the platform Twitch. As such, livestreaming connects the physical and the virtual, since users normally stream from a physical location for their audiences to watch online and frequently on their smartphones. Following an initial analysis of the contextual constraints involved in livestreaming platforms, the chapter specifies possible streamer and audience reasons to engage in livestreaming and to watch it. The central part of the chapter focuses on the kinds of interactions that take place on the popular app Twitch, which exhibit different possibilities through different levels of contextualisation, from rich video-mediated communication to plain typed text in a chat box, which have interesting pragmatic implications. Chapter 11 covers one of the most intrinsic aspects of smartphone-mediated communication: the interface between the physical and the virtual, along with the growing importance of users’ location in today’s interactions and access to information, also important in relation to pragmatic issues such as the contextualisation of utterances exchanged through these devices. The first pages of this chapter review the increasing relevance of location and explain how mobile devices have altered traditional forms of communication in physical settings. Some possible labels that convey this idea of merging physical–virtual sources of information are subsequently listed. The chapter then shifts into more communicative issues associated with smartphone location. Several sub-sections address topics such as contextual constraints in communication through locative media, a more intention-centred account of manifestness when using locative media, and finally the analysis of non-propositional effects leaking from the use of locative media. To conclude, the chapter mentions the trend of check-ins on social media (more specifically on Facebook). Part IV ends with Chapter 12, dedicated to social networking sites on smartphones. This chapter was placed inside this Part about the interface between online and offline environments because on social networking sites the user is expected to remain the same unique person in both environments, online and offline. Indeed, users regard their online self as an integral part of their overall identity production and thus coordinate their online self-identity with their offline self-performance. The chapter addresses interaction within social networking sites, especially highlighting users’ reactions such as Likes (labelled as paralinguistic digital affordances). Some specific comments about the specificity of social networking sites on smartphones are also provided, together with an independent section devoted to the important issue

Introduction

9

of identity on social networking sites. It is argued that identity shaping, selfexpression, social bonding, and search for audience validation stand out as the main reasons users engage so intensely in social networking. The book ends with a short chapter of concluding remarks and future projections. Some future pragmatic research issues on smartphone communication are proposed and briefly commented upon. Today’s uses of smartphones are likely to continue in the near future, but new apps will become fashionable, and new ways of interaction on these apps will turn up and eventually become conventionalised among smartphone users.

1.4 The specificity of smartphone communication This book, in its four Parts, aims to provide cyberpragmatic insights on a number of issues framed within interaction, communication, and context accessibility on smartphones. It shows ways in which the smartphone meets current needs for communication, interaction, retrieval of information, and identity shaping. As such, it also shows how specific smartphone communication is in aspects such as the following: 1

2

3

Smartphone communication interfaces the physical and the virtual; it encompasses a whole range of communicative options ranging from cues-filtered text-based discourses to highly contextualised video. The smartphone is an original communicative device holding an app ecosystem, where users combine different apps for their communicative needs. This ecosystem is both appealing and challenging. The implications of this multiplicity of apps in smartphone communication are one of the most interesting issues addressed in the book. In this sense, Madianou (2020: 76–77) comments that “to understand a smartphone, it is not sufficient to list all platforms nested in a particular mobile device. We need to understand how the assemblage of platforms and applications produces a new dynamic that extends beyond the capabilities or affordances of individual platforms. Users define and use each platform in relation to all others within a composite environment.” As a theory of how people rely on contextual information when interpreting utterances, cyberpragmatics, with its anchorage in relevance theory, should be suited to account for the multiple acts of communication taking place through smartphones on an ordinary basis.

Note 1 The book Cyberpragmatics (John Benjamins 2011) is now open access: https:// doi.org/10.1075/pbns.213.

Part I

Pragmatics, cyberpragmatics, and smartphones

2

Relevance theory, internet pragmatics, and cyberpragmatics

2.1 Introduction: an inferential model of communication This book takes cyberpragmatics (Yus 2001, 2010, 2011a, 2013, 2016a, 2018e) as the main theoretical framework, which is grounded in cognitive pragmatics and specifically in relevance theory (henceforth RT) (Sperber and Wilson 1995, henceforth S&W). As such, cyberpragmatics aims to analyse the inferences that users make when trying to identify other users’ communicative intentions based on what they code verbally (i.e. as discourses spoken, written, typed, recorded, uploaded on the Net, etc.) or nonverbally (i.e. as images, intentional gestures, facial expressions, emojis, GIFs, stickers, etc.). Cyberpragmatics is also interested in the mental representations that underlie communication and in the mental interpretive processes that are at work during an internet-mediated interaction. The main theoretical foundation of RT is the claim that human cognition is geared to the maximisation of relevance, that is, it always tries to obtain the highest benefit from all the inputs it processes, including inputs from all the range of smartphone apps that are available at the user’s disposal. As Wilson (2014: 4) summarises, relevance is sought everywhere: in utterances, communicative acts, and any external stimulus or internal mental representation (e.g. a thought) that presumably will yield inferential benefits. And the same applies to smartphone communication: users tend to pay attention to notifications of messaging utterances flashing on the smartphone screen, to users’ comments and reactions to a social networking entry, to the name of a person on the smartphone screen during a phone call, and so on, because these inputs will presumably yield some benefit to the user. Cyberpragmatics has mainly focused on theorising about how “addressee users” search for relevance while inferring interpretations from intentionally communicated utterances produced by “sender users” on the internet, but its underlying ideas are fully applicable to the inferential strategies performed by today’s smartphone users regarding the selection and processing of the barrage of content that they access on and retrieve from their devices. This book proposes precisely a first application of cyberpragmatics to smartphone communication. DOI: 10.4324/9781003200574-2

14 Pragmatics, cyberpragmatics, smartphones In general, pragmatics can be defined as the branch of semiotics that analyses “how more gets communicated than is said” (Yule 1996: 3). RT emphasises the role of inference in filling the gap existing between what is said (or written, recorded, typed) and what is eventually interpreted. Indeed, there is often (if not always) a more or less substantial gap between the information that is literally coded in the utterance and what is meant by it and interpreted from it, a gap that has to be filled by inference. Therefore, although users type messages, record audio files, or talk to others on the smartphone (coding activities), S&W stress that most of the interpretive activities involved are inferential. Since both cyberpragmatics and RT are pragmatic theories, both underline the role of context in human communication and, specifically, in this inferential gap-filling activity that addressees go through when turning utterances into fully contextualised interpretations, and the same applies to contextualisation in smartphone-mediated interactions. Users predict their interlocutors’ accessibility to contextual information as part of their interpretive activity. The outcome of this inferential activity is often correct, but it may sometimes lead to misunderstandings (Yus 1999a, 1999b), especially if the medium used is cues-filtered and devoid of orality, as happens with messaging conversations on smartphones.

2.2 Intentions and principles of relevance RT proposes two kinds of intention: The communicative intention, which alerts the hearer to the speaker’s willingness to communicate information to the hearer, and the informative intention, which concerns the actual information (a set of assumptions in relevance-theoretic terminology) that the speaker wants to communicate (and which is revealed by the prior identification of the communicative intention). As will be analysed in the next chapters, smartphone apps fulfil these two intentions. For example, in messaging apps (unless this option has been disabled) there is a notification on the smartphone screen associated with a noise (signalling the sender user’s communicative intention), which alerts the addressee of that user’s informative intention. A consequence of this picture of communication is that only the interactions that satisfy both types of intention are worth analysing by (cyber)pragmatics, while accidental transmissions of information (the ones in which the speaker simply gives off or exudes information without an intention to communicate it) would be outside its scope of analysis. For example, in the similar situations (1) and (2), only the latter would deserve (cyber)pragmatic analysis, even though in both of them inference is devoted to making sense of the other person’s behaviour: (1) Tom is walking along a street that leads to the railway station and sees his friend Peter, who is carrying a suitcase. While walking fast, Peter

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looks at his watch, worried. Tom infers correctly that Peter is hurrying to catch a train and that he is worried because he is late. (2) Tom is walking along a street that leads to the railway station and sees his friend Peter, who is carrying a suitcase. Tom waves at him. Peter waves back and, while looking at him, he points at his watch with a worried expression. Tom infers correctly that Peter is trying to communicate that he is hurrying to catch a train, that he is late and has no time to talk to him. S&W also adopt the term implicature, coined by Grice, but they introduce distinctions and modifcations, which are part of the broader term implication or implicated conclusion (see Jodłowiec 2015). Implicatures are interpretations that are fully tied to contextual information and make no sense without the hearer’s ability to access that information. An example is Ann’s implicated interpretation (5) from Mike’s utterance in (3), an implicature which can only be derived by combining the explicitly communicated information from Mike’s utterance (roughly Mike’s parents are away next weekend) and the contextual information in (4), which Mike expects Ann to be able to retrieve and which Ann accesses as part of her interpretation: (3) Ann: Are you going to next Saturday’s party? Mike: My parents are away this weekend. (4) Contextual information: If Mike’s parents are away, he has to look after his grandmother, who lives with them and is ill. (5) Implicated interpretation (implicature): Mike won’t be able to go to next Saturday’s party. For RT, context is needed for both explicit interpretations (which RT calls explicatures) and implicated interpretations or implicatures (see Carston 2009b), which are also pervasive in smartphone communication. And both demand contextual information and pragmatic inferential strategies. Clark (2013: 6) provides an illustrative example in (6), in which the assistant’s utterance communicates much more than is said, roughly what is provided in (7): (6) I was in my local corner shop recently and about to pay for two pots of cream cheese. The assistant at the till said to me: “They’re three for two just now.” (7) They [pots of cream cheese of the type which you are about to buy] are [on sale in this shop under a special offer which means that if you buy] two [pots of that cream cheese which you are about to buy] [we will give you a third pot without charging you any more] [at the present time and for as long as the offer lasts].

16 Pragmatics, cyberpragmatics, smartphones Another example is provided in (8) below: (8) Max: How was the party? Did it go well? Amy: There wasn’t enough drink, and everyone left early. (9) Parties are not successful if people leave early and they run out of drink. (10) The party was awful and did not go well. It is clear that Amy’s intended interpretation is the implicature (10). In this case, the hearer’s access to background commonsense information such as (9) will easily lead to that implicature. However, the explicit interpretation of Amy’s utterance also demands a lot of contextualisation. Firstly, drink is narrowed into specifcally alcoholic drinks. Secondly, everyone is also narrowed to everyone at the party. Finally, the specifc time frame of early depends on what is commonly assumed to be “early” for parties in the age group to which Max and Amy belong.

2.3 Manifestness and cognitive environments The notions of manifest and manifestness in RT deserve explanation, together with the related proposal of (mutual) cognitive environment, also at work in smartphone communication. People construct different concepts and representations of the world, just as their personal experiences are different. S&W call this array of information cognitive environments, which are made up of manifest assumptions, the ones that a person is capable at a certain time of representing mentally (S&W 1995: 39). S&W also propose the notion of degrees of manifestness, because every time we identify a stimulus, some assumptions are more accessible than others. As a consequence, manifestness is context-dependent (S&W 2015: 134). In a nutshell, while smartphone interactions are taking place, the interlocutors are exposed to a great deal of contextual information, either coming from the device itself, from the physical environment where the interlocutors are located, or from their own mental background store of information. Crucially, some of this manifest information is accessible to both users, and the “sender user” predicts that this information is indeed mutual. In this case, S&W propose the term mutual cognitive environment for the amount of information that is manifest to both interlocutors in a specific situation. At every stage of any smartphone interaction, interlocutors make predictions about each other’s accessibility to certain information that is supposedly mutual, and smartphone interactions produce an enlargement of this mutuality.

2.4 Principles and conditions of relevance At the beginning of this chapter, it was underlined that a basic tenet of RT is its conceptualisation of human cognition as constantly geared to the

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maximisation of relevance, to obtaining the highest possible reward (positive cognitive effects in relevance-theoretic terminology) from the stimuli that it processes. This general tendency is covered by the cognitive principle of relevance: “Human cognition tends to be geared to the maximisation of relevance.” Needless to say, smartphone users also aim at interpretive reward when they use apps, either for obtaining objectively relevant information or out of interactions through these apps (see W&S 2002: 251). Processing inputs for relevance is seen as something that happens automatically, in ways that are generally outside our control, including our everyday smartphone interactions. Clark (2013: 107) correctly stresses that we pay attention to some things more than others, for instance while walking down the street, where one’s perceptual systems are on the lookout for stimuli which might be relevant. In a similar vein, upon looking at the smartphone screen, some users will pay attention to some app-mediated stimuli rather than others depending on their communicative or interactive needs. Inside this general cognitive principle of relevance, there is a sub-principle that is directly applied to instances of intentional communication (called ostensive-inferential communication under RT): the communicative principle of relevance: “Every ostensive stimulus conveys a presumption of its own optimal relevance.” This second principle is associated with the presumption of relevance that utterances carry and which makes users pay attention to their smartphones as soon as the smartphone rings or a notification alerts of incoming messages. When a smartphone user overtly claims the attention of another user (through texting, commenting to a social networking site entry, making a phone call . . .), it is clear to the addressee user that there is an underlying intention to communicate something to them. But processing the information that a smartphone-mediated discourse conveys is subject to risks and effort: the risk of not knowing exactly which is the intended interpretation and the effort to select an interpretation of that discourse and process it in a context. This is why every act of smartphone communication carries a presumption of its eventual relevance: The smartphone user is aware of the mental effort that he/she is demanding from the interlocutor and conveys the presumption that processing the utterance is going to be worth that effort. In fact, all utterances exchanged through smartphones have a number of possible interpretations, but hearers do not construct all of these interpretations simultaneously (it would be too mentally tiring), since some of these interpretations are more accessible and likely than others. With the psychologically rooted ability that smartphone users possess to choose interpretations, they will evaluate these interpretations and opt for (supposedly) the most relevant one in the specific context in which it is processed. The users’ minds are capable of assessing interpretations in terms of balances of interest or benefit (positive cognitive effects in relevance-theoretic terminology) and mental processing effort and of choosing the one that provides the best balance (cognitive effects and mental effort constitute the two main

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conditions of relevance that, according to RT, the human mind assesses upon interpreting a new input). People are unwilling to be pushed into supplementary effort if they do not obtain any reward in return for the effort, and that applies, for example, to the design of smartphone apps, some of which frustrate users due to the effort that their management demands (see Chapter 4).

2.5 Comprehension Comprehension, according to RT, has to do with turning schematic coded stimuli (e.g. spoken words, written discourses, audio files, typed messages . . .) into fully contextualised propositions that are selected as candidates to match the speaker’s intended explicit interpretation (explicatures) or are combined with context to yield the intended implicated conclusions (implicatures). This “explicit proposition plus context” is an interesting (and frequent) kind of interpretive outcome that entails the combination of new incoming information (from an utterance, an image, a nonverbal behaviour, etc.) and already available (or highly accessible) information (contextual information) to yield relevant conclusions. This inferential combination also applies to conclusions drawn from nonverbal stimuli and even from noncommunicative stimuli (the mind draws conclusions from all the inputs that it processes if deemed to be presumably relevant). Therefore, both when we select an utterance to communicate our thoughts (coding) and when we select an interpretation that probably matches the speaker’s thoughts (inferring), we assess potential interpretations and select the most relevant one. An example of relevance-driven coding is provided in (11): (11) Tom: Would you like a hamburger? Ann: a No, thanks. b I am a vegetarian. In (11), Ann has many possible utterances to choose from as an answer to Tom’s question; (a-b) are two of them. The frst one is a direct, straightforward answer that demands little processing effort from Tom, while the second is more demanding, since Tom has to access (from encyclopaedic knowledge) the information that vegetarians do not eat meat and derive – as an implicature – that Ann does not want the hamburger. However, even if more costly in cognitive resources, answer (b) is much more relevant than (a), because the extra mental effort is compensated for by an offset of interest (cognitive effects): in this case not only the refusal but also the reason for it are communicated. Another example is provided in (12), this time illustrating a relevancedriven (but eventually incorrect) choice of an interpretation: (12) John: Now, tell me, how’s your girlfriend? Mike: She’s no longer my girlfriend.

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John: Oh! I am really sorry . . . I really thought you got on very well with each other. Mike: No! I mean . . . She is now my wife! We got married last month. John: Oh! I see . . . Congratulations! I had no idea! In this particular dialogue, there is an incorrect choice of an interpretation (shaped as an implicature) for She is no longer my girlfriend. This utterance has a number of possible interpretations, all of them compatible with what Mike has coded, among them the ones listed in (13). (13) a His girlfriend has died. b They have split up. c They are now married. Obviously, not all of the interpretations are equally likely to be selected as the intended interpretation, and John, following a relevance-oriented interpretive path, is bound to select the most relevant (i.e. accessible) one in this context, which appears to be (13b). This interpretation ends up being incorrect, but John is not to blame for selecting this interpretation, since it is the most relevant and accessible one in this communicative scenario. It is Mike’s incorrect coding of his thoughts that has led to a misunderstanding. Obviously, there is no guarantee that (13b) will invariably be the most relevant interpretation across all possible communicative contexts. For example, if John knows that Mike’s girlfriend is suffering from terminal cancer, (13a) will probably be a more likely interpretation.

2.6 Explicit versus implicated interpretations For RT, interpreting an utterance involves turning words into a fully contextualised explicit interpretation (explicature) and also deriving implications from this content (implicature), if necessary, for eventual relevance. This applies to any utterance, including those communicated via smartphones. Implicatures are fully inferential and are unconnected to what is said (or written, typed, recorded). However, inferred explicatures also go beyond what the speaker-writer-user says, writes, or types (i.e. codes), as shown in these examples often cited in the bibliography: (14) a

I’ve got nothing to wear for the party. Interpreted: I’ve got nothing [elegant/fashionable] to wear for the party. b There’s milk in the fridge. Interpreted: There’s milk [of sufficient quantity/quality for adding to coffee] in the fridge. c It will take time to fix your car. Interpreted: It will take [a substantial amount of time] to fix your car.

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What specifc steps are taken in the interpretation of explicit and implicated information? RT predicts a mutual parallel adjustment of three inferential strategies performed by the addressee: (a) to obtain the explicit interpretation of the utterance; (b) to derive implicatures from the utterance (if required); and (c) to retrieve from context as much information as necessary to obtain (a) and (b). This adjustment takes place in a cumulative process as the utterance is identifed and processed for relevance. Indeed, hearers-readers do not wait until the whole utterance is coded to determine its explicit and implicated interpretations. Instead, they identify the words of the initial stretch of the utterance and access contextual information, extract an explicit interpretation, and perhaps already derive implicatures from this stretch of the utterance and then move on to the next stretch. In this general interpretive scenario of mutual parallel adjustment, several phases of interpretation can nevertheless be established: 1

2

Initially, the hearer/user has to identify the words that the utterance is made of. This is a context-free phase carried out by a specialised language module of the brain in which the schematic structure and words of the utterance are identified, but their communicative extent is not yet assessed. The outcome of this context-free identification of words is the logical form of the utterance, also called semantic representation. This schematic sequence has to be enriched pragmatically via inference so as to turn it into a relevant interpretation that presumably matches the one intended by the speaker. The logical form is the outcome of decoding and the only context-free stage of interpretation.

Among the inferential operations that are carried out by the hearer/user upon to enrich this logical form, we can list the following: a

Reference assignment. This is typical of indexicals (i.e. pronouns and adverbs) and proper names that are “empty” and have to be filled with a referent in a specific conversational context, as in (15), for example, where the internet users have to find referents for the pronouns in the tweets, or they will reach no interpretation:

(15) a Wow, yo de eso no sé nada. Pero eso es lo tuyo. Te irá muy bien. :). [Wow, I know nothing about that. But that’s your stuff. You’ll be all right]. b a mi me gustó, debes verla ^^. [I liked it. You must see it]. b

Disambiguation. Sometimes the hearer has to choose between two senses of the same word as possibly matching the one intended by the speaker, as in (16):

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(16) I saw John by the bank [river bank/financial institution]. c

Saturation. This takes place when the utterance demands from the hearer a kind of “inferential gap-filling” of some elided part of the utterance without which the utterance makes little sense. Typical examples cited in the bibliography include the part in square brackets listed in (17):

(17) Paracetamol is better [than what?]. Louise is the best candidate [for what?]. d

Concept adjustment. On many occasions (if not all), the concept that underlies a word is adjusted pragmatically, in such a way that the prototypical concept associated with that coded word (as one would find in a dictionary, for example) is slightly different from the one actually communicated in a context (called ad hoc concept). This communicated concept may be narrower than the coded concept, as in (18), or broader, as in (19). In all of these cases, the ad hoc concept that is eventually communicated and inferred (drink*, empty*)1 only resembles the literal concept coded in the utterance:

(18) I am worried about Jim . . . He drinks too much. [specifically, Jim drinks too much alcohol]. (19) We entered the pub, but we left since it was empty. [not literally empty; rather, with few people, including the waiter]. 3

The outcome of these inferential strategies is the so-called proposition expressed by the utterance. When that proposition is communicated, it is called an explicature. Sometimes the explicature matches the speaker’s (or sender user’s) intended interpretation, but on other occasions the speaker/user also (or even only) intends some implicated interpretation (implicature), and hence the explicature becomes part of the “information plus context” that the hearer (or addressee user) needs to reach that implicature.

Furthermore, in Yus (2016b, 2018b), an adaptation was suggested for the dialogue in (20), from S&W (2015: 121), including additional relevant information that might be communicated and/or inferred. In this example, the explicit interpretation from the official’s utterance would roughly correspond to the version provided in (21). Besides, the passenger would be expected to infer the official’s propositional attitude upon answering the question, in this case a warning (22). In Yus (ibid.) an extension was also proposed to include not only propositional information intended but also the official’s affective attitude (feelings and emotions) that he might also be interested in communicating, as in (23). Concerning implicatures, (24) would count as a strong implicature (clearly intended by the official), whereas the possibilities listed in (25) are weak implicatures (perhaps

22 Pragmatics, cyberpragmatics, smartphones derived by the passenger beyond the official’s intentions), and also triggered by the utterance: (20) Passenger: What time is the next train to Oxford? Railway official: [With an alarmed look on his face and marked intonation] At 12.48!!! (21) The next train to Oxford departs at 12.48 on this day. (22) The official is warning the passenger that the next train to Oxford departs at 12.48. (23) The official feels concerned about whether the passenger will get on the train. (24) You’d better hurry or you’ll miss the train. (25) The train is not going to wait for passengers who arrive late at the platform. The seats on the train are filling up fast. The platform is farther away than the passenger might have thought. (26) I will miss the job interview. Besides, in Yus (2016b: 102), it was pointed out that other effects might be added from this official’s utterance plus his nonverbal behaviour, for example a number of hearer-centred implicatures (obviously beyond the official’s intentions) such as (26) above (which the passenger knows are not part of the official’s intended interpretation but which he derives anyway) and also a number of “leaked” non-intended non-propositional effects, for instance on the reliability of trains, feelings about the passenger’s colleagues’ reaction upon not turning up, or general satisfaction with the punctuality of British trains.

2.7 Internet pragmatics When applying pragmatics to internet-mediated communication and more specifically to smartphone communication, the analyst is faced with two apparently contradictory statements. On the one hand, internet makes no difference, in the sense that in this virtual environment users also interpret other users’ utterances with the aid of context, engage in (a)synchronous conversations, store, update, and reproduce social meanings via interactions, etc. Therefore, applications of pragmatics to this virtual environment should be straightforward. However, on the other hand internet makes all the difference, since virtual communication often takes place in a cues-filtered environment, typically text based (even nowadays), and with fewer options and resources for contextualisation (e.g. lack of nonverbal communication, of physical co-presence, etc.).2 In this sense, a challenge that analysts face when applying pragmatics to internet communication is that the prototypical

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human interaction is altered or blurred in this virtual medium. As was commented upon in Yus (2015a), communication on the Net frequently entails a radical reinterpretation of the traditional communication schema. This reinterpretation will suit some users (eager for more dynamic forms of interaction, who like to be participants in the act of communication and take full responsibility for making interpretive or plot decisions) while discouraging others (who prefer a more traditional way of interpreting discourses). However, smartphone users consistently choose their most convenient medium (e.g. a messaging app), not the best in information richness (e.g. videoenabled phone calls), and draw from whatever resources available to make the most of their options for contextualisation (e.g. through the use of emojis, GIFs and stickers). Text-based interactions may be limited in contextualisation, but they offer users compensations such as freedom from imposition on the interlocutor, time to plan the message, lack of exuded information on the user’s physical appearance, etc. This is why a proposition-centred pragmatics has to be complemented with the role that non-propositional effects play in eventual (dis)satisfaction with the online act of communication (see next chapter). In Yus (2018e) several layers in the application of pragmatics to internet communication were proposed, also applicable to smartphone communication. These are briefly commented upon as follows: Layer 1: User and contextual constraints. Smartphone communication is constrained by a number of factors that infuence the eventual (un)successful outcome of the act of communication. They frame, as it were, communication and have an impact not only on the quality of interpretation but also on the willingness to engage in sustained virtual interactions. These will be analysed in the next chapter. Layer 2: User to user by means of discourse. Pragmatics conceptualises discourse as open to multiple possible interpretations in a context. There should be little difference in how smartphone users accomplish this interpretive procedure compared to listeners in physical contexts, and disciplines such as computer-mediated discourse analysis or digital discourse analysis cover similar areas to the ones addressed by offine pragmatic research. After all, smartphone-mediated discourses exhibit similar patterns both in the way they are processed and in the way they are stabilised and enacted in interactions. Layer 3: User to user in interaction. On smartphones, users engage in conversations, among them synchronous oral dialogues (phone calls, video calls), multi-party typed conversations inside

24 Pragmatics, cyberpragmatics, smartphones messaging groups, one-to-one typed dialogues (WhatsApp, WeChat . . .), audio-fle conversations (recorded fles exchanged between users), and typed asynchronous interactions (email, dialogues on a user’s photo or post on a social networking site profle, etc.). Layer 4: User to audience. A pragmatics of smartphone communication should include the analysis of online discourses aimed at an audience (e.g. smartphone narratives, see Chapter 7). Layer 5: User in a group of users. Several pragmatic disciplines have done research on social aspects of communication and the effects that communication produces on feelings of group membership, stabilisation of social rules and norms, etc. My intuition regarding smartphone communication (e.g. Yus 2007, 2011b, 2018e) is that in general people’s awareness of social aspects leaks, as it were, from instances of communication, generating a store not only of general social qualities of the person’s environment but also qualities regarding the position of the individual within the group. Smartphone users would generate and manage social qualities through interactions in a similar way to offine communication. For example, certain types of online discourse (or some form of online code of behaviour, interface use, etc.) are only comprehensible to those who belong to a specifc social group engaged on the smartphone interaction, thus generating feelings of community membership and parallel feelings of being excluded for those unable to understand the discourse properly (Yus 2014a). An example of discourse ftting this role of community bonding is the use of letters and numbers (instead of Arabic characters) among the Tunisian youth, a sort of hieroglyphic that is only comprehensible to them and not to others such as some adults with whom they do not want to share the information from their posts, thus emphasising their group membership and feelings of community bonding. Layer 6: User and non-intended non-propositional effects. On many occasions the key to successful acts of communication does not lie in propositional content but in certain non-propositional effects (feelings, emotions, impressions), and this is particularly pervasive in smartphone communication, where users spend hours exchanging utterly useless (propositional) content which, nevertheless, provides them with alternative sources of satisfaction through non-propositional effects, generated from the act of smartphone communication and making up for the low informational quality of those discourses exchanged. These will be addressed in more detail in the next chapter.

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2.8 Cyberpragmatics Cyberpragmatics was coined as a proposal to study internet-mediated communication from a cognitive pragmatics point of view and, more specifically, from the theoretical framework of relevance theory (S&W 1995), although other theoretical approaches were also addressed where appropriate (see Yus 2001, 2010, 2011a, 2013). One of its aims in this book is to analyse why smartphone users often find relevance in certain discourses even though several “richer” options of contextualisation (e.g. free video calls) are also available. It also analyses how users fill the gap between what is coded (typed, recorded as audio file . . .) and what is eventually interpreted (i.e. inferred) and the role of technological aspects of smartphone communication (i.e. app interfaces) in the eventual assessment of relevance. Besides, access to contextual information on smartphones is always constrained by the interpretive requirements of the stimulus (utterance, picture, multimodal discourse, nonverbal behaviour . . .) being processed. On smartphones, the accessibility to contextual information is also constrained by the quality of the different channels of communication and their place in dichotomies such as “oral vs. written,” “visual vs. verbal” and “synchronous vs. asynchronous,” which alter, to a greater or lesser extent, the way in which users predict and obtain relevance. Besides, smartphone apps are in constant evolution, and new features are added that alter the position of the app in the aforementioned dichotomies. For instance, messaging apps have incorporated voice (e.g. audio files) and nonverbal information (through video calls), together with letter types (bold, italics) and galleries of GIFs, stickers and emojis. This evolution has consequences regarding the quality and quantity of contextual information that can be accessed during interpretation and on the overall assessment of relevance by the users of messaging apps. Specifically, several main aspects are underlined and addressed by cyberpragmatics regarding smartphone communication: 1

2

3

In smartphone-mediated communication, just as in face-to-face communication, the sender (or addresser) users have communicative intentions and devise their messages in such a way that their intended interpretation is selected by their addressee users. Addresser users expect their interlocutors to access some specific contextual information that enables them to reach the intended interpretation of their messages. Similarly, addressee users invariably access contextual information as an inherent part of their relevance-seeking inferential activity. An important claim in cyberpragmatics is that the characteristics of the different apps affect the quality and quantity of contextual information accessed by users, the mental effort devoted to interpretation, and the very choice of an interpretation. Therefore, as pointed out in Yus (2011a),

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4

apps may be placed on a scale of contextualisation ranging from highly context-saturated media (e.g. video calls) to highly cues-filtered text-based media (e.g. messaging apps). Of course, smartphone users may resort to a number of techniques and strategies in order to connote texts with oral qualities, giving rise to what in this book will be labelled text alteration (also called oralised written text in Yus 2011a, text deformation in Yus 2005a), basically consisting of creative spelling, repetitions of letters and punctuation marks, together with the use of GIFs, stickers, and emojis, all of which will be studied in Chapters 5 and 9. Another interest within cyberpragmatics concerns the social side of smartphone communication, especially the way it is used to sustain and assess group membership and (personal) social networks. In these cases, the “social benefit” obtained from these forms of smartphone-mediated communication offsets the effort required to keep this level of commitment to and from the other users.

Notes 1 Adjusted concepts are conventionally represented with an asterisk after them. The encoded concept empty is represented as empty* when understood in context. If there is a need to distinguish two ad hoc concepts of the same encoded word, then two, three, or more asterisks are added. 2 Parini (2014: 148–149) lists a number of specific features of digital environments that frame internet-mediated communication, including (a) a mobile lifestyle with non-stop connectivity; (b) a tendency to technology-mediated interactions compensating for or even replacing physical ones; (c) the emergence of varied social groupings that “problematise” the traditional notion of community; (d) the reconfiguration and reinterpretation of interpersonal relationships based on new ways to conceptualise the social groups to which these interactions are anchored; (e) an increase in the number of textual discourses, typically accompanied by visual or audio discourses (media convergence) which convey a lot of meaning, both linguistic and social, for the members of a certain social group; and (f) a relaxation of the agreed conventions of appropriate syntactic and orthographic writing rules.

3

Contextual constraints and non-propositional effects

3.1 Non-propositional effects: feeling, emotion, affect Pragmatics has traditionally dismissed the analysis of non-propositional information (feelings, emotions, affect, etc.) in human communication. However, they are essential to understand the appeal of smartphones nowadays, and throughout this book they will be underlined as key outcomes of smartphone communication that aid in our understanding of why that communication is (un)satisfactory or (un)successful. Needless to say, there is no room in this book to account for the vast bibliography that has accounted for this kind of information from a psychological point of view, and in this book such information will be treated under the unified labels of affective attitude and affective effect (see what follows). Nevertheless, some terminological comments are perhaps welcome, especially regarding possible differences or overlappings among the terms involved in the broad label of non-propositional information.1 1

Emotions. In general, emotions are typically characterised as “acute, intense, and typically brief psychophysiological changes that result from a response to a meaningful situation in one’s environment” (Rosenberg, quoted in Kidron and Kuzar 2002: 130).2 A different issue is whether the range of emotions which can be communicated is narrow or broad, which connects with the parallel debate on whether there is a basic set of emotions from which all other emotions are derived (see Ekman 1992) and whether a number of sub-components, such as valence and intensity, combine to form specific emotions.

For Rey (1980, in Wharton 2000: 189), emotions comprise cognitive, qualitative, and physiological elements. In a later publication, Wharton and Strey (2019) use these elements to further differentiate emotions from feelings or “sensations”: full-fledged emotional states are distinguished from “sensations” or “feelings” by the fact that they involve an interaction between several DOI: 10.4324/9781003200574-3

28 Pragmatics, cyberpragmatics, smartphones elements: cognitive, qualitative and physiological. So the emotion we call “sadness” is characterised as involving an interaction between a cognitive element – the belief that something which you would prefer not to happen is about to, or the knowledge that something has happened which you would prefer not to have happened; an (optional) qualitative element – that feeling of being “down” (which we might experience without being able to introspect on and, indeed, might attempt to pretend doesn’t exist); and a physiological element – chemical changes in the brain (in the case of sadness or depression, depletion of norepinephrine). Whilst fully-fledged emotional states crucially involve cognitive as well as qualitative and physiological elements, “feelings” or “sensations” need not. 2

3

Affect. According to Garde-Hansen and Gorton (2013: 32), affect has been defined in various ways, roughly meaning the conscious, subjective aspect of an emotion. Generally, this refers to a physical response from the body, a blush or a tear, for instance. Some authors argue that affect is more firmly rooted in biology and in our physical response to feelings. A basic distinction is provided in this study between emotion (related to cultural and social expression) and affect (of a more biological and physiological nature). Feelings. These are typically described as being opposed to emotions. For instance, Caffi and Janney (1994: 327) distinguish between feelings (a broad, complex class of subjective personal sensations or states of inner physiological arousal) and emotions (a restricted subset of empirically investigable phenomena within this general class that are relatively transitory, of a certain intensity, and are attached to or triggered by particular objects, ideas, or outer incentive events).

3.2 Relevance theory and non-propositional effects Although pragmatics tends to address only intentionally conveyed propositional communication (verbal utterances), in this book non-propositional information (both intentionally and unintendedly transmitted) is also deemed essential to determine the full extent of the intended interpretation and the quality of the eventual interpretation (Yus 2018c: 95). In many cases of interpersonal communication, and especially in everyday acts of smartphone communication, what is important is not so much the (verbal) propositions conveyed explicitly or implicitly through verbal utterances but the more indeterminate non-propositional meaning and affect that is expressed and understood in the act of communication or even “leaking” from this act unintentionally (but nevertheless resulting in relevant effects). A much more realistic picture is to acknowledge that propositional and nonpropositional effects are intertwined (Wharton 2018). For instance, nonpropositional effects may trigger or block propositional interpretations, and

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the latter can have an effect on the inference of non-propositional effects (Moeschler 2009: 460). Within RT, there has been an evolution from an initial dismissal stance regarding non-propositional information, and especially regarding leaked unintentional non-propositional effects (which are crucial in smartphone communication, as this book I hope will show), since pragmatics typically deals with information which is both propositional (from verbal utterances) and intentional (but see Wharton 2000, 2009; Moeschler 2009; Piskorska 2012). Initially, S&W (1995: 87) were reluctant to include non-propositional information in their cognitive pragmatics framework: There is a very good reason for anyone concerned with the role of inference in communication to assume that what is communicated is propositional: it is relatively easy to say what propositions are, and how inference might operate over propositions. No one has any clear idea how inference might operate over non-propositional objects: say, over images, impressions or emotions. Propositional contents and attitudes thus seem to provide the only relatively solid ground on which to base a partly or wholly inferential approach to communication. (S&W 1995: 87) relevance theory is a theory of communication, and it defines communication rather narrowly in conceptual terms. Communication involves providing evidence for a range of intended effects, and while this leaves room for images and emotions to play a role as causes or consequences of an appropriate interpretation, they cannot be part of that interpretation unless embedded into a conceptual description. (Deirdre Wilson, in de Saussure and Wharton 2020: 193) However, in recent publications, these authors have also incorporated non-propositional information to the range of possible relevant inferential outcomes. In S&W (2015), they propose a chart of nine communicative cases, some of which involve feeling- or emotion-related non-propositional information. For example, in Case 6 (indeterminate meaning + showing), the linguistic meaning of the utterance gives no more than a rough indication of the type of conclusions the addressee is being encouraged to derive, and the intended import3 is not paraphrasable as a proposition at all. In Wharton and Strey (2019), the examples (1/3) are suggested, where the interjections wow! and aha! aid in communicating (2/4) respectively: (1) (2) (3) (4)

Wow! Roger’s won again! The speaker is delighted that Roger has won again. Aha! Andy’s won! The speaker is surprised that Andy has won.

30 Pragmatics, cyberpragmatics, smartphones More recently, Wilson (2017) acknowledges the importance of non-propositional information. Consider the exchange in (5): (5) Peter: Did you enjoy the film? Mary: I enjoyed most of it. (6) a What Mary explicitly communicates: She enjoyed most of the film. b What she implicates: She didn’t enjoy all of the film. c What Mary means: She enjoyed most, but not all, of the film. (7) a She was a bit disappointed by the film. b She wishes she hadn’t accepted Peter’s choice. c She somewhat resents him for not listening to her. The standard RT approach to what is communicated in this exchange is quoted in (6), namely propositional information of an explicit and implicated quality. However, Wilson (ibid.) reckons that most uses of language convey something more nebulous than a speaker’s meaning, a non-propositional effect. By saying “I enjoyed most of it” in a certain manner or tone of voice, Mary might also convey non-propositional effects such as those listed in (7), which add to her general sense of disappointment. In a similar way to how propositions are inferred, Wilson argues that upon interpreting Mary’s utterance, Peter’s perceptual and emotion-reading mechanisms may register her mental state in an extremely fne-grained way. Furthermore, in Yus (2018c), the umbrella terms affective attitude (feelings and emotions underlying the production of an utterance, held and intended as part of the act of communication) and affective effect (the resulting non-propositional effects, which are often intended but may also “leak” or “exude” from the act of communication unintentionally) were proposed for the whole range of non-propositional information eventually communicated or produced. Both affective attitude and affective effect exhibit a great deal of variation if we take into account “axes” such as whether they are acted upon or not, together with the initial distinction between intentional and unintentional transfer of affective information. The term acted upon refers to the fact that, although feelings and emotions may be produced without the individuals intervening in their extent and intensity, on other occasions these individuals do exert some control on their production. As Langlotz and Locher (2013: 91) summarise, while some cues may result from spontaneous expressions of genuine emotional states, other cues may be used strategically to emotionalise a given message in the absence of actual arousal; and the emotional load of the message may be altered by masking it, enhancing it, etc. This entails degrees of control on this continuum from spontaneous to strategic emotional display. Van Kleef (2016: 57) adds that people express emotions to various degrees. At one end are experienced emotions which are expressed in an uncensored way, so that the interlocutor gets full insight into the individual’s feelings. At the other end we find suppressed expression of any experienced emotion, to the extent that their

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nonverbal or verbal expressions provide no clues as to the internal feeling states (see Wilson and Wharton 2006: 1563). In Yus (2018c), several possibilities were also listed: 1 2

3

4

5

Intentional and propositional. Addressers intentionally produce a propositional message whose content conveys their affective attitude. Intentional, non-propositional, and acted upon. Addressers intentionally convey affective information non-propositionally, either nonverbally (gestures, vocal expressions) or attached to a verbal proposition (via intonation, gestures in parallel to verbal communication, etc.). Being aware of the affective information that should be conveyed, they act upon this non-propositional act by enhancing it, reducing it, masking it, etc. Intentional, non-propositional, and not acted upon. Addressers intentionally convey affective information non-propositionally, either nonverbally or attached to a verbal proposition. However, they do not feel the need to act upon this non-propositional act by enhancing it, masking it, etc. Unintentional, non-propositional, and acted upon. Beyond the addresser’s intentions, some information exudes or leaks from their communicative acts conveying their feelings or emotions. The addresser becomes aware of this leakage and acts upon its production by minimising it, masking it, etc. Unintentional, non-propositional, and not acted upon. Beyond the addresser’s intentions, some information exudes or leaks, conveying their feelings or emotions. The addresser does not feel the need to act upon its production by minimising it, masking it, etc.

Among the aforementioned possibilities, one deserves further attention: the propositional vs. non-propositional format in which feelings and emotions may be shaped. For RT, if these are intended, they should typically entail a propositional quality, even if what is communicated is a range of impressions rather than a fully fledged proposition. An often-cited example is (8) below (S&W 1995: 55): (8) Mary and Peter arrive at the seaside. She opens the window overlooking the sea and sniffs appreciatively and ostensively. When Peter follows suit, there is no one particular good thing that comes to his attention: the air smells fresh, [. . .] it reminds him of their previous holidays, he can smell the sea [. . .]; all sorts of pleasant things come to mind, and while, because her sniff was appreciative, he is reasonably safe in assuming that she must have intended him to notice at least some of them, he is unlikely to be able to pin her intentions down any further. In this case, Mary’s informative intention when sniffng the seaside air might be a number of assumptions that suddenly come to her mind upon sniffng,

32 Pragmatics, cyberpragmatics, smartphones without necessarily intending, in a conscious way, to communicate any particular one of these assumptions. Maybe all that she wants is to share an impression with Peter. As such, it is partly precise and partly vague and may be communicated as a weak implicature. But, in my opinion, perhaps all that takes place in (8) is a mutuality of non-propositional feelings and emotions triggered by the seaside, Mary perhaps being unable to pin them down propositionally and Peter being unable to infer them accurately beyond a general “she just feels good about being at the seaside.”4 Furthermore, there is no reason why some non-propositional affective information could not be communicated besides (or even instead of) affectrelated propositional implications. Illustrative examples are found in Strey (2016: 80) and Wharton (2016), adapted as (9) and (10) below, respectively: (9) a b c d e f (10) a b

Jack: Let’s go to the mall. Mary: [angrily] I’m feeling tired! Mary feels tired. Mary does not want to go to the mall. When Mary is tired, she never wants to go to malls. Mary thinks that malls are crowded this time of year. Mary feels angry at the prospect of having to go to the mall. A: How’s work going? B: The boss is a bastard! A: How’s work going? B: [Sighs wearily].

In conversation (9a), Mary communicates (9b) explicitly (explicature). She also strongly implicates (9c), whereas other weaker implicatures such as (9d–e) may also be triggered by Mary’s utterance, but they will probably be extracted by Jack’s sole responsibility. Crucially, Mary also communicates how she feels about Jack’s question (the affective attitude in (9f)) by using a marked intonation, and one of Jack’s relevance-oriented inferential strategies will focus on working out the extent and intensity of these negative feelings, which will infuence the parallel inference of the propositional content to which Mary’s intonation is attached (see also Moeschler 2009: 456–457). Similarly, the difference between (10a) and (10b) is covered within RT by distinguishing strong from weak communication (and between strong and weak implicatures). Needless to say, a conclusion is strongly implicated to the extent that it must be derived in the course of constructing a satisfactory interpretation (and its derivation is clearly intended and backed up by the speaker). In this case, there is mainly a single, strongly manifest (i.e. implicated) assumption. In the case of weakly implicated assumptions, these help with the construction of a satisfactory interpretation but are not essential or are even derived beyond the speaker’s intentions. For Wharton, (10a) quite strongly implicates that all is not well at work, whereas the sigh in (10b) makes weakly manifest a wide array of weak implicatures, that is, it

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creates an impression rather than conveying a definite message. Again, in my opinion it is reductive to base all interpretations, including impressions, on a propositional mould, even if a whole range of possibilities is covered between strongly and weakly implicated assumptions. Although B may well have a propositional implication in mind, he/she may also hold a rather general feeling located on the negative side (being upset, fed up, angry . . .) and may only be capable of communicating these broad non-propositional feelings via sighing and not through a mentally represented implicated proposition, even if it is an impression-based weak implicature. And the same applies to the addressee A, who may be able to stand in B’s shoes, as it were, to feel roughly the same broad negative feelings held by B but without consciously reaching a propositional (even if weak) implicature from them. Other analysts have included non-propositional information in their RT-based analyses of communicative phenomena, for example regarding the choice of contextual information used in determining the explicit or implicated interpretation: “Since emotions are generally treated as factors prioritizing access to some chunks of information in cognitive processes, they have to be recognized as factors affecting the accessibility of contextual information in comprehension, too” (Piskorska 2012: 109). The same applies to more stable emotional attitudes stored in the hearer’s mind but attached to concepts in a very personal way. Consider the example in (11) from Yus (2016a): (11) Ann: My boyfriend has turned the whole week into a non-stop Sunday morning. In this example, Ann probably wants to relate her boyfriend’s behaviour to information associated with pleasurable emotions arising on Sunday mornings such as not having to work, not being stressed, being able to sit in the garden and drink tea, etc. However, my own personal experience with English Sunday mornings is quite negative: being confronted with empty streets, not being able to fnd a newsagent’s, closed shops, feeling like the only human alive in town, etc. Consequently, my interpretation of (11) would differ from the one Ann intended. Besides influencing the outcome of interpretation (hearer’s point of view), any non-propositional effect (feelings, emotions, etc.) also evidences how we feel about what we are saying (speaker’s point of view) and also constitutes the backbone of human interpersonal interaction, to the extent of becoming the core ingredient of social interaction (see Bromberek-Dyzman 2012).

3.3 Feelings and emotions on the internet Feelings and emotions are very important in smartphone communication. Throughout this book, there will be a constant emphasis on the role of affective attitude (intended) and the generation of affective effects (sometimes

34 Pragmatics, cyberpragmatics, smartphones intended but also often leaking unintentionally) that online interactions trigger. As a starting point, Fortunati and Vincent (2009: 13–14) provide a general definition of computer-mediated emotions: A mediated emotion is an emotion felt, narrated or showed, which is produced or consumed, for example in a telephone or mobile phone conversation, in a film or a TV programme or in a website, in other words mediated by a computational electronic device. Electronic emotions are emotions lived, re-lived or discovered through machines. Through ICT, emotions are on one hand amplified, shaped, stereotyped, re-invented and on the other sacrificed, because they must submit themselves to the technological limits and languages of a machine. It can be stated that internet users hold and want to communicate similar feelings and emotions online to the ones that would be produced in physical scenarios. Maybe even more intensely so on the internet, since users typically intend their peers and online communities to acknowledge and react to their feelings and emotions, a kind of social sharing of emotions (Choi and Toma 2014), and they often display emotions freely without the burden of the social constraints imposed on the interlocutors by physical co-presence. Sasaki and Ohbuchi (1999, in Janssen et al. 2014: 35) showed that emotional displays in oral conversations elicited the same intensity of emotions as the ones arising in virtual interactions. The main debate in this area has centred upon the extent to which the medium chosen is capable of transmitting these feelings and emotions correctly. A scale may be established ranging from highly contextualised interfaces, as happens with video-mediated conversations (e.g. Skype, Meet, Zoom . . .), to highly cues-filtered interfaces where interactions take place mainly through typed text (e.g. mobile messaging, SMS). Indeed, each technological device, application, or communication channel carries with it a particular affective bandwidth, as Lasén (2010) calls it, in the sense that they allow a certain amount of emotional information to be transferred (Serrano-Puche 2015: 12). Therefore, the internet (and smartphone apps) encompass different socio-technical environments that allow emotions to surface to varying degrees and with different media affordances and message visibilities. Hence, the affective dimension is not revealed equally in all interactions and communicative situations taking place on the Net or on smartphones. In this sense, Gómez Cabranes (2013, in Serrano-Puche ibid.) proposes the term emotionality factor, which includes the expressive possibilities of each of those environments, themes and topics around which the interaction revolves, the context and purpose of use, the degree of anonymity or self-revelation in interactions, and the investment of time or frequency with which users connect to the digital domain. Traditionally, text-based interactions on the internet have been criticised for taking place in a rather poor medium for the communication of

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non-propositional information. Several theories, brought together under the umbrella label of theories of information richness5 in Yus (2007, 2011a), have criticised text-based communication on the internet for being too narrow in contextualisation to communicate this feeling- and emotion-related information accurately. However, theories such as social information processing theory (see Walther 1992) and the hyperpersonal model (see Walther 1996) claim that users actually manage to convey as many feelings and emotions through internet as in face-to-face communication, and with a similar (if not higher) intensity. The key lies in how users detect and exploit the linguistic and expressive resources (i.e. the affordances) that the interface provides for the communication of these affective attitudes and effects. A good example is to be found in messaging apps, whose users rely on text alteration and the use of stickers, GIFs, and emojis to transfer their feelings and emotions more accurately (see Chapters 5 and 9). As Ortner (2015: 309) correctly states, “text-based conversations sometimes prove to be much more intimate and effective in terms of emotional expression and support” (see also Lasén 2013b: 94). Besides, these feelings and emotions may be generated out of the several categories, including user-to-system interaction and user-to-user interaction. Regarding the former, very often the interface arouses intense feelings and emotions related to the use of the interface and the options for communication afforded. Concerning the latter, the internet generates an intense offset of feelings and emotions, both intended and unintended (but equally relevant), and smartphones are particularly prone to the production of these effects: “ICTs and media technologies are more than ever touched, felt, held, worn, caressed, pressed, thumbed, dropped, scratched, protected, stolen, remembered, and forgotten within the affective economy of pervasive and ubiquitous computing” (Garde-Hansen and Gorton 2013: 42).

3.4 Extending cyberpragmatic research As described in Yus (2017a), RT provides an exhaustive picture of how interpretations are selected and how their content achieves relevance with the aid of context. However, when applied to internet-mediated communication (specifically within cyberpragmatics), and especially regarding smartphone interactions, the analyst is faced with a huge number of messages that are devoid of objectively relevant content but which are nevertheless valued by users and produce various kinds of interest and reward beyond their propositional content. This is why in previous research new terminology has been proposed that plays a part in the eventual relevance of internet-mediated communication, but which is not specifically tied to the relevance of the content being communicated (see Yus 2011b, 2015a, 2015b, 2015c, 2016b). Firstly, the term non-intended non-propositional effect was added to the general RT approach. It refers to feelings, emotions, impressions, etc. which are not overtly intended by the sender user but are generated from the act

36 Pragmatics, cyberpragmatics, smartphones of communication (i.e. they leak from that act of communication) and add (positively or negatively) to the cognitive effects derived from utterance interpretation (propositional content). Secondly, internet communication is affected by a number of interfacerelated and user-related qualities that may also alter the act of communication, its interpretation, and the overall satisfaction of the interlocutors involved with that interaction. These are mainly related to the design of the interface (see Chapter 4), the users’ management of the interface, the kind of relationship existing between interlocutors, the user’s personality, etc. To account for the mediation of these qualities, the term contextual constraint was proposed, restricted to aspects that underlie the acts of communication and the users’ interactions (i.e. they exist prior to the interpretive activity) and constrain their eventual (un)successful outcome. Overall, the framework for the analysis of internet-mediated communication may be represented by the chart in Figure 3.1 (Yus 2017a). Inside the thick-line square, the typical objects of cyberpragmatics and RT research are included: the cases of intended interpretations of a propositional kind (explicatures, strong/weak implicatures) and of a non-propositional kind (affective attitude, that is, feelings, emotions and impressions held and meant to be communicated by the speaker). The extraction or derivation of these interpretations from coded stimuli would be triggered by the communicative principle of relevance (abbreviated as PoR in Figure 3.1).

Figure 3.1 A chart of extended cyberpragmatic research.

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Beyond this array of prototypical interpretations, the addressee may also extract (positive or negative) non-intended and non-propositional effects beyond the speaker’s intention, effects that leak, as it were, from the act of communication in the shape of feelings and emotions. Many of these nonpropositional effects possess a phatic quality, typical of everyday communication on smartphones nowadays. Indeed, many instances of these effects arise from trivial conversations and, as argued in Yus (2017a), they compensate for the lack of relevance that the content of the messages objectively possesses. Of course, these phatic outcomes may be achieved intentionally, by propositional means (in the shape of weak implicatures), but these nonpropositional phatic effects often exude or leak unintentionally from the act of communication. Lastly in Figure 3.1, both the intended propositional and non-propositional information (inside the thick-lined square) and non-intended nonpropositional effects would be generated within a pool, as it were, of contextual constraints, of a positive or negative quality. Crucially, both contextual constraints and (non-intended) non-propositional effects would be managed by the cognitive principle of relevance and not by the communicative principle of relevance, since we are dealing with effects that are not intentionally communicated but assessed and computed by the user’s cognition as part of the general tendency towards the maximisation of relevance from the messages inferred. In a nutshell, the addressee would engage in a relevance-seeking inferential procedure by activating the communicative principle of relevance (as applied to the propositional content), but at the same time the addressee may cognitively assess and compute the existence and possible burden or reward of a number of (positive or negative) contextual constraints and non-intended non-propositional effects that are eventually added to the basic RT formula for propositional information, altering the eventual (dis)satisfaction regarding the act of communication as a whole. 3.4.1 Contextual constraints As remarked earlier, contextual constraints frame, as it were, communication and have an impact not only on the quality of interpretation but also on the willingness to engage in sustained virtual interactions. They exist prior to the interaction and hence should not be an inherent object of pragmatic research, but their role in the outcome of communication makes its analysis relevant to determining why communication on the internet (and on smartphones, as addressed in this book) turns out satisfactory or fruitless. A distinction can be made between those constraints that are related to the use of an interface (user-to-system communication) and those related to the exchange of information among users or qualities of individual

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users that affect the eventual quantity of information coded and the eventual relevance achieved, such as the user’s personality (user-to-user communication). Besides, contextual constraints may be associated with the sender user or with the addressee user, thus introducing further elements that might play a part in how (un)successful smartphone interactions turn out to be. 3.4.2 (Non-)intended non-propositional effects RT has faced challenges when analysing non-propositional effects that are meant by the speaker. An even more challenging term is non-intended nonpropositional effect, since it is not only devoid of propositional quality (typical object of analysis for pragmatics) but often also of intentionality, a necessary premise of “true” communication for both RT and pragmatics in general. However, in previous research the term has been proposed in order to explain the massive trend of today’s internet and smartphone communication in which users no longer send one another messages because of the inherent relevance of their content but because the exchange of messages, often of a trivial quality, fulfils other functions that have more to do with feelings and emotions than with propositional content. As summarised in Yus (2018a), although it is undeniable that there is still valuable content being exchanged on the Net, it is highly noticeable that most of the time spent by users interacting on smartphones, especially youngsters, involves what for many people (especially adults) might appear to involve a significant phatic component (i.e. this form of communication that is occasionally referred to as “silly,” “irrelevant,” or “meaningless” by adults). Miller (2008: 395/398) explains this as the shift from significantly relevant content to the increasing value of online communication as supportive of phatic connotations that compensate for the lack of quality in the information exchanged: content is not king, but “keeping in touch” is. More important than anything said, it is the connection to the other that becomes significant, and the exchange of words becomes superfluous. Thus the text message, the short call, the brief email, the short blog update or comment, becomes part of a mediated phatic sociability necessary to maintain a connected presence in an ever-expanding social network [. . .]. We see a shift from dialogue and communication between actors in a network, where the point of the network was to facilitate an exchange of substantive content, to a situation where the maintenance of a network itself has become the primary focus. Therefore, the objective value of the propositional content of discourses exchanged is often not the primary source of the eventual relevance obtained by the interlocutors. Rather, certain non-propositional qualities,

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often exuding or leaking from propositional acts of communication, may radically infuence the satisfaction from the processing of these discourses. In a nutshell, the eventual relevance may not only depend on the value of the information exchanged but also (and often mainly) on the derivation of certain non-propositional effects. The term non-intended non-propositional effect is an umbrella term for feelings, emotions, impressions, etc. that are not overtly intended or mentally represented by the communicator but are generated from the act of communication. These effects may be assessed consciously by the addressees or lie beyond their awareness, but in any case they influence eventual relevance. In this sense, the RT model of communication (a-b below) should be complemented with the notions of (positive) contextual constraint and (positive) (non-intended) non-propositional effect, as described in (a’) and (b’) (see Yus 2015b, 2015c): The information intentionally exchanged between interlocutors is relevant if . . . (a) There is a high interest (enough number of positive cognitive effects in RT terminology). (b) The mental effort that processing this information demands is low. The act of communication between interlocutors is eventually relevant if . . . (a’) The (intended/non-intended) non-propositional effects add to the positive cognitive effects that the information produces in a specific context (to the extent that they make the act of communication relevant even if the actual content is itself irrelevant). (b’) The contextual constraints save (or at least do not add to) the addressee’s mental effort devoted to the processing of the information in a specific context (to the extent that they threaten the eventual relevance of the act of communication).

3.5 Feelings and emotions in smartphone communication Feelings and emotions abound in smartphone communication, as has been emphasised in passing. The ones that are most interesting for a pragmatics of smartphone communication are, obviously, those generated out of user-to-user interactions. In this sense, one of the key feelings induced by the smartphone is the feeling of permanent co-presence or non-stop connection. This arises from the emotional offset of cooperating for successful smartphone-mediated interactions, and the emotional identification between interactants. As Vincent (2011: 48) summarises, people feel a permanent and profound sense of connectivity and co-presence via their mobile phones. There appears to be an emotional investment in the mobile phone because it provides an unbroken and constant connection that mitigates or suppresses

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the sense of being physically apart. In fact, people feel the absent presence of each other as if they were together. The instant availability of users, who are constantly attached to their devices, favours this feeling of non-stop connection. A similar term is perpetual contact, proposed by Mascheroni and Vincent (2016) as a communicative affordance of smartphone communication, in the sense that different interfaces open up diverse communicative possibilities but at the same time shape distinctive communicative practices as well as different norms concerning use, social expectations, and emotions around smartphones. Another feeling generated out of smartphone interactions is that of social capital, both in its bridging variety (capital from weak ties, acquaintances, superficial friends) and in its bonding variety (capital from strong ties, family, close friends). Indeed, smartphones may be used in similar ways for both meeting close friends and also for sustaining the connection with weak ties. Furthermore, users may obtain an offset of positive feelings and emotions impacting their self-concept, self-identity, and self-esteem, for example by receiving lots of praising comments on an entry (e.g. a new profile photo) on a social networking site: “Facebook users with larger networks on Facebook disclosed more positive emotions, and the relation between network size and emotional disclosure was mediated by a stronger need for impression management” (Lin et al. 2014: 342). Finally, another feeling arising from smartphone interactions is intimacy. Hjorth and Lim (2012: 478) remark that this feeling is created in the growing blur between physical and virtual spaces favoured by non-stop smartphone connection, that is, “multiple cartographies of space in which the geographic and physical space is overlaid with an electronic position and relational presence, which is emotional and social. This overlaying of the material-geographic and electronic-social is what can be called mobile intimacy.” However, users also become emotionally attached to the smartphone itself (user-to-system interactions), since it is more than simply a communicationcentred device, but mainly the locus of innumerable interactions within the app ecosystem, an archive of the user’s past life and experiences (e.g. photos, videos, archived chats . . .), a source of collective bonding, etc. Meschtscherjakov et al. (2014: 2319) propose the label mobile attachment for the bond existing between the user and their smartphone, defined as “a cognitive and emotional target-specific bond connecting a person’s self and a mobile phone that is dynamic over time and varies in strength.” Besides, the term affective technology also covers this kind of feeling and emotion that is mainly tied to the smartphone itself rather than to the interactions managed through the device. Lasén (2004) uses the term to refer to the fact that smartphones “mediate the expression, display, experience and communication of feelings and emotions. Users enjoy an affective relationship with their phones and feel attached to them.” She refers to the intrinsic affective character of human communication, and also to the fact

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that mobile phones are close to the body, as possible causes of this attachment. Furthermore, smartphones not only cause emotional attachment but also provide the user with new, innovative ways of conveying emotional expressions. In this case, designers play an important role in these smartphone affordances (see next chapter). The aim of this “emotional design” is to make the use and experience of technology an emotionally richer interaction, multi-media and multi-sensuous, which would improve communication and task performance. Lasén (2010) also comments on a related term: affective bandwidth, already mentioned and initially defined by Picard (1997) as the amount of affective information relayed through a particular device or application. She suggests that a scale could be arranged for interfaces in terms of how wide their affective bandwidth is. Email and SMS would have lower affective bandwidth, followed by instant messaging and phone conversation. However, she also acknowledges that initially “cold” media may nevertheless be rich in terms of the emotions that might be transmitted through them: “For instance asynchronous forms of communication, from love letters to e-mails and texts, provide a way of displaying the emotion of the sender and of eliciting emotional responses in the receiver, which is different from the face-to-face communication, without being necessarily less intense or inferior.” Finally, the smartphone may generate a number of intense feelings and emotions simply from the fact that it contains an archive of the user’s life (photos, personal apps, a store of instant messaging conversations . . .). The contents of smartphones are uniquely personalised by their users from the very moment when the SIM card is inserted into them (Vincent and Fortunati 2017: 314). As a consequence, “the mobile phone becomes an expression of the user’s emotional identity and the mobile phone itself becomes the repository of the content and functionality that is the trigger for electronic emotions, the emotion conveyed via this electronic device” (p. 316).

Notes 1 According to Wilson and Carston (2019: 32), characteristic features of non-propositional effects include the fact that (a) different audiences paraphrase them in rather different ways; (b) no finite paraphrase captures all their nuances; (c) they are often described as open-ended; and (d) they typically involve the activation of perceptual, emotional, or sensorimotor mechanisms. 2 According to Wharton and Strey (2019), the very word emotion is problematic. Terms such as passion or affect were preferred during the 17th century, while 18th-century intellectuals used the word sentiment. 3 The intended import is the overtly intended cognitive effect of a communicative act (S&W ibid.). 4 For example, de Saussure and Wharton (2020: 194) point in a similar direction when remarking that RT pictures non-propositional information as “propositional content,” even if weakly communicated: “If having opened the curtain, Mary catches the eye of the person she is sharing her room with and gazes up at

42 Pragmatics, cyberpragmatics, smartphones the blue sky outside, she does not make manifest any particular proposition, but rather – in relevance theory terms – shares a number of weakly manifest ones. (. . .) However, no matter how weakly manifest this array is, or how unpredictably it may rise in an individual’s mind, these elements are still essentially propositional.” 5 Among others, we can list: (1) Reduced Social Context Cues Theory, (2) Social Identity Theory of Deindividuation Effects or SIDE, (3) Media Richness Theory, and (4) Uncertainty Reduction Theory.

4

Smartphone communication and app usability

In previous research (e.g. Yus 2011a, 2017b), the role of interface usability in internet-mediated communication was underlined. In Yus (2017b), it was claimed that usability might radically influence the eventual (ir)relevance of virtual acts of communication by increasing or reducing the effort required to convey and process messages through interfaces. Needless to say, this is even more evident in the case of smartphone communication due to the smaller size of the screens where all communicative exchanges and searches for information take place. Interface usability is also one of the major (positive or negative) contextual constraints that were analysed in the previous chapter. Since smartphone screens are small, usability has an enormous impact on user (dis)satisfaction. And because usability affects users’ processing effort when interpreting information through an interface, managing an app, or surfing the Net, it clearly plays a part in the eventual relevance of the information accessed and interactions performed through a smartphone app.

4.1 Usability: a relevance-theoretic approach In Yus (2011a) some general remarks on usability were provided. The term itself refers to the effort that using a computer system demands. However, nowadays the term is mainly associated with the ease of use of web pages or interfaces, which includes the use of smartphone apps: “the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use” (Oghuma et al. 2016: 36). Therefore, usability focuses on the users’ perception of the functional and instrumental qualities related to a website’s – or app’s – controllability and effectiveness, and highlights navigability and organization of information to be the key aspects (Palmer 2002, in Pee et al. 2018: 230). The main claim under cyberpragmatics is that usability clearly influences estimations of relevance. As Hong et al. (2017: 354) acknowledge, a system with good interface design is easy to use; with users scanning the screen and identifying relevant information easily. On the other hand, a poorly designed interface can create confusion and misunderstanding. Clearly, poor usability DOI: 10.4324/9781003200574-4

44 Pragmatics, cyberpragmatics, smartphones impacts the effort and time needed to carry out the tasks at hand, and this is detrimental to the eventual relevance of the virtual act of communication. An example is the number of “taps” that the user has to apply to the smartphone screen in order to obtain the desired information or effects, since users are exposed to longer overall loading times necessary to reach the desired content. Therefore, it may be concluded that a user browsing a mobile interface that is highly efficient by allowing him/her to reach the desired content in a small number of taps will perceive the site as more usable and rewarding. Besides, various proposals can also be found in the bibliography for the attributes of usability. Nielsen (1993, in Korhan and Ersoy 2016) lists five main attributes of usability, now applied to smartphone apps: 1

2 3 4 5

Learnability. App menus and tags should be easy to learn. This is especially important in today’s app-saturated smartphones, where users often start using the app before they fully understand how to use it; they are pressed for time and want to use the app right away. Efficiency of use. This refers to the expected level of app performance, which some smartphone users often do not reach. Memorability. The app’s features should be easy to remember. Lack of errors. Users should make as few errors as possible when using an app. Satisfaction. This refers to how pleasant it is to use the app. This is particularly important since, as argued in the previous chapter, nonpropositional effects often compensate for the effort involved in using an app or for the effort required for processing the information accessed or exchanged through this app.

Other authors propose a more generic list of usability attributes. For example, Wagner et al. (2014: 271) mention utilitarian dimensions of usability versus hedonic dimensions. The former are concerned with function and are goal-directed and performance-based. The latter, by contrast, are more concerned with entertainment and enjoyment. A similar proposal is made by Zhang and von Dran (2000, in Huang and Fu 2009). They differentiate the users’ feelings on usability upon two dimensions: hygiene factors (those related to security and stability, as well as ease of use and ease of learning) and motivation factors (related to pleasure, such as the appearance of the website and the user’s sense of achievement). In my opinion, when addressing smartphone app usability, it is better to approach it in its multifarious quality. Hertzum’s (2010) attributes of usability are useful in this direction: 1

Universal. There is a great variability in users’ styles, command of the smartphone, and communicative needs, but all of the users will need to use the same app, whose design should satisfy this user variability.

Smartphone communication and app usability 2

3

4

5

6

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Situational. The design of the app should be able to adapt to the users’ tasks and context of use. In a sense, usability should not be pictured simply as a decontextualised attribute of the system but has to be addressed as tightly linked to these user-specific situational parameters. Perceived. The idea here is that app usability concerns the users’ subjective experience when interacting with it. In perceived usability, the user as a unique individual is a tester of usability based on their subjective experience. Hedonic. It is about enjoyment of use rather than ease of use or task accomplishment. As argued in the previous chapter, feelings and emotions stirred by the use of smartphone apps are really important to understand users’ attachment to their devices and to the interactions carried out through them. Pleasurable emotions such as excitement and fun, among others, are exploited in hedonic usability. Organizational. It implies groups of people collaborating in an organisational setting, and the smartphone app should provide the environment for the task at hand. Cultural. App usability takes on different meanings depending on the users’ cultural background. There are often variations in specific app interfaces used in different parts of the world, even if they are intended for the same tasks. For instance, Wallace et al. (2013: 79) hint at the possibility that different cultures see usability as comprising different sets of attributes. They mention research that compared user attitudes toward computer applications used by selected users from China, Denmark, and India and found differences between cultures, which may be linked to different conceptualisations of usability. Danish and Indian users rely on concepts such as easy to use, intuitiveness, and likeability when making distinctions between apps. By contrast, Chinese users preferred to rely on concepts related to security, task types, training, and system issues.

Furthermore, smartphone apps are (supposedly) designed to provide easy access to the most interesting information and arrange it in relevant ways, as well as to provide users with a user-friendly environment for user-to-user interactions. In this framework, the visual, verbal, or multimodal design of the interface is crucial for user satisfaction. Nowadays apps include text, pictures, flash animations, graphics, and videos, among other discursive elements. Their combination on the screen has an impact on user satisfaction and perceived ease of use, on the desire to return to the app in the future, and on the eventual relevance of the content offered or exchanged through these apps. However, there may be no foolproof way to predict patterns of users’ behaviour with apps because their cognitive environments, skills, and expectations of relevance differ enormously across users. Besides, expectations and conceptualisations of relevance not only differ in the end users but also,

46

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and crucially, in all the people involved in the creation and development of an app. There is only a partial resemblance between the initial customer’s expectations when coming up with the idea of an app and the end user’s eventual reaction to and satisfaction with that app. This also applies to the expectations and background ideas of the people involved in the design and development of the app. A summary of stages involving parameters of resemblance and possible constraints in the production of an interface include: the client’s initial idea of an app, its uses, and prospective users [is contextually constrained by . . .] the client’s personality, command of computing, preferences for app design [which influence . . .] the client’s expectations of relevance upon the use of the app by prospective users [which only resemble . . .] the company designer’s expectations of relevance upon the initial design of the app [which only resemble . . .] the computing expert’s actual design of the app, embedding their own expectations of relevance within the app [which only resemble . . .] the design of the app together with the designer’s expectations of usability for end users [which only resemble . . .] the expectations of relevance and eventual relevance upon using the app by “experimental” users recruited by the company in laboratorysimulated situations [which only resemble . . .] the end user’s expectations of relevance and eventual relevance upon using the app Therefore, designing an app entails a prediction of the users’ needs and preferences, together with foreseeable actions on those apps (e.g. that they will follow certain interpretive steps, that the way information is arranged will be positively valued by the users, etc.). App users will tend to pick up, often unconsciously, the information from the app that is likely to be relevant. Those who design apps and fill them with content predict that certain

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information and the way it is arranged are more likely to be selected and processed, together with a prediction of which kinds of interaction users are likely to carry out on the app. S&W (2002: 14–15) stress this human ability to predict the mental states and inferential steps of others as part of the general human tendency to maximise relevance. Specifically, individuals (and also app designers) can predict: 1

2

3

What stimulus in an individual’s environment is likely to attract their attention (i.e. the most relevant stimulus in that environment). In the context of app design and processing, the author (or designer) is aware that certain ways of arranging the app and organising the information therein are likely to interest the user or make the user’s task and interactions easier or more effort relieving. What background information from an individual’s memory is likely to be retrieved and used in processing this stimulus (i.e. the background information most relevant to processing it). In the context of processing app content, the authors (or designers) assume that certain information will already belong to the user’s cognitive environment and expect that the new content made manifest by the interface will combine effectively with this background information to yield relevant conclusions. What inferences the individual is likely to draw. The same would apply to the processing of app content. Indeed, authors or designers of apps make predictions of relevance, of the user’s accessible information, and their inferential steps and conclusions. But there is no guarantee that these predictions will be successful, since cognitive environments and manifest information vary enormously across users. Perhaps it would be more sensible to assume that certain app designs will satisfy certain users and discourage others (Huang and Fu 2009: 461).

In conclusion, the design of the app is subject to hypotheses about its eventual relevance. To these other factors can be added, for instance, the people that are involved in the app-mediated act of communication or those technological aspects that may influence the user’s satisfaction or lack of it.

4.2 Contextual constraints affecting usability As proposed in the previous chapter, the term contextual constraint refers to aspects that underlie and frame smartphone communication and interaction and constrain their eventual (un)successful outcome. These constraints may be divided into those related to the individual user (or to user-to-user smartphone communication) and those related to the app itself (its affordances). The former may affect mainly the user’s feelings of (dis)satisfaction at using the app, whereas the latter is more directly linked to the eventual usability of the app.

48 Pragmatics, cyberpragmatics, smartphones 4.2.1 User-centred contextual constraints on smartphone app use The usability of an app or, rather, the specific user’s feeling that the app is easy to use is contextually constrained by a number of features that pertain to the user. Firstly, there is a great deal of variation depending on the user’s task at hand when using the app. For example, following Iten et al. (2018), when users have a specific purpose upon using an app (i.e. they are in goal mode), the design of the app and how easily the information is accessed through it become very important issues, whereas if users are simply browsing the site with no specific purpose (i.e. they are in action mode), these are of secondary importance. Similarly, the task at hand can be divided into productivity-oriented, pleasure-oriented, and hybrid (Huang and Fu 2009: 462). The second case is more related to a gratification of the senses and hedonic tasks such as smartphone games. Here, perceived enjoyment is more important than objective usefulness: “A user interface which provides characteristics such as an attractive and aesthetic screen design with pleasant background colours or graphics, innovative and creative design elements, a proper level of challenge, and social interaction will provide motivators for users’ enjoyment, engagement and flow” (ibid.: 463). Secondly, a user-related contextual constraint is the user’s trust in the app, especially prominent in the area of e-commerce and directly related to app design, which is not just about what is communicated but rather about how information is communicated and/or exchanged among users, and this impacts the user’s trust and willingness to engage in future interactions through a specific app (see Kaasinen et al. 2011: 88). Thirdly, an important user-related contextual constraint is what may be labelled personal variables (personality, mood, degree of expertise using the interface . . .). These variables have an impact on (dis)satisfaction upon using the interface, since different users with different personal attributes will find the same app easy or difficult to use. Massanari (2010: 403) correctly reminds us that users are diverse and heterogeneous, complex, and fragmented in nature. Therefore, the label “app user” may be functionally quite different, suggesting not just a category of people who represent a specific set of demographic characteristics but also referring to various individuals who interact differently with the app. However, as commented upon earlier, the process of designing an app limits the variability of potential users who actually interact with the app, with designers having in mind only certain kinds of users and neglecting others. Finally, a possible user-centred interface constraint refers to cultural variables in the use of apps. Hertzum (2010) applies the famous cultural dimensions by Hofstede (2001). In the case of apps, their design is culturally constrained in several ways: (a) power distance (this affects the prominence given to information on certain people over others, together with direct/ indirect forms of language used on the app); (b) uncertainty avoidance (this may affect navigational choices within apps and smartphone search outputs, etc.); (c) collectivism/individualism (this affects designs for collective

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actions on the smartphone versus designs emphasising individual choices); (d)  femininity/masculinity (this affects visual design and its aesthetics intended for male or female smartphone users); and (e) long-term vs. shortterm orientation (this ranges from emphasising future rewards, persistence, and prudence to emphasising the past and present).

4.2.2 Interface-centred contextual constraints on smartphone app use Interface-related constraints play a major part in the eventual satisfaction experienced by the user upon engaging with an app. Firstly, and predictably, the visual appeal and aesthetics of the app have an impact on users’ appreciation of usability. Designers should strive to improve the visual appeal of the interface and reduce visual complexity, since a good impression has a positive effect on user satisfaction and intention to stay on the app against other competing apps and return to it. In contrast, poorly designed apps tend to be rejected even if the content provided by these apps is objectively valuable. In general, the more intuitive the app, the less effort involved in finding the information, surfing/browsing the app, and engaging in fruitful interactions therein. In this sense, research on this issue tends to isolate design elements that supposedly affect user engagement and satisfaction. An example is Garett et al. (2016), who list up to 20 of these elements. Of these 20 elements, 7 are most often discussed in relation to user engagement: Navigation. Effective navigation is the presence of salient and consistent menus or navigation bars, aids for navigation (e.g. visible links), search features, and easy access to sections and sub-menus. Therefore, they propose a definition of navigability as “the degree to which the design of interface elements facilitates ease and efficiency of locating information.” Graphical representation. Engaging graphical presentation entails inclusion of images, proper size and resolution of images (these are often re-sized when using images from desktop websites on smartphones), multimedia content, proper colour, font, size of text, use of logos and icons, attractive visual layout, and so on. Organisation. Optimal organisation includes cognitive architecture (logical, understandable arrangement of elements in the app) and hierarchical structure (information arrangement and categorisation, meaningful labels, headings, or titles, and use of keywords). Content utility. This is determined by (a) a sufficient amount of information to attract users, (b) arousal or motivation (keeps users interested and motivates them to continue exploring the app), (c) content quality, (d) information relevant to the purpose of the app, and (e) perceived utility based on user needs or requirements. Purpose. The purpose of an app is clear when it establishes a unique and visible brand or identity, addresses users’ purposes and expectations.

50 Pragmatics, cyberpragmatics, smartphones Simplicity. This is achieved by using simple subject headings, transparency of information (reduced search time), consistency in app, ease of use (including first-time users), a minimum of redundant features, and easily understandable functions. Readability. It is optimized by content that is easy to read, well written, grammatically correct, understandable, and presented in readable blocks and at an appropriate reading level.

4.3 The specificity of smartphone usability If usability is important in all interfaces and constitutes a major contextual constraint in the eventual relevance of internet-mediated interactions, it is even more important in the case of smartphones due to their smaller screen size. Companies try their best to design their smartphone apps in such a way that they keep users engaged and faithful to their apps against competing ones, and companies have no qualms about stealing other companies’ successful interface designs and affordances. A notorious example was Snapchat’s Stories, short videos that users record and send to their peers but which disappear after a few hours. This innovation was later copied and incorporated into Facebook’s and Instagram’s interfaces. Companies also make expectations of interface usability and make changes in their apps in their attempt to keep users satisfied and engaged. This is no trivial business and has proven to have an important impact on the economy of these companies. For example, as is described in Levin (2018), Snapchat introduced a major redesign of its app at the beginning of 2018, which users disliked enormously, provoking a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars to the company. The redesign “featured big changes, including separating content that comes from friends and media companies, and reorganising Snapchat Stories” (Levin ibid.), but the company’s design did not satisfy the users’ expectations. In general, companies intend to improve the range of communicative modes and options offered by their apps and interfaces so as to obtain faithful and satisfied users. In this sense, they aim at cue multiplicity (Jiang and Hancock 2013, in Cui and Li 2020: 176), defined as “the extent to which a medium can convey multiple cues relevant to the interaction such as verbal expressions, voice inflection, facial expression, and body gestures.” An example is WhatsApp, whose interface has recently been incorporating several interesting features such as letter types (bold, italics), galleries of stickers and GIFs, chained reproduction of audio files, etc. Certainly, the advent of smartphones and their small-sized screens poses a number of challenges in the search for app usability. Zhang and Adipat (2005, in Harrison et al. 2013) underline a number of issues that have been introduced by the advent of mobile devices and are now applied to smartphone apps: 1

Mobile context. When using smartphone apps, the user is freed from a single physical location. The mobile context includes possible mixed

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3

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interactions with people on the phone and physically nearby people in the same location or even objects and environmental elements which may distract their attention. Connectivity. This is a constraint when it is slow and unreliable on smartphones. It will impact performance because most apps rely on internet connection. Although nowadays most smartphone users are provided with fast and reliable internet connection, in certain areas there is reduced connectivity. Small screen size. Smartphones contain very limited screen size, and so the amount of information that can be displayed at a time is limited. Menus, tags, and links have to be designed so as to reduce effort and maximise efficiency. Different display resolution. The resolution of mobile devices used to be reduced compared to that of desktop computers, resulting in lowerquality images. This is no longer an issue, since today’s smartphone screens are high resolution. Limited processing capability and power. Mobile devices often contain less processing capability and power than laptop computers. This will limit the type of applications that are suitable for mobile devices. This is, again, not applicable to today’s smartphones, most of which exhibit incredible processing power. Data entry methods. The input methods available for smartphones are different from those for desktop computers and require a certain level of command (digital literacy).

Finally, Lobo et al. (2011: 35–36) list a number of guidelines for smartphone interface usability, among which the following are worth mentioning: a

b

c

Keep it simple. Actions on the smartphone should be uncomplicated and user-friendly. Most smartphone users will not want to go through difficult and complicated actions while surfing through interface menus and options. Due to lack of screen space and, especially in the past, slow internet connection, these authors recommend designs for smartphone websites without large images and Flash content. Simplify user input. Entering text on a smartphone is often slow and prone to error, so links can be an alternative. Furthermore, giving users the option to scroll and browse through a website is often easier than forcing them to search the site for some particular information or item by typing the query text. Further aids include voice-to-text language input. Scroll vertically only. Since smartphone screens are small, the website should not be designed for horizontal scroll. Nowadays, this has been implemented by automatically shifting from desktop web to its parallel mobile web version when the system detects that the user is accessing the site from a mobile device.

52 Pragmatics, cyberpragmatics, smartphones d

Native apps vs. mobile webs. Native applications (apps) have much higher usability than the mobile webs for several reasons, most notably because apps can be optimised for the specific operating system.

In sum, interactions with the smartphone screen may generate positive or negative feelings, emotions, and attitudes, willingness to use the app, or reluctance to engage with it. Naylor and Sanchez (2018: 252) devote some research to this issue by asking: “does the difficulty associated with reading on small screens translate into different reactions toward the information presented on these devices? For example, if one reads a story about the latest political scandal on their smartphone instead of their laptop or desktop, is there a measurable difference in how an individual emotionally reacts to this story?” In cyberpragmatic terms, there is bound to be an impact on the effort side that translates into eventual (dis)satisfaction with the app. Besides, the app should be easy to use so as not to generate unwanted negative feelings in the users, who tend to continue using an app if they find it not only useful but also easy to use and if they derive enjoyment out of this use (a non-propositional effect): “Perceived ease of use has a positive impact on usage intention through perceived usefulness and playfulness. In this regard, those who find the app easy to use also tend to perceive the app as useful and gain high levels of enjoyment from using the app, and thus, their usage intention of the app increases” (Hur et al. 2017: 360). Another attribute of smartphone apps that may be considered a contextual constraint is their aesthetics. This quality of smartphone interfaces is considered both as classical aesthetics (characterised by being clean, clear, symmetrical, etc.) and expressive aesthetics (characterised by being original, creative, fascinating). Overall, it has been demonstrated that visual aesthetics influences perceived usability. Bhandari et al. (2017: 527) further specify the traits of expressive aesthetics, represented with qualities such as creativity, fused with special effects, novelty, and sophistication and being fascinating. It is centred upon the visual richness dimension, which comprises embellishment and expression of the designer’s creativity and originality. Expressive aesthetics increases the individual’s involvement and arousal with the interface.

4.4 Non-propositional effects from the smartphone app interface As was argued in the previous chapter, smartphone users interpret the information contained in the apps in their search for relevance, but the main reward from this interpretive activity may be located not in the propositional content processed but in the (non-)intended non-propositional effects obtained either within or beyond user intentions in the shape of feelings and emotions. These effects are important for eventual relevance, since they have an impact on the outcome of app-mediated acts of communication, on the user’s preference for

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a specific app, on why certain interactions are (un)profitable despite the lack/ existence of interesting information, and on how app-mediated interactions make users feel. In terms of interface design, positive feelings and emotions may stem from the use of a well-designed app. In general, there are two approaches to the relationship between interfaces and derived feelings or emotions. On the one hand, there is affective computing, the study and development of interfaces (i.e. systems and devices) that can recognise, interpret, process, and replicate a range of human emotions. But what interests cyberpragmatics most is the second approach, emotional design: how to design an interface capable of generating positive emotional responses in the user. In this sense, Sonderegger et al. (2014: 22) wonder why feelings and emotions have not been addressed as part of the variables that measure usability or system efficiency and argue that this is surprising, since different models and theories of design and evaluation regard them to be a central aspect in the perception of the aesthetics of the system. Besides, while a user is completing a task through an app, feelings and emotions, grouped under the generic label of positive affect, may be experienced as information about the task (e.g. “this app is fun”), as information about oneself (e.g. “I am really good at managing this app”), or about one’s strategy (e.g. “I am doing this right through this app”), depending on what is in focus (Lindgaard and Parush 2008: 229). However, in this book it is claimed that non-propositional effects may be relevant to the user even if the user is not fully aware of having derived them from managing an app or from a user-to-user interaction through an app.

Part II

Smartphone-mediated discourse and communication

5

Texting From SMS to smartphone messaging

Smartphone messaging (henceforth SM) is one of the most pervasive forms of interaction that people carry out on their smartphones nowadays. Messaging apps entail a cues-filtered means of interaction, though contextually richer audio files and free phone/video calls are also enabled through some of these apps. However, even if users engage in text-based interactions, they manage to complement their messages with discursive strategies that convey further contextual information beyond plain text, including text alteration (called text deformation in Yus 2005a and oralised written text in Yus 2001, 2011a), and the use of emojis, stickers, GIFs, images, videos, etc. For the purposes of this book, SM offers very interesting insights on how messages are inferred and contextualised, together with the role of additional discourse elements in their eventual relevance. These will be complemented with a number of contextual constraints and non-propositional effects that also play a part in the eventual (ir)relevance.

5.1 SMS texting The mobile phone’s short messaging service (SMS) was one of the most popular mobile texting options before the advent of messaging apps.1 It appeared around 1993, and it is still very popular and even the main texting option in many countries. One of the key features of SMS discourse is text alteration. At the time of its highest popularity, there was a heated debate on the impact of SMS on literacy and writing skills, which were mostly unfounded. As Thurlow and Poff (2013: 173) summarise, criticism of texting seems exaggerated, and in fact most of the non-conventional spellings found in texting are widespread in other discourses (e.g. Post-it notes on the fridge) and pre-date their use in mobiles. More interesting is the fact that SMS was initially not thought to be a useful option by the phone manufacturers, and therefore its massive use took them by surprise. This is an example of how users adapt and reshape technologies to their own communicative needs. The same happened with Twitter users, who were dissatisfied with its interface options and started to label tweets by using hashtags, as well as creating the retweet nomenclature. These end-user innovations were eventually incorporated into the interface by the company. DOI: 10.4324/9781003200574-5

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5.1.1 Why use SMS? SMS is a plain-text mediated form of interaction, a cues-filtered medium that does not convey much information on the user’s nonverbal behaviour and how it expresses feelings or emotions. However, it was massively popular, and its poor default discursive qualities were compensated for by a number of gratifications that satisfied users (apart from being rather cheap). In the bibliography, a number of these “SMS motives” are provided, some of which are summarised here:

Reference

Reasons for SMS use

Leung and Wei (2000)

affection/sociability (expressing appreciation, encouraging, showing care), relaxation (fulfilling the need to gossip or chat, relieving boredom or passing the time), immediate access (ability to be accessible anytime, anywhere, blurring time and space boundaries), mobility (access to phone service anywhere), fashion/status (mobile phone is stylish and expected by peers) high transportability, reasonable affordability, good adaptability, general suitability convenience, affordability, control over the context of communication, speed of relating information, autonomy from supervision friendship maintenance, mobility, fine-tune arrangements assisting in establishing new relationships, maintaining and reinforcing existing ties, defining social boundaries, relationship maintenance, conflict management, maintain an “absent presence” maintaining social contacts, entertainment, affection, fashion, coordination, immediate access, information seeking, self-presentation, intimacy greetings and reminders, keeping track of whereabouts, scheduling activities, staying in touch, coordinating with friends, maintaining relationships with peers, acquiring information about personal interests, marking membership through creative use of discourse, establishing identities relaxation, escaping from reality, entertainment, passing time, social interaction needs, friendships, relationship maintenance, control of interaction permanent connection, forming close social circles and interactions, arranging face-to-face meetings, expressing emotion

Thurlow and Brown (2003) Skierkowski and Wood (2012)

Spagnolli (2013) Thurlow and Poff (2013)

Park et al. (2016)

Eisenhart and Allaman (2017)

Ishii et al. (2017)

Tulane et al. (2017)

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Clearly, SMS provides some users with a number of benefits that compensate for the cues-filtered quality of the texts exchanged, but this quality may also discourage other users. In any case, users exhibit an incredible ability to adapt or tailor the medium to their interactive and communicative needs. Communication through SMS typically takes place between friends or at least users who know each other, since texting relies on the mobile phone’s contact list (see Skierkowski and Wood 2012: 746), and is also useful to maintain contact with good friends and acquaintances who are away. Reid and Reid (2004) call these friendship-centred interactions text circles: Texters establish and maintain social contacts within one or a few fairly well defined and close-knit groups of textmates, forming these text circles within which they regularly, perhaps even continuously, exchange messages. However, although SMS involves the intensive exchange of messages between these close ties, especially among the young, reiterative interactions with close friends and relatives may provoke a cocooning effect: “if texting facilitates contact with close friends and family exclusively, and if it reduces heterogeneous encounters, it can have a cocooning effect by focusing one’s attention on existing close relationships at the expense of reaching out to new people” (Kobayashi and Boase 2014: 682). When interacting with close ties through SMS, it is easier, in theory, to assess the extent and depth of the interlocutors’ information that is shared, that is, their mutually manifest assumptions. This mutuality of information arises from the intersection of both interlocutors’ cognitive environments (see Yus 2016a). 5.1.2 SMS discourse SMS discourse exhibits similar features to those found in chat rooms, including single mode (not multimodal), verbal, both ephemeral and permanent, in-between oral and written, short, transitive (the flow of the interaction is open to both interlocutors), unidirectional with successive turns and bi-personal (it takes place between two mobile phones, unlike smartphone messaging groups) (Cantamutto 2017). One key attribute that deserves some space in this section is SMS (a)synchrony. This discourse is typically asynchronous (which for users entails some positive contextual constraints). However, the intense exchange of texts held between users does produce a feeling of immediacy and hence of synchronicity: “Users infuse an ostensibly asynchronous technology with a certain synchronicity in the way they actually use it; as is so often the case, the technology is thereby co-opted and exploited to serve the underlying imperatives of intimacy and social intercourse” (Thurlow and Brown 2003). SMS has also been compared to face-to-face (f2f) discourse, with mixed claims. Initially, it was argued that SMS demands more effort both in coding and inferring the discourse, especially when the discourse is filled with orthographic and stylistic alterations. This is the idea underlying Kock’s (2004)

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media naturalness theory, for which text-based communication requires more cognitive effort and hence it should be perceived as less pleasant than f2f interaction. By contrast, other analysts claim otherwise, as happens with Walther’s social information processing theory (users manage to compensate for the lack of nonverbal cues and convey them effectively through text, see Walther 1992), his hyperpersonal model (Walther 1996), and the adaptive structuration theory (technology evolves in parallel to those who use it, leading to changes in social rules and norms; see DeSanctis and Poole 1994). Text alteration would also play a substantial role in the ability to feel SMS communication as not so cues filtered. The use of non-standard orthography is a powerful expressive resource which can graphically capture some of the immediacy, the authenticity and flavour of the spoken word in all its diversity and has the potential to challenge linguistic hierarchies (Jaffe 2000, in Thurlow and Poff 2013: 177). As such, typed text may be even more productive in generating intimacy and control over messages than f2f communication. Within cyberpragmatics, the reason for a preference for a cues-filtered medium such as SMS over a highly contextualised f2f environment lies in the fact that SMS (and also smartphone messaging) is framed by a lot of positive contextual constraints, especially for those who feel more “at ease” in a means that does not expose or reveal much information about themselves, such as physical appearance or qualities of the voice, and provides users with time to design their texts (Skierkowski and Wood 2012: 747). A central object of research within cyberpragmatics is the role of text alterations in the eventual interpretation obtained from the SMS text, that is, to use the altered text as public evidence of the SMS user’s intention, predict the quality of the addressee user’s interpretation, and assess whether it differs from the standard “plain text” interpretation. In general, some SMS text alterations may be included under the label of written simulations of oral conversations (Borreguero 2002, in López Quero 2010: 174), oralised written text (Yus 2011a), textual deformation (Yus 2005a), txtspeak (Durante 2016: 68) or orthographic emotive expression (Albritton 2017) among other proposals (see also McSweeney 2018). Another word typically used in analyses of text alteration in SMS is textism, defined as any change in a word’s orthographic form as compared to traditional writing (Bernicot et al. 2014: 30) and as specific respellings, contractions, and additions to conventional English contained in text messages (Grace 2013: 2). In my opinion, not all SMS text alterations (textisms) have a communicative value and are therefore interesting for a cyberpragmatics of SMS communication. Here, Grace and Kemp’s (2015) distinction between contractive textism and expressive textism is useful. The former involves shortening of the original words, whereas the latter entails adding more text in order to provide additional information.2 This has implications for a cyberpragmatics of SMS, as pictured in Figure 5.1. Normally, contractive textisms are produced due to the user’s need for brevity and speed, especially concerning the SMS 160-character limit, no longer an issue in today’s messaging apps, even

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Figure 5.1 Pragmatic implications of contractive and expressive textisms.

if nowadays there is still a tendency toward brevity in messaging and social networking apps. As such, the user does not intend to communicate any additional or more fine-grained information, and the mental effort involved in their interpretation differs depending on the degree of conventionalisation that exists in the shortening techniques. Although pls for please is easy to process due to its fixed convention, other more innovative textisms may make it much harder and effort demanding to make the inferential gap filling between the typed SMS and the intended interpretation. By contrast, expressive textisms are produced due to the user’s communicative or expressive needs (e.g. to convey intonation, feelings, emotions, etc.), and therefore they communicate an additional layer of information that is relevant in itself.3 Again, the degree of mental effort involved depends on the degree of conventionalisation and also on the eventual quality of this added information and how it compensates for the extra effort involved in the processing of these textisms. Finally, regarding the interactional quality of SMS, it may produce a feeling of intense synchronicity. However, in interactional terms, it resembles more chat room interactions in which messages are sent and read in their entirety, and therefore there is no room for overlappings or interruptions. Besides, the system may arrange turns in a disordered way, for example

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when a user receives the next text on the mobile phone while they are still trying to reply to the previous one, which opens up a possibility for misunderstandings. As a consequence, SMS sequences are not invariably coherent and do not always form perfectly organised adjacency pairs (question/ answer; request/reply, etc.). In this sense, König (2019: 158) comments that there may be instances of phantom adjacency or disrupted adjacency. The former occurs when two adjacent postings appear together and seem to be related, but they are not. The latter occurs when the second pair part is not posted in direct adjacency to the first pair part but in a slot further down on the screen, separated from its actual point of reference by earlier postings. Consequently, multiple-party interactions may appear chaotic due to the disruption of face-to-face communication conventions. This interactional quality of SMS can be noticed in the massively phatic quality of the messages exchanged (see Yus 2019a). Taking into account Thurlow and Brown’s (2003) distinction between informational messages (designed to provide information) and relational messages (designed to create, develop, and maintain relationships), the latter seem to abound in SMS communication, not only for interactional or social purposes but also to generate phatic effects that fit the non-propositional mould. These messages are exchanged for the purpose of maintaining lightweight contact and co-presence rather than an exchange of substantive information, a form of text sharing that Ito and Okabe (2005) label ambient virtual co-presence. Research in this direction corroborates this informational/relational asymmetry in SMS. For example, Thompson and Cupples’ (2008) label of digital sociality indicates that humans exhibit an inherent need to socialise, and SMS is a means to sustain relationships. Reid and Reid (2010: 5) also point out that the content of these messages “resembles everyday gossip, and seems to provide a similar opportunity to consolidate mutual involvement and inclusion in friendship groups, as well as an occasion to engage in more strategic forms of self-presentation.” 5.1.3 Contextual constraints and non-propositional effects in SMS communication SMS exhibits contradictory constraints. On the one hand, it has a cuesfiltered quality that makes it a lean medium devoid of the rich contextualisation that face-to-face interactions exhibit. By contrast, in SMS there are also positive contextual constraints and non-propositional effects that compensate for this cues-filtered quality and even make SMS a preferred medium for many users. These issues will be briefly commented upon below. 1 User-related contextual constraints The major constraint in this category is the user’s personality. It has a direct impact on how many SMS texts are sent, how much content is coded, and

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what expectations are held regarding the interaction and the feelings and emotions associated with the SMS act of communication. For example, it has been demonstrated that SMS plays a positive role in users whose personality is prone to social anxiety (Park et al. 2016: 712). Shy users also rely on SMS to fulfil their need for meaningful social interaction (Tagg 2012: 18). The user’s competence at using the SMS interface also constrains the amount and quality of the SMS texts coded, together with the user’s communicative competence. “Familiarity with media conventions determines, at least to some extent, discursive choices made by senders and guides correct interpretation by recipients. In order to ensure successful communication through texting, interactants must make assumptions about their partner’s general communicative competence as well as their familiarity with modality conventions” (Lyons 2014: 78). Another user-centred constraint is the reason for the SMS interaction. Whether the interaction is task based or purely informal affects the users’ expectations of relevance, the amount of text typed, and the quality of the text coded. A related issue is the kind of relationship existing between the interlocutors and the amount of information that is mutually manifest to them, enacted, and taken for granted while the SMS interaction is taking place.4 As Riordan and Trichtinger (2017: 2) underline, “friends, by definition, share a history of personal communication and experience upon which they can rely to help them interpret each other’s messages, whereas strangers must necessarily draw upon only general experiences and knowledge of the world. Such relational differences lead to alterations in interpretation and conversational patterns.” One further user-centred contextual constraint is the interlocutors’ culture and social background. For example, Ishii et al. (2017: 401) remark that U.S. users perceive, feel, and use text-messaging differently from students in Japan. Those in the U.S. see the medium as richer than their Japanese counterparts. Furthermore, the former tend to seek gratifications of reduced cues, quickness, and interlocutors’ ubiquity more than the latter. Texters in Italy and Japan expect reciprocity, the latter being highly sensitive to the amount of time that elapses between turns. Danish users exhibit expectations of reciprocity and immediacy, while in the U.S. users do not expect an immediate reply (Thurlow and Poff 2013: 170). Finally, two user-related contextual constraints are age and gender. Several publications have corroborated that there are differences in texting behaviour regarding these variables. For example, young users and older users text differently, and texting presents a different set of values for young people, which may not be so prominent for older generations of texters (see Ling et al. 2012: 283). Concerning gender, several studies have also concluded that the SMS user’s sex has an impact on what is typed in the message and its discursive qualities. For example, females are said to use various strategies to achieve brevity more than males do. There is also a significant relationship between gender and the usage of standard grammatical structure and

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punctuation, thus fitting the stereotype that females tend to adhere more to typing norms and standards in their communication than males. However, for Ceccucci et al. (2013), there was no significant difference regarding gender and SMS, with the exception of the emotions felt by the users. All of the positive emotions were higher for females than males. In other words, females were more pleased, satisfied, contented, and delighted with their text-messaging experience. 2 Interface-related contextual constraints SMS is constrained by the interface affordances, especially its famous 160-character limit for each text, which provokes many of the (non-communicative) contractive textisms mentioned earlier, together with the users’ lack of co-presence and the tiring text-entry system on the mobile.5 Indeed, in the past, each key of the mobile phone included three or four letters, and the user had to tap several times on each key in order to reach the desired letter. This was really tiring and provoked a lot of the contractive textisms mentioned above. Nowadays, smartphones incorporate full keyboards and predictive text entry systems. These are positive interface-related constraints, in the sense that they relieve the user’s effort in producing texts and provoke fewer text alterations. SMS is also a text-based medium, which constrains the range of nonpropositional information that may be communicated through typed texts, although users do exhibit an ability to connote their messages with this kind of information. Actually, despite these limitations, there are positive constraints involved in the act of SMS communication that make it particularly appealing to certain users. Among other positive constraints, SMS allows users to contact friends where a phone call is felt to be awkward or expensive. It supports communication without the commitment to an immediate reply (it is considered less intrusive). SMS also helps users to craft and carefully compose their messages without the burden of the spontaneity of face-to-face synchronicity (Reid and Reid 2004). This blurring of the synchronous/asynchronous dichotomy seems to work to the user’s benefit. Users feel that they are engaged in intense synchronous conversations, but with the benefits that asynchrony brings to the management of typed texts, allowing them to take time for impression management, control over communication sequences, ability to craft a message and respond at the user’s convenience (Ishii et al. 2017: 402), and the possibility to manage multiple simultaneous conversations without disrupting others (Skierkowski and Wood 2012: 745). 3 Non-propositional effects One of the reasons texters rely on SMS, a cues-filtered medium, is that they generate a number of non-propositional effects (feelings, emotions) that get

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attached to the messages or leak unintentionally from the act of SMS communication, making up its main source of eventual relevance, adding to the relevance of the content communicated or compensating for the lack of interest that the texts themselves possess. This also applies to SM communication (see what follows). Some of these are briefly commented upon here. 1

Identity-related effects. SMS exchanges may have effects on the user’s identity, and the medium itself may impact the user’s self-presentation strategies, typically performed with an expectation of cognitive reward, especially by young users. Tagg et al. (2014: 221) are right in stressing the role of orthographic choices, such as the respelling of words, always meaningful in the sense that it indexes particular identities. Spelling variation in SMS is meaningful because “it contributes to how texters portray themselves through texting, and how they position themselves in relation to the people they text.”

Among the identity effects, the feelings of group membership (and parallel feelings of being “outsiders” to the group) are very important for some users. Certain discursive strategies, argots and text-altering norms are only comprehensible to those in the group and define or mark group membership discursively, at the same time generating feelings of intimacy among those in the group (Tagg 2012: 181). An example is the use of the Dominican acronym Klk for qué lo qué (McSweeney 2018: 177), a colloquial greeting similar to what’s up? This acronym is typically Dominican and marks the sender user and connotes the interlocutor (when interpreting it correctly) with group membership. This group-enhancing role of SMS is especially prominent in young users. As Skierkowski and Wood (2012: 746) summarise, adolescents indicated that frequent contact with others over text messages promoted feelings of being loved, valued, and of being popular among their peer networks. [. . .] youth compliant with socially defined norms for appropriate text messaging behavior are likely to experience a greater sense of belongingness, which in turn can have a positive impact on self-esteem. Activities, such as text messaging, that enhance perceptions of self-esteem are likely to ultimately result in the formation of a social identity that is enmeshed in the communicative processes that facilitate feelings of belongingness in the first place. As a result, text messaging becomes an important aspect of the essential experience of the self in relation to others. 2

Connection, co-presence, and closeness. Texting also produces an offset of feelings of intimacy and connection between the interlocutor(s). Feelings such as connected presence (Licoppe 2004) may be generated intentionally or leak unintentionally from the act of SMS communication, being in both cases relevant to the users.6 Similarly, feelings of

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Smartphone-mediated communication co-presence are important to users; many messages are exchanged simply for enhancing co-presence rather than for exchanging substantive information. Negative non-propositional effects. These may also be generated out of intense SMS interactions, for example when users feel lonely despite continuous exchange of messages. Apart from the obvious unpleasant feelings when the user is subjected to acts of flaming or cyberaggression, negative feelings may also stem from the combination of texting and a face-to-face interaction (see Chapter 11 on the use of locative media). Halpern and Katz (2017) describe situations such as the one in which not responding to the partner at the right time or not making eye contact (because of simultaneous texting) affects negatively the impression that partners form of each other (see also Park et al. 2016: 717).

5.2 Smartphone messaging (SM)7 Smartphone messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Line, Snapchat, and WeChat, among many others, are initially intended to provide users with the possibility to send typed messages to friends or contacts. Among the qualities that these apps exhibit, in Yus (2016c) it was underlined that SM apps offer users a whole range of types of discourse that may be communicated and/or exchanged (typed texts, photos, screen shots, audio files, videos, links to websites, information on physical location, stickers, GIFs, etc.). Actually, the wide range of possibilities for exchanging content is part of “the fun” of using these SM apps. Specifically concerning WhatsApp, it “is perceived more as a form of entertainment than as a means of communication or, in other words, it is used to communicate with close people and to seek entertainment through that interaction, thereby unlocking new opportunities for intimate communication while sending memes, videos and links to entertaining things” (Fernández Robin et al. 2017: 89). In any case, SM is felt as more conversational, fluid, and synchronous than SMS. In Church and de Oliveira (2013: 354), a user comments that “with WhatsApp maybe you type more, but the conversation is more fluid. You type a sentence and someone sends a sentence and then you type another one. I have the feeling that if it’s WhatsApp, it’s an open conversation. It is similar to if you were talking in person.” In fact, one of the differences between SM and social networking apps such as Facebook is that SM produces a more intimate, private feeling in the conversation. Besides, SM is mainly meant to sustain communication mostly with friends that the user knows already and with many of whom they already interact in physical, face-to-face scenarios. Other apps such as Line or Telegram may also be managed through nicks. This is why they are preferred at the initial stages of relationships, for example after meeting through dating apps. In this sense, although there seem to be minimal differences among SM apps, these subtle differences provide us with hints about the users’

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communicative needs, intentions, and satisfaction. Nouwens et al. (2017: 727), for example, claim that we should consider channel selection relative to the other apps available to the user, in what is labelled the user’s ecosystem, rather than focusing on just one app, and that considering this ecosystem of apps “should help us to better understand how use of mostly identical communication apps diverges over time, which factors create and maintain these differences, and how the ecosystem influences the relationships among communication partners.” They also coin the term communication place for those apps that entail particular identities, that is, personal and idiosyncratic constructs that users build on top of the apps that they use and which in turn shape their subsequent communicative actions and experiences. Communication places are shaped by membership rules (who belongs to them), perceived purpose (what they are for), and emotional connotations (how they make the user feel). These communication places are personal rather than inherent to the app and therefore highly variable across users. Nevertheless, these apps have also proved to be essential to maintaining contact with people who live far away, as in the case of students who interact with their parents when they live abroad. In general, SM is a clear example of the convergence (and clash) of increasingly virtualised physical settings for interactions and a growing physicalisation or materialisation of virtual environments for interactions. Since communication has evolved towards a total hybridisation of physical–virtual scenarios in personal networks (Yus 2007), SM allows for (mainly) synchronic text or audio file–based conversations that replace physical interactions or complement them efficiently. SM allows for better accessibility and ease of communication offering real-time messaging, empowerment, sense of belongingness and sociability, enjoyment, quick information-sharing, and cost benefits. It is commonly adopted for convenience in communication and because it saves money and is also popular for entertainment purposes such as sharing jokes, memes, and funny photos or audios. In fact, this kind of mediated text- or file-based interaction has become the norm, being now preferred to traditional phone calls (see Chapter 6). Indeed, very often users prefer exchanging texts or recorded audio files that resemble a phone conversation rather than engaging in an actual phone call. A possible explanation lies in the synchronous-asynchronous interface. SMS is typically asynchronous, although it can reproduce a quasi-synchronous conversation if the system manages to send the messages fast. On the other hand, SM is typically synchronous, with long exchanges of conversations taking place between users, but it also possesses an asynchronous potential that works as a positive contextual constraint. SM also provides notifications regarding who has contacted the user through these apps, a nice example of the duality of intentions suggested within RT: the informative intention (the intention to inform the interlocutor of something through SM) and the communicative intention (the intention to alert the interlocutor to this informative intention through alerting

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notifications). This “visual warning” is useful to stress the user’s communicative intention, but it may also produce disturbances in the user’s task at hand, a negative non-propositional effect.

5.3 Contextual constraints on smartphone messaging communication As described in some detail in Yus (2017a), the act of SM communication may be constrained by a number of user- and interface-related issues, some of which may radically alter the eventual relevance and the positive/negative interpretive outcome of this communicative act. 5.3.1 User-related contextual constraints on SM One initial user-related constraint refers to the user’s task at hand when using SM. A second one is the user’s familiarity with and command of the SM app and with the options for coding and contextualising messages, a sort of user’s SM literacy. As pointed out in Yus (2011a: 65–66), “the user’s familiarity with the interface, even if it is not user-friendly, and also the user’s intuitive ability to interact with the interface also affect the balance of cognitive effects and mental effort involved in processing information from this interface, generating multiple outcomes of (in)efficient interpretations. And frequency of use is a parallel variable affecting relevance.” In the same way, the use of SM also demands some familiarity and literacy from the user, for example concerning uses of emoji, despite its apparent universal denotative meaning. For instance, some connotations in the interpretation of emoji are culture laden, thus demanding cultural literacy (Freedman 2018) or cultural competence (Gibson et al. 2018). Next, we should consider the user’s age, sex, and personality (and related terms such as self-esteem, self-concept, and self-identity), together with associated feelings (e.g. joy, loneliness, depression), which have an impact on the quantity and quality of the messages typed and sent through SM, together with their frequency and their content (Michikyan et al. 2014: 180). Concerning age, the default expectation is that the young will use emoji more intensely than older people due to the quality of their differing everyday interactions, as suggested in studies such as Prada et al. (2018: 1931), among others. Regarding gender differences in emoji use, it has been claimed that women use emojis more frequently. One possible explanation is their greater natural ability to express their emotions compared to men (Herring and Dainas 2018, 2020). A parallel explanation is that women “are more concerned about how they are perceived in the society and tend to focus more on their image in social and online interactions” (Al Rousan and Remil 2018: 67). Besides, Pérez-Sabater (2015) compared the SM discourses, and she concluded that male users’ messages exhibit more colloquial language, they are lacking in the use of salutation, their interactions are shorter, and

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they tend to go straight to the point. By contrast, female users’ messages are more correct in orthography and grammar, they often greet other users, and they resort to more vague language. As for personality, as happens with SMS, shyness inhibits users from social behavior in physical scenarios, but in SM shy users may find the perfect channel to express themselves without the burden of the negative impact of physical co-presence. It would therefore make sense for shy individuals to use SM intensely to supplement their social lives; it may reduce anxiety and allow them to initiate more in-depth and more rewarding conversations. In the specific realm of emoji use, research found several connections between personality and the quantity and quality of the emojis typed. Furthermore, the culture to which the SM users belong and within which they carry out their interactions is another user-related constraint (Bieswanger 2013: 476). Although there are global trends of SM use, some cultures influence the quality and quantity of information exchanged on the SM app. In fact, many of these exchanges exhibit a phatic quality, and several studies have demonstrated the mediation of cultural background in the use of this kind of small talk. Gardner and Davis (2013: 95) comment on this phatic function by relating it to “virtual taps on the shoulder, establishing and maintaining a sense of connection among friends who are physically separated.” Besides, since different cultures rely on different SM apps for their communicative needs (e.g. WhatsApp in Spain, WeChat in China), some of their background cultural values inevitably get transferred to their SM utterances and interactions on those specific apps as part of the users’ overall orthographic practices. This is, for example, what happens with the cultural information leaked by code-switching choices between Arabic and English in the WhatsApp conversations by Saudi female users analysed in Albawardi (2018). Another example is the different ways in which Spanish and British users manage conflict talk through WhatsApp (García-Gómez 2018), with differentiated social representations of verbal aggression in these cultures. Cultural constraints are also found in emoji use. In the past, marked differences were found in how emoticons were created in different cultures, and cultural biases linger on in the use of emoji, despite its apparent cross-cultural “iconic” validity. For example, Hofstede’s (2001) distinction between individualist and collectivist cultures can explain the quantity and quality of emoji use, especially in the broad division between Western and Asian countries. Besides, several emojis are interpreted differently in different cultures, as happens with the “clasped hands” emoji, meaning “pray” in Western cultures but initially meant as a “give me five” salutation. Another example is the “hand covering face” emoji (🤦), interpreted by default as “laughing when you should not,” but acquiring additional meanings in Chinese culture, for example the assumption that people should be euphemistic in how they talk, avoiding the display of feelings or opinions too directly (Gibson et al. 2018: 92). Also, when emoji relate more or less directly to language

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(e.g. replacing it, as will be analysed below), cultural background knowledge is expected. An example is found in this sequence of emojis: 🚫🍵 (Gn 2018).  If the sender users are English, they may intend the addressee to interpret that whatever is being qualified is not “their cup of tea,” which is depicted iconically, but other users not acquainted with English idioms might get other interpretations such as “prohibition of hot drinks.” Furthermore, the differences in politeness strategies among countries have a parallel impact on emoji use (Sampietro 2016a: 86). Lastly, a major user-related constraint refers to the contacts on the smartphone and the kind of relationship existing among them. As O’Hara et al. (2004) remark, when users interact on SM (WhatsApp in their study), there is an intimate understanding of each other’s day-to-day lives, and the kind of relationship held between them is built up through their frequent SM encounters. In a similar fashion, one of the major negative user-centred constraints is the management of long lists of contacts on the smartphone who demand equal attention by the user (Birnholtz 2010: 1432). In other words, the app treats all contacts as equal, but for the user, some interactions and interlocutors are more important than others, and the app should make it possible to prioritise contacts and their variable intensity of interactions so that the user is not loaded with on-screen notifications. 5.3.2 Interface-related constraints The SM interface exhibits a number of constraints that are shared with other text-based interactions such as SMS but lacks the 160-character limit that provokes so many contractive textisms. Instead, SM apps have no text length limitation, and predictive text input makes text shortenings associated with brevity less likely. However, the SM interaction still takes place on a small screen, and the medium remains cues filtered despite the range of media content that may be attached to the user’s messages. Therefore, SM should be negatively constrained, both at the coding phase (trying to make up for the expressive limitations of typed text) and the inferring phase (trying to work out the intended meaning out of the typed text plus emoji and other visual discourses such as GIFs and stickers). In order to make the app as useful as possible, SM apps periodically offer users new or updated featured functions to improve their satisfaction, but these will not necessarily lead to positive effects across users. In the previous chapter, the failed new Snapchat interface was mentioned. WhatsApp also introduced new user status capabilities that were massively rejected (Maíz-Arévalo 2018: 145), and the added functionality on Facebook’s Messenger to monitor and alert the user when their friends are nearby may improve some users’ satisfaction, but others may feel uneasy, thinking that this service violates their privacy. As was argued in Yus (2017a: 77) and also earlier in passing, SM users obtain additional reward in the use of typed messages that is not possible with more contextualised app-enabled phone calls. In any case, smartphone

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users do feel that the SM interface is manageable enough and that it serves their communicative needs without the negative effects generated from using a phone call (intrusive quality, exudes too much nonverbal information about the user, lack of time for planning messages, etc.), and new updates in the apps bring new possibilities to communicate the user’s intended interpretation. Furthermore, the fact that users readily resort to the SM interface does not entail that the interface itself is devoid of negative contextual constraints. As described in Yus (2017a) concerning WhatsApp and applicable to other SM apps, the interface shares a lot of constraints with chat rooms and SMS texting, since both interfaces entail typing and sending messages that a server allocates in a fixed order, and the user may find turns disordered, and sometimes the comment on a picture sent by the user arrives at the addressee’s smartphone before the picture itself, thus creating confusion. In the specific case of emoji use, there are additional contextual constraints. One major constraint is the fact that the depiction of emojis varies across platforms and smartphone operating systems (e.g. Android and iOS), together with the fact that they can change size on some messaging apps (e.g. WhatsApp, depending on whether they are typed in isolation or attached to text) and are fixed in size on other apps. Although differences in emoji depiction are not substantial enough to lead to major misunderstandings of the user’s initial intention, there may be a loss in the exact interpretation that the user was aiming at when using that particular emoji. Furthermore, sometimes several galleries of emojis co-exist in the same messaging app with variations in their visual referents. For example, WeChat users may choose between the galleries of emojis provided by the smartphone and the unique ones provided by the app itself (see Zhang et al. in press).

5.4 Smartphone messaging discourse SM discourses exhibit many similarities with other text-based discourses. In the following sections some interesting qualities of these discourses for pragmatics are addressed, including text alteration to show vocal qualities and the use of emoji. Other visual and/or multimodal discourses on SM such as GIFs, videos, photos, and stickers will be addressed in other chapters of the book. SM discourses exhibit several interesting qualities in their (a)synchronous and “oralised” status, in between the need to type them and the feeling that they are spoken and conversational, although providing texts with oral qualities is not the only reason for text alterations. Calero Vaquera (2014: 95–99) lists some attributes of SM discourse (in this case, WhatsApp discourse), some of which are summarised and further commented upon. 1

Extratextual level (pragmatic and communicative aspects). a

SM discourses are exchanged in real time, through a program whose “affordances” constrain the user’s capacity for linguistic productivity.

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c

d e

f

2

The user’s intention is to communicate some information or make a connection with other users synchronically, although there is often no expectation of an immediate reply. The typical conversation held in SM is emotion laden, expressive, and participatory, and users have managed to reduce the loss of contextual information in SM discourses so as to express vocal and visual qualities of oral communication. Sometimes politeness markers are omitted in SM interactions, for example greeting formulas. As has already been mentioned, very often SM discourses are not informationally relevant but are important in their phatic quality and in their role of maintaining perpetual contact among users. As happens with SMS, many SM apps rely on the user’s smartphone contacts, and therefore interactions are held between users who know each other.

Paratextual level (or macrostructural, pertaining to aspects of text organisation and distribution). a b c

d e

f

SM is characterised by successive and spontaneous textual/multimodal turns among users who are normally not physically co-present. The minimal conversational unit is the exchange, made up of two turns by different users and related by relevance. SM users also frequently produce several turns in order to complete a single utterance, which allows the user to “keep the SM floor” and maintain the addressee user’s attention. The SM discourse is often unplanned and dynamic, with a dynamic question–reply structure. Very often the user is identified by a profile photo (as in WhatsApp, Line, WeChat, etc.). On WhatsApp, there is also a “status text” in the user’s profile that works as a self-presentation strategy (MaízArévalo 2018), and the same applies to other messaging apps such as WeChat. SM discourses include the date and time of their production. As argued in Yus (2016c: 14) and earlier passim, in SM conversational turns are subject to the rigid sequencing imposed by the system. This sequencing may have little to do with the intended sequence of turns, and this lessened coherence may lead to misunderstandings or reduced relevance from the interaction, especially in multi-party conversational groups. Besides, programs for text-based interactions are designed so that several persons can post messages simultaneously, which means that there is no competition for the floor, since all messages sent off will eventually be posted by the system, even if probably not in the expected order.

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Intratextual level (or microstructural, pertaining to phonetic, grammatical, and lexical aspects). a

b

c

SM discourse exhibits a high degree of orality; it is dynamic, unplanned, informal, innovative, and orthographically challenging so as to compensate for the lack of physical co-presence and for other interactional purposes. Given the limitations that plaintext messages exhibit compared to face-to-face exchanges, one of the central areas of cyberpragmatic research focuses on the users’ ability to connote their messages with different attributes of orality, typically found in the vocal channel (e.g. repetition of letters and creative use of punctuation marks) and the visual channel (e.g. emoji) of oral interactions (see Yus 2005a, 2014b; Maíz-Arévalo 2015, among others), together with attached media and multimodal content.8 Therefore, cyberpragmatics analyses the challenges that users face when they attempt to compensate for this lack of orality9 and nevertheless expect to communicate not only the right interpretation from verbal content but also the whole range of feelings, emotions, attitudes, and impressions associated with this content that are also relevant and which may alter drastically the eventual interpretation of the accompanying verbal input. In SM, the user’s communicative intention is coded with linguistic creativity and a playful tone, which abound in the SM lexicon. Playfulness has recently been stressed as important in SM communication, aided by emoji use: “Text messaging and emoticon use work together in mobile instant messaging to facilitate the establishment of perceived playfulness among users, which leads to a strengthened social connectedness, enhanced identity expressiveness and increased advocacy intention among friends to use mobile instant messaging” (Hsieh and Tseng 2017: 412). As in SMS, there are multiple strategies for text alteration in both contractive and expressive strategies, although the former may only be caused by the user’s need to type fast rather than due to space constraints, as was the case in SMS communication.

5.5 Text alteration in smartphone messaging discourse Traditionally, text alteration has been studied as related to the user’s attempt to mimic, in typed text, the intonation and vocal subtleties of oral communication. However, although this is often the case, there are other functions. Specifically, what interests cyberpragmatics is the role that it plays in making the text relevant to the addressee user and leading more easily to the intended interpretation and the derivation of (propositional or affective) effects. Text alteration draws the user’s attention towards possible additional meanings that may be conveyed; otherwise the sender user would not have bothered to engage in such strategy.

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Two claims underlie a cyberpragmatics approach to text alteration. The first is that any modification from default plain text generates additional inferences and effects (propositional and/or affective) in addressee users, even if the underlying reason is as simple as to be different from adults’ way of typing, as is the case with adolescents, or to stand out visually from the chain of messages by adding colour and engaging in innovative text alterations for other users to notice. In general, even minor alterations in default text produce significant effects in the interlocutor (Lyons 2014: 181). For example, concerning the messaging dialogue in (1), when my students were asked about the interpretation of Ana’s replies, text alteration in answer (b) (vaaaaale) led 90% of my students to come up with an interpretation such as (2b). Although there was no agreement on the exact intention (incredulity, anger, irony), they all agreed that it diverted from the one that they obtained from the interpretation from the plain, default text (2a). (1) Luis: Voy a llegar tarde a la reunión. Hay mucho tráfico en el centro [I am going to arrive late for the meeting. There’s a lot of traffic in the city centre] Ana: a Vale, no te preocupes [Ok, don’t worry] b Vaaaaale, no te preocupes [Oooooook, don’t worry] (2) a I understand that you cannot get here in time, you needn’t worry. b I don’t believe you cannot get here in time. You just don’t care to be on time. The second claim is that the strategies for text alteration are context dependent, in the sense that there is no “coded” one-to-one match between a text alteration strategy and its eventual interpretation, and the user has to draw information from context in order to pin down, as it were, the right information that was intended via text alteration. Even supposedly clear “text alteration-interpretation” matches such as “capitalisation to express anger” do not convey the same information across contexts. In other words, some text alterations “are only possible based on the context and insider knowledge of the interactants’ in-group language” (Lyons 2014: 179). In the bibliography, there are several proposals for text-altering techniques (see Kalman and Gergle 2014: 188–189). However, as was hinted, what interests us most is text alteration as evidence of the user’s intended interpretation (and intention to convey additional information regarding the plain-text counterpart). Some of these strategies are reviewed next. 1 Capitalisation This strategy is commonly used for the expression of anger or heated-up feelings in the user but not necessarily so: it depends on the role of contextual

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information, as has already been claimed. Zappavigna (2012) acknowledges that affective meanings are generally involved in the use of capitalisation (affective attitude that may be correlated with affective effects in the terminology of this book) but not always interpreted as anger. She proposes that capitalisation serves as upscaled graduation of the interpersonal meaning conveyed by the typed text, and the content of the text determines which meaning is expected to be intensified. Unlike the stereotypical correlation of capitalisation with anger, capitalised words expressing happiness will probably be interpreted as meaning that the user is happier, with context playing a major role in both propositional inferences and non-propositional effects. Durante (2016) correlates capitalisation with intensity, and when users capitalise some portion of the text, they are giving instructions as to how their texts should be inferred, adding to the relevance of the text and saving mental effort. Hence, a text such as “I HAVE TO WORK LATE,” provides higher overall intensity, but when used concurrently with lowercase text, a representation of pitch height fluctuation occurs: “I have to WORK late,” or “I have to work LATE,” and even “I HAVE to work late.” All three code the same information, but they do not all mean pragmatically the same thing to the sender user and are not inferred in the same way. Possible interpretations of selected capitalised words range from simple added emphasis to louder pronunciation, or a more intense feeling when the words capitalised are emotion related. 2 Period SM users are normally relaxed about prescriptive orthography, and a case in point is the period (full stop) at the end of the text. It is so often omitted that when it is used, it immediately raises a number of inferential hypotheses (again, context-dependent ones). McSweeney (2018: 35), for example, writes that in text messaging the period indicates finality, and many users feel that it indicates a sense of firmness, whereas on other occasions the user feels the obligation to omit it. Some empirical research has provided some curious inferences for the sentence-final period. For instance, Gunraj et al. (2016) presented information with/without a final period, and those texts with a period were rated as more insincere. An explanation for this effect is provided by Collister (2017), for whom there is a connection between period and formality, so when used in informal SM conversations (a different environment altogether), it is immediately interpreted as insincere. 3 Letter repetition Repeated letters – as in example (1) above – convey a number of possible added meanings when compared to plain text, including text clarification, emphasis and accentuation, all of them constrained by the contextual

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information available to the interlocutors. Although some users repeat letters to mimic how their texts would be pronounced in face-to-face interaction, very often there is no match, and other intentions must be pinned down. Kalman and Gergle (2014: 191) list a number of possible functions of letter repetition including emulating spoken nonverbal cues, change in pitch, pause filling, expression of sounds, and even musical intonation. Lyons (2014: 175) moves beyond letter repetition as mere expression of pronunciation. She proposes examples such as those quoted in (3) to show how letter repetition is not necessarily linked to the reproduction of pronunciation: (3) a

Dat is soooooo sweet..u must b so hapz gal..to ur wrkplc?..btw, I’ll b arnd urs by 8..kool? b Yipppppeeeeeee!! c Oh sorry i 4got thats cool silver woo get u with your newwww contract

The repetition of the letter “o” in (3a) and “e” in (3b) does correspond to the pronunciation of prolonged diphthongs or long vowel sounds, but surely a different intention underlies the multiple “p” in (3b) and “w” in (3c). She concludes that “the fact that, as a plosive, [p] cannot be pronounced as a long sound suggests that texters do not use repeated letters just to represent the length of sounds in a text-only medium to compensate for its lack of prosody, but that mediated lengthening of sounds, although inspired by pronunciation in speech, is somewhat more creative and develops, to a certain degree, independently from spoken language” (p. 175). Similarly, Darics (2013: 144) concludes that letter repetitions do bring attention to the sound qualities of typed text, but they do not necessarily correlate with the stress or elongation of the spoken versions of manipulated words. Therefore, it might be better to approach letter repetitions specifcally (or non-standard spelling more generally) based on their function during interactions rather than their sound-imitating qualities. 4 Creative use of punctuation This encompasses repetitions of question or exclamation marks and other forms of punctuation symbols. These creative uses, like capitalisation, fit the upscale graduation proposed by Zappavigna (2012). Apart from a higher intensity in feelings and emotions conveyed through these uses of punctuation, Vandergriff (2013: 3) lists other possible uses such as indicating friendly interaction and emphasis. Furthermore, punctuation is used to communicate silence in typed text, mainly by repeating dots or dashes (see also Serrano García 2019). 5 Letter repetition and affective attitude ascription As was mentioned, SM users are often unsatisfied with plain text to communicate their affective attitudes (i.e. feelings, emotions) and resort to text

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alteration in order to show the kind of feeling which they have while they are typing their messages. Therefore, while some SM users simply type the closest – and more conventional – way of typing their feelings, as in (4a), others frequently rely on text alteration, as in (4b), or even use coded symbols for the transcription of feelings, as the repetition of “Z” to show boredom in (4c): (4) a I feel lonely. b I am booooooooooored. c zzzZZZzzzz Interjections can also be used as markers of affective attitude. Some examples of interjections containing affective-attitude information of the type “X is surprised while typing p” are quoted in (5a-b) below: (5) a Oops! This has stopped. b Oops! I fell down. It should be noted that the nonverbal behaviours associated with feelings and emotions which are most frequently communicated are the ones which are easiest to type, that is, those whose vocal expression in oral communication is not superimposed on speech (what Poyatos 1975 labelled alternants), such as reproduction of laughter (König 2019). Typical emotion-conveying alternants include laughs, as in (6), and shouts (7): (6) A: os kiero muchisimo!! jeje [I love you a lot!! ha ha]. B: jajajajajajajja jajajaajajajajjajajaja. (7) aaaaaaaaaaaah. waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. The measurement of these emotion-connoted repetitions of letters does not seem to be oriented towards communicating the intensity with which these emotions are felt but, instead, towards a more or less faithful reproduction of how lasting the sound of the alternant would have been if the user had heard it in a face-to-face context (an altogether different type of measurement).

5.6 Visual support in smartphone messaging discourse: emoji As an evolution from text-based emoticons, emojis (iconic signs available on smartphone keyboards) are nowadays an inherent element of SM communication. Although they are also used elsewhere, for example within tweets and Facebook entries and also used in advertisements, emojis are typically used in SM interactions. Unlike emoticons, emojis exhibit fully iconic images, and these are more aesthetically appealing, closer to the real gestures and/or objects that can be found offline. They provide users with an economical way of expressing feelings and emotions (and a way

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to reveal other intentions; see what follows) that would otherwise be difficult to convey using only typed words. Therefore, emojis are not gratuitous, and users normally infer additional information when they are provided. As argued in Yus (2014b: 514), with emoji/emoticons, users have to devote cognitive resources to determine the intention that underlies their production and work out its relationship to what has been typed verbally, a kind of multimodal text–emoji ensemble. This extra effort has to be offset with additional (or different) cognitive reward and/or affective effects of a nonpropositional quality), and the pragmatic functions that will be proposed in what follows are evidence of interesting communicative roles beyond redundancy, especially when combined with textual input. Besides, emojis are intentional, which does not entail that users invariably have a specific interpretation in mind when they type an emoji; sometimes they just want to add colour to their utterances. In general, as argued in Yus (ibid.), although emojis are used more consciously than actual nonverbal behaviour, and there is more control over the message that a user intends to convey, this is no guarantee of improved communication of feelings and emotions, since speakers are often bad at assessing their own feelings and emotions, at least in a fine-grained way. They are unable to control and explain the range and scope of the information that exudes from their interactional behaviour and are even worse at putting these feelings and emotions into coded discourses such as emojis. Furthermore, the communication of feelings and emotions through facial expressions often occurs in parallel to verbal utterances while one is speaking, but emojis have to be typed before, after, or inside the accompanying text, and the addressee often has to engage in backwards inferencing, that is, to process a typed text for relevance, and when the emoji comes up, they have to backtrack and re-interpret the whole text, since the emoji changes or alters the initial inferential path. In sum, emojis are intentionally typed iconic signs that are produced with an underlying intention. In this book, several pragmatic functions of emoji are proposed. Underlying these functions lies the premise that the user intends to communicate supplementary cognitive or affective effects, and emojis are useful to convey the appropriate extent and quality of this communicative intention, to direct interlocutors towards an appropriate interpretation, and to save their mental effort (see dos Reis et al. 2018). A final introductory issue is whether emojis constitute “a language” and whether their default meanings have become sufficiently conventionalised to remain stable across contexts. From the perspective adopted in this book, both claims are problematic. Concerning the first claim, it is difficult to qualify emojis as “a language” (see Yus 1996). Ge and Herring (2018) suggest the term emerging graphical language as a possible alternative label. Regarding the second issue, from the perspective adopted in this book, there is no guaranteed interpretation of emoji across contexts. Both text and emoji exhibit interpretive gaps between their coded default visual

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referents and their eventual interpretations obtained in a context (see Wilde 2020 for discussion on the perceptual status of emojis). Therefore, I doubt that Danesi’s (2017) distinction of emoji roles between pictographic (i.e. iconic, when they signify exactly what they depict) and logographic (i.e. symbolic, when they act as word replacement) is attainable.10 Does any emoji invariably signify exactly what it depicts? This is doubtful; rather, different shades of meanings may be communicated with a single emoji in different contexts and/or depending on the text that they precede or follow. Depending on the user’s search for a relevant interpretation, the contextual assumptions accessed may vary, ranging from information from the accompanying text to default cultural information associated with the emoji, etc. And vice versa: The user will also use the information from the emoji when trying to work out the intended meaning of the text next to which the emoji is placed. An example of the high context dependence of emoji and how open they are for differing interpretations is the example proposed in Yus (2019b) and quoted in (8). (8) a Friday 🍝+🍺+🕺? b Shall we meet next Friday, have supper, have a drink, and go partying? c See you next Friday, have pasta together, drink a beer, and go dancing? In (8) there is a misunderstanding even if it does not radically prevent the normal fow of the SM interaction. The sender user types the emojis of a bowl of pasta, a mug of beer, and a dancing person in (8a) but intends to use these emojis as metonymies of their actual intended interpretation (8b). By contrast, although the addressee user also interprets the three images metonymically, as (8c), these are closer to the visual referents depicted by the emojis. This example shows how the meaning of the emoji is not given by default but has to be worked out in context (see Gibson et al. 2018: 97). However, specifc meanings may become conventionalised within specifc SM groups and acquire stable meanings across conversations. This phenomenon is labelled repurposing in Wiseman and Gould (2018), defned as “giving an emoji a specifc and constant meaning beyond the initial ‘intention’ of the emoji designer; this meaning would be inaccessible to an outside observer without explanation,” and producing interesting non-propositional effects such as those involving social identity reaffrmation and feelings of in-group connection and cohesion. In this chapter, the functions of emojis will be addressed from a cyberpragmatic point of view that underlines the user’s intentionality upon typing them and the relevance that they intend to achieve by using them. Sometimes emojis generate additional (or different) effects when used together with text, and the effort involved in interpreting the accompanying text may be alleviated (or increased occasionally).

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Initially, underlying the etymology of both emoticon and emoji lies the idea that they add an additional layer of information concerning the user’s emotion while typing the message, although this is just one of the functions that will be proposed. A second general function of emojis is to avoid misunderstandings in SM text-based interactions, that is, to aid in the addressee user’s recovery of the right interpretation within a cues-filtered medium such as typed text. Nevertheless, sometimes emojis cannot prevent misunderstandings, and they even generate some further misunderstandings of their own, given the aforementioned context dependence of even apparently easy-to-infer emojis. Examples of misunderstanding are depicted in the two conversations in Figure 5.2. In the conversation on the left, a user types a single “naked” emoji (🤔) and the interlocutor asks “y ese emoticono?” (why this emoticon?). The initial user replies “pensando” (thinking), and the interlocutor replies “en qué? 😂” (about what? 😂). Clearly, the user has not been able to interpret the intention underlying that emoji. In the conversation on the right, translated as (9), we keep wondering why the users resort to those emojis, some of which have no apparent relationship to what has been typed verbally, as the comments inserted within the conversation show:

Figure 5.2 An example of misunderstanding in the use of emojis.

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(9) A: Good DAVID!! Barbara and me could go to texaco one of these days with the boys 😊😂😂 [comment: what do these emojis show? that the user is happy to go to texaco (“smiling face” emoji)?, that going to texaco is a silly suggestion (“face with tears of joy” emoji)?]. A: Óscar!! Send last night’s photo, please! 🤗🤗🤗🙋👏👏 [comment: why these emojis? Do they have anything to do with what has just been typed?]. B: Of course, Dani, one day we’ll go to Tex. So far, today I have to recover, because I don’t know why I am a bit in pain 🙄🙄 [comment: the user is being ironic, since she knows that all the other users in that group share with her the information that they went to the gym and did intense exercise. However, she does not resort to the typical irony-signalling emoji. Why the “face with rolling eyes” emoji?]. C: Yeah, Óscar, send the photo, come on 😉😉 [comment: what is the “winking face” emoji for? Irony? Complicity? Joking?]. D: [reply to B’s message] 🤗🤗😘😘 [comment: what are these emojis aimed at? At B’s comment or at B herself?]. Furthermore, in Gibson et al. (2018: 91) only 25% out of 304 informants agreed on the meaning of a given emoji. Sometimes the misunderstanding is not acute enough to lead to full miscommunication, but the addressee user may be baffled at the use of certain emojis. This is accentuated by the different uses that countries and communities assign to specific emojis.11 In the bibliography, several taxonomies of functions of emojis have been proposed. Some of the most recent ones are schematically listed in what follows. After that, in the next sections my own pragmatic taxonomy of functions will be provided, some of which overlap, to a greater or lesser extent, with the ones listed here.

Author(s)

Functions proposed and/or cited

Durante (2016: 61–62)

(a) repeat what is sent verbally; (b) substitute for parts of the text message or the entire text message; (c) complement or clarify the text message; (d) contradict the text message; (e) emphasise or elaborate the text message; (f) moderate text messages (establish conversational rhythm, moderate, regulate text messaging conversations) (Continued)

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(Continued) Herring (2017: 104)

(a) express emotion and playfulness; (b) modify the tone of textual messages; (c) soften illocutionary force; (d) illustrate portions of text; (e) express virtual actions; (f) convey private meanings; (g) open and/or close conversations Al Rashdi (2018: 118) (a) express emotions; (b) keep a conversational connection; (c) add tone; (d) engage recipients; (e) maintain or manage relationships; (f) engage in phaticness; (g) add humorous tinges to the text Ge and Herring (2018) (a) express emotion; (b) modify tone; (c) substitute for nonverbal behaviour; (d) open and close conversations; (e) enhance interpersonal relationships; (f) share secret meanings; (g) foster social connectedness between users; (h) express one’s identity; (i) increase perceived intimacy Herring and Dainas (2018) (a) add personal identity expression; (b) add playfulness to a message; (c) maintain relationships; (d) modify the tone of the message Sampietro (2019a: 110) (a) signal the illocutionary force of the message; (b) add politeness and rapport-building devices; (c) clarify the message; (d) express emotion; (e) create conversational connection; (f) soften or strengthen the message Völkel et al. (2019) (a) add emotional or situational meaning; (b) convey a more intense expression; (c) adjust the tone of a message; (d) make a message more engaging or playful by providing additional stimuli; (e) conversation management; (f) inside jokes or references within a relationship Siever (2020) (a) modal function, divided into (a.1) extension of the proposition (sub-divided into provide additional information, provide propositional attitude, decoration), (a.2) repetition of parts of the proposition; (b) referential function, divided into (b.1) replacement of a letter, (b.2) replacement of parts of words, (b.3) replacement of a complete word, and (b.4) replacement of a complete word with multiple emojis Siever and Siever (2020) (a) allographs for individual letters; (b) semantic specifier (of intended meaning); (c) cohesive device; (d) deictic element; (e) structuring device; (f) hashtag Panckhurst and Frontini (a) redundant addition (an emoji is used as well as (2020) written text, but it is not required in order to understand the text); (b) necessary addition (an emoji is used as well as written text, and its inclusion is necessary in order to avoid misinterpretation); (c) lexical replacement (an emoji is used instead of a word)

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Within cyberpragmatics, three main functions are proposed. Needless to say, accurate emoji interpretation demands contextualised inferencing beyond the mere identification of the emoji as depicting an object or a facial expression, among other referents. For instance, Parkwell (2019) analyses the use of the toilet emoji to refer to Trump in singer Cher’s tweets. She correctly comments that users with a similar social-cultural background to Cher will likely be able to identify that the emoji has the form of a toilet (denotative emoji-referent matching), but they will need access to contextual information (familiarity with Cher’s tweets and her discourse practices and/or enough knowledge of issues central to the presidential election), or they may not be able to appreciate the emoji–Trump association correctly. For that purpose, three groups of pragmatic functions are proposed in this chapter: (a) Cases in which the emoji aids in inferring correctly the propositional content of the text next to which the emoji is typed and/or deriving possible parallel non-propositional effects. This group will be generically called emoji within. (b) Cases in which the emoji performs communicative functions on its own, either because it is typed with no accompanying text (so-called naked emoji) or because it plays no role in the interpretation of the text that has been typed next to it. This group will be generically labelled emoji without. (c) Cases in which the emoji has a qualifying role but not towards the content of the message next to which it is typed (i.e. does not aid in the interpretation of the propositional form of that message) but qualifies the SM act of communication as a whole. This group will be generically named emoji beyond.12 As will be argued, an example of this third group is its use to foreground a polite strategy, as in “Perhaps you could give me a lift later 😘,” in which the “face-blowing-a-kiss emoji” does not alter the interpretation of the text as a request but does add supplementary information about the user’s expectation that the act of SM communication as a whole should be interpreted as framed in a polite strategy.13 In any case, the boundary between these three categories is often difficult to set, and the addressee user may well interpret the emoji in subtly different ways from the one intended by the initial user without that inferential outcome being a threat to effective communication. 5.6.1 Emoji within This is the typical case in which the emoji influences the way the accompanying text is interpreted. In this group of functions, the typical situation is that of the sender user thinking that their text would be more accurately interpreted with the addition of the emoji or expecting the derivation of additional (or different) propositional cognitive effects, together with possible affective effects. As such, within the perspective of this book, the inclusion of an emoji is seldom regarded as gratuitous or redundant but as aiming at relevance and leading the addressee in certain interpretive directions. In general, in the functions listed in what follows, it is assumed that the emoji adds certain information to the content of the accompanying text

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(see Maíz-Arévalo 2014: 182). On other occasions, the emoji has a more procedural role, that is, when it does not convey much information by itself but mainly instructs the addressee user about how the text should be processed, a role similar to what Gumperz (1982) called contextualisation cue.

A.1. To signal the propositional attitude that underlies the message and which would be difficult to identify without the aid of the emoji

Propositional attitudes are part of the content communicated by an utterance. Natural languages offer speakers a whole range of linguistic means that can be used in the coding of propositional attitudes. However, as argued in Yus (2014b: 519), sometimes the underlying attitude can only be derived from non-linguistic evidence, by focusing on vocal (e.g. intonation) and visual (e.g. facial gestures) aspects of the specific context in which the act of communication is taking place, and this is where emojis play a clarifying role, since internet users are also expected to embed their messages in a particular attitude under which the message is typed, and for that purpose, the user may resort to text alteration and emojis in order to fulfil this communicative task, thus facilitating the identification of an appropriate attitudinal schema. In short, in this first function, the emoji makes it easier to identify the propositional attitude, which would otherwise be difficult to spot. Consider these examples: (10) A: What was the trip like? 🙂🙂 B: I was bored to death 😔😖😖😞😢 (11) A: What was the exam like? B: My mind went blank! 😖😖 (12) I am sooo old!!! 😭 (13) I have no time to get bored, nor to read 😖 In all of these examples, the user adds a propositional attitude to what he/ she has typed, specifcally an “I regret that . . .” attitudinal schema, since the messages could have been understood as simple assertions without those emojis. This use is similar to the one found in face-to-face interactions, where certain aspects of the speaker’s attitude are most often expressed through nonverbal or paralinguistic cues.

A.2. To communicate a higher intensity of a propositional attitude which is already coded verbally

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In this case, the user does resort to a linguistic means to communicate their propositional attitude, and the emoji adds an additional level of intensity in the way this attitude is held, as in (14), where the typed propositional attitude appears in italics, and the emoji adds intensity: (14) I hope you’ll always remember my Spanish lessons 🙂

A.3. To contradict the explicit content of the message (a): joking

An important role of emojis is to signal that the user should not be understood literally but that the underlying intention is to joke about some state of affairs. The relevance of the emoji lies in its capability to direct the reader away from a literal interpretation of the message and, instead, to offer an interpretive reward in terms of generation of humorous effects, as in these examples: (15) A: B: (16) A: B: A:

How are the exams going? 😔😔 Ufff . . . Really well!!! 😂 Feel like starting [the new academic year]? Yes, a little, to be honest. Me too, but only for the gossip 😂

In (15–16), the user resorts to the emoji to make sure that the addressee interprets her assertion within a joking schema. In general, as Vandergriff (2014) correctly argues, when used to cue humour or signal humour appreciation, emojis orient to a message’s contextual inappropriateness. In this way, the emoji eliminates or minimises the risk that a humorous intention may not be recognised as such.

A.4. To contradict the explicit content of the message (b): irony

A similar case is contradicting propositional content due to an ironic intention. The main difference with jokes is the explicit dissociative attitude that irony exhibits (Yus 2016a). During interpretation, some information from context is inconsistent with the explicit interpretation of the utterance, which triggers a search for the underlying dissociative attitude typically ascribed to irony. In Filik et al. (2016: 2132), 85% of informants associated the “wink emoticon” [ ;-) ] with an ironic intention, proving to be useful to direct the user to the right ironic interpretation.

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In Yus (2014b: 522) the examples in (17) were provided for the role of emoticons as markers of an ironic intention: (17) a A: I would click on “don’t like” if I could . . . hehe. B: Hahaha User 1, I know that, deep down inside you, you like them :-) b What a hard life you lead xD. c A: These scenes ring a bell, don’t know why . . . :-). B: Really? Well, I don’t know why they do, either ;-). d This clarifies it all. I couldn’t breathe normally because of the uncertainty . . . :-D. In (17a), B knows that A dislikes the content of the entry but pretends that he does like it; by using the emoticon, she makes it clear (ironically) that both agree on the quality of the content. (17b) is a typical example of irony in which the user communicates the opposite while, at the same time, foregrounding the real quality of the addressee’s life. In (17c), both users know which scenes are being talked about but pretend that they do not; the outcome is an increased awareness of the mutuality of this information. Finally, in (17d) the user is unsatisfed with the other user’s reply and stresses that by using an ironic statement with the aid of the emoticon. A.5. To contradict the explicit content of the message (b): other

Humour and irony do not exhaust the possibilities of emoji use in its function of contradiction. An example is found in the specific “smiling face” emoji on WeChat and used specifically by young users. Its function is to contradict the accompanying text, taking the opposite interpretation of the prototypical referent of the emoji.14 For example, in (18) B is expressing that she did not like the present at all; in (19) that B is unwilling to write the report and he is being forced to write it; and in (20) that the book is not at all good. (18) A: B: (19) A: B: (20) A: B:

Did you like the present? I did Can you write the report for tomorrow? All right I think my book is rather good . . . So do I . . .

A.6. To add a feeling or emotion towards the propositional content of the message (affective attitude towards the message)

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Adding emotion is the function that most users intuitively ascribe to emojis, which is corroborated by the etymology of both terms. Siyang (2018: 23) includes this function in what is labelled adjunctive use of emoji, according to which “an emoji is not an indispensable part of the text, that is, if you remove the emojis in this discourse, the general meaning of the text is still complete and can be interpreted.” Recently, Gesselman et al. (2019) have demonstrated that the use of emoji in initial relationships through dating apps in order to add feelings and emotions to typed text increases the chances of eventual intimate and sexual relationships. Indeed, emoji use adds emotional valence and affect and can be used, at times strategically, to imbue SM with expression in ways that satisfy fundamental human needs for affect, interpersonal closeness, and intimacy in communication. However, although emojis certainly aid in the communication of “text plus emotions,” they are not devoid of additional inferential challenges, such as the inherent human inability to infer highly fine-grained emotions from human behaviour, the constraint of differing interpretations of emotions across cultures, and pinning down whether the emoji actually serves this purpose and not any other (Gibson et al. 2018: 92). In general, the range of textual options to convey emotions is limited compared to the vast amount of subtleties and shades of meanings that emotions can acquire, and this is why SM users often resort to emojis. In this function, then, the user shows, with the aid of emoji, a certain feeling or emotion towards the content of the message. These are some examples: (21) A: B: (22) A: B: B: (23) A: B:

Will they let you do it [the exam] again? I don’t know . . . As things stand I doubt it 😭 What are you doing on New Year’s Eve? Mmm 🤔🤔 Why are you asking? Do you have any idea? 😮 He finished his marriage really fast xD Indeed! 😂

In (21), B adds a feeling of sadness or dismay at the fact that the teachers are not probably going to let her repeat the exam by using a specifc emoji. In (22), B adds a feeling of uncertainty to what she is saying verbally. Finally, in (23) B adds a laughter-inducing feeling referred to a sub-sentential utterance (Indeed) that confrms what the initial user has typed. It should be noted that, in this function, the emoji qualifies the accompanying text, but the text also aids in the inference of the extent and intensity of the feeling or emotion felt by the user and which is prototypically depicted by the facial emoji, that is, the text aids in ad hoc referent adjustment. As explained in Chapter 2, one of the key terms in relevance theory is ad hoc concept formation, which is applied to almost any coded concept with the aid of contextual information but which so far has only been applied to verbal communication and especially to the analysis of figurative language.

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However, in Yus (2019c) it is claimed that the same applies to the interpretation of the referent underlying a picture when accompanied by text. In short, relevance theory claims that during interpretation the prototypical concept literally encoded by a word is adjusted by the hearers so that it meets their expectations of relevance. The outcome of this adjustment is an ad hoc concept that is similar but not identical to the concept literally coded by the word. In the case of emojis, the user would also engage in an inferential concept adjustment, but this time applied to the referent of the emoji. The accompanying text triggers slightly different interpretations of the prototypical visual referent of the emoji, and therefore the inferential strategy leading to these slightly different interpretations would be called ad hoc visual referent adjustment. When faced with a facial emoji next to a message, the user will initially infer the default gesture portrayed in the emoji but will come up with interpretive variations depending on the accompanying text, a proper case of adjustment but this time applied to the referent of the emoji. For instance, in all the messages followed by the “slightly smiling face emoji” 🙂 listed in (24), the user will initially take the default meaning of the emoji as a starting interpretive strategy, but the final interpretation will differ, to a greater or lesser extent, from this basic denotative meaning of the emoji depending on the surrounding text: (24)

I love you for a lot more things 🙂 You’re pretty! 🙂 We can go and have a family meeting 🙂 I look forward to seeing you, my dear! 🙂 Next Friday, we’ll go to the beach together! 🙂

A.7. To communicate the intensity of a feeling or emotion that is coded verbally

Emojis can also enhance the intensity of a feeling or emotion that has already been coded verbally in the message. In Yus (2014b) the examples in (25) were provided for emoticons, also valid for emojis, in which the emotions conveyed by the words (in italics) are enhanced by the addition of the emoticon: (25) a b c d e

This is on my sister and the dances of the 80s, we love them :-) I don’t like it, I love it! You’ve really moved me, my friend :-) Oleeee olee olee!! look forward to meeting the little baby :-) Sounds great!! So excited to see you!! :-) I was pleased to see that after waking up . . . :-)

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The examples in (25) are the ones that were typically considered to be redundant in previous research (Yus 2011a) and ft the redundant addition function in Panckhurst and Frontini (2020). However, these emoticons/ emojis are not neutral but contribute to the eventual relevance of the message. They generate extra cognitive or affective effects related to a more fne-grained interpretation of the extent and intensity of the emotions that the user is feeling at the time of typing these messages.

A.8. To replace verbal elements within a message

Emojis may also be used to replace verbal elements in a message (Sampietro 2019b; Siever and Siever 2020), functioning as what Siyang (2018: 24) calls substitutive function and Danesi (2017: 79) labels calquing (a “transliteral” process, whereby the words in verbal expressions are converted into emojis that are grounded in a pictographically based conceptual system). On paper, apart from a willingness to add some “visual imagery” and stand out in the textual threads, this phenomenon may be explained by the user’s time constraint and need for speed, since it is easier to select an emoji from the library than to type the corresponding word (they are also suggested automatically when typing on SM keyboards). However, the alleviation of typing effort does correlate with similar alleviated processing effort, since the emoji does not always replace the word describing its most prototypical meaning but may also acquire other roles with respect to the actual referent, which can only be inferred in context and with a certain amount of mental effort (see Durante 2016). One of these non-literal relationships between the emoji and the word(s) that it is substituting is the metonymic function, and the user has to work out the relationship between the word and the emoji by inferring in parallel its metonymic referent. Danesi (2017: 78) offers two interesting examples: (a) 🎤☔, and (b) 👙😖. The former means “Singing in the rain,” and both emojis perform metonymic functions (the microphone substitutes the act of singing; the umbrella substitutes the rain). In the latter, meaning “bikini wax,” by contrast, the bikini emoji is denotatively used, that is, it replaces the word that directly corresponds to the prototypical visual referent of the emoji. And the second emoji is also used metonymically, since it signals the user’s reaction to the waxing rather than directly portraying the action. Another example of metonymic use of emoji is the message “☎ when you get up, please” (Sampietro 2016a: 220, my translation), in which the emoji of a phone metonymically substitutes for the action of making a phone call. Consider also the conversation in Figure 5.3, translated in (26).

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Figure 5.3 SM conversation in which emoji substitutes verbal elements of the message.

(26) A: Congratulations Lau!!! 🎂🎈🎈 32 already!!! 👀 you tmw? B: 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 I’m so old! It’s 👍👍 👍👍👍for me. We’ll have to have some 🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺 A: Friday 🍝+🍺+💃 ??? B: 👏👏👏👏👏👏 Friday 👍👍👍👍 I suggest tomorrow [“cup of coffee” emoji] + 🎂 in my 🏚 and Friday 🍝+🍺+💃 A: 👌 In this conversation, several emojis replace equivalent words, but the actual meaning is far from literally depicted. The “eyes” emoji (👀) replaces metonymically the act of seeing/meeting someone, whereas the “thumbs up” emoji (👍) has a conventionalised image-text translation (it is an emblem in Ekman and Friesen’s 1969, terminology). The “pint of beer” emoji (🍺) may generate interpretations that depart more or less substantially from the prototypical referent coded in the emoji: A may interpret literally that B wants some pints of beer, or simply beers (whatever size and quantity), even if these interpretive possibilities will not lead to miscommunication. The three emojis in a row (🍝+🍺+💃) have already been mentioned. In this case, there is no way to know whether the user intends a metonymic interpretation that is closer to

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the referents depicted by the emojis (have pasta, drink a beer, go dancing) or these metonymies entail broader referents (to have something to eat, have a drink, go partying). The “cup of coffee” emoji and the “cake” emoji also refer metonymically to broader referents: to have coffee and at the same time to have something sweet to eat. Finally, the “house” emoji seems to substitute for the word matching the prototypical referent of the emoji, a house, even if probably that house does not resemble the actual user’s home at all. 5.6.2 Emoji without In this group of functions, the emoji is the only source of information in the SM act of communication. This is so especially when the emoji has no accompanying text (so-called naked emoji). However, two parallel cases should be borne in mind: Firstly, there is a possibility that the emoji might perform one of the “emoji without” functions described in what follows even when placed next to text, as long as the emoji does not influence or qualify that text. Consider this example (Sampietro 2016b, my translation): (27) A: The interview is today? Loooots of luck!! 😙 B: Thanks my darling 😊😊😊 In (27), the wish of luck is emphasised by text deformation and the repetition of the exclamation mark. However, and crucially, the “kissing face with closed eyes” emoji (😙) is independent from that text and communicates its own speech act: “to say goodbye”; it also substitutes the textual “I give you a kiss.” Therefore, it would perform an emoji without function. Concerning B’s reply, we are faced with two interpretive possibilities: First, the emoji may be intensifying the speech act of thanking (one of the functions in the group of functions emoji beyond, analysed next), but it could also stand for another proposition, unrelated to the text, such as “I am happy that you remembered to wish me luck.” In this case, the emoji would be performing an emoji without function. Secondly, having an emoji as the single element in a message (i.e. with no accompanying text in the message, just a single “naked” emoji) is no guarantee that the emoji will perform one of the emoji without functions. Consider the conversation in (28), in which a group of friends are arranging a meeting and checking availability: (28) A: A: A: B:

I can only meet tomorrow and I’d go with my daughter. So it’s a “yes!” for tomorrow 💁😉💃💃 Let’s see what the others say about it . . . Perfect! 😘 Let’s see that the others say and arrange a definite time 🙌 C: Ok, thanks for thinking about us 👏👏💃 😘

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In this dialogue, E types a single “sleepy face” emoji in her message. The emoji is a typical misunderstanding by Spanish users (and Western users in general) when using that particular emoji, since in Spain it is commonly believed that this emoji depicts a sad face, but it was created to show sleepiness.15 In any case, the fact that the emoji is the only element in E’s message would indicate that it belongs to the emoji without group of functions. However, in reality the emoji seems to be qualifying the previous message by D, adding a propositional attitude and meaning “I regret that you have to work at 16:00” or an affective attitude such as “I feel sad that you have to work at 16:00.” Its function, then, would be to qualify previously typed text and not to convey an act of communication on its own, and therefore it would belong to the emoji within category.

B.1. To communicate a single referent In this first function, the prototypical meaning of the emoji corresponds, without great informational gap, to what the user intends to communicate with it. It is a clearly denotative function. Some examples include the one shown in (29) and the WhatsApp conversation depicted in Figure 5.4. (29) [User A uploads a picture of a thermometer showing a very low temperature]. A: ⛄ B: 😱 In (29), the “face screaming in fear” emoji (😱) roughly depicts a facial reaction to the picture with the low temperature. In Figure 5.4, the same (naked) emoji is used to express the feeling of surprise at having forgotten to do the washing up. It is easy to understand (even if somewhat exaggerated), a single emoji related to single expression of a feeling.16 B.2. To communicate an ad hoc visual referent

As already explained in this chapter, one of the key terms in relevance theory is ad hoc concept formation, which is applied to almost any coded concept with the aid of contextual information. In this chapter, this term has been applied to certain “text plus emoji” combinations, in which the

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Figure 5.4 A conversation including an instance of emoji without function.

text aids in the recovery of what has been labelled the ad hoc visual referent of the emoji. The same may happen with a naked emoji, but this time the addressee user will have to adjust the prototypical referent of the emoji by resorting to other sources of contextual information such as previous information in the SM conversation or the mutuality of information between the interlocutors, among other sources. The notion of the ad hoc concept has most fruitfully been applied to the analysis of figurative language (metaphor, metonymy, hyperbole .  .  .), and the same applies to naked emojis, some of which are visual depictions of corresponding verbal metaphors. An example is the “zippermouth” emoji (🤐), an equivalent of the metaphor “zip it!” (Ge and Gretzel 2018: 1276).

B.3. To communicate a whole proposition

Emojis may also be used to communicate not a single referent but a whole proposition. Consider the conversation in Figure 5.5, “translated” into words on the right-hand side of the Figure. In this conversation, the emojis used have to be developed inferentially into full propositions with the aid of contextual information, as in the “watch” emoji, which is developed into

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Figure 5.5 WhatsApp conversation made up of emojis.

“What time shall we meet?” and “Why is it taking you so long?” in two different instances of the dialogue. Other examples are provided here: (30) A: B: (31) A: A: A: A: (32) A: B: A:

How is the exam going? 😔 He’s made a webpage. Where he sells his sportwear. With his logo and his name. 🤦 He finished his marriage really fast xD Indeed! 😂 🤦😂

In (30), B may simply be showing A that she feels depressed, a more or less direct referent to a single emoji (function B1), but it may also be substituting for a whole message such as “The exam is going really bad.” The “woman facepalming” emoji in (31) and (32) can be expanded into “he is so stupid” or “I can’t believe he did that.” In (32), the “laugh with tears of joy” emoji (😂) is interesting; it seems to work as affective attitude towards the proposition communicated by the previous emoji.

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The emoji may also communicate a whole proposition that differs radically from the prototypical meaning of the emoji selected. This is the case of the specific “smiling face” emoji on WeChat, already mentioned above in its emoji within function and also used as emoji without, specifically by young users. Its function is to provide a totally opposed meaning to what one could initially infer from a smiling emoji. For example, in (33) B is expressing propositions such as “I do not want to do anything with you; I do not want to talk to you,” thus showing rudeness; in (34) B is expressing the proposition that she does not want to meet him or fix the relationship; and in (35) B is expressing the proposition that she does not care about how A is feeling. (33) A: What would you like to do tomorrow? B: (34) A: We could meet and talk to fix our relationship. B: (35) A: I am going through a rough patch . . . B:

B.4. To construct a story (emojis in a row)

Finally, naked emojis may be used in sequences to construct stories. A famous example is the novel Emoji Dick by Fred Benenson, a transcription into emojis of the famous novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville. According to Ge and Herring (2018), 90% of the emoji sequences are analysable as speech acts and as expressing rhetorical relations, which brings them closer to verbal messages. These authors also observed creative usages in the composition of emoji sequences that compensate for the lack of an “emoji sequence grammar” and thus make the sequences more language-like. As such, they concluded that emoji use (on Sina Weibo) constitutes an emergent graphical language. In inferential terms, these stories may be quite challenging, considering that there may be a mixture of emojis with a denotative function, others that need ad hoc referent adjustment, and others which metonymically substitute several or even whole propositions. Besides, important information needed to construct a sentence (e.g. tense, mode, case) cannot be represented through emojis (see Cohn et al. 2019). 5.6.3 Emoji beyond In this category, the emoji does not qualify the content of the typed message but connotes the act of communication as a whole, providing affective attitude or propositional attitude towards the act of communication instead of directly towards the content of the message typed. Several functions may be isolated. These are summarised below.

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In this first function, the user resorts to emojis without the intention of connoting or qualifying the content of the message that they are typing. These emojis are often added simply to convey visual imagery, also called colourful addition (Siever and Siever 2020) and decoration function (Dainas and Herring 2021), and are devoid of substantive meaning, especially in SM groups when users want to “stand out from the typing SM crowd,” as it were, or they provide redundant information regarding the content provided by the text. Schneebeli (2018) also mentions this role of emojis, labelling it as aesthetic function, that is, to make the message more colourful, and therefore these emojis are just “visual props.” Examples include those in (36–38). (36) A: What was the trip like? 🙂🙂 B: It was great fun 😜 A: I can imagine ✈✈ (37) You’ve got Thursday’s units of [the subject] Culture in your email 📩😘 (38) Happy birthday! 🎂🎈🎈 In (36), the “plane” emoji seems to play no role in the comprehension of the message apart from adding visual imagery. The same applies to the “envelope with arrow” emoji in (37), which entails a metonymy of the act of sending an email but which has no bearing on the comprehension of the accompanying text, nor does it produce any act on its own. Finally, in (38) the emojis add a playful visual arrangement of elements typically associated with birthdays, but these do not play any part in the comprehension of the text.

C.2. To aid in conversational management

Emojis may also play a part in the management of the SM conversation. They can be used more or less like facial gestures to help in managing conversations in physical scenarios (e.g. nodding). Roles include turn-taking management and backchannel reactions, among others. This is particularly useful in SM groups, in which the system invariably follows a rigid chronological pattern when reproducing messages which may not coincide with the flow of the multi-party messages, and emojis may structure those otherwise disordered interactions. An example is (39), in which the emoji 😘 is used to signal the closing of the conversation, whereas in (40) the emoji 😊 is used

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as a backchannel reaction showing that the user is being attended to, even if the user does not contribute verbally to the interaction (Sampietro 2018): (39) A: If you want, we could meet next weekend and have dinner together. B: Okay, we’ll talk about it on Friday if you want. A: Ok A: Talk to u soon 😘 B: 👍😘 (40) A: When does Clara come? B: On our way. B: She arrives in 10 minutes. A: 😊 B: Do I say something to her? This function is related to preserving turn organisation, functioning as structural markers with their strategic position in the SM messages (Spina 2019), what Provine et al. (2007) called punctuation effect. For example, an emoji at the end of the message “may be considered a new way to close up a message, as a new fnal punctuation mark. The fact that emojis are mostly used without further punctuation marks seem to reinforce this hypothesis” (Sampietro 2016b: 101).

C.3. To add a feeling, emotion, or attitude towards the whole communicative act

In physical scenarios, people’s nonverbal behaviour sometimes has a more social connotation (the typical quality of phatic exchanges), in which the speakers show what the interaction is making them feel, and hence the nonverbal behaviour is produced in parallel to the verbal content, thereby connoting the whole communicative act with an affective attitude rather than directly qualifying the propositional content encoded in the utterances. On SM and social media, we find similar instances of emojis with this function. An example is provided in (41) (Yus 2014b: 524, my translation): (41) A: how pretty!!! Great parties you go to, you never stop!!!! 🙂 B: Next time I’ll let you know, in case you feel like it!!! 🙂 In this example, two young female users are having a casual, phatic conversation. As in any act of communication, the proposition literally typed by B has to be enriched inferentially so as to yield a relevant explicit (and/or implicated) interpretation. In the specifc case of (41), A will be expected to

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enrich B’s message inferentially into roughly the proposition quoted in (42), its explicature, in which the additional inferred content appears between square brackets: (42) contextualised explicit interpretation Next time [I go to a party] I’ll let you know [about that party] in case you feel like [coming with me to that party]. A is also expected to infer B’s attitude when saying her utterance (or the underlying speech act schema). For example, if someone asks “Can you help me to fnd work?” and the interlocutor answers, with sadness, that she cannot help him, we could establish an explicature of her answer (“She cannot help him to fnd work”) and also an explicature plus attitude (called higherlevel explicature in RT terminology) expressed by the same answer, such as “she regrets not being able to help him to fnd work.” In the specifc case of (41), a possible higher-level explicature would be “to inform that. . .” (43): (43) propositional attitude (towards the content of message) [I inform you that] next time [I go to a party] I’ll let you know [about that party] in case you feel like [coming with me to that party]. Now, a question arises: is (43) all that B intends to communicate? Obviously not. She also wants A to know that she would love A to join her at the party (in other words, she wants to communicate her affective attitude), and the “slightly smiling face” emoji (🙂) helps B to convey this feeling. Crucially, B is not using the emoji because she is happy that she will let A know about a future party or happy to ask whether A will be willing to go. Instead, she is showing the kind of nonverbal behaviour that is aroused by the fact that she is communicating with A, by the prospect of getting together at the party, and in general by the emotions that she feels while she is typing that message for A (including a feeling of bonding or enhanced friendship). In other words, the emoji is qualifying the higher-level explicature (I inform you that . . .) and not the content of the explicature (Next time . . .), and thus it qualifes the act of communication as a whole. Besides, B wants to show that this is not simply an open-ended question; she wants to convey the idea that some insistence and urge underlie this invitation, and she resorts to the repetition of the exclamation mark so as to achieve her communicative purposes. The resulting proposition would roughly be the one quoted in (44): (44) affective attitude (towards the whole communicative act) [I am happy while] [I inform you that] next time [I go to a party] I’ll let you know [about that party] in case you feel like [coming with me to that party] [and I insist that you accept to come].

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Several authors have also stressed this social role of emoji beyond qualifying the content of the message. A parallel use is to show what usually happens in face-to-face interactions when interlocutors use nonverbal behaviour to enhance the act of communication or emphasise the social connotation. In these instances, it seems to be more important to show a bond with the interlocutor, a sharing of parallel emotions, than to show an emotion towards the propositional content of the message. The same applies to the emoticons in (45), which seem to depict the user’s nonverbal behaviour that communicates their feelings while typing the message rather than towards that message (Yus 2014b): (45) a b c d

Can you tell what you eat to get prettier and prettier?????? ;-) :-( I want to come back . . . You now know you’re invited!!!! ;-) [Drinking cider] is one of the best things of attending a Conference in Oviedo . . . ;-)

In (45a), the user is showing joy (with a shade of envy) while complimenting her friend and smiles (with an emoticon) in the same way as she would smile if she said that to her in a face-to-face scenario, in which a bonding of friendship results from this complement to the speech act. In (45b), the user is not sad that she wants to come back; on the contrary, she does want to come back and the emoticon shows the feeling she has while typing the message. In (45c), the user shows happiness at the bonding of friendship stemming out of this invitation and also at the future attendance at the party. Finally, in (45d), the user says that she is happy to be in Oviedo drinking cider; hence this joy is not related to the utterance but to the activity in Oviedo, a parallel emotion while typing the message. C.4. To strengthen/mitigate the illocutionary force of a speech act In this function, the emoji qualifies a speech act performed in a SM interaction either by strengthening or mitigating it. As such, it is an emoji beyond function, since it has an impact on the interpretation of the overall speech act rather than on the interpretation of the content of the message encoded in the speech act. This function is generally called tone modification in the bibliography, often regarded as the main function of an emoji (Danesi 2017: 14). More recently, the function is called illocutionary force indicator, facilitating the ascription of the user’s intentionality towards the act of communication (Dresner and Herring 2010, 2012; dos Reis et al. 2018: 148; Sampietro 2016b: 104). In this case, the emoji upgrades or downgrades the force of the speech act. The former is frequently found in relationaloriented expressions (wishes, thanks . . .) which are strengthened, and the

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latter  is  typically used to minimise the impact of a negatively connoted act, for instance a directive in the shape of an order (Sampietro 2019a: 113), a kind of hedging strategy. Another example is provided in Zhang et al. (in press) of emojis in the Chinese messaging app WeChat. Chinese traditions value modesty and humbleness, so self-praise is considered as a potentially problematic social action. On WeChat, users often resort to emojis to mitigate its effect. An example is (46), in which the emoji softens a speech act that sounds too imposing and minimises the rejection to the arrangement at that time: (46) A: A: A: A: B:

Hi! Shall we meet tomorrow to organise the paper? At 8. If you want and can. I can’t tomorrow at 8. I could at 9 😰

Finally, phatic communication may be ascribed to this function of emojis, since the user intends to qualify the speech act with an emphasis on sociability and bonding (Aull 2019). In this case, emojis are used as phatic qualifiers of speech acts. For example, many positive facial expressions depicted in emojis (smiling, laughing . . .) are placed in different parts of the message to convey phatic information. Danesi (2017: 19–20) suggests three phatic functions of emoji: (a) Utterance opener, when the emoji substitutes typical phatic salutations such as “Hi!” and to imbue the message with a cheerful tone or mood. (b) Utterance ending, when the emoji allows the sender to mitigate the danger of conveying any implicit sense of rejection while affirming the friendly bond that exists between both interlocutors (Schneebeli 2018). And (c) silence avoidance. Because silence is uncomfortable or awkward in face-to-face interactions, a solution is to fill these “silence gaps” with phatically connoted expressions (e.g. “Nice weather, isn’t it?”). In SM conversations, by putting emojis in such content gaps, the user may counteract the uncomfortableness that may result from these silences. C.5. To communicate the politeness involved in the act of SM communication

A last function in this emoji beyond group is the use of emojis for polite purposes. Following Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory, many acts of SM communication are face-threatening, and the user resorts to emojis to convey an underlying polite attitude (Vandergriff 2014; Sampietro 2017). Politeness under this theory is divided into positive politeness (the desire that the speaker’s intentions are accepted by others, for example that one’s ideas are agreed with, that one’s opinions are accepted) and negative politeness (the desire that the speaker’s intentions are not thwarted by interlocutors, for instance that an order

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gets performed, that a request gets done). These types of politeness may also be performed by emojis, including polite openings and closings, expressions of gratitude, markers of solidarity, compliments, and so on.

5.7 Non-propositional effects from smartphone messaging In this book, an emphasis has been laid upon the importance of non-propositional effects, both intended and leaking unintentionally from the smartphone-mediated act of communication. These may add to the (propositional) cognitive effects of verbal communication, compensate for the lack of objective relevance in the content of the message typed, or even be the only source of relevance for internet users, even if these are not overtly intended and even if the user is not fully aware of having derived these effects from the virtual interaction. In Yus (2017a) some of these effects were listed for WhatsApp communication, also valid for other messaging apps. 5.7.1 Interface-related non-propositional effects from smartphone messaging The most obvious interface-related non-propositional effects are those which generate feelings of satisfaction and/or enjoyment or anger and/or frustration upon engaging with the SM app interface. The former should be more frequent, since these apps tend to be intuitive. Indeed, some positive effects may be obtained simply from the use of the interface, regardless of the quality of the interaction carried out therein, mostly in terms of perceived enjoyment and offsets of gratification. As Hsiao et al. (2016) summarise, users are concerned with both the affective (emotional and social) nature of apps and functional aspects such as reliability and efficiency in managing their daily tasks. And the messaging apps provide users with a multitude of sources of satisfaction such as the use of multimedia files, text plus emoji, multiple in-group interactions, options for sharing content, information on contacts’ readiness for chatting, and alerts of in-coming messages. The messaging interface may also generate a number of unwanted, negative non-propositional effects. Some of them have to do with misunderstandings regarding the chronemics of SM interactions.17 These effects arise from the management of time lapses between turns and the mediation of offline activities in the management of the virtual interaction (Darics 2014: 339). But these effects may be minimised if the interlocutors know each other’s “reply habits” or there is mutual manifestness regarding the impossibility of a fast reply. 5.7.2 User-related non-propositional effects from smartphone messaging As has already been pointed out, the limitations of the SM app interface do not discourage users from engaging in frequent text-based interactions, many of them of a phatic quality, and even though more contextualised

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communicative options are also available. This is because interactions through typed text produce affective effects that compensate for the lack of contextual richness or the loss of options for contextualisation. Users also obtain feelings of control over the communicative act, e.g. planning what is communicated, how much nonverbal information is conveyed, and creativity upon composing text plus emojis (or any multimedia content), among other possible control-related effects beyond what is coded in the act of communication. Some of these affective effects are commented upon in what follows (see Yus 2017a). 1

Feeling of connectedness. SM users often obtain an offset of phatic feelings of connectivity and relatedness with contacts, of being acknowledged by the peers through repeated interactions, etc. Several studies have mentioned the importance of this connectivity-centred affective effect, with greater or lesser emphasis. Most of them conclude that one of the major reasons users engage in SM interactions is to maintain contact, keep in touch, engage in a feeling of connectivity with people they already know in physical scenarios, both the ones they meet on an ordinary basis and those who live far away, even if that verbal prolixity means that the content is often devoid of objective interest. As Vetere et al. (2009: 180) state, what may appear as “idle chatter” is nevertheless full of meaning for SM interlocutors. The regular and frequent exchanges, which have little if any informational value, are key elements for the strength of the ongoing social binding.

By sharing mutual areas of interest and finding support in sustained interactions, users get an offset of positive feelings associated with SM communication. A related term consistent with this kind of effect is ambient awareness (Thompson 2008), i.e. the feeling of being physically near the other users with the aid of information about feelings, moods, ordinary activities, etc., and the feeling of mutual acknowledgement of one another through synchronous SM conversations. Radovanovic and Ragnedda (2012: 12) describe how mobile media are centred upon a phatic display of nonsense writing, communications designed to be read as soon as they are sent, updates creating intimacy by being and feeling constantly connected online, in real time with others, and with a feeling of keeping in contact and reinforcing relationships. Similarly, Licoppe and Smoreda (2005: 321) propose the term connected presence for this feeling of mutual awareness expressed through multiplied connections of quasi-continuous exchanges in which keeping in touch generates more relevant effects than what is typed when users get in touch. Nardi et al. (2000) propose the term outeraction for communicative processes that socially extend to others, mainly through “awareness moments” that produce feelings of connection with others.

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Feeling of group membership and social capital. SM interactions, especially through multi-party conversations inside a messaging group, can create non-propositional feelings of group membership, of belonging to a community of users, of generation of social capital. This kind of effect is related to personal strategies of self-disclosure and feedback from the community. Concerning the former, Knop et al. (2016: 1076–1077) link feelings of group membership to sharing personal information and self-disclosure, which are important mechanisms for building and maintaining relationships, for increasing trust between members of a social group, and for strengthening group identity. Concerning feedback from one’s community, Carr et al. (2016: 386–388) comment on how receiving personalised feedback was perceived as very supportive by their informants, even if most of the support came from weak ties.

Regarding social capital, there is no agreement on whether internet-mediated interactions are associated with increased or decreased social capital, especially of a bonding kind. For some analysts, the internet has diminished (rich) social interactions in physical scenarios, replacing them with less socially productive cues-filtered virtual communication. For others, though, online interactions efficiently replace physical interactions in intensity, depth, and number of positive effects generated, thus also having an impact on social capital, even if the ties involved are often weak. In the case of SM, for Aharony (2015) it contributes to both bridging and bonding social capital but especially the latter.18 This is so because for many users SM is now the “natural” way of maintaining connections inside their group of peers of both a strong and a weak quality (family, close friends, colleagues, etc.). 3

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Feeling of increased social presence. The term refers to the users’ awareness of one another and of their mutual involvement in the conversation or interaction through a medium; and also to the degree to which the channel facilitates these interlocutors’ awareness and involvement. In theory, social presence is facilitated by the amount of cues and options for contextualisation that the medium offers. However, SM users find social presence simply in the permanent availability (and location) of contacts, a feeling of “being there,” always available for SM interactions. Feeling of narrowed gap between the physical and the virtual. Today’s social media are filled with messages concerning the users’ physical activities that they want to share with their peers through locative media (see Chapter 11). An example is the non-stop updating of one’s and other users’ daily activities, which provides a feeling of closeness and even of co-presence. This non-stop uploading creates a kind of proximity in the virtual. SM interactions are virtual but definitely have a physical feel for the users. This is so not only because very often the interlocutors know each other and also interact in physical scenarios,

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Smartphone-mediated communication but also because users resort to the affordances of the SM app interface to bring the physical into the SM conversation (for example by uploading photos or videos of what is happening in the user’s physical whereabouts, as happens with the popular food pics and selfies shared on social media), generating an offset of feelings of mutuality, intimacy, and involvement despite each other’s separate contexts. This discursive display may subsequently be used as a preliminary context upon which to build subsequent interactions and sustain relationships. Feeling of increased self-concept and self-esteem. SM interactions often have an impact on the user’s feelings of self-concept and self-esteem. Close relationships with friends and the existence of social support strengthen their subjective feelings. As a result, they experience less anxiety and loneliness in intimidating or stressful situations. Besides, increased self-esteem and self-concept also influence willingness for self-disclosure in an environment of non-stop connection such as SM (Valkemburg and Peter 2009: 83). Users feel that it is easier to express certain things about themselves online, a disclosure that typically occurs when close friends are communicating through private online channels such as SM apps. Feeling of peer pressure. SM users are in general satisfied with the options for interaction that the interface offers them, but messaging interactions are not devoid of negative aspects that might generate unwanted affective effects on users. For instance, messages may arrive at the user’s smartphone at inconvenient or disruptive times. And due to the ubiquity of SM, the app has increased the presumption of non-stop connectedness and obligation for reciprocity. Therefore, the user feels the peer pressure to satisfy the non-stop demands for interactions and to reciprocate, which may produce negative feelings. Users normally do not control interruptions produced by massive incoming messages that the user is alerted to on the smartphone screen, and their inability to sustain all the parallel interactions may discourage them. Feeling of emotional involvement. SM is a cues-filtered medium that is not optimal for emotional communication, but users do improve the emotional load of the text that they type, basically through text alteration, emojis, and other media such as stickers, pictures, memes, videos, and GIFs, among others. In fact, users surprisingly get a feeling of emotional involvement from the SM interface. A source of such involvement is the shared use of SM texting conventions and emojis. As Prada et al. (2018: 1926) summarise regarding the latter, using emojis has positive effects on users (e.g. more enjoyment and perceived playfulness), which in turn leads to a strengthened social connectedness and enhanced identity expressiveness. Specifically, perceived playfulness from the use of emojis and emoticons has been underlined as a source of positive affective effects such as a general enjoyment of the SM interaction (Hsieh and Tseng 2017: 407; Thomson et al. 2018: 135).

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Notes 1 In this chapter, the nomenclature of “SMS communication” and “an SMS” are used for a text-based utterance sent through the SMS medium. Lyons (2014: 17) opts for a different terminology: A text-message, which is “a text-only form of electronically mediated communication with limited buffer size transferred by means of a mobile device, and texting as the act of typing and sending a textmessage between two or more mobile phone users over a phone network using the Short Message Service” (my italics). 2 In both cases, we are dealing with intentional text alterations. Unintentional spelling mistakes are not covered in this chapter (see Pérez-Sabater and Montero-Fleta 2015: 422; Bieswanger 2013: 472). 3 Luangrath et al. (2017) propose the term textual paralanguage, defined as “written manifestations of nonverbal audible, tactile, and visual elements that supplement or replace written language and that can be expressed through words, symbols, images, punctuation, demarcations, or any combination of these elements.” 4 Clark and Brennan (1990, in Riordan and Trichtinger 2017) propose the grounding theory, according to which interlocutors design (i.e. code) their texts and communicative acts based on what they believe a listener knows or does not know in order to promote communicative success; that is, they “ground” their communication in a particular context based on assumed mutual knowledge. For relevance theory, though, this kind of shared information can only be expected or predicted, without a certainty that this will in fact be mutual. 5 Soffer (2012: 1094) calls these interface affordances technical constraints, including shortening of the reaction time, which is much more important than grammatical correctness or spelling and punctuation; also the phone’s miniature keyboard and screen (which allow the display of a limited number of characters), as well as the nature of texting, which also demands an “economical” writing style. 6 In Schandorf (2013: 321) other labels similar to connected presence are listed: continual connection, mundane connection, ambient co-presence, and digital intimacy. 7 The following sections are updated versions of research carried out in Yus (2014b, 2016c, 2017a). 8 Of course, these are far from clear-cut discourses in SM communication. There is a tendency to discursive mixtures that blur the supposedly clear boundaries of internet discourses. For example, Herring and Androutsopoulos (2015: 142) mention text inserted in images, which constitute another format of multimodal communication. Besides, there is collaborative video annotation as a dynamic variant of text-in-image communication. On video-sharing sites such as YouTube, certain videos allow viewers to insert text annotations, and these add a discursive element to an apparently clear-cut video format. The same applies to danmu, Chinese texts added to ongoing films and TV series on the screen (see Zhang and Cassany 2019a, 2019b). 9 In a survey given out to 167 of my students in Yus (2014a), to the question “Why do you use text-oralising techniques in your messaging conversations?” 63.4% replied that it was because plain text was not expressive enough to communicate what they intended to convey; 27.5% replied that it is the normal way to communicate on SM; and 12.5% replied that it is a typical feature of SM discourse among the young. 10 However, Danesi (ibid.: 41) does acknowledge that emojis may be open to differing interpretations. He proposes three generic features that define the socalled emoji code, the third being the most “pragmatic” one: (a) Representationality (the signs and the rules for combining them stand for something in specific

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ways). (b) Interpretability (implies that messages can be understood successfully by anyone who is familiar with the signs and rules of the code used to construct them). (c) Contextualisation (implies that message interpretation is affected by contextual factors, including outside information or points of reference). Cantamutto and Vela Delfa (2019: 38–39) also mention the case of a very polysemous emoji: 😬 (grimacing face emoji). Among other answers, their informants suggested uses such as: (1) mischievous smile, used as a replacement for the common smile or to apologise for something; (2) sympathy, solidarity with someone else’s problem; (3) to express complicated or childish laughter; (4) to mark that something makes us nervous and restless, that makes us uneasy; (5) to express anger; and (6) to communicate that one is nervous. Preliminary versions of this threefold proposal of functions of emojis were presented in Yus (2019d, 2019e). All the informants in Cantamutto and Vela Delfa (2019: 38) agreed that this emoji is invariably used to close interactions and hence culturally associated with a good-bye kiss. As this politeness-related use of the emoji shows, the final interpretation is intensely context-dependent, which allows for inferential variations. My thanks to Xiaolin Hu for her comments and examples on this use of the “smiling face” emoji on WeChat. The same happens with other emojis. For example, the “face with steam from nose” emoji (😤) is used as an expression of determination in Japan, whereas in Western countries it is often used as someone panting in rage (see Siever 2020: 135–136). The second emoji in Figure 5.4 (woman facepalming) is used to qualify the meaning expressed by the text, mirroring the facial expression that would accompany that text if it was uttered in a face-to-face scenario. The third, fourth, and fifth emojis are used to replace the words kill, keep quiet, and ok. The first is used metonymically (“knife” instead of “kill”); the second mimics the facial gesture of asking someone to keep quiet, and the third is a conventionalised gesture meaning “ok.” The last two would be considered emblems in Ekman and Friesen’s (1969) classification. Specifically regarding WhatsApp, the app under analysis in Yus (2017a), two features of the interface contribute to these misunderstandings. Firstly, the option of “last time online.” If the initial user sees that his last message was not replied to, he/she might conclude that there is unwillingness to reply, when in fact there may be many reasons for this lack of reply. Secondly, an update of WhatsApp included a famous feature that alerts the user that the message has actually been read (blue double check/tick). Again, several misunderstandings may be generated from this feature. Bridging social capital takes place between people who do not know each other very well, that is, between weak ties. By contrast, bonding social capital takes place between strong ties such as relatives or close friends. The former is more pervasive in virtual interactions.

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Phone calls and video calls are (surprisingly) also enabled

6.1 Introduction Phone calls and video calls are of course enabled in today’s smartphone communication. However, as the title of the chapter suggests and as has already been mentioned in previous chapters, these calls are now less frequent than in traditional landline phone and mobile phone communication. Unlike these traditional forms of communication, today’s smartphones are full of apps that offer a good number of options for interactions besides voice and video calls, and these are often preferred. Indeed, other forms of smartphone communication, for example messaging apps, are more positively constrained for some users and produce more non-propositional effects than phone and video calls, and these constraints/effects are crucial for the users’ choice of these apps instead of voice/video calls. This has been the case for the many years in which smartphones have been available. However, the coronavirus pandemic that spread across the planet in 2020 revealed that, under times of crisis like this that forced people to remain at home, users clung to video calls as “communicative lifebuoys.” As half of the world population were confined to their flats and houses under lockdown, they relied more than ever on video calls to try and get a minimum of that physical closeness of which the quarantine had deprived them. In Spain, for example, these video calls increased by 80% in these months. Concerning positive contextual constraints on messaging apps (Chapter 5) compared to phone and video calls, several of them were listed in Yus (2019a: 171–172), especially when sending messages, and including the fact that messaging apps allow for: a b

Immediacy of communication, constant connection with a lot of friends and relatives (unlike a single phone call interlocutor). Lack of imposition on the addressee’s reply. Typed messages or audio files relieve users of certain obligations, since this type of communication is non-intrusive, whereas phone call interactions entail many impositions on the addressee, who is urged to reply immediately and come up with utterances spontaneously. DOI: 10.4324/9781003200574-6

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Smartphone-mediated communication Non-compulsory commitment to the conversation, no need to sustain long interactions. The user is free to stop and leave the current typed conversation on the messaging app, without causing negative effects on the interlocutors, whereas phone call conversations demand full commitment so as to develop the dialogue towards a relevant interactional outcome. Possibility to plan and design messages. Unlike phone call conversations, in which utterances are spontaneous and hence not easy to plan and design, typed texts on a smartphone screen allow for creative and colourful planning and messages and for the addition of emojis, stickers, and other connotative discourses. Besides, these texts may be revised before touching the “send” icon on the smartphone screen. Possibility for shy users to keep control of how much information is provided, especially the unintentionally conveyed nonverbal, “exuded” one (e.g. blushing). In face-to-face and phone/video call scenarios, shy users feel “exposed” to the interlocutor and without control of what information of themselves is eventually transferred. By contrast, typed conversations provide a secure environment within which personal cues are filtered out and only the text communicates the desired information.

On the other hand, positive affective effects also influence the user’s estimation of relevance when receiving messages. These effects may sometimes be richer and more varied in communication through messaging apps than the ones obtained through a one-to-one phone or video call. Besides, most of these effects possess a phatic connotation, which leaks from the act of communication, and the user is often not even aware of their generation, but they are nevertheless essential to understanding why users are addicted to their smartphone screens. Among others, the following non-propositional effects were listed in Yus (ibid.) for channels of communication such as messaging apps, which are not produced so intensely through one-to-one phone and video calls: a

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Feeling of social presence. One of the phatic offsets of virtual interactions is the generation of social presence, that is, the feeling of being with other people in a mediated environment, the degree to which users are perceived as “real” in virtual scenarios; the degree of feeling, perception, and reaction of being connected to other users through the Net. Feeling of enhanced sociability and social capital. Users may feel that they are in a context of sociability and that so-called social capital is gained from their interactions. Feeling of reciprocity and intimacy. The fact that phatic technologies allow for non-stop connection and instant gratification may generate an increased feeling of intimacy with the user’s peers and acquaintances. Posting trivial content acts upon others’ obligation for reciprocity, and receiving messages makes the user feel cared for and acknowledged by others.

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Feeling of connectedness, acknowledgement, mutual awareness. These are probably the most important effects generated through phatic technologies. In order to achieve that awareness of connectivity effectively, a strategy is to write chained phatic messages, expressing thoughts freely and making witty comments with the ultimate purpose of keeping contact and reinforcing relationships. This is accomplished more easily through messaging apps than through one-to-one phone calls. Feeling of group membership. Finally, an offset of effects may be centred upon feelings of community or group membership and the support from users therein, especially in clearly delimited messaging groups (with effects on the users’ social identity).

In any case, users do use their smartphones to call friends and acquaintances, and the most obvious difference between landline calls and smartphone calls is that the former link places, whereas the latter link people, regardless of their physical location. This has produced an impact on the linguistic management of the call itself and on the management of mutuality of information between interlocutors and bystanders. This quality redefines phone communication from “person-in-a-place” to “person-without-reference-to-locale” (Ling and Baron 2013: 193).

6.2 Smartphone calls: one step beyond Smartphone voice and video calls (plus apps for interaction), together with today’s non-stop internet connection, may be pictured as the latest phase in a general human tendency to detach ourselves from a bounded physical space when managing our interactions, communicative needs, and community bonding. Many years ago, Wellman (2001) argued that we live in an era of diverse online–offline interactions, of personal networks and interestbased acquaintances regardless of one’s physical location. The idea of the user as a node of interactions proposed in Yus (2011a) also fits this picture, the user being now a node of intersections of different online–offline–hybrid personal networks. However, this “liberation” from one’s anchoring physical space into more virtualised cyberplaces (Wellman 2001) that smartphones allow for is a gradual process that started many years ago (although it has been clearly accelerated by developments in technologies of human connection). Basically, two phases may be distinguished. The first covers the transition, in the 19th and 20th centuries, from door-to-door relationships to place-to-place relationships. It was a radical change from interactions among people in delimited physical spaces (e.g. neighbourhoods) to dispersed physical gatherings and networks of interaction. The second phase took place from place-to-place interactions to person-to-person interactions, leading to so-called networked individualism (Wellman ibid.) and the consolidation of cyberplaces, as can be seen in Figure 6.1.

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Figure 6.1 Evolution of human interaction and socialisation (adapted from Wellman 2001).

This evolution towards person-to-person communication allows for personal networks. It is the individual, of course, who is now the main unit of connection, not the group, and in the individual several networks of an online–offline quality intersect, forming the picture of today’s user as a node of interactions. Nowadays, people still want to relate to others but are not so concerned about where they are located. People now chat with their friends through messaging apps and smartphone calls, forming personal communities or networks. Undoubtedly, the internet and smartphone calls (and apps) favour the effective management of this stage of relationships and socialisation.

6.3 Smartphone calls and pragmatics Pragmatics has mainly addressed phone calls from a conversation-analytic perspective centred upon the role of turn-taking, overlappings, and the kind of opening and closing sequences that are more frequently used. Among the reasons for this interest in sequences, Fortunati and Baron (2017: 37) underline the intention to capture the structure and dynamics of smartphone conversations and also to unveil the etiquette and social skills that underlie the production of these sequences and of phone conversations in general. Opening sequences initiate the conversation, with one of the two participants typically using more or less set formulas, which negotiate the way in which a dialogic event takes place, are shaped by defined rules of politeness, establish the level of formality, and enable reciprocal identification

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(Schegloff 1967, in Fortunati and Baron 2017: 37). These sequences differ depending on whether interlocutors connect through landline phones or (smart)phones (in the latter initial requests for the individual’s location are the norm). For example, Schegloff (1979) comments how the initial stage of phone conversations entails the interlocutors’ mutual recognition. After that, questions about the interlocutors’ current activity typically follow. In the case of smartphone calls, opening sequences are more oriented towards interlocutors’ location, essential to build up a mutual context in communication for otherwise physically scattered interlocutors, including how the caller’s location inquiry in the opening of a smartphone call works as a question of the addressee’s interactional availability before the introduction of the reason for the call and how it can accomplish the work of establishing interactionally relevant links between present location and current activities (Laursen and Szymanski 2013: 315). Also interesting for pragmatics is the fact that phone calls are contextually richer than text-based utterances, and consequently, the caller may convey the intended interpretation more precisely with the aid of vocal nonverbal information and visual information (in the case of video calls). However, the smartphone still restricts the range of sound frequencies in the human voice that may be transmitted. Several characteristics such as vocal overtones and noise from consonants, which improve the intelligibility of a face-to-face conversation, are omitted in smartphone-mediated interactions. Therefore, even if more contextualised, phone calls are still a cues-filtered medium when compared to the richness of a face-to-face interaction. This may entail extra cognitive effort for smartphone conversations. For instance, “the telephone user unconsciously creates a mental representation of their physically absent interlocutor, which supposes an additional cognitive load” (Cougnon and Bouraoui 2017: 158). Smartphone calls are also interesting for pragmatics and relevance theory since they easily accomplish the duality of intentions proposed by that theory: the communicative intention and the informative intention. As described in Chapter 2, the communicative intention alerts the hearer to the speaker’s willingness to communicate some information (a set of assumptions in relevance-theoretic terminology) to the hearer; and the informative intention concerns the actual information that the speaker wants to communicate (to make mutually manifest) and which is revealed by the parallel identification of the communicative intention. Several technologies exhibit this “alerting quality” of the addresser’s intentions. In the case of smartphone calls, the addressee can see the name of the caller on the screen (if stored in the contact list of the device) and is immediately alerted to the caller’s informative intention. This identification is facilitated by the supplementary interface affordance of being able to choose differentiated ringtones specific to a person or group of persons, and therefore the expectations raised on callers’ intentions may be even more fine-tuned.

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Visual information is also conveyed in video calls, an even more contextualised option for smartphone-based interaction. However, video calls are not devoid of communicative limitations, as argued in Yus (2011a: 217–218). Indeed, the first problem in trying to equate video calls and face-to-face interactions lies in the fact that video calls link spaces that can be very distant from each other, and these spaces are framed by the smartphone screen. Sometimes, inferential alterations may arise due to the mutual influence of the framed area of the room and the one which is out of frame. The introduction of video in interactions produces asymmetries that affect everyday communicative practices, thus making the routines and scripts of interactive behaviour (which we use almost unconsciously) less valid. In video calls, the interlocutors do not share the same physical context, although part of it is framed on the screen (this framed scenario is mutually manifest to both interlocutors). This affects the interpretation of the environment of the interlocutor, their eyes, body language, etc. The social context is not shared, either; this generates a loss in the appropriate contextual clues to interpret the speaker’s communicative behaviour. Besides, some technological problems (interface-related contextual constraints in the terminology of this book) have to be taken into consideration which disrupt communication (Have I heard correctly? Has the interlocutor grasped the meaning of my gesture? Is there synchronisation between voice and image?). In this sense, during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic millions of people resorted to apps for video-mediated interactions in order to compensate for the loss of physical co-presence, among which the interfaces Zoom and Meet were particularly popular. Again, although it is undeniable that video calls are a highly contextualised medium from a pragmatic perspective, these interfaces demand supplementary mental effort and possess disruptive attributes that somehow reduce the eventual relevance obtained from these interactions. Murphy (2020) hints at possible reasons why dialogues through video calls make us feel strange and incomplete: The problem is that the way the video images are digitally encoded and decoded, altered and adjusted, patched and synthesized introduces all kinds of artifacts: blocking, freezing, blurring, jerkiness and out-ofsync audio. These disruptions, some below our conscious awareness, confound perception and scramble subtle social cues. Our brains strain to fill in the gaps and make sense of the disorder, which makes us feel vaguely disturbed, uneasy and tired without quite knowing why. She adds that human beings are very sensitive to one another’s facial expressions. Authentic expressions of emotion (mostly in face-to-face scenarios) are “an intricate array of minute muscle contractions, particularly around the eyes and mouth, often subconsciously perceived, and essential to our understanding of one another.” But those nonverbal hints disappear on pixelated video or are even frozen, smoothed over, or delayed. Indeed, to

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recognise emotion, we have to embody it, which makes mirroring essential to empathy and connection, and “when we can’t do it seamlessly, as happens during a video chat, we feel unsettled because it’s hard to read people’s reactions and, thus, predict what they will do.” To these relevance-reducing factors, we could add the so-called Zoom anxiety, coined by Degges-White (2020): When physical co-presence is lost, getting connected through a video call forces us to engage in an exhausting non-stop performance in which we play a role that we would not perform in an everyday face-to-face situation, making us “feel like we must be witty, or entertaining, or compassionate, or engaging when all that is representing us is our profile pic or headshot.” By contrast, Katz and Crocker (2017) propose new creative ways in which video calls may be integrated into people’s lived experiences. The first is called virtual cohabitation. It refers to the way in which some users use the video call interface as a way to maintain an open window into the life of the interlocutor. In this case, the video call is maintained, but the caller may proceed to do other things simultaneously and not be involved actively in the video-mediated conversation. Hence the video call becomes “a window that links two geographically separate spaces, allowing users to interact similar to the way they might if they were ‘hanging out’ in the same physical space” (p. 64). The second is called virtual accompaniment, that is, to use the video call as a window to a mobile trip so that the addressee travels with the caller, whereby both experience each other’s presence and the space travelled through in the area framed within the smartphone screen.

6.4 Layers of mutual manifestness In my opinion, a more interesting line of cyberpragmatic research on smartphone calls is to distinguish different layers of mutual manifestness (and hence also different layers in mutual cognitive environments) provoked by smartphone calls, especially when contrasted with simultaneous face-to-face interactions. In Chapter 2, the notion of mutual manifestness, a refinement of more traditional terms such as mutual knowledge or shared knowledge, was described. Relevance theory proposes the term mutual cognitive environment for the amount of information that both interlocutors have mental access to in a specific situation. Inside this cognitive environment, the information that both interlocutors are aware that they share is called mutually manifest assumptions. Therefore, communication is basically an attempt to make certain information (a set of assumptions) mutually manifest to both interlocutors. This applies to any kind of communication. In this sense, it is interesting to study how mutual manifestness is taken for granted, is generated during smartphone calls and overlaps mutually manifest assumptions for the physical setting, especially when face-to-face conversations are simultaneously being sustained. Four main layers of mutual manifestness may be isolated. These will be briefly analysed below.

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Smartphone-mediated communication Mutual manifestness through micro-coordination. Smartphone users resort to phone calls to coordinate current or forthcoming actions and monitor each interlocutor’s location, that is, to get a mutual manifestness of that locative information. Such coordination is possible because users are permanently available and accessible. Ling and Yittri (2002: 143) propose three basic types of what they refer to as micro-coordination, that is, a largely functional and instrumental activity of the smartphone to coordinate everyday life. The first type relates to the redirection of trips that have already started (i.e. changes in the initial route that one of the interlocutors was expected to take). A second type is the “softening” of time, for example when unexpected problems arise that make an initially scheduled activity impossible (e.g. traffic jam affecting one’s arrival at a meeting). Finally, a third type is the progressively exact arrangement of a meeting, when both interlocutors make more exact arrangements on the time and place of a meeting on the fly.

Non-stop connectivity and accessibility favoured by the smartphone allow for this level of specificity in coordination through frequent calls. As Ling and Donner (2009: 92) summarise, the mobile phone has allowed us a much finer-grained form of synchronization, allowing for more flexible forms of social coordination, and giving users the ability to interact copresently and almost simultaneously in mediated interactions. However, micro-coordination is associated with non-stop connection and today’s “user always on, smartphone always on the user” trend. Users sometimes become anxious and reluctant to be contacted at all times, an effect which Ling and Yttri (2002) call hyper-coordination, “the experience of enhanced, anxiety-provoking relational dependence and engagement through the use of mobile technologies. Although greatly enjoyed, the expectations of friends to inform, share, and maintain relationships via text messaging and cell phone calls can also lead to feelings of imprisonment and entrapment.” In this sense, the term mobile maintenance expectations is proposed by Hall and Baym (2012: 320–321) for those expectations or relationships and interactions made possible precisely by this presumption of “always-on” non-stop connection and availability. Furthermore, this coordination is often shaped as a chain of short calls rather than one single call to establish mutuality. As such, these chained calls demand a parallel expectation of manifestness progressively constructed through these calls. Some of the assumptions becoming manifest are also taken for granted during the calls and make up a background of assumptions that will surely be used as a preliminary context for interpreting subsequent smartphone calls. Much of this coordination is directed towards the mutual manifestness of the interlocutor’s location or whereabouts, as already stated in passing (see Arminen 2005). This manifestness may be accomplished either through the addressee’s verbal information or through direct inference from background information (ambient noises, etc.).

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Mutual manifestness through social spheres. Smartphones are socially purposed, and smartphone calls are influenced by the social contexts where they are produced, while at the same time blurring some of the traditional boundaries separating spheres such as work, social life, and personal life. Besides, Ling and Donner (2009: 24) emphasise the role of mobiles/smartphones in performing social rituals that result in social cohesion, especially in one’s intimate sphere, thus leading to an increased sense of relatedness and membership within a bounded group. Social spheres and social life in these spheres are orderly because people share methods for mutually constructing the orderliness of social situations. Social reality is made up of shared, local practices, which demand the ongoing work of these people. Mutual manifestness through blurred public and private spaces. There is another layer of mutual manifestness favoured by smartphone calls, one that is interesting for pragmatics: the overlapping of mutuality between face-to-face conversations (usually in public environments such as bars or restaurants) and interlocutors in a smartphone call taking place during this face-to-face gathering (so-called phubbing). There is a clash of spaces and a parallel overlapping of cognitive environments among the interlocutors involved in this public–private convergence. This collision of spaces is parallel to another convergence of spaces during a smartphone communication: the physical space where the caller is located and the virtual space of the smartphone conversation. In any case, there is a general complaint that the private world of the smartphone intrudes into the public sphere. As Fortunati (2002: 521; 2005) argues, when someone engages in a phone call in a public space, they are forcing their private conversation onto those physically present; the caller erects around himself/herself an imaginary fence, but the call is clearly perceptible to those around the caller, which is criticisable.

Related to this, Vanden Abeele (2020) mentions the term immediacy cues, which play an important role in expectancy violation through phubbing. In general, unless otherwise agreed, people generally expect their conversation partners to give their undivided attention, and such attention is displayed through these immediacy cues such as leaning towards the interaction partner, reacting immediately, nodding, and keeping eye contact. In short, individuals whose co-present friends use their phones report feeling ostracised and that their needs for inclusion are unsatisfied. In a similar direction, Campbell (2020b: 45) remarks that mobile phone calls in a public gathering open up a new social space that is separate from and competing with the physical surroundings of the user: “From this perspective, mobile conversations in public divide the self, requiring the user to perform multiple identity roles at once. Making matters worse, the user is confronted with dual sets of norms that oftentimes clash, for example, the expectation to speak up on the phone but at the same time speak quietly in certain public settings.”

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From our pragmatic point of view, there are interesting overlappings of cognitive environments fostered by this convergence of private and public spaces during a smartphone call. These are schematically illustrated in Figure 6.2, inspired in a chart by Schlote and Linke (2010: 124). According to this chart, there is a smartphone-mediated call between a caller and a callee. Between these interlocutors there is a mutual cognitive environment. In the case of those who know each other fairly well, upon seeing the name of the caller on the smartphone screen, some information regarding this caller and previous meetings, information exchanged, etc. becomes more prominent and hence more accessible, thus constituting a narrowed cognitive environment. At the same time both interlocutors may be engaged in a face-to-face interaction with third parties, among whom some assumptions are, predictably, also mutually manifest, generating a foreseeable mutual cognitive environment. There is a possibility that the smartphone interlocutors and these third parties in a face-to-face conversation know one another, and hence there are also some assumptions that are mutually manifest to all of them. But what is more often the case, though, is that these third parties are unwillingly forced to witness the caller/callee conversation, with some assumptions becoming mutually manifest out of the interlocutors’ utterances on the smartphone

Figure 6.2 Overlapping mutual cognitive environments (inspired in Schlote and Linke 2010: 124).

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but without an expectation of relevant mutuality of assumptions by these third parties. Finally, there may also be other people in the scenario who are close enough to hear the smartphone call and the utterances spoken therein. These unknown third parties are again forced to form what may tentatively be called an ad hoc mutual cognitive environment, but which these third parties would rather not share. More often than not, in fact, elements from both scenarios intrude on each other (see Ling and Donner 2009: 111). Inevitably, smartphone calls in the middle of an ongoing face-to-face interaction generate tension as to which one has priority over the other. Very often, we get the feeling that the person calling has priority over the faceto-face interlocutor. This is corroborated by the caller/callee’s nonverbal behaviour, often directed at the absent person on the other end of the line and not at the physically co-present interlocutor. Gergen (2002, in Campbell and Kwak 2012: 208) proposes the term absent presence precisely for this situation in which the callee is removed from their physical surroundings, absorbed by a technologically mediated world elsewhere. On other occasions, though, there may be parallel overlapping conversations that intrude on each other without added tension. This is what happens, for example, when the caller is informed of what is going on in the face-to-face gathering (i.e. when they all know one another), and the callee manages to pay attention to both smartphone and face-to-face scenarios. An example is provided by Humphreys’ (2005) notion of dual front interaction, when participants in a smartphone call also engage with nonverbal behaviours to maintain the interaction with active co-present interlocutor(s), for example by rolling the eyes, and which are unknown to the caller. Another example is the use of the smartphone loudspeaker so that people physically present can follow the smartphone-mediated conversation as additional interlocutors. 4

Mutual manifestness through etiquette/norms reconsidered. The tension generated by smartphone calls intruding on an on-going face-to-face interaction demands an extra layer of mutual manifestness: the one concerning social rules of behaviour and etiquette. These rules should be stabilised as part of the cultural background knowledge of all the individuals in the collectivity and acquire a communal status. This stabilisation is no easy task, since it takes place against a constant redefinition of what individuals are expected to do when smartphone calls take place in face-to-face scenarios and urban spaces in general and assuming today’s presumption of perpetual contact among individuals. As a consequence, the meaning of “correct smartphone-related behaviour” is constantly being reconsidered.

6.5 Non-propositional effects from smartphone calls Some of these effects were suggested earlier. Further non-propositional effects favoured by smartphone calls include the feeling of connected presence, even

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if these calls disrupt interactions in face-to-face scenarios. Licoppe (2004: 141) defines it as “short, frequent calls, the content of which is sometimes secondary to the fact of calling. The continuous nature of this flow of irregular interaction helps to maintain the feeling of a permanent connection, an impression that the link can be activated at any time and that one can thus experience the other’s engagement in the relationship at any time.” This feeling is facilitated by today’s calls from smartphones (see Ling and Donner 2009: 21). A second non-propositional effect worth mentioning is the feeling of group enhancement (i.e. group membership, community bonding, etc.). Ling and Baron (2013: 198) comment how this is especially true of young users in their transition from their family home to being autonomous individuals. As such, they are fully responsible for determining when and where the calls are initiated and received. Such freedom fosters a feeling of connection but also provides users with opportunities for strengthening peer-group relationships. A third non-propositional effect generated by smartphone calls is the individual’s feeling of intimacy with the interlocutor, a kind of sub-set of the affective effects obtained through connected presence (Ling 2012: 7). Among the negative non-propositional effects, we may list social insularity, since being in perpetual contact with one’s personal sphere of relationships can lead to a focus on the individual and hence to less interest in broader social gatherings. Besides, Hall and Baym (2012: 327) mention the term entrapment, a feeling arising from overdependence on complying with non-stop calls.

7

New narratives and storytelling on the smartphone

Users (and literary authors) have always felt the need to tell stories to other people, and the internet has proved essential in getting stories across to other users. At the initial stages of the Net, users resorted to website-based interfaces where they could upload their stories for their followers to read, as happened with blogs. With the advent of smartphones and non-stop connection through these devices, users are increasingly resorting to apps in these devices to construct (or co-construct) and transfer their stories, taking advantage of the smartphone “affordances” in order to get a more vivid and colourful display of their stories. The smartphone camera takes snapshots and videos that can be immediately attached to the story that the user is narrating on the fly. For example, travellers are able to come up with very intimate accounts of their experiences abroad by adding photos and other multimedia resources directly to the story being typed on the smartphone.

7.1 Narratives, new narratives, and cyberpragmatics Users aim at relevance when interpreting new narratives on their smartphone screens. As happens with any stimulus, the human mind also looks for relevant interpretations of the narrative input, normally in a cumulative way, so that the chunks of narrative that have already been processed become a preliminary context upon which subsequent discourses of the narrative are processed. But several qualities of new digital narratives may have an important impact on their interpretation and therefore on their eventual relevance (Yus 2015a). In any case, under RT narratives are not encoded and decoded but inferred against a background of available contextual assumptions. This quality entails a non-unitary eventual interpretation of the narrative, because different readers with different levels of accessibility of contextual information will come up with slightly or radically different interpretations of the narrative. As Klimek (2019: 139) emphasises, different readers can differ not only according to the real-world knowledge and degree of familiarity with genre conventions that they may have but also according to the degree of relevance that they attribute to a single utterance within the narrative. DOI: 10.4324/9781003200574-7

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Similarly, in the case of new digital narratives, there is no guarantee that each new stretch of discourse selected within a narrative will add positively to the eventual relevance of the higher-order narrative discourse being processed. Besides, as claimed in Yus (2011a: 63–65), on the internet it is possible to find surprising (relevant) inferential outcomes for chained non-linear online discourses, made out of dynamic interfaces that aim to make the interpretation of these narratives more personal, attractive, and enjoyable. However, not all of these advances in “digital narrative design” are welcomed by all users. What appears to be an interesting evolution in the design of an interface for some users may be detrimental in terms of relevance for other users who, for instance, find their interaction with or within the site more tiring and discouraging after the interface has been subjected to certain changes in its design or in the range of options it used to offer. The elements that may alter inferential strategies of new narratives include the (un)predictability of links to click on, the role of pictures (and videos, GIFs, stickers, etc.) and their processing in the eventual interpretation, so typical in narratives created through smartphone apps, or the extent to which the roles of author and reader are fixed, with an impact on the cognitive resources that have to be devoted to an eventually satisfactory interpretive outcome of the narrative. Additionally, a positive development of new digital narratives is the fact that they offer a “potential of online storytelling for enhanced interactivity and for multiple modes of user involvement that can decisively shape a story” (Georgakopoulou 2013: 700). Again, not all advances in these interfaces, even if these are meant to make the user’s experience more active, personal, fruitful, and pleasant, end up being valued positively by all users. In reality, only advanced users who are capable of obtaining all the reward from these advances will be pleased to see evolutions in these interfaces and happy to be granted a more active role in these new digital narratives. Many other users will, instead, feel disappointed to see that the old interface that they mastered so well has changed and information is no longer linear and easy to access or process, or angry at noticing that their effortless passive role of readers has been turned into non-stop decisions on what thread to choose for the storyline. Therefore, a continuum of users can be established depending on how differently they react to certain advances in digital narratives and their interfaces that are originally meant to please all users.

7.2 New media and author–reader communication through narratives Digital narratives have produced is a radical reinterpretation of the traditional “author-narrative-reader” schema. Nowadays, with the rise and ubiquity of the internet, what we rather witness is: [1] New authors (not only a single author but also collective creation, hybridisation of readers-writers, etc.).

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[2] Who produce new forms of narratives (audio-visual, multimodal narratives, link-mediated choices for the flow of narrative, etc.). [3] Through new interfaces (new verbal-visual designs, multimodality, interfaces aiming at usability). [4] Directed at a new kind of reader (an active, dynamic reader who often contributes to the authorship of the narrative). [5] Who comes up with a variety of interpretations (the author’s intended interpretation – if any – is diluted and the choice of interpretations is mainly the reader’s responsibility). A brief comment on these elements [1–5] is provided in what follows.

A NEW AUTHORS The makers of new digital narratives often do not expect a specific interpretation of their stories, nor do they expect that readers will invariably follow certain links or narrative threads in a certain pre-arranged order. Besides, their presence in the story – as narrators – is sometimes weaker and less visible, as if they were only making information manifest to end users. Something similar happens with entries on social networking sites and social media in general, which encourage multiple authorship and ways to tell stories (Page 2012: 196), and typically various readers judge the profile owner’s entries according to the comments they get, becoming a unitary “entry-plus-comments” discourse. That is, these comments get hybridised and imbricated with the initial entry and are interpreted as a whole. This “authorial fusion” is also found in digital fiction, whose main purpose is “not so much the final literary product but rather the act of participation itself, that is, to watch and contribute to the emerging narrative in real time. The social dynamics of the collaborative process may be traced in the commentary of registered users, which accompanies the textual contributions, as well as in their evaluative ratings” (Klaiber 2014: 125). One further example of how the traditional conceptualisation of a single author of the narrative has shifted and amplified in today’s digital narratives is Scenepad, an app that allows users to write, develop, analyse, and collaborate on screenplays. It is specifically “designed to provide factual information and collaborative tools to aid in the development of a screenplay, namely through the writing and weaving together of individual scenes” (Batty 2014: 110).

B NEW FORMS OF NARRATIVE The traditional cumulative flow of information in which new information from the narrative is coherently and linearly added, becoming a preliminary context for subsequent processing of information, collapses in new digital narratives. Needless to say, not all of the discourses are open to multiple

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reading paths and interpretations, and some even reproduce faithfully the offline narrative counterparts. In this sense, it is useful to note proposals of different stages in the evolution of cybergenres, also applicable to digital narratives. Two of them are briefly summarised here. The first proposal of evolution of cybergenres comes from Shepherd and Watters (1998: Figure 7.1). According to these authors, cybergenres are initially divided into extant and novel. The former are based on genres that already exist outside the Net, while the latter depend entirely on the digital qualities of the interface. Extant genres are, in turn, divided into replicated and variant. The former were very abundant in the early stages of the development of the internet, when it was thought that it was only necessary to scan and upload documents online. The variant genres, on the other hand, take advantage (to a certain extent) of the specificity of the interfaces, such as the inclusion of links or the cutting of the text to adapt it to the new reading area of the screen. Often, it is the same text as in the printed version, but format fidelity is no longer maintained, nor is it expected by users. Continuing with Figure 7.1, novel genres are divided into emergent and spontaneous. The first are evolutions of offline genres and adapted to the Net, to such an extent that they hardly resemble their printed counterparts. There are substantial changes in form and content and, therefore, also substantial changes resulting from the processing of the information contained in both versions. Finally, the spontaneous genres do not have a printed counterpart. They have been born within the internet and take advantage of the technology and the design of interfaces to generate different readings and modes of interaction, as happens with the profiles of the social networking sites such as Facebook.

Figure 7.1 Evolution of cybergenres (Shepherd and Watters 1998).

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The second proposal is found in Herring (2013a), with a classification of the evolution in online discourses into familiar, reconfigured, and emergent. Familiar ones are more or less reproduced from offline (or earlier) formats without major changes. Reconfigured genres have been adapted to the new online environment. Finally, emergent ones are entirely innovative and web specific, and with no offline counterpart. A key aspect in the evolution of cybergenres is the capacity that they exhibit (or not) to maintain discursive coherence when online discourses with multiple narrative choices are interpreted by users. According to Storrer (2002), three factors have an impact on coherence-building from online discourses: (a) discontinuous text processing (the reader of a hypertext-mediated narrative has to choose which of the currently accessible nodes they want to click on; thus, reading is continuous only within the boundaries of a single hypertextual node); (b) lack of visible document boundaries (printed documents have fixed, well-defined boundaries, whereas online link-mediated discourses are presented as single nodes distributed on the screen, and the overall document remains invisible); and (c) lack of a fixed text sequence (printed documents have a fixed sequence relating the author’s coherence-design to the reader’s coherence-building. In hypertext environments, by contrast, such a sequence exists only within nodes, not across different nodes).

C NEW INTERFACES The narrative itself undergoes major alterations in this new online scenario. On the one hand, narratives are no longer strictly text-based but are complemented with images, video, links, animated graphs, multimodal compositions, GIFs, stickers, etc., especially on smartphones. Therefore, the source of meaning often lies in the combination of information provided by different types of media involving different interpretive choices and speeds. Besides, it should be considered how the interfaces are designed for usability, with menus, screens, and links that should lead readers in the right or desired direction (or should make it easier for the reader to take any direction he/ she wants) without an increase in the mental effort generated by the use of the interface, which is particularly important in the case of narratives that are managed through smartphone touchscreens.

D NEW READERS Today’s internet user is no longer a passive reader of delimited and unchangeable narrative discourses. Rather, these readers are active, participatory, cocreators of narratives and willing to take full responsibility for which links they click on, in which order, and for the coherence they apply to subsequent nodes. Certainly, today’s readers of digital narratives are very active, to the

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extent that they even become co-participants in the authorship. This has a “diluting effect” in terms of what specific interpretation – if any – underlies the act of creation of a new digital narrative. In the latest narratives, the so-called interactive paradox (Louchart and Aylett 2003: 25) seems to have been resolved. This paradox concerns the fight between the author attempting to control the direction and structure of the narrative and the reader aiming at freedom to choose, demanding autonomy to act and react without authorial constraints. Nowadays, many digital narratives are produced without a foreseeable reading path, and readers take for granted this autonomy from authorial intention. An example of the new kind of reader in today’s cybermedia is The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (see Dabek 2017), which updated and re-imagined Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Over the course of a year, this story world would expand to include four additional YouTube channels, interconnected Twitter feeds, blogs, Facebook profiles, and many interactions between characters and readers on social media platforms. Austen’s original print novel evolved into a small-screen narrative that could be accessed on laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Readers were expected to make plot decisions when navigating through the story, and therefore the reading experience became highly individualised. Some users processed the information linearly; others “jumped” from content to content and from platform to platform. Besides, readers were granted online spaces for discussion and community engagement. They were not able to change or alter Austen’s novel, but the writers and producers of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries did adjust and expand some story elements in response to reader input and enthusiasm. By offering readers an individualised narrative experience, creating a feeling of value and connection through the narrative’s media platforms, and granting readers opportunities to provide feedback and suggestions, the modes of participation in these Diaries indicate a shift in readers’ engagement with narratives, specifically with smartphone narratives.

E A VARIETY OF INTERPRETATIONS In this scenario of new narratives in which the traditional roles of author and reader are diluted and in which there are so many options to click on, there is no prediction of what information will be more relevant to the actual reader or even what the exact (i.e. intended) interpretation might be. It all depends on the context of interpretation, unique in every situation for unique readers. Different readers with different backgrounds and context accessibility will deliver radically different interpretations of the same digital narrative.

7.3 Multimedia, cross-media, transmedia digital narratives The smartphone has acquired importance in the creation, management, and consumption of today’s digital narratives. Users record video on the

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fly while typing their stories and add photos, audio files, GIFs, and stickers where appropriate (multimedia). Besides, these narratives often “jump” from one environment (e.g. an app) to another, with the necessary adaptations and adjustments to the new environment (cross-media). For example, a user can type a long account of their trip abroad on a blog profile, illustrated with photos, maps, videos, etc. And later, the user may decide to narrate the same story on Twitter by selecting relevant bits of text that suit the 280-character limit of each post. Finally, very often, the narratives develop new chunks of narrative and further contents through internet fora and specialised apps that continue and complement the initial narrative (transmedia). In all of these cases, the production, the narrated discourse, and the interpretation differ from traditional linear narratives. Authors and their readers often aim at discourses that complement, rather than add to, the initial narrative; the discourses themselves convey meaning in the juxtaposition of different multimodal media, with some innovative ways in which the eventual interpretation (and relevance) is obtained from the partial meanings of these media; and readers are arranged in a hierarchy depending on their accessibility to the background assumptions generated by scattered contents uploaded by the users or companies. The multimedia versus cross-media versus transmedia distinction, as briefly described, is apparently clear-cut, but there are debates around their scope and possible intersecting or overlapping attributes. These terms also overlap with similar terms proposed in the bibliography such as intermedia, augmented narrative, multimediality, intermediality, and transmedia worlds, among others. However, the three terms proposed in this section cover most of the qualities that are found in smartphone-mediated narratives, and a special emphasis will be laid upon the concept of transmedia narrative. The term multimedia narrative fits smartphones nicely given the capacity of the device to deliver content in multiple formats, and the multimedia quality of these narratives affects both the conceptualisation and creation of the narrative, together with an impact on the eventual processing of that multimodal discourse. A basic definition of multimodality is suggested by Stöckl (2004: 9), for whom “multimodal refers to communicative artefacts and processes which combine various sign systems (modes) and whose production and reception calls upon the communicators to semantically and formally interrelate all sign repertoires present.” The term cross-media  is also interesting for an account of smartphonemediated narratives. As users are given a wide range of apps for the management of their digital narratives, these often “jump” from one app to another and with the necessary discursive alterations to fit the new environment. This has obvious consequences for the amount of assumptions communicated, the cognitive effects obtained, and their processing effort. Besides, some degree of audience interactivity is expected in cross-media. Regarding transmedia narratives, nowadays certain discourses, including offline discourses such as films and TV series, are complemented with

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further content arranged across different platforms and smartphone apps, together with user-generated content regarding this additional information. A typology of audiences is hence generated out of their accessibility to this content and concerning their ability to build up implications from joint interpretations of the initial and the additional discourses. The term itself was proposed by Jenkins (2006: 95–96): “A transmedia story unfolds across multiple media platforms with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole. In the ideal form of transmedia storytelling, each medium does what it does best – so that a story might be introduced in a film, expanded through television, novels, and comics; its world might be explored through game play or experienced as an amusement park attraction.” Although Jenkins emphasised that one does not have to know the whole of the narrative (as produced through different media) to understand one of the parts of the narrative, in my opinion there are pragmatic implications regarding which information is manifest to the reader and how the interpretations of the scattered parts impacts the interpretation of the narrative as a whole. Definitions of transmedia narrative abound, mostly overlapping but some of them clearly misguided. Nisi (2017: 46) offers a satisfactory definition of transmedia storytelling as “a technique that uses current digital technologies to turn stories into immersive, multilayered experiences that can be delivered to a range of different audiences through different media channels.” Hence, the basic attribute of transmedia narratives is that subsequent partial narratives add to the initial core narrative, both complementing it and providing their own autonomous information. They tell multiple stories instead of the same content in different media platforms, that is, they offer a discourse-building experience, unfolding content and generating the possibilities for the story to evolve with new and relevant content. This is particularly appealing to some smartphone users who resort to specific apps to get further insights on the narrative and actively contribute to the unfolding of effects in other users with their role of prosumers (producers and consumers of information) and produsers (producers and users of information). Several distinctive and defining attributes of transmedia narratives may be isolated (Scolari 2013: 57; Jenkins 2006). These narratives typically unfold through different media, each medium contributing with its own informational value to the eventual relevance of the narrative; they are accessed through different platforms, apps, and devices. Besides, narrative expansions are often generated by the audience in a participatory and collaborative fashion. Ideally, the user should start the processing of the narrative with the initial discourse, which is often outside the Net, as happens with transmedia narratives originated in the three films of The Matrix or the TV series Game of Thrones and Skam.1 Entering the narrative from one of the subsequent extensions may puzzle and discourage some users, thus reducing the eventual relevance (a case of user-related contextual constraint). The same applies to user-generated information and collaborative building up

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of the extensions, which may puzzle some users, unable to process the vast amount of assumptions that active users are capable of providing, accessing, and processing. To sum up, transmedia narratives exhibit some distinctive qualities that alter traditional ways of transferring content from authors to audiences. New forms of constructing stories, of interpreting, modifying, expanding, and sharing them and how audiences react to them have stabilised, together with new multimodal semiotic resources that these narratives are made of. The author is no longer a single entity with a single interpretation of the narrative in mind. The audience is also different from the “implied reader” that was foreseen in traditional narratives and often takes the role of coconstructor of the narrative. As Guerrero-Pico et al. (2019: 337) illustrate, “fan communities, with their remixes, parodies, alternate endings, and many other narrative extensions, play a fundamental role in these processes of textual dissemination. Both the cultural and the technological contexts stimulate the production of content by media users. It has never been so easy to produce and disseminate media content.” These new roles demand some kind of transmedial literacy so as to be able to generate relevant content for other users out of the initial narrative.2 This is especially important in the case of modifications of the discourse for subsequent users. For example, de Fina and Toscano Gore (2017) propose the concept of nesting for particular retellings of discourses on social media, which demand certain skills in order to maintain the interest initially aroused by the narrative and favour the viral spread of the information made manifest in these retold narratives.

7.4 New digital narratives and smartphones 7.4.1 Constraints and non-propositional effects in smartphone narratives Narratives on smartphones are constrained (positively and negatively) by the specificity of smartphone screens and app interfaces, together with usercentred constraints, such as the user’s predisposition to engage in innovative digital narratives or their preference for more traditional and linear kinds of narrative. These constraints have an impact on the user’s eventual satisfaction upon engaging with the narrative. Indeed, the smartphone narrative is often designed so as to generate a number of threads and options for plot development, for the user’s interactions with both the technology and the environment and for their personal decisions. Of course, the evolution of smartphone technology and its built-in affordances (camera, GPS positioning, app ecosystem . . .) allow for more personalised creation and management of narratives. Besides, the audiences of these smartphone narratives may obtain an offset of non-propositional effects (i.e. affective effects) in the shape of feelings, emotions, and impressions (positive or negative, intended or unintended,

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within or beyond the audience’s awareness), some of them stemming from the interactions between the narrative and the individual’s personal store of beliefs, ideas, background knowledge (often expected or assumed by the makers of the narrative), and overall command of the technology that manages the narrative on the smartphone. In this case, a good narrative structure helps when making sense of the discourse, but the most innovative narratives charge the users with so much responsibility that they may end up puzzled or disoriented as to whether the point of the narrative plots and/or alternative threads has been accomplished. One potential factor that may increase relevance in smartphone narratives is the capacity to predict the qualities, command of the technology, and background knowledge of the user and then tailor the narrative to that specific user. As Oppegaard and Grigar (2014: 29) correctly indicate, mobile technologies may adapt messages to the desires of each individual in the crowd, even complete strangers. Smartphones can collect data from their users that assist authors in continually making better connections with the audience as a sum of particular individuals, in real time, and these data allow for virtually unlimited on-the-spot calibration of the narrative, instantaneously. Smartphones can create a distinctively personalised experience with information. And this quality impacts the users’ assessment of relevance. The same applies to narratives based on locative media and interactions between the physical and the digital (see Chapter 11). In this case, the user has to navigate between these two realms and make sense of their mutual unfolding in the narrative, which demands more cognitive effort than traditional narratives and also more than hypertext narratives. Locative narratives are composed of geographically dispersed elements and must, to varying degrees, engage their audiences. It takes extra effort to “read” the locative narrative, even with the aid of systems that allow audiences to navigate the narratives successfully. Ritchie’s (2014: 58) narrative value threshold is interesting at this point: “Once the audience perceives that the value offered by the locative work exceeds the threshold of ‘really nontrivial effort’ necessary to enact the work, the audience will be willing to expend those efforts necessary to navigate the storyworld and come to identify and understand the story itself.” 7.4.2 Types of narrative on smartphones In this section it is proposed that (at least) seven types of smartphone narratives may be listed: 1

Imported offline narrative. These narratives are directly transferred to the smartphone with no discursive alterations. In this case, an increased effort may be predicted to process the content of an offline narrative in the reduced space of the smartphone screen, which will be detrimental to eventual relevance.

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Native smartphone narrative. Specifically made for the smartphone by a company or by an individual author and typically adapted to the specificity of the screen. In this case, the discourse is cut into smaller pieces, and its density is often alleviated for the prospective smartphone reader. Hence, many of these native narratives resort to a linked fragmentation of the narrative that provides basic coherence links and less effort in their management. Text-based sequences of narrative may be “unnatural” when compared to traditional linear narratives, and making sense of this and other qualities of texts such as text alteration and emoji use involves “not only reshuffling familiar frames in narrative processing, but also taking into account the modality of texting, its affordances, and constraints” (Lyons 2015: 138). Familiarity with the accepted conventions of electronically mediated communication helps draw conclusions as to the most plausible interpretation of both natural and unnatural texting storyworlds.

An example of native narrative is the literature that is designed specifically for the smartphone, with a long tradition in countries such as Japan. Such is the case of SMS novels that are delivered to the users’ phones on a daily basis. The discourse therein is typically made of short sentences and paragraphs to minimise processing effort. In fact, many of these novels are not only designed to fit the smartphone screen but were also created using the smartphone keyboard, so minimised interpreting effort is coupled with minimised authoring effort. In Batty (2014: 108–111) we find two more examples of native smartphone narratives. The first one, Scrivener, was sold as an advanced app to aid writers in creating their texts anytime and anywhere, from plain text to hyperlink-mediated narration and image embedding. The software was able to “bind” all the elements of the creative process into a unified project. The second one is Scenetweet, an app “intended to help writers develop screenplays in ‘snippets’, constructing scenes as-they-go without the need to sit in front of a computer. Users can also comment on each other’s work, providing immediate and cyclical feedback.” 3

Social networking smartphone narrative. This category would, in theory, belong to native narratives, but social networking apps (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Sina Weibo etc.) are so crucial in today’s smartphone-mediated narratives that an independent category is devoted to narratives on these sites. Three basic attributes are key to understanding these narratives: immediacy, contiguity, and co-construction. The users construct narratives related to events that have just taken place or are very recent with the aid of the smartphone camera (immediacy), with the user normally tied to the physical space that forms the scaffolding of the story (contiguity) and very often with other users commenting and co-building the story in the spaces designed within the

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To these attributes, we could add ephemerality. Although social networking narratives are archived and, in the case of Facebook, the system reminds the users of these past narratives as an invitation for re-posting, in general users record videos, take photos, and narrate stories with an ephemeral attitude to these discourses and are more interested in their immediate impact on other users. As de Fina (2016: 477–478) summarises, what is most distinctive about storytelling on social media is the way narratives are shared, recontextualised, commented upon, and subject to continuous reconfigurations and reinterpretations, their embedding within different media, the systematic resource of multimodal content, and how their production and circulation are as relevant as their content. 4

5

6

Cross-media smartphone narrative. This is usually generated on a single app or in an offline medium or discourse and then adapted and redesigned to fit a new environment. This is the case of some e-books that are adapted to dedicated apps and available multimedia content. Goggin and Hamilton (2014: 230) mention these e-books that “cross” into apps and “replicate some of the design and aesthetic features of the printed novel but build a suite of complementary multimedia around the primary material, taking advantage of the new forms of storytelling that mobile media and digital networks have popularized.” An example is Choose Your Own Adventure (Alexander 2014: 198), which were turned into apps with a link-mediated narrative structure, where the reader could enjoy sound, light, and other special effects and make plot-related decisions by tapping on the smartphone screen. Transmedia smartphone narrative. This exploits the potentials of the smartphone and the app ecosystem to extend the narrative into multiple discourses and other media, some of which are valid pieces of narrative in their own terms or add/extend the initial narrative. It is typically offered by TV, comics, and film companies with dedicated apps. These offer immersive, location-based, interactive narrative experiences, providing readers with supplementary material that acts as independent narratives, including social network profiles where readers can share notes and enjoy additional multimedia. Locative smartphone narrative. This demands constant interaction of the user with the physical environment and exploits the user’s current location for narrative purposes. Instead of illustrating the narrative with location-based information (videos, photos .  .  .), as in the social networking narrative, this narrative is fully imbricated and hybridised with

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physical location. Nisi (2017: 45) summarises this kind of narrative as follows: “With the integration of location awareness in our personal devices, spaces became physical branching structures for the audiences to walk through. The use of mobile technologies as connection interfaces blur the traditional borders between physical and digital spaces.” As a consequence of this physical–digital hybridisation, we could also include in this type of narrative those that entail augmented reality, that is, narratives in which layers of digital information are superimposed on the physical scene that the users have in front of them and is framed by the smartphone camera. Technology-generated smartphone narrative. This narrative is created by the system, as happens with anniversary videos on Facebook and auto-awesome movies or Google+ stories on Google. Although this is not an “agentive” narrative, since the users play no role in the selection and creation of the narrative, they may obtain an offset of relevant effects, for example from seeing themselves as the protagonists of a well-designed, professional-looking narrative video.

7.5 Digital narratives and social networking apps Although this was one of the types of narrative listed in the previous section, they exhibit qualities and affordances of many of the other types. Narratives on social networking apps (henceforth SNAs) are capable of producing a whole range of native narratives, and they also import narratives from other media, online and offline (cross-media narratives).3 Besides, companies create social media profiles that add, expand, and complement the information provided in TV series and films (transmedia narratives), and the user may interact intensely with the physical location while creating an SNA narrative, for example when engaging in livestreaming of the user’s whereabouts and current physical activity (locative narrative). Finally, every now and then SNAs offer users anniversary videos and video-mediated reminders of the friendship that binds two users (technology-generated narrative). There is an intimate relationship between SNAs, narratives and users’ identity-shaping and self-concept. The main reason for using these SNAs is to publish noteworthy events in the user’s life, which are typically shaped as narratives, even if these do not resemble the canonical format of printed counterparts.4 Users upload content on their SNA profiles because they have stories to tell and share with their friends and followers. These stories are often co-constructed and shaped by the specific affordances of the SNA in question. As Georgakopoulou (2016a: 268) summarises, SNA narratives (or stories) exhibit interesting features for pragmatic analysis including fragmentation of otherwise open-ended stories, going beyond a single posting or site and resisting a neat traditional categorisation. They also involve multiple

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authoring of the narrative, especially when shared across SNAs. In addition, there is a tendency for reporting down-to-earth, ordinary, and trivial events from the poster’s everyday life, rather than big narratives on important issues.5 As has been underlined several times in this chapter, online narratives, and SNA narratives in particular, do not comply with the traditional view of narrative found in most printed stories. Among others, several pragmatic questions arise from these new narratives: Who’s the author? If more than one author is identified, which is the partial contribution of each of them to the eventual relevance of the narrative? Is there a “correct” interpretation of the narrative? If the reader is choosing their own interpretive path (e.g. through hyperlinks), are they obtaining an appropriate interpretation? What kind of reader is expected in terms of mutuality of background information? Among these features, the non-linearity of the SNA narrative stands out, with the reader normally expected to fill the informational gaps actively, make constant plot decisions, and connect scattered bits of narrative rather than be presented with a single linear and coherent narrative. In SNA narratives, co-authorship of fragmented multimedia stories with a variety of reasonable (i.e. relevant) interpretations is the norm. In this sense, Hermida (2010, in Sadler 2018: 3267) proposes that the growth of SNAs has produced ambient forms of reporting and narrating, where small fragments of information are constantly added without the need for an overarching structure. However, most SNA entries and updates are “timestamped,” and this forms an anchorage for inferring narratives as they unfold through multiple chunks of discourse (Dayter 2016: 184). The notion of authorship of the story is also different in SNA narratives. Authors are constantly producing narratives as they move through physical spaces with their smartphones. They assume an expectation of relevance even though these stories are often mundane and trivial. Several authors may co-construct the narrative, taking full or partial responsibility for the (non-)linear discourse uploaded and expectations of relevance raised (Dayter 2015: 21). Additionally, authors often mesh with readers, as happens in online videos on YouTube, where viewers are not only recipients but also communicators who post, read, and reply to comments that become tied to the original video, forming a multi-layered whole. Furthermore, as has been argued in this chapter, the end-user has to engage actively in inferential strategies of cohesion- and coherence-building for scattered multimedia chunks of SNA narratives that are uploaded, commented upon, shared in other media, and which exhibit multiple interpretive paths through personal choices of links. This management of cohesion and coherence also depends on the qualities of the interface. On Twitter, for example, hashtags and keywords aid in reducing the effort expended in following and keeping track of the dynamic and otherwise highly disorganised tweets forming a narrative (Dayter 2016: 197). On other occasions, the author engages in a more linear development of the story, even on Twitter, as

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happens with Twitter threads (see below). In these, more traditional cases, verb tenses and the user’s accessibility to commonsense background information help infer the narrative as a whole, partly from text organisation and partly from the inferential reconstruction of the story. Undoubtedly, then, the production and inference of SNA narratives are highly influenced by the specific qualities (affordances) of the app used for that purpose. This is obvious in the case of Twitter and its fixed character limit but also plays a part in other apps such as Facebook. Invariably, app designs will influence how the narrative is created and processed, how much cognitive reward is derived, and how much processing effort is demanded from the users. One of the main features of storytelling through social media apps is the haptic management of the touchscreen, invoking a closeness and intimacy in which the content can literally be manipulated by the viewer’s fingertips and physical movements. This approach to SNA storytelling entails particular attention to the design phase of the SNA narrative through smartphones, as stories are not only told but are actually designed to harness the structure of social media feed as a narrative structure. Interface constraints for SNA narratives include design options such as Facebook’s generic label of “Friends,” within which many kinds of user are included (relatives, friends, colleagues, former students, acquaintances . . .), what Marwick and boyd (2011) called context collapse. Certain SNA narratives are created with certain audiences in mind, who predictably have access to the necessary contextual information that helps them reach a relevant interpretation, but other users on the “Friend list” may be unable to do so and may end up puzzled. More recently, though, Facebook has introduced options for tagging which Friends are targeted by the author and may read the narrative. These users may then feel special upon being selected as readers and feel compelled to contribute to the narrative with comments and further multimedia content. Page et al. (2013: 208) found many examples of stories which appear “obtuse, and rely on shared, in-group knowledge between the narrator who has posted the update and the Friends who read and respond to it; they are deictical.” The use of contextual references shared only by some rather than all of the Friends may be used to delineate the boundary between the intended audience and the overhearers or lurkers. Mutuality of assumptions is a user-related constraint. Addressee users are then stratified according to their ability to access contextual information and also according to their ability to contribute dynamically to the unfolding of the narrative and make the correct choices when presented with alternatives to click on. Undoubtedly, smartphones are the perfect “locus” for the creation and interpretation of social media narratives, since former desktop websites such as Facebook are now used mainly through smartphone apps. Besides, the user can record and store a lot of multimedia information in the shape of videos and pictures that will enrich the narratives, many of which possess a connotation of immediacy and ephemerality (despite options for archiving),

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as has already been mentioned. As such, multimedia-filled SNA narratives seem to have more to do with showing the moment than with telling the moment, “with text and written language becoming more and more confined to brief assessments and ‘stories’ as app facilities increasingly being identified with photographing and filming one’s life, as it is happening” (Georgakopoulou 2017a: 330). Indeed, multimedia content is an inherent quality of smartphone-mediated SNA narratives, mainly because it is so easy to record and take photos with the device on the fly. Smartphones also offer users more specific options for the construction of narratives, as happens with the ephemeral Stories, short video clips that disappear after a certain time. But what makes smartphones special for narratives is, of course, the non-stop interaction between the physical and the digital. Many SNA narratives are closely tied to location while the story is narrated, and their physical surroundings are photographed or recorded for the construction of the narrative. Of course, in this narrative environment, the online and offline elements of the story are so intertwined that it is often very difficult to differentiate them. Regarding possible labels for narratives on SNAs, a number of proposals can be found in the bibliography. The most compelling term is small stories, a label initially proposed by Georgakopoulou (2007) and characterised by fluidity, plasticity, and open-endedness, usually occurring in the small moments of talk rather than as distinct, fully fledged units (p.  36). They are often trivial and convey little information, centring their eventual relevance on non-propositional effects such as phatic communion or feelings of connection and group membership. As such, they diverge from canonical printed narratives but constitute much of the narrative unfolding on SNAs: Facebook updates, Instagram stories, short tweets, etc., which provide intense cognitive reward in exchange for little mental effort due to their length (adapted to the increasingly low attention span of today’s young SNA users). As de Fina and Georgakopoulou (2012) summarise, small stories cover a range of discourses that do not fit traditional ideas on narrative. They are typically co-constructed by several users, revolve around mundane and recent (or even still-happening) events rather than focused on memories that a single author recalls in a linear order. Crucially, SNAs have significance for the users’ mundane and ordinary social practices, with consequences for how they present themselves to and relate with other users. In short, small stories on smartphone SNAs are mobile, multi-authored, and multi-semiotic, responding for users’ need to share life-in-the-moment. Three sub-groups of small stories have been proposed. The first one is breaking news (also called breaking stories, Page 2010): These are typically conveyed in the present tense, making the audience feel that the events portrayed are taking place at the same time as they are being narrated (Dayter 2015: 21, 2016: 190). The audience may even feel the illusion that they are “co-spectating on the writer’s life experiences as the events themselves are happening. The human time of the status updates

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is thus inherently social in its potential to forge connections between storytelling participants” (Page 2010: 432). A second sub-group is projections, where the user constructs a narrative about events that still have not yet taken place. Finally, a third sub-group is shared stories. These do not fit neatly canonical forms of narrative, are often co-constructed rather than the accomplishment of a single narrator, and are embedded in interactional contexts, not in uni-directional flows of narrative content. The topics addressed are mainly trivial or mundane (see Page 2018). One major SNA is Facebook, whose narratives are normally produced and interpreted in so-called status updates, either in the case of a user posting several “chapters” of an ongoing narrative (for example, a user telling their followers about a recent trip by uploading day-by-day updates as separate entries), or in the case of a single update that is commented upon and the narrative is further developed and co-constructed by these users (for example a user posting photos of a recent trip in which their friends are portrayed and then these friends also comment on the trip and provide more information for that narrative regarding this trip). In any case, Facebook is one of the apps on which ordinary, mundane narratives are more frequent (Page et al. 2013: 195) and shows the greatest differences with canonical narratives, since narratives on Facebook are multimedia (text, photos, videos, recorded stories, GIFs . . .), distributed across posts (comments, Likes, links, attachments, tagging .  .  .) and often developed non-linearly (apart from the timestamp on each entry). The very design of the interface seems to be directed at a constant biographisation of the user’s experience. The Facebook profile was initially called the wall, which suggests a public forum for sharing, commenting, and discussing. And later re-designs of the interface seem to be much more oriented to the idea of posting one’s life events, which the user is periodically reminded of by the system. As such, Facebook offers users several narrative options. Davies (2015: 402) comments how a Facebook update can contain one or multiple stories, and a single story may be told (or enacted) collaboratively by several users across comments hyperlinks, images, tags, and so on. Such updates allow individuals to narrate ordinary, trivial, and mundane aspects of their lives for others to read, for themselves to reflect back upon, and for collaborators to amend or contribute to over time. In this case, Facebook allows for new and sometimes unexpected co-tellers to emerge and reinterpret or revise the narrative and even redirect the entire narrative along a different path. Embeddedness is also favoured by this SNA, because several narratives may be smoothly taking place at once. Unlike in face-to-face interactions, it is possible to keep track of different threads simultaneously. In the case of Twitter, narratives are constrained by its rigid 280-character limit. This SNA is also highly dynamic, a noisy environment in which “even a minute’s delay in posting the next instalment of a story will have many unconnected tweets from other users intruding between the story’s turns in a reader’s timeline” (Dayter 2016: 184). As happens with other SNAs,

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Twitter also exhibits co-tellership, non-linear structure, use of links, and multimedia. As a dynamic interface, the reader has to take full responsibility for achieving relevance in the processing of narratives. Sadler (2018: 3274) points in the same direction when he writes that readers must not only interpret pre-existing bodies of material into comprehensible narratives but cope with the constant addition of new material, which may demand the reappraisal of previously published content. This re-emphasises that the narrative wholes produced are themselves only ever tentative, provisional, and subject to change. Besides, different readers may interpret tweets in entirely different ways, depending on what they read and their context accessibility, but even the interpretations by a single reader may change “as the narrative wholes within which individual tweets are positioned shift and change. They may also entertain different narrative possibilities simultaneously” (Sadler ibid.). Narratives on Twitter range from trivial aspects of the user’s daily life to more literary accomplishments in chained instalments, so-called Twitter threads (or hilos de Twitter in the Spanish version). In Yus (2011a: 138–139) it was argued that successive trivial tweets may look irrelevant, accentuated in the case of narrative sequences placed very close to one another, that seem to provide redundant information about an event narrated that is, in itself, of little relevance, as in the chained messages quoted in (1): (1) a Voy a hacer un wallpaper-collage chachi de los mios. [I’m going to make one of my nice wallpaper-collages]. b Vale, no, me voy to the shower y ahora vengo a hacer el wall. [ok, no, I’m going to the shower and I’ll come back in a while to make the wallpaper]. c Horas después . . . me pongo a hacer el wallpaper. [Several hours later, I start doing the wallpaper]. d Vale pues que le den al collage ò.ó me estreso con tanta foto. Pero ahora que me pongo yo de wallpaper?! QUÉ!? (T4, 1:49 pm). [ok, fuck the collage . . . I get stressed out with so many photos. But what shall I put in the wallpaper now? WHAT!?]. However, there may be other sources of user satisfaction in these chained messages that provide a certain cognitive reward which is not constrained by excess effort. Firstly, a possible interest in these trivial narrative tweets may lie in what Thompson (2008) called ambient awareness, a non-stop updating on other users’ daily activities, which provides a feeling of closeness. This creates a different kind of “proximity in the virtual” or at least an awareness of its existence. For Zhao and Rosson (2009), Twitter users obtain a high level of cyberspatial presence, a feeling of “being there,” and they can get an additional level of connection with other users. Secondly, knowing all these ordinary details, even if trivial, generates a cumulative background

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knowledge that can be recovered later as part of the (supposedly) mutual cognitive environment between users and as a preliminary context for building up subsequent successful interactions. Specifically, Twitter threads tend to follow a more linear kind of unfolding based on the timestamp, a narrative quality resulting from “the representation of time generated from the timestamp in the tweet template, the position of the tweet within an archive of updates and the content of the tweet itself” (Page 2012: 100). As can be seen in Figure 7.2 from one of the Spanish threads, Noe T,6 these include not only text but also photographs, GIFs, and videos, often recorded with a sense of immediacy and proximity regarding specific physical locations. As these Twitter threads entail long sequences of very short tweets, the authors of these Twitter narratives have to generate expectations of relevance in their followers by publishing “snapshots” of the narrative that build up tension and an increasing need to continue reading the thread. Other relevance-enhancing techniques include the initial phrase of the thread and the diffusion it has among followers. One of the most famous threads in Spain was Todo está bien (Everything is fine) by Manuel Bartual,7 whose beginning was intriguing, triggering expectations of eventual relevance: “I have been on holiday for a couple of days, at a hotel near the beach. Everything was fine until suddenly strange things started to happen” (my translation). The initial tweets of the thread by Bartual challenge the audience’s make-sense frame (mental scenario for the interpretation of a text, often with stereotypical qualities; see Yus 2016a) regarding the typical actions (mental script) that take place when going to a hotel room on a holiday, and

Figure 7.2 Spanish Twitter thread by Noe T.

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how Bartual himself is puzzled at not finding a mental frame that fits the sequence of events taking place in the narrative: (2) a Esta tarde estaba leyendo en la terraza de mi habitación cuando he escuchado que la puerta se abría. Y a este viaje he venido solo. [This evening I was reading on the terrace outside my room when I heard the door opening. And I came alone on this trip]. b Lo primero que he pensado es lo normal en estos casos, que sería alguien del servicio de habitaciones. [The first thing I thought was the typical in these cases, that it was someone from room service]. c Pero no: cuando he entrado a la habitación, me he encontrado con un hombre alto y delgado, muy nervioso, moviéndose de un lado a otro. [But no: when I entered the room, I saw a tall thin man, very nervous, moving around]. d Me he acojonado un poco. Se movía rápido, parecía registrar la habitación, o buscar algo, no sé. Le he hablado y me ha mirado. [I freaked out a bit. He was moving fast, seemed to be searching around the room for something in the room, I don’t know. I spoke to him and he looked at me]. Users normally pay attention to how many retweets the story has, a supplementary quality that raises expectations of relevance. For users to follow the chained tweets, the author has to keep their attention throughout the short extent of these messages. Very often, followers become interested because the story seems to be real (Bartual’s thread seemed to be so until he was forced to admit that it was fictional) and by the skilful use of pictures, videos and other multimedia content.8 Finally, as in other types of smartphone-mediated communication, SNA narratives may generate a number of affective effects (feelings and emotions) in both the author(s) of the stories and their readers, some of them intended as part of the relevance of the narrative and some leaking unintendedly but nevertheless generating an offset of relevant affective effects for the author and/or the audience. A major non-propositional effect has to do with feelings regarding the user’s personal and social identity and related terms such as self-concept, self-expression, and group membership (see next section and Chapter 12). Other effects include the feeling of solidarity (Dayter 2015: 21). Georgakopoulou (2015: 65) stresses the importance of establishing more or less meaningful connections between people, place, time, and events, and this lies at the heart of interweaving narrative plots. Since connections are always done in context and in interaction with participants, the value of this solidarity should be analysed within the multi-semioticity, multi-authorship, and wide distribution of communicative activities that SNAs enable. A related term is ambient affiliation (Zappavigna 2011), which signals mutual awareness

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of one another’s comments and replies on a given narrative and the mutual manifestness of information arising from these exchanges to generate markers of in-group membership.

7.6 New digital narratives on smartphones and identity Today’s internet users have developed an ability to switch from offline to online networks of friends with different degrees of commitment and intensity depending on what portion of their identities is shaped discursively on the Net, ranging from those who rarely log on to those who reject their physical identities entirely and can only “be themselves” online. And environments such as SNAs are suitable environments for discursively shaped identities (see Yus 2014a, 2015d, 2016d, 2018d, 2018f). In this sense, online narratives have an impact on the users’ personal and social identities, both as authors and audiences, as will be discussed next (for identity on SNAs, see Chapter 12). 1

2

Personal identity in digital narratives. Users make sense of their selfconcept by telling others about their beliefs, events in their lives, etc. And other users’ comments, Likes, and other types of reaction shape the extent to which these personal accounts are valuable, thus satisfying initial expectations of relevance and enhancing self-awareness. Unlike immanent views on identity, in this book a constructivist position is supported, in which the user’s identity is shaped interactionally rather than existing as a default stable entity, and the users position themselves in these interactive environments where identities are constantly negotiated, shaped, and adjusted. This “identities-in-interaction approach” benefits from the potential of social media contexts to engage in new forms of collaboration and co-construction of narration between multiple tellers. Indeed, narratives offer users a nice tool for these identitycentred acts of communication, either because the user’s self is expanded through narratives or because the user may explore new possible selves, even if these are managed through very heterogeneous Friend lists on social media. Social identity in digital narratives. This kind of identity is shaped through narratives taking place in community pages and especially in co-constructed stories, for instance those that are initiated by a single user and reacted upon by other members of the user’s Friend list. Another source of social identity is found in narrative-related community pages on social media, for example on Facebook. Page (2018) shows how these pages foster bonding and mutuality of information stressing group membership. Even discursive reactions such as the pervasive “Like” on Facebook are good to enhance feelings of social bonding (Page ibid.: 95), because it can indicate a stance regarding the object which the “Like” refers to. Besides, there are differences between “liking” a whole

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Smartphone-mediated communication Facebook page (i.e. becoming a user of the collectivity bounded inside the page and showing ascription to the topic of the page and its owner, if identifiable), and “liking” a post or comment as a response to an individual user (Page ibid.: 96). Furthermore, social identities may also be shaped and bounded in several social media simultaneously. This is the case of the identities described in Perrino (2018), formed around a specific event: an earthquake. After that traumatic event, stories were created and re-told on several social media including YouTube, Facebook, and blogs. By sharing and re-telling their experiences they created a collective identity, with a foundation of solidarity.

Notes 1 Bengtsson et al. (2018) analysed Skam as an example of transmedia narrative. The series was acclaimed for its unique distribution, with an integration of various platforms and content to adapt to active TV-viewing styles, especially by the young, the population that the series was aimed at. Skam was broadcast on a website through short video clips that unfolded in real time and came up during irregular hours that were not announced in advance. At the end of each week, the clips were brought together into complete episodes with varying length, which were published on the website and also broadcast on TV and on-demand services. Besides video clips, the website included photos, SMS, and email conversations between characters. Instagram accounts were created for the characters, and in a later season, YouTube was also integrated (p. 64). 2 See Mikos (2017: 164) for a proposal of three types of viewers/users in transmedia storytelling: the actively engaged real-time viewer, the long-term audience, and the navigational viewer. 3 It should be noted that although these are labelled as a spontaneous genre, this is so to varying degrees. Certainly, they allow for comparisons with older media despite this label, and therefore they may exhibit qualities of narratives in older media and at the same time compress unique generic attributes. Hence, we should talk about evolution into a new genre (see Page 2013: 36, 2015: 331). 4 Namely, “Author-(Implied Author)-[Narrator-Narratee]-(Implied Reader)-Reader” (Page 2012: 125). 5 Specifically, these narratives (a) announce and perform minute-by-minute everyday life experience (b) are transportable and circulatable in different media platforms, (c) are embedded into a variety of online and offline environments, (d) are multi-semiotic and multi-authored, and (e) address simultaneously different, potentially big and unforeseeable audiences (Georgakopoulou 2016a: 269–270). 6 Noe T is now Noly (@zemcnolys), available at https://twitter.com/zemcnolys. 7 https://twitter.com/ManuelBartual. The thread is archived here: https://threader.app/ thread/899719483752935426. 8 My thanks to Mónica Yus for her firsthand comments on these Twitter threads.

Part III

Media on the smartphone

8

Media on the smartphone Images

8.1 Smartphone-mediated images and the explicit/implicated distinction Images are pervasive on smartphones. They are taken with smartphone cameras on the fly and uploaded on social networking sites, forwarded on messaging apps, tagged and shared, collected in albums, and commented or reacted upon by friends and acquaintances. They are archived and re-enacted at different times, sometimes by the system software and sometimes by the users themselves. They are edited and filtered to improve their quality (e.g. Instagram  filters). They are fundamental in identity shaping, selected for profile identification, etc. In this chapter, images are regarded as intentional coded acts of communication with intended effects on the audience. Sometimes they are uploaded with a clear desire to arouse comments and reactions (Likes) in other users (interactivity triggers; see Yus 2014a and Chapter 12). On other occasions, the main relevance lies in the non-propositional effects (feelings, emotions) that these images generate in the initial user and their audience. Furthermore, my proposal is that images on smartphones have explicit and implicated interpretations, in roughly a similar way to verbal content, even if the terminology itself is controversial (see Yus 1997, 2008, 2009, 2016a). The main controversy lies in the linguistic foundation of utterances from which explicit and implicated interpretations (called explicatures and implicatures, respectively) are obtained and which is lacking in images. In example (1), a possible explicature of Bob’s utterance would be (2) and an implicature would be (3). Notice that inferring the explicature from Bob’s utterance involves much more than simply interpreting its literal meaning: (1) Ann: Is Tom working at the office today? Bob: He is in the park feeding the birds with Lucy. (2) Tom is in the park feeding the pigeons with his wife, Lucy Smith. (3) Tom is not working at the office today. What about images on the smartphone? Needless to say, they lack this linguistic foundation for the derivation of an interpretation, but I claim DOI: 10.4324/9781003200574-8

144 Media on the smartphone that images may also convey both explicit and implicated interpretations as long as the rigid conceptualisation of that linguistic anchorage is “relaxed” so as to incorporate inferential interpretations of images (see Bárány 2019: 202; Forceville 2014, 2020; Forceville and Clark 2014: 452; Wharton 2009). In this chapter, the proposal is that images on smartphones are capable of communicating explicit and implicated meanings (labelled visual explicatures and visual implicatures). These are close to what is traditionally called denotative meaning  and connotative meaning  of the image, respectively. In Yus (1997, 2008), these terms were applied to the visual information contained in comics panels, since at every stage of interpretation the reader has to make inferential hypotheses concerning the role that images play in the comprehension of the panel (and in the story as a whole). In Figure 8.1, for example, two characters are walking down a street in London. Most readers

Figure 8.1 Visual explicature from a panel in the comic book Exit. © Nabiel Kanan.

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will identify the typical scenario (black taxis, the parliament, double-decker bus) and conclude that the intended visual referent of the drawing is London, but no more inferential conclusions seem to be required. The interpretation “the characters are walking down some street in London” would be a plausible interpretation (visual explicature). By contrast, visual implicatures are fully inferential, and these interpretations cannot be simply obtained from the referent of the image. In Yus (2008) the panels described in (4) are suggested as fitting this label of visual implicature (Saraceni 2003). The panels portray a couple celebrating their anniversary: (4) Panel 1: The couple are sitting watching TV. She is wearing a striped jacket. He is wearing striped trousers and a checked shirt. The sofa where they are sitting is also striped, as well as the TV. Panel 2: The couple are in bed. She is wearing striped pyjamas; the wallpaper is also striped. She gets up, looks at her husband sleeping, goes to the window (which has a Venetian blind), pulls down one of the strips of the blind, and looks out. A reader of these panels may infer this visually coded information and simply identify the prototypical referents of the images (in terms of visual explicatures). But for Saraceni (ibid.) these scenes contain a deeper interpretation that cannot be simply inferred perceptually from the images but requires a more connotative (i.e. implicature-like) layer of processing: All the striped lines in the panels represent the tedious monotony in the couple’s relationship, and since the Venetian blind is also drawn as a series of straight lines, the girl’s bending of the strips of the blind “represents a break in the mechanical regularity that pervades the relationship between the two characters. Also, this break allows the girl to gaze outside, and this acquires an extra significance: all the straight lines inside can be seen as the bars of a cage in which she feels trapped” (ibid.: 32). In what follows, I provide several additional reasons for the appropriateness of the terms visual explicature and visual implicature, as correlates to linguistic explicatures and implicatures, for image interpretation: 1

2

Images are also communicated with an intention to be relevant. These convey information which is meant to be relevant enough to be worth the viewers’ mental effort. For instance, when a user takes a photo and uploads it on a social networking app, they have expectations that its processing will be relevant (see McCallum et al. 2020, who point in the same direction concerning pieces of art). Visual explicatures entail an initial stage of decoding by a mental module, like verbal explicatures. Relevance theory (RT) predicts, following Fodor’s (1983) theory of the modularity of mind, that the human mind

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4

has a dedicated language module that simply identifies words and then sends them to the mental central processor to interpret them. Crucially, visual information is also thought to be decoded by a dedicated module: the perceptual module, which identifies context-free information that is then interpreted by the central processor. Perception is much more than simply identifying visual referents, just as interpreting an utterance is more than simply identifying its words. Critics of my “visual explicature hypothesis” argue that images are identified in an all-at-once manner, unlike utterances, which are interpreted in a linear word-by-word procedure. This entails an initial unique interpretation of the image (and matching to a visual referent), with no room for alternative perceptual hypotheses. In fact, as argued in Yus (2008: 227), inference is in charge of a more important role in the apprehension of visual information than it appears to play. Perception is not automatic but mediated by the person’s background knowledge, expectations, and assumptions about the world (actual or possible) within which images are processed. Therefore, the viewers of an image must generate and test hypotheses regarding the meaning of the picture before they can discover the correspondence between the pictorial and the referent. There are degrees of explicitness in visual explicatures, just as in verbal explicatures. In RT, it is claimed that an explicature may be more or less explicit depending on how much information is coded in the utterance and how much has to be inferred by the hearer in their search for an appropriate interpretation. Take the utterances in (5). As we move down in the examples, coded elements are suppressed (e.g. names replaced with pronouns), and the hearer takes increased responsibility for arriving at the correct interpretation. Therefore, (5a) would be the most explicit utterance and (5d) the least explicit.

(5) a Jane returned the book on cyberpragmatics to the university library. b Jane returned the book to the university library. c Jane returned the book there. d She returned it there. Faced with an image, the viewer initially contrasts it with their background mental store of prototypical referents. In general, as the number of visual features of the image matches the prototypical visual referent, the effort involved in its processing decreases accordingly. Highly iconic images are normally flled with features ftting the prototypical visual referent of the image that the reader possesses, but there can be other images demanding more inference and generating so-called scales of iconicity. Indeed, images may be arranged on a scale of iconicity (visual explicitness) depending on how many features of the prototypical referent are actually present in the image or have to be inferred by the viewer, thus generating different amounts of mental effort during image interpretation (see Yus 1996). For example, in

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a scale of iconicity for art, highly realistic (fgurative) paintings would be at the most iconic end, whereas abstract paintings would be at the least iconic end, with other trends such as impressionism placed somewhere in-between, depending on how many attributes of the prototypical referent are actually portrayed in the paintings. 5

6

7

Both images and utterances entail decoding plus different degrees of inferencing. Images and utterances are encoded and decoded, but the terms need adjustment when applied to pictures. “Understanding pictures requires knowledge of conventions of depiction as well as of genres that, even though pictures do not have a grammar or a vocabulary, suggest that we should broaden the concept of ‘encoding/decoding’” (Forceville and Clark 2014: 469). Tseronis (2018) proposes an amplification of the term code so as to accommodate both utterances and pictures, referring to “the rules and conventions shared among the members of particular interpretive or discourse communities, which make meaning-making processes possible [.  .  .] one may consider adjusting and broadening existing categories in order to accommodate the various systems of representation available for human communication.” Images have a certain “syntax.” The mental storage of referents for images that we possess is made up of two basic types of information which undergo a constant process of updating and stabilisation through subsequent visual perceptions (Yus 2008: 153–154): (a) Prototypical visual referent. An encyclopaedic entry containing visual elements and attributes that an image is typically associated with. (b) Prototypical visual syntax. Other items typically associated with another object depicted in an image. In general, processing is faster if the visual arrangement of objects in the image fits our mental store of the prototypical visual syntax for these objects, a sort of “visual schema” that precedes and influences actual perception (see Yus 2009). Interpreting images may involve inferential strategies similar to those used in the interpretation of utterances. Obtaining an explicature from the words in the utterance entails their enrichment into a relevant and satisfactory interpretation (we never interpret what is literally said), and sometimes similar inferential strategies are at work in the interpretation of images. A clear example is visual metaphors, whose interpretation invariably differs from its prototypical visual referent(s). A visual metaphor analysed in Yus (2009) depicted a syringe with a television tower instead of the needle. The viewers’ search for a relevant interpretation will lead them to dismiss the prototypical referents of the images depicted (“syringe” and “television tower”) as the main candidates for a correct interpretation of the metaphor (*The TV tower is a syringe). Instead, they will infer that “syringe” stands metonymically for drugs in general and that “television tower” stands metonymically for television in general as a mass medium. Therefore, the prototypical referents

148 Media on the smartphone associated with the images of the syringe and the TV tower are not selected but adjusted, yielding the correct metaphoric interpretation: Television is a drug.

8.2 Smartphone camera images 8.2.1 Three phases of camera practices The use of cameras to capture images of people, objects, and scenarios has changed enormously in the last few years due to the imbrication of cameras into the smartphone ecosystem, the current availability of photo-enhancing apps, and the role of camera practices in the fabric of today’s interactions, connections, and bonding. And a parallel evolution can be witnessed from a time when the appeal of the visual referent in front of the camera was the main reason for taking a photo to nowadays, when the image may still be important, but the point of taking it mostly lies in what the person does with the image on the smartphone rather than what the image objectively depicts. In the evolution of camera practices, three phases may be isolated. The first one is camera photography. The camera used to be independent from the mobile phone and, either analogue or digital, its main function was to capture images that were later printed and collected in albums or stored in a computer as a form of archiving. Chalfen (1987) called this phase Kodak culture, described as a “home mode” of photographic communication. Unlike today’s photo practices, in which users find interest and reward beyond the content of photos and use them as vehicles to form rewarding connections, in this phase people told stories about the photos, mainly at home gatherings (e.g. after a nice holiday trip). The second phase is camera phone photography. The camera was then imbricated in the mobile phone, but the main purpose of taking pictures remained roughly the same. Unlike today’s non-stop internet connectivity, at this phase the transference of images from user to user was limited. Typically, the computer was used as a repository of photos or uploaded in so-called photoblogs, in a clear tendency to use photos to tell stories with images rather than about images, what Rubenstein (2005, in Palmer 2012: 86) calls visible speech. In this second phase people still conceptualised camera phones as a means to collect snapshots of people and scenarios and produce an archive or repository of images for future viewing. Finally, the third phase is smartphone camera photography. Unlike the previous phase, images taken from the smartphone camera are tightly related to the affordances of the permanently connected device and, within the app ecosystem, these are immediately shared, typically edited with dedicated apps, either for messaging, social networking, or photo enhancement. Palmer (2012) calls this phase iPhone photography, characterised by (a) an intimate user’s feeling with the touchscreen,1 what Palmer (ibid.) calls

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embodied visual intimacy; (b) countless apps for editing, taking, and sharing images; and (c) the increasing role of location, allowing the tagging of images and an eventual geographical arrangement of the images. In this phase, thousands of photos are taken daily with no overt intention to preserve them (or not primarily) but rather to use them to perform actions and provoke effects; photos often lack aesthetic quality because the photos themselves are not the main point of taking them, as will be argued later. As Peters and Allan (2018: 365) note, smartphone technology creates the possibility of an “always-on” connection, which means that different places are experienced by participants not just in terms of their immediate surroundings but in terms of the potential social and informational connections that they enable. Berry (2016: 54) adds that “visual images in these social media ecologies, enabled by the assemblages of smartphones and networked technology, take on phatic and phenomenological aspects in order to evoke a sense of what it is like to be here and now in the physical world in a visceral multisensory way.” Among all the technological advances that characterise this third phase, the availability of other apps inside the smartphone’s app ecosystem is crucial. Users have the ability to share their photos immediately after taking them on messaging and networking apps, with an emphasis on the present, the user’s physical location (see Chapter 11), and on the users’ constant urge for interactivity and feelings of connection with friends and acquaintances. In general, three qualities are distinctive of this third phase: A Emphasis on ephemerality and banality As already commented upon, in phases 1 and 2 images were taken because they were regarded as relevant in the portrayal of certain content (relevance of the referent). By contrast, in the smartphone camera phase, users are not so worried about archiving their images. Firstly, users take for granted that these images are going to be archived in their social networking profiles or directly on the smartphone (and parallel automatic storing on cloud services). Secondly (and crucially), users acknowledge that most of the images that they take are not aesthetically valuable and use them for other nonphotographic purposes, especially for interaction and non-stop connection with other users. In a nutshell, pictures at this phase are not conceived of as a valuable and everlasting discourse but often as something meant to be used, thrown away, and easily forgotten. Users assume that their photos and the interactions generated by their publication are bound to disappear soon from the news feed and be instantly forgotten, which does not mean that they are devoid of importance at a social or affective level. In van House and Davis (2005), some participants reported using camera phones to capture frequent, mundane images of their daily lives, sometimes with an overt intention to record these lives, while others did the same out of experimentation or playfulness,

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realising later that they had managed to construct a rough record of the pattern and texture of their everyday lives. This is indeed different from previous photographic practices, which tended to focus on the exceptional, not the mundane. Now users walk with their smartphones in their hands, ready to take spontaneous photos that are understood as ephemeral from the very moment that they are taken. Needless to say, as Hjorth and Burgess (2017: 499) correctly remark, despite this pervasive ephemerality, users may also be willing to share aesthetic pictures with others (e.g. a beautiful sunset) or photos of added relevance such as the documentation of shocking and/or disruptive images (e.g. a demonstration violently dispersed by the police). Besides, ephemerality is enhanced or favoured by the design of some apps that encourage this “use and delete” mode of image production and consumption. A clear example is Snapchat and its self-deleting Stories, now copied by other platforms such as Instagram or Facebook. B Emphasis on the present and synchronicity In past camera practices, photos were taken to preserve the memory of the referent for a future viewing (e.g. in photo albums). As such, photos were endowed with a past orientation. By contrast, today’s smartphone practices are firmly anchored in the present. Instead of This is where I was on whatever date, users now publish photos of where they are right now and expect rewarding synchronous interactions while still being at that particular location, and both interlocutors linked at a distance (but in the present) obtain an offset of non-propositional effects in the shape of feelings of connection, mediated presence, and ambient awareness, among other suggested labels. Bañuelos (2013: 13) remarks that users seem to be interested in using images for remembering a continuous present, a sort of memory in real time. This immediacy is added to a parallel immediacy: the one existing between the time the photo is taken and the time the photo is viewed and either re-taken (if unsatisfactory) or edited with enhancing apps straight away (Goggin 2006: 149). C Emphasis on location As will be explained in more detail in Chapter 11, today’s smartphone users cannot conceive of photographic practices without embedding them in the specific location where they are taken, and location is one more ingredient (and informational source) at hand in the development of interactions and eventual physical actions regarding the user’s whereabouts. Besides, users may send their specific location in the shape of a photograph of a map, again inviting viewers to engage in further interactions or location-centred actions. Indicating the place forms a part of visual chitchat as people communicate about themselves and their whereabouts. This location-related small talk

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can be a valuable communicative activity, even if it entails the use of repetitive and superfluous photographs. 8.2.2 Contextual constraints on image-centred smartphone interactions Image-centred communicative practices on smartphones are doubly constrained in the same way as other communicative practices studied in this book: They are constrained by the interface (camera and/or app affordances) and by the user (personality, mood, etc.). These are briefly commented upon. A Interface-related contextual constraints There are several actions that the user may perform when taking a photo and deciding to share it and/or enhance it by editing it with dedicated apps, depending on interface affordances. These affordances limit certain practices but also foster certain communicative strategies. For example, on Instagram one of the stages in the publication of images is the application of filters to the photo just taken. Most users engage in this photo-enhancing activity, but they cannot do that so easily on Facebook, for instance, or not as straightforwardly, and users frequently resort to a different app for editing the image. What is important is that maybe a much lower percentage of users would engage in this filtering activity if the app did not “invite” users to do so as part of the publishing stages. Similarly, Snapchat created stories that disappear after a certain time. Users embraced this option and started publishing photographic material that was banal and mundane, since it was ephemeral, as required by the app. Again, users would probably not generate so much banal and mundane content if the app did not “invite” them to do so by forcing ephemerality on that content. It can then be stated that interfaces limit the number of possible actions therein, but app interfaces also create and foster new image-based communicative practices on the smartphone. Similarly, users may simply accept the interface-related constraints of the app and rely on its design affordances, or “act upon” the app, as it were. Users constantly create new affordances that were not predicted by the makers of the interface. The designers envisage uses and practices for each app, but users “act within these affordances, taking up some opportunities, ignoring others and creating new activities which the designers never intended. It is this creative space between the designer and the user where the unexpected can happen” (Barton 2018: 40). However, the most important interface quality for smartphone communication is the convergence of camera, editing software, location-based services, and interaction-centred apps in the same device (the app ecosystem), so that users may take photos, edit them instantly, and share them with friends immediately, triggering interactions, comments, feedback, reactions, and so on.

152 Media on the smartphone B User-related contextual constraints Specifically regarding smartphone photographs, some qualities of the users (and their audiences) constrain what kind of photograph is taken, of which referent, with what frequency, and with what reaction and feedback. One important constraint is the user’s personality, as has been stressed several times in this book. Narcissist users will tend to take many photos and desperately expect immediate praising feedback from friends and acquaintances. Shy users, by contrast, will normally be unwilling to publicise their lives online. Personality also influences the choice of the profile photo. According to Liu et al. (2016: 211), extroverts enjoy interacting with others and have high group visibility, and therefore they will tend to use profile pictures involving other people or where they express more positive emotions. By contrast, users high in conscientiousness tend to be more orderly and conform to norms of what is expected from a profile picture (mainly a frontal photograph of themselves). Secondly, the user’s mood may also constrain the number and qualities of the photos shared or published on social networking sites. For example, being in a good mood seems to stimulate users’ willingness to share photographs, their current feelings impacting their desire to post “shareable experiences” (Serafinelli and Villi 2017: 80). Thirdly, the user’s sex has an impact on the choice and frequency of photosharing practices. Hudson and Gore (2017: 190) found differences specifically in the user’s profile picture. According to these authors, men tend to be open to experience (a trait associated with an independent sense of self), which is reflected in social networking site profile pictures of “just themselves.” As a contrast, women’s agreeableness makes profile pictures with others more valuable. Fourthly, the user’s cultural background may also influence image-mediated communication. There is evidence supporting the view that the context of one’s culture affects social behaviour, including socialisation online, with differences observed mainly between East Asians (specifically, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese) and Westerners (Huang and Park 2013: 335). On the whole, Westerners are individualistic, independent, and self-based regarding their culture, whereas East Asians are shaped by their collectivist and interdependent representation and hence view themselves as part of a larger whole (see Hofstede 2001). These culture-bound qualities may also influence the choice of photos for entries and profiles. Finally, one possible user-related constraint is the heterogeneity of the user’s audience and how they will react to the photo shared or published (Scifo 2009: 191). In today’s scenario of context collapse (boyd 2011; Marwick and boyd 2011), users have a very heterogeneous audience in their social networking sites (close friends, acquaintances, former students, relatives .  .  .), who may react to the photo in radically different ways.

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8.2.3 The relevance of today’s smartphone images When users take photos and share them with their friends or acquaintances, there are expectations that the photo will raise their audience’s interest and also that the photo will provoke a sufficient number of replies and reactions. Initially, establishing what counts as “relevant” from the publication or sharing of photos is complicated, since the objective relevance of the photo itself is intertwined with affective effects (i.e. non-propositional effects) that arise both in the initial user and in the audience (see Section 8.2.5). However, in terms of relevance two major cases may be isolated, one in which the image is relevant in itself and another in which the image is only relevant for what the user does with it. Both cases are not meant to be mutually exclusive, and in fact, there are many instances of images that are interesting for the audience because of its aesthetic qualities, while at the same time allowing for fruitful interactions and a number of affective effects between the user and the audience. In the first case, the content of a photograph itself is relevant simply due to the objective interest of what is depicted and how it is depicted (angle, colour, framing, people, surrounding scenario .  .  .). This case will generically be labelled relevance of image–referent contiguity. The audience finds relevance in interpreting the photo as being attached to the referent at the moment that the photo was taken, and the user is praised for managing to capture that contiguity. In this case, the user will be granted a number of affective effects from the praising reactions triggered by the photos (e.g. feelings of connection, of self-worth, of being acknowledged, increased selfesteem). This case is particularly noticeable on Instagram, where users take their time to polish their photos with filters and associated photo-enhancing apps available on the smartphone. In the second case, photos may be relevant not because of the quality or the content of the referent but because the photo allows for the derivation of a number of affective effects binding the initial user and the audience together. As briefly commented upon already, a typical feature of today’s smartphone camera practices is the trivial and banal quality of many of the photos taken, also assumed to be ephemeral and tied to the synchronous present. In these cases, the eventual relevance cannot arise from the photo itself but from how the photo connects the user with their audience. This case will generically be called relevance of user–audience contiguity (through the image). Figure 8.2 exemplifies this second case. The user publishes on his Facebook profile a photo of a breakfast together with the text Having a yummy breakfast at my favourite Café. The photo plus text emphasise the tendency to a present orientation and synchronicity, and the user expects comments and reactions shortly after publishing the photo, with an enhanced feeling of synchronous connection with his friends. The photo itself lacks aesthetic value, and therefore the source of relevance has to be found elsewhere. Jurgenson (2019) also remarks that on social networking sites, images evoke

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Figure 8.2 User–audience contiguity (through an image) on social media.

more than they explain; they transmit a general alertness to experience rather than facts. And an example is the tendency toward the normal (the banal, the mundane) instead of toward the exceptional (as in the “image–referent contiguity”) and becomes woven into the fabric of everyday life. Jurgenson (ibid.) notes that holding a camera over food has come to be a paradigmatic example of the banality of social photography. It conveys little or no information, fails at being a scene, the traditional domain of photography, but nevertheless ends up relevant in subtler, non-propositional ways (see Rousseau 2012). Lasén and Gómez-Cruz (2009: 205) also acknowledge this shift in photographic practices and intentions, where photography has changed from a way to support memories of public and personal events to a performance of everyday life. In this sense, two activities are typically associated with users’ practices in this second case of non-stop publication of trivial, ephemeral, and banal photographs: A Sharing This is performed with different underlying intentions. Favoured by the aforementioned app ecosystem in which the camera, messaging, and social networking apps are all integrated in an environment of non-stop internet

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connection, the device not only satisfies the user’s desire to share their images with other users but also fosters it. This is why Kofoed and Larsen (2016) propose that these sharing practices should be described as networked photography (sharing images immediately after they are taken), or visual conversations between sender and receiver. In this sense, Lobinger (2016: 476) proposes three modes of photo-sharing practices, two of which are related to my two-fold proposal of sources of relevance in smartphone-mediated interactions through images: The first mode is “sharing photographs in order to talk about images.” It belongs to the first generation of camera practices that was mentioned above (Kodak culture). In this mode, photos were not really shared but shown to other people (mostly after being printed), and the main purpose was the preservation of the referent. The second mode is “communicating visually and sharing visual stories.” In this practice the photo is relevant in itself due to the special (e.g. aesthetic) qualities of the photo regarding its referent (relevance of image– referent contiguity). In this mode, photographs are shared to communicate visually (e.g. visual stories). Ling and Li (2020: 395) also note that the “Kodak moments” of the previous mode have been replaced by “Instaworthy photographs” in this mode. Certainly, Instagram has become an increasingly important site for sharing photographs and for the development of various aesthetic conventions and practices. Although there is also an inclination to “save the moment” for posterity, as in the “Kodak mode,” “Insta-worthy” implies spontaneity and the urge to quickly update one’s social media feeds. Finally, in the third mode, “phatic photo sharing,” the pleasure of user connectivity is prominent, thus fitting my proposed label of relevance of user–audience contiguity (through the image). Photographs are exchanged mainly for the sake of visual connectivity and with an intention to confirm and strengthen bonds and relationships (Lobinger 2016). Sometimes these image-mediated exchanges are ritualised, just like phatic exchanges in physical scenarios, a sort of “gift giving” that demands reciprocity. B Interacting The relevance of user–audience contiguity (through the image) is typically produced as a consequence of one of the most inherent and intimate of human needs: that of interacting with and feeling connected to others. Images are often used as an excuse for further interactions through comments, conversations, replies, reactions, and so on. Through these interactions, a number of affective effects (non-propositional effects) are sought by the initial user (see the notion of interactivity trigger in Chapter 12) but may also be generated as a leakage from these interactions, without either user or audience intending or expecting these explicitly on some occasions, which does not mean that they are not equally relevant to the users involved.

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These image-based communicative practices are now part of the routine forms of interaction among today’s smartphone users, who acknowledge that photos are meant to be interpreted more on what they do for the interaction and the effects that they produce in both interlocutors. Non-stop “always-on” internet connection on smartphones facilitates the constant exchange of images with a synchronous and ephemeral quality but nevertheless aiming at substantive (relevant) interactions centred upon these images. As a consequence, different places are experienced by participants not just in terms of their immediate surroundings but in terms of the potential social and informational connections that they enable. Images, in short, are often like verbal interactions in the way they generate effects on interlocutors (van Dijck 2008: 62–63). As such, images acquire an explicit phatic quality in which the social connections and interactions that they enable are more important than the content (i.e. the referent) that gets communicated through these images (Lobinger 2016; Yus 2015c, 2016d, 2019a). 8.2.4 Acting on smartphone images Images are often not transferred to other users unaltered or in isolation. Besides image-enhancing apps in which images are enhanced before being sent or shared, these images are also intertwined with verbal discourses with a number of relevant communicative effects. Images are frequently edited before they are sent to other users, thus somehow blurring the iconic relationship between the photo and its referent at the moment of taking the picture but also acquiring new expectations of reward through audience validation. As suggested, sometimes the app “invites” users to enhance their photos, as in the “filter phase” on Instagram. On other occasions, the user installs specific image-enhancing apps. Besides, when images are shared with other users, they are often complemented with text, most notably comments by the initial user in order to contextualise the image, and also by the user’s audience, frequently leading to fully fledged interactions based on the image. An example is van Dijck’s (2013: 94) analysis of the photo-based networking site Flickr, where “the comment function turned out to be an important instrument not only for developing community bonds but also for building shared aesthetic judgment.” However, the most prominent act of verbal action on images is, undoubtedly, the option of tagging. It has relational implications depending on the app or platform where tagging is performed. For example, if user A is tagged in a photo on another user B’s profile on Facebook, then B’s publication appears on user A’s profile as well, thus creating an entry-related bond between both users. For Dhir (2017: 481), such photo-tagging also enables direct communication between Facebook users and generates an offset of affective rewards in the way the users build and maintain their online identity and relationships with friends and relatives. The tagged photo is not only

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available for viewing by both “tagger” and “tagged” users but also becomes accessible to the users’ entire network of friends, with or without the due knowledge of the tagged user. From this multiple tagging, several relevant affective effects may be derived, not necessarily positive ones, as happens when users are tagged without their permission. Several more functions of tagging have been proposed.2 Of these functions, one stands out as essential: to mark the image thematically so that it gets indexed and is more easily searchable, as happens with the massive use of hashtags to tag photos on Instagram. Photos become fully searchable by topic or location, reducing effort and maximising the interest for those users who are looking for some image-centred information. 8.2.5 Non-propositional effects from image-mediated smartphone interactions Taking photos, sharing them, and tagging them, among other image-centred actions, may generate a number of relevant non-propositional effects (affective effects). These may be intended as part of the image-based act of communication, the initial user overtly intending to obtain a number of personal affective effects by publishing the image, for example using the image to provoke a substantial number of rewarding, praising comments, brief reactions (Likes), or subsequent interactions related to the image. In parallel, the user may intend a number of rewarding affective effects on the audience by establishing connections with them, showing them instances of group activities (e.g. trips) or gatherings (e.g. parties), etc. In this sense, photo-sharing has become a ritual that contributes to the cohesion of social groups. The smartphone facilitates a continuous flow of photos among users, repeatedly reinforcing feelings of group awareness and group membership. To be precise, the user’s need for reward regarding self-identity, self-worth, and self-management generally underlies many image-based acts of smartphone communication, as is clearly the case of selfies (see van House and Davis 2005). This image-based strategy is typical of teenagers, who carefully select and craft images to project a desired identity (the label enhanced self has been proposed for this kind of user activity). Of course, among the identity-centred choice of images, the social networking profile photo stands out in importance (see Hudson and Gore 2017). Another major non-propositional effect that is generated out of imagecentred smartphone communication is the feeling of connection between the user and the audience. This is what was labelled relevance of user–audience contiguity (through the image) earlier and illustrated with Figure 8.2. In this case, the quality of the image is not relevant, but the offset of affective effects is. Due to their associative, simultaneous nature, photographs are more closely related to feelings and emotions. Images are experienced more intuitively than verbal texts, and they convey emotions more directly and more authentically, which makes them ideal resources for intimate

158 Media on the smartphone communication (Venema and Lobinger 2017). In this sense, several terminological proposals point in the same direction of underlining users’ bonds and connectivity through shared photos, including:

visual intimacy

visual co-presence

distant closeness

mediated presence

By using photos, users create a shared visual space and a sense of (co-)presence and proximity that is enabled by the photograph (Venema and Lobinger 2017). This arises out of the temporal nature of social streaming technologies that emphasise the present and synchronicity, aided by the portability of mobile media. These affordances mean that a feeling of “you could be here with me” is generated, in which photographers include part of themselves in the image and invite the viewer to imagine themselves into the frame with the initial user (Zappavigna 2016: 272; Berry 2016: 55–57). Images used for staying close to and informed about people who may be distant physically. “Mediated sharing of photographs supports ‘distant closeness’ between friends and family members and functions to maintain and enforce social bonds” (Villi 2013). Users of mobile communication technology are not present in any physical sense, but sharing images allows them to be connected to one another by using a communication device. Mediated presence through images emulates the experience of actually being in a remote location or with a remote other (Villi 2016: 111).

It should be noted that these effects are somehow connected to parallel user-related constraints, to the extent that several correlations between these user-related constraints, the quality/quantity of the visual discourse uploaded, and intended-unintended non-propositional effects may be distinguished, as proposed in Yus (2016e). Some of these possible correlations include the ones listed in Table 8.1.

8.3 The selfie The selfie is one of the most popular images produced with smartphones, taking advantage of the device’s front-facing camera. Broadly speaking, the selfie is a self-portrait using a camera, and definitions of the selfie abound in the bibliography. My own definition is rather narrow compared to other definitions: “a photo of someone depicting them at the very moment of taking that photo of themselves (and maybe also of other people), mainly intended to be shared with other users.” As such, my scope of the term “selfie” covers only those photographs in which the audience can see the user’s extended

Table 8.1 Identity-related constraints–effects correlations mediated by images. Discourse (sender)

Discourse (audience)

Non-propositional effect

Need for connectedness; shyness/extroversion; to remind the audience of the user’s existence User’s personality (low self-esteem, shyness, introversion)

Image-centred self-disclosure on mundane activities and events

Positive feedback from peers through comments, dialogues (audience validation) Successful interactions and peer validation

Social capital (bridging/ bonding), feelings of group membership, of being acknowledged by peers Increased social capital Enhanced self-esteem

Different audiences evaluate visual self-presentation (context collapse) Feedback from interactions on the content uploaded (audience validation)

Positive/negative feelings arising from user’s image (in)congruence Feelings of affirmation of selfimage; enhanced positive feelings on self-image; self-worth Enhanced self-esteem, feelings of group membership and group approval, connectivity. Enhanced in-group mutuality of information Feeling of group membership and connectivity therein

Self-concept (impression motivation) Narcissist personality

Cultural stereotypes on beauty, attractiveness (stabilised from sources such as the media)

Norm-fitting published content

Interactions from peers, e.g. from praising pics. Comments valuing visual personal display (audience validation) Positive feedback from group of peers (sustained interactions)

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Expectations of social norm adequacy and expectations of group conformity

Active and intense imagerelated Facebook use (social compensation hypothesis: compensate by actively engaging in online activities) Self-presentation through visual discourse (impression construction) Intense image-centred activity as attention-seeking strategies (interactivity trigger) Photographic display matching cultural stereotypes (impression management)

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Constraint

160 Media on the smartphone arm (or they can easily guess its presence even if not framed in the photo), the user who takes the photo is clearly identifiable, and the photo is taken with the smartphone’s front-facing camera (so photos of oneself in a mirror are placed outside my definition, too). Page (2019a: 80) correctly adds that selfies are not just produced as images but “are a form of multimodal discourse which can include visual, aural and verbal elements when shared through video clips that can be created on smart phones.” This multimodal quality is also outside the scope of the selfie as proposed in my definition, which focuses only on photos. Selfies exhibit a number of general features, some of which shape the selfie as a highly identifiable photographic genre. They are complex in the way users are both photographers and models who can simultaneously place themselves as active users and potential audiences. They are meant to be shared and validated by the user’s friends, so they deviate from traditional uses of photography as only documentation and archiving and incorporate the need for sharing and interacting. In this sense, Tifentale (2018) mentions the term networked camera to understand the selfie as a hybrid phenomenon that merges the aesthetics of self-portraiture with the social functions of online interaction. Rettberg (2014) also considers both sides of the selfie (content/interaction) when she proposes two categories, namely the selfie as self-expression and as self-representation, the first being communicative in function whereas the second is more about the content of the image itself. This duality also underlies Hess’s (2015: 1631) term selfie assemblage, “a constellation of multiple elements of existence within contemporary technological culture that expresses – even copes with – the affective tensions of networked identity: the longing for authenticity through digitality, the conflicted need for fleeting connection with others, the compulsion to document ourselves in spaces and places, and the relational intimacy found with our devices.” In this chapter, the selfie – at least within my narrow definition proposed earlier – could be conceptualised as an identifiable photographic genre of its own. This entails checking its degree of conventionalisation within the broad community of smartphone users and also the extent to which these users expect and exploit selfie features as an aid to achieving their communicative goals. However, there is no agreement on the status of the selfie as an independent genre. Georgakopoulou (2016b: 301) contends that “we can expect conventional and normative communicative resources for presenting self through selfies, as part of specific social practices and developed not in isolation, but for and with other social media users.” Farci and Orefice (2015) write that the selfie is probably the most ritualised and conventionalized practice of self-representation currently existing online: “despite the fact that each selfie captures a unique pose, this same pose obediently repeats millions of other very similar stances.” From a cyberpragmatic point of view, as has been proposed for other smartphone-mediated discourses in this book, the proposal of analysis of selfies is multiple and comprises different layers and steps. These are depicted in Figure 8.3 and will be addressed in the next sub-sections.

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Figure 8.3 A cyberpragmatics of the selfie.

8.3.1 Contextual constraints on selfie-based smartphone communication A Interface-related constraints Selfie-taking is facilitated by the fact that all smartphones are now equipped with two cameras, the front-facing one being the one associated with selfies. But interface affordances are at work in all the process of selfie-taking, including apps that allow for editing and improving the quality of the selfie before it is shared with others on social media or messaging apps. Different social media also impose their own constraints upon the publication of selfies. For example, Instagram exhibits the strongest relationship with selfie production; hence specific social media platforms are outlets for specific types of motivations for selfies, thus constraining their use and impact (Barker and Rodriguez 2019: 1160). Somehow, different platforms entail different uses of selfie production and interpretation. An example is Snapchat, whose ephemeral publications may offer users a way to express themselves through selfies without the burden of permanent storage, and users exert more control over audience reactions than on other social media such as Facebook, biased by the aforementioned context collapse. The informants in Katz and Crocker (2015) also stressed the specificity of Snapchat, viewed as impermanent, mostly edited, and more private. Its ephemeral nature allows users fewer restrictions and more creative modes of engagement, together with ways to experiment with the self and try on different styles of self-presentation. B User-related constraints A major user-related constraint on selfie production is the user’s personality. Existing research has linked frequency of selfie posting with specific personalities such as extroversion, agreeableness, openness, considerateness,

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and narcissism, paired with other human traits such as self-esteem and a tendency to exhibitionism. A possible explanation for the role of personality in selfie-taking is that perhaps certain personalities such as extroversion and agreeableness make people more likely to be surrounded by other people and have more possibilities to post group selfies or be willing to take a selfie of themselves. Among the types of personality impacting selfie-taking, some have aroused more scholarly attention. One is narcissism: There is a common belief that narcissists are constantly willing to expose themselves on social media (exhibitionism), and selfies are a good means to obtain audience validation, even if that entails taking risky selfies. However, research mentioned in Bevan (2017) yielded inconsistent evidence for this link between narcissism and selfie-taking or specified that only some types of narcissism do lead to increased selfie-related actions. Another major personality-related trait is degree of self-esteem. As Pounders et al. (2016) correctly contend, and corroborating my proposal of constraints-effects correlations proposed previously, self-esteem is both a constraint and a non-propositional effect: users intend to obtain increased self-esteem by taking, editing, and then posting selfies, and the audience validation (in terms of Likes, comments, and the development of selfierelated interactions) generates an offset of affective effects in the user, thus increasing their self-esteem. Several studies corroborate the idea that although users with low self-esteem may be interested in posting selfies so as to receive positive validation from other users, normally users with high self-esteem are the ones posting the most selfies. However, praise-seeking selfies may backfire, as it were, if the audience feels that the selfie poster is too narcissistic or praise obsessed. An example is the series of Twitter selfies by female adolescents (typically in underwear and with sexy poses) who add the text “tell me something I don’t know” to their posts.3 It is not difficult to imagine the point of these selfies and this accompanying text, whose intended inferential enrichment would be similar to (6a). However, some of the replies to this text show that many users, unsatisfied with these girls’ narcissist selfies, opt for a different enrichment, this time similar to (6b), generating unexpected comments such as those listed in (7a-b), with users taking advantage of the various possible interpretive continuations of the tweet: (6) a Tell me something I don’t know [about how pretty I am and how nice my figure is]. b Tell me something I don’t know [about culture in general]. (7) a

Natural gas is odourless; the characteristic smell is a substance that is added to notice when there are leaks. b Alec Stewart scored the same number of Test runs as his date of birth. 8–4–63.

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A second major user-related constraint is gender. The stereotypical assumption is that women take and share more selfies due to the traditional pressure on women’s physical appearance and on their compliance with standards of beauty (Dhir et al. 2016a). In this sense, Stefanone et al. (2019: 330) further specify that female users take selfies as frequently as males, but they share significantly fewer selfies and are more likely to edit their selfies, compared to male users. This indicates that women tend to be more mindful in terms of their online self-presentation. A third user-related constraint is (supposedly) shared cultural schemas regarding appearance and body image, which are particularly important when addressing how users intend to comply with beauty and body-shape standards when taking, editing, and sharing their selfies. Beauty stereotypes spread across populations and are reinforced by practices by influencers, for example. Taking Sperber’s (1996) view of culture as an instance of epidemiological spread, these stereotypes would get communicated repeatedly, spread out in a human population, and end up being instantiated in the mind of every selfie-taking user. Finally, another possible selfie-related constraint involves the prediction of the selfie audience. When taking, editing, and posting a selfie, users normally bear in mind the prospective audience. For example, it appears that users who have an audience in mind made up of close friends tend to engage less in selfie editing, whereas idealised self-presentation is more frequent with large audiences such as those in social networking sites. 8.3.2 Users’ overt intentions upon engaging in selfie-taking When users engage in selfie-taking, they may have several communicative intentions in mind, some of which are overtly conveyed to other users belonging to their social media network. Initially, from a cyberpragmatic stance, these intentions may broadly be divided into those pertaining to the content of the selfie and those related to the generation of affective effects (feelings and emotions) in both the initial user and their audience. Several studies propose possible intentions underlying selfie-based communication. For example, Barker and Rodriguez (2019) propose that selfies are taken to say something about themselves, connect with others, feel better about themselves, feel empowered, and identify with others like themselves. A Intentions related to selfie content A major content-related intention when taking selfies is to trigger audience reactions on social media or messaging apps. Users post selfies strategically so as to obtain social rewards, audience validation, and relational development through comments and reactions (Bevan 2017: 495; Stefanone et al. 2019: 325). They want to boost their confidence and feelings of self-worth, and selfies are a good means to achieve this intention as an interactivity trigger, using Yus’s (2014a) terminology (selfies explicitly aiming at replies

164 Media on the smartphone and comments). In fact, according to so-called looking-glass self-theory, when users want to present themselves to their audience online, they imagine what their judgments of them would be like, and this in turn affects the way they present their appearance to them. It can be stated, then, that self-presentation (and other related labels such as self-disclosure and selfpromotion) is mostly an attempt to obtain audience validation and underlies most instances of selfies online. Self-presentation is part of overall identity shaping and identity management. Selfies are often not about aesthetic quality, since the front-facing camera produces lower-quality photos than those taken with the rear-facing camera. It has more to do with who is portrayed (or who with or where) as an (apparently) spontaneous act of visual communication (selfies are frequently edited and enhanced, though). Spontaneous here does not mean accidental, since selfies are “spontaneously performed but rehearsed, lending them a character of performed legitimacy [. . .] selfies provide ‘real’ glimpses into the corporeal presentation of self” (Hess 2015: 1632). Altogether, selfies thus seem to provide best opportunities for self-presentations, impression management, and admiration-seeking strategies (Page 2019b). And positive reactions and feedback received from friends on social media (e.g. Likes or comments) may act as an index to the relationships and social validation central to one’s self-worth (that is, self-affirmation). B Related to affective effects through selfie editing and sharing Selfie-taking users also hold intentions related to obtaining rewarding “affective effects” (feelings, emotions) that they intend to produce in the audience and which, in parallel, may also be relevant to the initial selfie poster, especially if the selfie arouses a number of fruitful comments and reactions. Two of these affective effects are the feeling of connection and community bonding, which Barker and Rodriguez (2019: 1159) call social capital affinity. Another possibility is the intention to make the audience entertain the same affective effects that the user is feeling at the moment of taking the selfie. This is particularly noticeable in so-called travel selfies. 8.3.3 Taking the selfie When taking the selfie, the user has to decide what part of the scene needs to be framed in the selfie (the relevant area of the selfie). Following the narrow definition of the selfie proposed above, the user who takes the selfie should be visible and identifiable, but other people or environments may also be very relevant in the selfie-mediated act of communication. Crucially, selfies are intentional acts of image-mediated communication that may convey an explicit interpretation (visual explicature) and/or an implicated interpretation (visual implicature), as suggested for images in

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general. Take the messaging conversations reproduced in Figure 8.4. In conversation [A], Thomas ignores that Frank is on the West Coast of Ireland, and Frank produces a selfie with the intention that it be interpreted explicitly as a piece of information regarding his whereabouts, for example the interpretation in (8), in which the direct referent of the photo is what is meant to be communicated. By contrast, in conversation [B] Frank produces the same selfie, but the point of producing the selfie is mainly to implicate the information in (9), a visual implicature. Notice that the implicated interpretation from the selfie is actually easier to derive by Thomas (i.e. demands less mental effort) than its explicit interpretation, since the latter is initially not clear to him (i.e. he asks for clarification). (8) Explicit interpretation: Frank is somewhere on the west coast of Ireland. (9) Implicated interpretation: Frank will not be at his office tomorrow and won’t be able to discuss with me the ideas for the article. Taking the selfie also entails relatedness between the referent and the photo, with an overt intention that the subject(s) depicted be easily identifiable at the moment of taking the photo.4 This is why selfies are often endowed with a feeling of authenticity, also conveyed by the “liveness” that surrounds the selfie, bringing the audience closer to the situation where it was taken, the feeling that the photo was shot instantly and incidentally when the current situation emerged. And a related issue when addressing the act of taking a selfie is its indexicality (or contiguity, using the terminology of this chapter).

Figure 8.4 Visual explicature and visual implicature in selfie-based communication.

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Concerning this section, three main types of selfies are proposed and briefly described. Other authors have also proposed their own classifications (see Zappavigna and Zhao 2020; Georgakopoulou 2016b: 307). In all of these cases, the selfie takers expect their audience to share an impression with them of the feelings associated with “showing” their images rather than verbally (and ostensively) informing the audience of their intentions. Several weak implicatures may also arise by the mere fact that the selfie taker and the audience share some visual information through the publication of the selfie. Wharton (2009: 46) suggests the example of what might be communicated by Lily’s sigh in (10) or (11): (10) Jack: How are you enjoying your linguistics course? Lily: [Looks at Jack and sighs]. (11) Lily comes home after a day at work, slams the door, catches Jack’s eye, and sighs. In (10), Lily’s sigh provides strong evidence that she is not enjoying her linguistics course and probably weaker support for a range of further conclusions (her linguistics course is diffcult, she is worried or anxious about it, is in need of help or sympathy, etc.). In (11), her sigh does not provide evidence for a single, defnite conclusion but creates what Wharton calls a diffuse impression. As these examples show, intentional uses of nonverbal behaviours such as posting a selfe may convey a more or less defnite meaning when addressed to an audience with and also a wide array of conclusions regarding the user (see S&W 2015: 122). A This is ME In this first type of selfie, the user takes centre stage in the photo and its eventual relevance. This type is very frequent, with a “user close-up” and the face dominating the image frame (Veum and Undrum 2018). Many of these selfies are taken with standards of beauty in mind, as already stated. Needless to say, research suggests that this beauty compliance is more pervasive in female users, who often feel the need to adhere to societal expectations: “Selfie posters may therefore be constrained in their selfie posting practices if they wish to ‘do femininity’ correctly and be acknowledged as young women online. If women ‘choose’ not to present their bodies in an appropriate way, they risk being judged by other women as unfeminine or pathological” (Grogan et al. 2018: 18). However, a radical alternative is to convey selfies that are clearly opposed to current standards of beauty, thus attracting the attention of the potential audience. A clear example is the ugly selfie (Page 2019c). Indeed, “empirical analysis of these images and the responses that they generate can help us better understand the nuanced ways in which this type of selfie communicates

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and also the extent to which the potential self-denigration conveyed in this context might achieve positive or negative interactional outcomes for the selfie-taker” (p. 179). B This is ME with PEOPLE In this category, typically called group selfie or even groufie or groupie, a number of people fill the photo, and normally there is little or no space for any other visual context in the selfie. In this case, the relevance of the selfie lies in the social connotations and explicit affective effects that are generated from being together in the selfie. Furthermore, Kim and Chock (2017: 569) propose one additional source of relevance in the popularity that might arise out of posing within group selfies, which is reflected in strategic self-presentation that involves behaviours that contribute to social enhancement. C This is ME at a certain LOCATION In the third type, the physical scenario where the selfie is taken (and where the user is located) is the main source of interest in the photograph, a proof that the user was at that location, which is deemed prominent for some reason. In fact, the user normally appears at one side of the image so that the environment is visually captured by the smartphone camera. As Fontcuberta (2016) remarks, with this kind of selfie we do not want so much to show the world to others but, rather, to show our being in the world. Sometimes that obsession with obtaining relevant locations for the selfie entails taking risky selfies at dangerous places (see Ling and Li 2020: 401). 8.3.4 Interface affordances in selfie-based communication Users, especially young females, intend their selfies to impact their audiences positively and trigger their comments and reactions, and this major expectation involves editing the selfie, erasing imperfections, and enhancing the referent as much as necessary. Some users spend a considerable amount of time perfecting their selfies, although this “acting on the selfie” somehow is at odds with the supposedly spontaneous selfie-taking procedure that in theory fills these photos with authenticity. Smartphone apps and smartphone camera affordances play a major role in this selfie-enhancing process. As de Vaate et al. (2018: 1395) summarise, good-looking pictures on social media are more relevant in terms of arousing more attention and reactions (e.g. comments and Likes). Apps to edit pictures and the rise of social networking sites like Instagram that contain built-in tools to improve pictures instantly have made image editing a very easy task, and users act on their selfies and thus idealise their pictures.

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However, apps and editing software are not only used when posting the selfie but also at subsequent stages of selfie sharing and distribution. Leiendecker (2018: 196) mentions the term recycled selfies for those images that have been downloaded and redistributed in a modified version. Software aids in actions such as adding text, the juxtaposition of several selfies in a collage, or any operation that alters the original image (with the use of image-editing software). In this case, the initial selfie taker somehow loses control not only of the context in which the photo appears but also of its (now altered) content. When editing selfies, users have certain beauty standards in mind, as has already been emphasised. These are enacted from cultural background knowledge and are also further disseminated as the selfies are shared with broad audiences. Chae (2017: 370–371) mentions social comparison theory, which fits this “spreading quality” of selfies. The theory postulates that humans have a basic instinct to compare themselves to others. Selfie-editing could be said to entail social comparison because it is based on self-evaluation of appearance, which is culturally biased. Selfie-editing might be due to the dissatisfaction about one’s appearance in selfies or due to the desire to look better than others. Specifically, they aim at quantitative evidence of popularity, evidenced by Likes, increased number of followers, or many comments. To construct a self-image that others like, one must evaluate their appearance according to current stabilised beauty standards. Selfie-editing also includes adding text to the selfie before sharing it. This added discourse is relevant to the end-users and may even alter the eventual interpretation and estimation of relevance. In this sense, Farci and Orefice (2015) think that the accompanying text contributes to redefining the meaning of the selfie, making it available to a large and potentially unknown public, but contend that although a selfie can be produced and submitted with a specific audience in mind, those who view and react to this content may be different from those for whom it was initially intended. Among the possible textual additions, tagging the selfie with “hashtagged text” stands out. It increases the chances of being found through searches and widens the prospective audience beyond the initial intimate circle of friends. It also increases the chances for the selfie to become popular for a longer period of time: “most selfies generate interest only for a short period of time, especially when they are distributed on a social networking website, where they usually get buried by new posts pretty quickly. The hashtag function helps users make the most of this short time frame by generating the attention and the interest of more users or, [. . .] more potential sources of recognition and approval” (Leiendecker 2018: 198). Veum and Undrum (2018: 96) underline the fact that the texts published alongside the selfies are usually not composed of ordinary sentences but mainly isolated words. They list some groups of examples in (12), where only one example in (12a) contains one nearly ordinary sentence, while examples in (12b) and (12c) lack sentence-like tags:

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(12) a #selfie #iphone6s love the camera quality of the 6s b Goodnight #goodnight #sweetdreams #selfie #makeup #follow #f4f #blonde #style #fasion #vouge #lithuanian c #quote #sexandthecity #mrbig #brunette #smile #diamonds #shinebright #glow #happy #follow #followme #tgit #Thursday #staystrong #love #like #stayfaboulous (12b) and (12c) illustrate the typical hashtagged captions (on Instagram), namely words without spaces or punctuation and without an explicit order. The reason for such unconventional texts is germane to the original function of the hashtag. That arrangement seems to be pervasive on Instagram, where random labels abound. Among the hashtags, #selfe is the most frequent and indicates (together with #me and #myself, found in more than 50% of selfes under their study) that the main topic of these texts is the user’s self.5 Nevertheless, the terms used also seem to be dependent on the kind of activity performed at the time of taking the selfe. Gretzel (2017: 121), for instance, comments that in travel selfes users explicitly frame the travel identity that they intend to communicate. Hashtags such as #solotraveler, #digitalnomad, #traveladdict, #globetrotter, #wanderlust, #freedomjunkie, #welltraveled, and #adventureseeker are “examples of how travellers try to present themselves as specifc types of travellers because they wish to stress that they are not just regular tourists.” 8.3.5 Selfie shared with others Selfies are meant to be posted and shared on social media or messaging apps so as to obtain audience validation in terms of comments, Likes, or other kinds of audience reactions, taking advantage of the smartphone affordances. In fact, sharing is often the only reason the selfie is taken in the first place. For example, Kenaan (2018: 114) writes that selfies in the full sense of the term are those images intended to be shared via social media. They are forms of participation in the public sphere whose telos of appearing in public plays indeed an important role in the constitution of their visuality. A selfie, in other words, is a mode of making oneself present in the public domain, a visual mode of self-presentation. As such, it is a dimension of the self’s ongoing engagement with the visuality of the world, a visuality whose characteristics are intimately tied to who we are and particularly tied to the complex structure of living at the intersection of vision and visibility, of seeing and being seen. Furthermore, Srivastava et al. (2018) apply Goffman’s (1959) distinction between backstage and frontstage performances. The act of taking the selfe could be considered as backstage performance, whereas selfe posting could

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be perceived as frontstage performance, intended to maintain social reciprocity with the audience on social media. The backstage performance is highly time-consuming, since users want to capture the best selfe on camera to be subsequently shared. Finally, selfies may be shared in order to use them as interactivity triggers (Yus 2014a; see Chapter 12), that is, specifically aiming to generate conversations either through the selfies themselves or through discursive conversations attached to them (Sung et al. 2016: 263; Katz and Crocker 2015: 1866–1867). 8.3.6 Audience validation The last stage of a cyberpragmatics of selfies is audience validation, a truly relevant stage for selfie-takers, not only because users create a mutuality of information between themselves and their audience through the selfie but also because of the relevant affective effects that may offset from this selfiebased interaction and audience validation (Chae 2017: 375). In Lovink’s (2019: 103) words, “the self-taken picture is one that does away with any need for assistance from proximate others, seeking instead the responses of absent or desired others.” Of course, audience reactions may not always be positive, and this may be one of the reasons users adapt to foreseeable standards (e.g. of beauty) so as to guarantee positive reactions. The main source of audience validation is, of course, discursive (comments, selfie-related dialogues, reactions such as Likes, etc.). Woodruff et al. (2018: 6) summarise some research regarding audience validation on social media6 but remark that similar research specifically on selfies is scarce. Similarly, Katz and Crocker (2015: 1862) contend that these selfies as conversation “constitute a major step forward in visual communication within contemporary culture. This is a significant finding, since the dialectical communicative nature and entertainment value of selfies have been ignored in scholarly research to date.” Georgakopoulou (2016b, 2017b) mentions how social relations are signalled through semiotic and sequential choices, with alignment as a key term describing interactional processes of relationship-building. A typical feature of alignment is making contributions lexically, syntactically, grammatically, and sequentially similar to previous contributions. This is precisely what frequently happens with users’ comments on a selfie as a form of alignment within overall audience validation. Drawing on her proposal of small stories mentioned in Chapter 7, she proposes two kinds of alignment in comments on social media, specifically regarding selfie-related entries. Firstly, ritual appreciation “involves positive assessments of the post and/or poster, expressed in highly conventionalized language coupled with emojis.” By contrast, knowing participation “creates specific alignment responses by bringing in and displaying knowledge from offline, pre-posting activities or any other knowledge specific to the post or poster” (entails either

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recognition of existing mutuality of this information or its generation via posting). Interestingly, comments to selfies on Facebook seem to follow the typical alignment-generating feature of similarity in lexis (praising adjectives related to appearance, exclamations), grammar (sub-sentential utterances), use of emojis, etc., together with series of speech acts such as praising and thanking (reciprocity). Typical typographic features also include text alteration (repetition of letters resembling oral speech, see Chapter 5). An example is (13). (13) [selfie of user 2 posted on Facebook]. User 1: Preciosa . . . [Beautiful . . .]. User 2: tú más!  [You more!]. User 3: Woopi woopi que linda mi User 2 [How beautiful User 2]. User 4: oh my goodness! User 5: oh wow if i was straight. . . . User 6: Bellezóooooonnnn!!!!! [Beauty!!!]. User 7: Joooder User 2! [Damn it User 2!]. User 8: jaw-dropping picture  User 9: guapa [Pretty]. User 2: gracias!  [Thanks]. User 10: Looking fabulous mate! User 2: Ooh thanks! Besides, audience validation generates a number of non-propositional effects (affective effects), both in the selfie taker and in their audience, and which may be much more rewarding than the identification of the person(s) depicted in the selfie or the surrounding area. One of these feelings is increased self-image or self-concept produced through compliance with beauty standards. Audience validation spreads these beauty stereotypes, reinforcing them, as has already been mentioned. Cohen et al. (2018: 72) cite research on how appearance-focused images like selfies receive more positive reinforcement in the forms of Likes and comments in comparison with neutral images: “Those who post more selfies are likely to get more positive reinforcement about their appearance, thus leading to an increase in body satisfaction. Alternatively, those who have greater body satisfaction to begin with are more likely to post more selfies.” Another non-propositional effect from selfie-based interactions is increased (or reduced) self-esteem. Coulthard and Ogden (2018) are right in stressing

172 Media on the smartphone that receiving many audience reactions such as Likes may be regarded as a cue of social inclusion, improving self-esteem, while the absence of Likes may indicate audience rejection, negating self-esteem. Finally, selfies may produce affective effects in both selfie poster and audience in terms of feelings of connection, of group membership (especially through group selfies), and of intimacy, as happens with other smartphonemediated acts of communication that are studied in this book.

Notes 1 Touchscreen is an important difference between smartphones and former mobile phones. Touch was important when holding printed photos in our hands, and today’s smartphones introduce that visual intimacy with photography that had been lost in previous mobile devices (Palmer 2017: 248). 2 Barton (2018: 39) proposes the following functions of tagging on Flickr: “identifying existing information in a photo; adding relevant new information; expressing affective stance towards the images; addressing specific audiences; making unrelated ‘asides’; and for creative play.” 3 My thanks to Alba Milà García for pointing this out to me. 4 Jones (2020a: 25) makes an interesting comment in this respect when he argues that selfies are not just a way of showing oneself to an audience but a way of communicating the user’s experience of being looked at. 5 Other frequently used lexical items in Veum et al.’s (ibid.) corpus are words that physically describe the referent, such as #blonde, #brunette, #redhead, and #blueeyes, or qualifying words such as #nice, #handsome, #beautiful, #sexy, and #pretty. Words indicating the selfie-taker’s nationality, or where it was shot, are rare but do appear in the corpus. 6 Among others, the following: (a) girls (compared to boys) care more about receiving Likes than comments on social media and pay close attention to the number of Likes they receive; (b) girls’ and women’s photographs tend to receive more comments and appearance-related feedback; (c) the presence of a face is 38% more likely to receive Likes and 32% more likely to receive comments.

9

Media on the smartphone Video and animation (GIF, sticker)

Ever since developments in internet bandwidth made it possible to transfer data seamlessly, videos have become pervasive on the Net, and much more so nowadays, when they are often watched and managed through smartphone apps. Users now have a huge number of videos at their disposal on portals such as YouTube, TikTok, or Bilibili. Users also engage in video recording, video editing, and subsequent video sharing through different social networking apps. They typically create and share video stories that are ephemeral rather than permanent. Upon publication, these videos are commented upon, and fruitful interactions are sustained around them, generating a number of relevant non-propositional effects.

9.1 Online video Online video portals have evolved from an initial passive function of mere storage to a dynamic locus of intense participatory culture, interactions, and sociality, especially in the case of smartphone video-handling apps. The history of video portals exhibits tensions between these two functions of online video. In fact, nowadays “video sharing” covers not only uploading and sharing content but also quoting, labelling favourites, commenting on, responding to, archiving, editing, and mashing up videos (van Dijck 2013: 115). Crucially, video sites contain much more than the videos themselves and have to be conceptualised as multimodal ensembles of video files, usergenerated textual discourse, images, and corporate content, to the extent that we cannot separate the video from these other concurring modes in the overall interpretation of the video as a whole. In this sense, Benson (2015: 83–84) suggests three related characteristics of YouTube that may be extended to other video-related sites: (a) multiple converging modes, including moving images, spoken word, music and sound, still images, written words, and a variety of clickable objects, icons, and links; (b) multiple authorship (user- and system-generated, plus advertisements and so on); (c) high dynamism, in the sense that the text of the page constantly changes in response to user- and machine-generated input. DOI: 10.4324/9781003200574-9

174 Media on the smartphone From a cyberpragmatic point of view, unlike many studies on online video which only focus on a single act of video-mediated communication between senders and audiences, in this chapter this interaction will be considered important but not the only possible video-prompted interaction. The label first-order will be attached to the sender, the audience, the comments/ interaction, and the non-propositional effects within the initial prototypical communication on video-related sites: a sender that uploads a video for an audience to watch (Figure 9.1). However, beyond this default video-related interaction, users may also share the videos elsewhere (on social networking or messaging apps . . .), and this entails a re-contextualisation of the video with a new interface, new interlocutors, new (mutually) manifest information around the video, and new or different cognitive effects for the interlocutors involved. The participants and discourses in this subsequent form of video-related interaction will be labelled second-order. In this first-order video-centred communication, as pictured in Figure 9.1, the video is uploaded by a “sender user” ranging from amateur users or professional YouTubers to media companies, with an expected interpretation. This sender-video-audience communicative schema will be called inter-video interaction (see also Yus 1997, 1998). The video itself exhibits a number of multimodal qualities with specific options for contextualisation. Interestingly, there are also interactions inside the video itself, what will be labelled intra-video interaction, and with different labels for the participants involved. The video leads to an interpretation by the first-order audience, an interpretation which may be within or beyond the initial sender’s intentions. The video also triggers a number of text-based comments and interactions (on YouTube, between 2006 and 2013, also video responses/

Figure 9.1 A cyberpragmatics of (first-order) video-related communication.

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comments were possible), which basically range from one-to-one, one-tomany, and many-to-one. These interactions generate a number of relevant non-propositional effects, typically community- and identity-oriented ones. However, the video may be shared by the audience in several social networking sites and messaging applications (the aforementioned second-order video-centred or video-prompted communication), which entails re-contextualisations with new interlocutors, new mutually manifest assumptions, and so on. The video in the new inferential context generates a different set of interpretations, comments, interactions, and non-propositional effects. 9.1.1 Contextual constraints on first-order video interaction The interface where the video is located contains a number of affordances that constrain the quality and quantity of interactions that may take place within the site and also the interpretations obtained from the videos, together with an impact on the eventual relevance while visiting the video app and watching its videos. This, as has been argued throughout this book, is most noticeable in the differences between desktop and smartphone versions of the same site. The evolution of sites such as YouTube is indicative of the impact of interface affordances on the quality and quantity of interactions, content accessibility, and even the number of non-propositional effects derived out of video-related or video-centred interactions. In this sense, Burgess and Green (2009: 64) comment that these participatory sites have to make a compromise between extreme hackability (the feeling that a technology allows for user experimentation) and extreme usability (the technology offering easy ways for users to manage their interactive and communicative needs). A parallel tension is noticeable in the asymmetry between the options offered by the company within the interface and the users’ desire to go beyond these options in order to obtain more fruitful interactions with both the site and the users logged onto it. Users create new affordances that are not predicted by the companies, and the latter eventually try to incorporate these into subsequent software designs if their popularity and massive use are acknowledged. In a way, the experience that users have on YouTube has been shaped directly by our individual and collective activity. Most dissatisfactions with the interface are related to the use of the text-based comment option and the way the system arranges the threads within a video-centred text-based interaction, a phenomenon also witnessed in chat rooms and messaging apps, with turn disruptions and off-topic messages in-between interactions, making the conversational thread messy and hard to follow. In addition, users often need to click on “all comments” to see the section as a whole. The effect, Benson (2015) contends, is that it is both difficult and

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counter-intuitive to read comments in sequential order. The tension here is, presumably, between the imperative of providing a satisfactory multimodal reading experience while at the same time representing YouTube as an interactional space. Contextual constraints may also be user related. Some of the constraints already listed in other chapters of this book are also applicable to users of video-related sites and portals, for example the user’s personality. Another constraint is the cultural background of the users. Portals such as YouTube are global, but their content may be positively or negatively assessed by users from different cultures and backgrounds, thus affecting estimations of relevance, specifically regarding the users’ mental store of cultural information.

9.1.2 First-order video sender The central (first-order) act of video-related communication includes what in this chapter is generically called the sender  of the video, mainly referring to the uploader of the file, broadly divided in Figure 9.1 into amateur user, professional user (e.g. YouTuber), and media company. In any case, the underlying motivation is similar: to provide users with relevant (i.e. entertaining, informative, rewarding .  .  .) content that interacts, in a relevant manner, with the audience’s background store of assumptions. But the label sender is a rather generic term in otherwise multi-authored video-centred sites, involving the video author and the video sender (when different from author), with different communicative motivations and preferences for specific kinds of discourse for interaction, what Lange (2014) calls mediated dispositions. As Androutsopoulos and Tereick (2016: 356) correctly remark, frequently videos are produced and uploaded by different people, and different parts of many videos may also be created by different people, as in mashups, compilations, or remixes. The search for maintaining the audience’s interest and sustaining inferential reward is most noticeable in YouTubers, always desperate for Likes, visits, and comments, since many of them earn a living out of uploading videos on the site and getting users’ reactions. They are relevant to the audience in different ways, for example by becoming role models based on their personalities, talents, and creativity. Among the varied relevance-seeking strategies, these authors list the YouTuber’s display as a “real” person on display, fostering connections with the audience by facing them directly on camera and talking to the spectator as if it was a one-to-one private conversation. They also address topics that are likely to resonate with the audience for different reasons (raising expectations of relevance in the audience) and create involvement with and among their audiences, together with explicitly asking for their support in the form of comments, Likes, and subscriptions.

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9.1.3 First-order video uploaded The video itself is a multimodal or multisemiotic discourse that comprises audio, moving image, and text, among other possible modes converging in the same discourse. Rosenbaun et al. (2016: 32) dub this modal multiplicity cross-modality. This refers to interactions that are sequentially organised through turns made up of different modalities, regardless of the interlocutors’ reply mode (textual or video feedback). Sindoni (2012, in Rosenbaun et al. ibid.) also explores this issue with the concept of mode-switching, applied to the user’s alternating between spoken and written discourse in video chats. The variability that online videos exhibit has led researchers such as Johansson (2017: 181) to state that they do not represent a delimited communicative genre. Some videos align with the television genre, since they have migrated from that medium to the Net unaltered, whereas others are evolutions of previous “native” discourses online. Besides, videos such as remixes and mashups appear to have been affected by the evolution of social media. Concerning the interactions that the video uploaded may facilitate, a proposal has been made distinguishing inter-video interaction (sender–audience communication established by means of a video) from intra-video interaction (communication inside the video itself). Boyd (2014: 49–50) proposes the labels first level and second level that roughly overlap with my terminological proposal. The first level includes the video itself, interlocutors inside it, and features on the page related to the video (text attached to the video by the sender). The level also includes the reception roles for those who watch the video as both registered and unregistered viewers or watchers (p. 50). By contrast, the second level includes users who participate in text creation through commenting or other activities enabled for registered users. Similarly, Dynel (2014: 40) proposes first and second levels, again overlapping with my proposal. The first level entails interactants in front of the camera who communicate with each other, a kind of intra-video interaction but specifically having the viewers in mind or even addressing them by speaking directly to the camera. At the second level, the audience makes inferences aiming at an appropriate interpretation of the discourse produced by participants interacting on the screen (fitting inter-video communication). For intra-video interactions, typical labels used in pragmatics for the varied participant roles also apply. Dynel (ibid.) uses some of these labels. Firstly, there are ratified participants (interlocutors), the individuals who participate in an exchange and are divided into speaker and ratified hearers. The speaker produces an utterance via any communicative channel or mode. At the reception end, two types of ratified hearers are distinguished: addressee and third party. The former is a hearer who is addressed directly by the speaker by means of an utterance or nonverbal cue. The latter is “a ratified listener to whom an utterance is not addressed but who is fully

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entitled to listen to it and make inferences, according to the speaker’s communicative intention” (ibid.). Secondly, unratified hearers or overhearers are those to whom the speaker does not wish to communicate any meanings, but they nevertheless listen and make inferences on the utterance produced for other interlocutors. Overhearers are further divided into bystanders (people who are standing near and watching something that is happening but are not taking part in it) and eavesdroppers (people who listen to a private conversation without the participants’ knowledge). 9.1.4 First-order audience interpretation The video uploaded on a site by a sender is aimed at an audience with certain expectations of eventual relevance. Sometimes a specific interpretation of the video is expected, but the audience may come up with alternative interpretations beyond the intended one, as is suggested in Figure 9.1. Needless to say, there are many types of video that are found (ir)relevant by a similar wide range of viewers with different cognitive environments (with particular ideas, beliefs, tastes . . .) and expectations of cognitive satisfaction. In this environment of sites searching for non-stop user engagement, nowadays algorithms play an important role suggesting to the user new videos that might also prove relevant considering the previous “history” of videos watched (they supposedly intertwine effectively with the user’s background store of mental assumptions). As van Dijck (2013: 113) summarises, YouTube’s interface design and its underlying algorithms select and filter content, guiding users in finding and watching certain videos out of the millions of uploads, for instance through buttons for “most popular” videos. The site controls video traffic not by means of programming schedules but by means of an information management system that steers user navigation and selects content to promote. Even though users feel they have control over which content to watch, their choices are heavily directed by referral systems, search functions, and ranking mechanisms (e.g., PageRank). In other words, ranking and popularity principles rule YouTube’s platform architecture. In a general sense, algorithms generate income to the site by showing users content that they are bound to find not only relevant but also irresistible. However, they also produce what Pariser (2011) calls filter bubbles, in the sense that users get what they are interested in and they are interested in what the algorithm suggests, thus entering a vicious circle preventing the user’s encounter with fresh, unexpected content that acquires relevance by making brand-new content manifest to the user rather than simply reinforcing pre-existing assumptions in the user’s cognitive environment about the issues addressed by the videos.

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9.1.5 First-order comments/interaction A great deal of the appeal of video sites such as YouTube lies in the comments and interactions (mainly text based) that arise from these videos and the non-propositional effects that they offset. These resemble the interest and bonding that stem from interactions on social networking sites (see Chapter 12), although the social networking status of sites such as YouTube is currently subject to scholarly debate.1 Users may comment on a video or on another user’s comment in a oneto-one fashion. Users may also address others in a one-to-many way, as happens when the sender of the video addresses the community of followers or when a commenting user addresses a group of other users. Besides, a number of commenting users may communicate with the sender of the video as a group, a many-to-one kind of interaction. Finally, it is possible (although rather constrained by the text-based interface) to have many-to-many interactions, what Bou-Franch et al. (2012) call intergroup discussions. Dynel (2014: 38) proposes the label multi-party for this kind of commenting multiplicity, “which may involve many producers of turns, one (or more in the case of choral production) taking the floor one at a time, and many individuals at the reception end, who can be classified as various hearers/listeners to an interactional turn.” As is the case with chat rooms and, to some extent, with messaging apps, the level of cohesion and coherence, two attributes of chained comments affecting eventual relevance, depends not only on the system interface but also on the ability of users to provide new relevant assumptions on top of what others have made manifest. This is especially important in YouTube comments, whose authors move beyond dyadic interactions. Indeed, the conversational structure of comments is obviously constrained by the capacity of the interface to display the turns and their organisation in a noneffort-demanding way. Turns within the comments area are also not dyadic but multi-party, what Bou Franch and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich (2014) label polylogue. In video comments, users can participate on two levels: either by contributing actively to the textual polylogues or doing so passively without posting responses. Different participants in the polylogue have access to different additional communicative actions and resources, and registered users are allowed to mark textual comments as spam or express their (dis)like by clicking on the thumbs-up and thumbs-down icons (ibid.: 21). In any case, as in any kind of interaction, the ultimate goal of these comment-based interactions is to share information among the users involved. Of course, particular users’ accessibility to background information (from the video sender’s previous videos, from previous interactions elsewhere, and so on) produces different ways in which new content is imbricated with that information previously stored as background knowledge. An example is spoof videos (Georgakopoulou 2017b: 200), in which proper understanding and adequate cognitive effects may only be generated if the user is capable

180 Media on the smartphone of recognising the allusive and creative aspects of the satirical video as connected to the original video, so that relevant effects may arise from the comparison. Another aspect to bear in mind is that the comments are inextricably linked to the video, forming a multimodal discursive whole, and viewers change their interpretation, attitude, and reactions to the video depending on the accompanying comments and text-based interactions and vice versa: The video itself also has an impact on the quantity and quality of comments received, with obvious implications for (cyber)pragmatics. More generally, comments influence subsequent comments. Since previously produced discourse becomes a preliminary context for the comprehension of subsequent discourses, these previous comments will influence the choice and thematic direction of the next comments within a particular thread. Undoubtedly, one of the most radical ways in which video and comments become imbricated and influence each other is the East Asian trend of danmu (see Zhang and Cassany 2019a, 2019b), a sort of collaborative textual annotation on videos. Users watching a video may write comments on the video discourse, each comment becoming synchronised with the image. Furthermore, several users typically engage in interactions about the video by typing danmu on it, to the extent that it is often difficult to see the image itself, with the text blocking out most of the image, causing a visual effect that resembles danmaku (“bullet curtain” in Japanese). However, for frequent and engaged Chinese viewers, this is a truly relevant source of information and an example of participatory culture (Jenkins 2006), to the extent that many of them prefer to watch the image-plus-danmu rather than a clean screen without text. Finally, video is also the main discourse exchanged in video chats. As defined by Rosenbaun et al. (2016: 30), “video chats are platforms through which geographically distributed users communicate in real time, with the possibility of seeing and hearing each other with a varying degree of timelag.” Public video chats allow strangers to interact in groups around common interests for purely recreational purposes. Video chat rooms inherit features of former text-based chats that were so frequent in the 2000s, but unlike their cues-filtered, text-based interactions, in video chats users can actually see and hear each other in real time, having access to the wealth of information conveyed through nonverbal communication. 9.1.6 Non-propositional effects from first-order video interaction Interactions based on videos uploaded on the Net may produce a wide range of non-propositional effects such as the ones already analysed in previous chapters and which often raise a lot of interest and even addictive effects on users. Two of these effects stand out: Firstly, feelings of community stemming from interactions related to a video. Lindgren and Lundström (2019), for instance, underline how the

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interface affordance of YouTube contributes to more intimate contact and eventually to feelings of group membership and bonding. By contrast, Murthy and Sharma (2019: 194) argue that YouTube differs from other social media sites inasmuch as its “community” is less cohesive and not centred on the individual profile page, together with the fact that many users simply consume videos without any community bonding in mind. Secondly, users of video sites may obtain a bonus of identity-centred nonpropositional effects (increased self-worth, self-concept .  .  .), both for the video sender (who engages in self-presentation and aims at audience validation) and for the users commenting on the video. These are achieved, for example, through using a specific type of discourse instead of a more common or institutionalised language, as happens with Tovares’ (2019) analysis of the link between language and identity from comments on videos in Ukraine.2 The study yielded some interesting identity-related effects (mainly on broad feelings of national identity) from the use of a certain language in these comments. 9.1.7 Video shared with other users (new sender, new audience) As proposed, research on internet video normally focuses on a single prototypical act of communication by means of a video (labelled first-order). But the communicative circuit does not end here. There is a second-order act of communication in which the videos are displaced from their original location and shared on social media or messaging apps. In this case, the sender changes even if the video remains unaltered, and different inferential assumptions are generated from factors such as who the new sender is, where the shared video is located, who the new viewers are (and which manifest assumptions are now at work in the relevance-seeking interpretation of the video), and the new assumptions generated from previous interactions that took place before the video was shared in the new environment. These factors may combine in different ways with the new assumptions arising from the second-order interpretation of the shared video. 9.1.8 Second-order interactions Upon sharing the video with other users on social media or messaging apps, a new trend of interaction starts, with different interlocutors, context, comments, cognitive effects, and so on. As briefly mentioned earlier, a video shared on WhatsApp or on Facebook, for example, entails a different set of viewers with different cognitive environments and ways in which context combines inferentially with the assumptions made manifest by the video. The position of the video also matters, because the assumptions brought to bear in the comprehension of previous entries (on the networking app) or turns (on the messaging app dialogue) are still vivid and constitute a preliminary context for the comprehension of the video itself. In short, the

182 Media on the smartphone video is re-contextualised in a new environment with different participants and different sets of (mutually) manifest assumptions. Androutsopoulos and Tereick (2016: 357) point in the same direction when they mention that one of the dimensions of YouTube videos is their detachability and potential for intermedia circulation: These videos can be embedded in other websites and are thus commonly found in social media timelines, online journalism, or personal blogs, where they are combined with new textual elements and are hence recontextualised. However, re-contextualisation, as pictured in this section, is more restrictive than what these authors have in mind, since they also include actions on videos such as remixing. By contrast, re-contextualisation here is meant simply as transferring the video from its initial (firstorder) context to a new second-order environment.

9.2 Smartphone video Videos managed by apps on a smartphone screen exhibit similar characteristics to those mentioned for online video in the previous section. But several differences appear when comparing desktop video websites and their smartphone app counterparts and also when comparing “adapted apps” to dedicated (i.e. native) smartphone apps where videos are either managed or watched. Differences are also prominent when we bear in mind that the app ecosystem includes, in the same device, the camera to take videos and apps to edit, enhance, share, and comment on them, etc. As has been the case in many chapters of this book, interface constraints are at work also in smartphone video apps, with more or less significant differences between the desktop interface affordances and the ones available on these apps. Ever since recording and/or watching videos on mobile devices was made possible (around 2002), users may take, download, and stream video clips, TV shows, movies, etc., and video-specific apps allow for sharing and distributing them, with an emphasis on spontaneous, “just for fun” video filming on smartphones. Needless to say, how video is recorded, edited, and shared depends on a number of interface constraints, as has been the case for other forms of smartphone-mediated communication, some of which are no longer an issue in most developed countries. For example, poor connectivity, limited battery capacity, and poor viewing experience due to screen size are no longer interface constraints. However, there is a constraint in the difference between video files compared to images. The former take up more space in the device and demand more computing power. 9.2.1 Smartphone video apps Nowadays, many videos are mainly or exclusively watched on smartphone apps. YouTube has both a desktop interface and a smartphone app, and many users still access the former to watch videos or simply to listen to preselected music videos while working on the computer. However, at the

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moment of writing this chapter, video-centred apps are more popular than desktop counterparts. This is the case of TikTok and Bilibili, which users rarely access through the desktop version and prefer to enjoy on smartphones. The app attracts many users, especially those interested in Japanese manga. In Figure 9.2, image (a) reproduces the main Bilibili page. The content is well organised in sections, which relieves effort when accessing the videos that the user is interested in (image (b)).3 It should also be stressed that celebrities, aware of the impossibility for Chinese viewers to access their content on YouTube, upload their videos on both sites. Furthermore, Bilibili offers its users a highly participatory interactive environment that fosters

Figure 9.2 The smartphone app Bilibili.

184 Media on the smartphone engagement with the app. It includes a multimedia player, with a text space underneath and a multi-functional control panel.4 Viewers are aware of how many users are currently watching the video in real time, reading the message history or writing and/or reading danmu (the video annotation feature mentioned previously). They can also customise their viewing experience, adjusting the quantity, transparency, and speed of the messages, filtering them according to keywords, or hiding them to reduce visual distraction. Hu et al. (2016: 105–106) list further attributes that have led to the success of the app through the satisfaction of multiple expectations of relevance in Chinese users through different interface affordances: Active member participation [on Bilibili] has been achieved through miscellaneous activities. On the other hand, Bilibili provides opportunities for individuals to express themselves. The membership differentiation systems in terms of level, badge, and ranking lists have been applied. Members are allowed to build personal spaces and leave a message and comment in almost any places. In addition, the newly enabled live telecast section has made future efforts in supporting users’ direct self-disclosure. Another interface for videos that is mainly accessed through smartphones is the app TikTok (called Douyin in China, where it was created). It is mainly oriented towards funny or entertaining videos, and therefore the main qualities that nowadays engage so many users lie both in the app affordances and in the quantity and quality of affective effects that are generated out of its use for video creation, consumption, and subsequent sharing, especially considering that the young (e.g. the so-called Generation Z) are the main target group of users. Among the positive interface constraints that make TikTok particularly appealing to its audience, Lu and Lu (2019: 234) underline its editing functions, which allow for add-ons, stickers, special visual effects, and animations easily when they are creating videos. The app also emphasises the role of music in the creation of videos, allowing users to easily align special visual effects of videos to music, an explicit personalisation with an impact on self-worth (non-propositional effect) out of the creation of the video and how it is valued and positively reacted upon. Besides, it adopts algorithms to recommend and customise what is suggested to different users when they are browsing videos, showing them what may be relevant to them regarding background information on previous searches or videos watched. Furthermore, an example of smartphone-specific uses of video lies in the ephemeral videos recorded with the smartphone and published as stories that disappear after a certain time. Also, the famous boomerang videos on Instagram, short film sequences that self-reproduce in a loop, are only

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recorded and published with the smartphone. These short videos exhibit two qualities that engage young viewers: They fit the increasingly low attention span of today’s youth, and they are intensely edited so as to guarantee effects and audience validation. In this sense, Huertas (2018: 11) makes a distinction between two types of smartphone-mediated short videos, live videos and stories: Live videos, which are instant and ephemeral, allow interaction and conversations among multiple users, live, with the creator of the video. However, stories allow private reactions and comments by the users with the creator of the video, always later on. Live videos are characterized by their reality and immediacy, because they show the sites as they are at that time, while stories can present the sites more attractively, though less real, due to the editing they involve. 9.2.2 Relevance in smartphone video content Users have a wide range of relevant content accessible on their video-dedicated apps. This is usually offered to users via algorithms, as has already been pointed out. In relevance-theoretic terms, this content will tend to combine with the users’ existing background knowledge, generating reinforcements, contradictions, and erasures of previous beliefs, or fruitful combinations yielding more solid implicated conclusions. An example is the videos taken by Jennelle Eliana with her smartphone. She is a young black woman who lives in a van and travels a lot, documenting her travelling experience with videos of herself (typically video selfies). Her lifestyle corroborates and contradicts some of her audience’s existing beliefs. In general, by being single, female, and a solo traveller, she makes an alternative lifestyle look attainable, contradicting stereotypes of dangers involved in female travelling. But she also corroborates the beliefs of young viewers who opt for non-glamorous travelling and connects with users who value the lo-fi quality of her videos taken on the fly. Her content also chimes with a move towards less manufactured, “authentic” online content favoured by younger viewers on platforms such as Instagram and YouTube (Bakare 2019: 19). Not surprisingly, one of the main motivations for viewing smartphonemediated videos listed in de Oliveira et al. (2018) is the enjoyment of a personal interest with the expectation that these videos will add information to satisfy that interest. Nearly 70% of informants commented that they had a clear idea of what they were looking for when using video apps. However, a radically different source of relevance was found in normal, everyday videos, usually labelled snapshot videos, tied to social practices and rewarding effects with sustained subsequent interactions. A possible explanation of the relevance of these short mundane videos is suggested in Ma et al. (2019): In the era of information overload, the attention of the

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audience is now very limited and fragmented, and the video must be short enough to attract their attention. 9.2.3 Non-propositional effects stemming out of video app interactions In Section 9.1.6, some online video-related non-propositional effects were listed. These have also been reported for the specificity of smartphone videocentred communication. Concerning TikTok, effects regarding identity shaping are important to understand the appeal of the app. As Ma et al. (2019) summarise, the entertainment value is the primary driver of user affect. Social value also has a great impact on satisfaction, which indicates that users fancy interactive activities, including giving Likes, commenting, and sharing. These activities provide them with chances to make friends. Meanwhile, sharing videos (i.e. re-posting them) can enhance the communal bond among users to some extent. In this sense, Zuo and Wang (2019: 4) propose three levels in which TikTok impacts the user’s identity: Firstly, an impact on self-identity. Users can make or share short videos based on their personal experience, get opportunities to show themselves to their peers, and experience self-worth. At the same time, TikTok users rely on the evaluation and interaction with other users (i.e. audience validation) to further build up their self-identity after self-presentation. Secondly, an impact on group identity, both in virtual and physical scenarios. Interactions on TikTok are fast and convenient and make it easier for users to find and enhance group identities. On the one hand, users exhibit a unique discourse system when they interact, and the mutual understanding among users deepens the construction of in-group identity. On the other hand, TikTok users are divided into different groups according to their interests. Finally, an impact on cultural identity. Through participating in the activities of the (mainly youth-centred) groups provided by the platform, users can identify with “the culture” of TikTok. The “content” of that culture would include clothing, language, fashion, consumption, leisure pursuits, and so on. Because TikTok users are mainly young people under 24 years of age, their identification with youth culture entails some cultural value. Also, McRoberts et al. (2017), specifically commenting on Snapchat stories, remark that this app is valued for the affective effects it produces in its users. The research cited emphasises lightweight sharing with close friends or the encouragement of playfulness. Besides, interactions therein create relationships laden with affect, involve sharing strong personal or intimate connections and provide emotional support. A recurrent feeling associated with video production and sharing is the feeling of connection and co-presence. Recording banal and mundane aspects of one’s life entails an emplaced visuality (Pink and Hjorth 2012) in

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which users feel closer to one another, enhanced by phatic tokens of noninformative videos. This is particularly noticeable in videos taken and shared while on vacation, which manage to generate a feeling of co-creation and co-experience. Not all the affective effects generated out of TikTok are positive, though. In Lu and Lu (2019: 242), some informants reported that some videos on this app made them hopeless about real life and even caused a contagion of negative emotions among friends if they shared the video with one another.

9.3 GIFs GIFs (graphical interface format files) and stickers are pervasive in messaging app interactions and, as such, they could have been analysed in Chapter 5, devoted to these apps, but GIFs are always animated (and self-reproducing in a repeated loop), and stickers may be static, but many of them are also animated, which justifies their incorporation into this chapter. Despite their obvious discursive limitations, GIFs and stickers have become a useful resource for communicating nonverbal information and engaging in fruitful re-contextualisation practices, among other motivations for their use. 9.3.1 Contextual constraints on GIF use The affordances of GIFs appear to be limited but are nevertheless beneficial for the text-based interactions where they are inserted. The brevity of GIF files has been hailed as beneficial in our attention-scarce contemporary culture, so prone to distraction and impatience. The smartphone interfaces also constrain their use, making them available (or not) and also by the fact that, unlike emojis, they cannot be embedded into or be part of a textual utterance but have to be sent as independent posts, with implications for proper understanding and coherence building regarding previous and/or following posts. Additionally, the fact that these GIFs may now be looked up by keyword makes their usage – in theory – easier. However, users often find the search results to be of low quality and often cannot obtain the desired GIF. Constraints may also be user related. In general, users who lack command of the technology and are unaware of agreed uses of GIFs will end up frustrated. This also applies to the nature of the relationship between messaging interactants. Another constraint is the user’s personality. Extroverts have been reported to use more GIFs in their messaging conversations, for instance. Besides, the age and gender of the user also constrain the quality and quantity of GIFs produced. In general, the youth tend to use more GIFs than older generations, and female users do so more often than males. Lastly, as already mentioned, the kind of relationship existing between the users also works as a constraint: The more intimate the relationship, the more frequently GIFs will be used.

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9.3.2 Motivations for GIF use Within a cyberpragmatic approach, the main reason for the use of GIFs is clear: They allow users to provide a more vivid and visual extent of their feelings and emotions through a much richer discourse that provides natural (e.g. filmed) nonverbal information from human gestures. As such, GIFs direct the audience to a more reliable interpretation (plus associated feelings and emotions) of the previous or following text, which shortens the gap between what has been typed and what is intended. On the negative side, GIFs themselves are open to several interpretations and demand intertextual inferential work. Expressing feelings and emotions lies at the heart of many of the discursive strategies addressed in Chapter 5 for text in messaging apps and emoji, and the same applies to GIF usage. They communicate gestures and certain emotions more effectively, which is otherwise not possible through other types of media. Text often fails in transferring feelings, although emoticons or emojis, together with new developments in textual communication (e.g. text alteration), may help to some extent. The fact that GIFs are often repeated film scenes makes GIFs especially convenient to convey complex emotions related to prior or subsequent texts (or as an autonomous communicative act) because of their resemblance to real-life scenarios. It should be noted that, as an agreed convention in GIF usage, the nonverbal behaviour displayed by the character inside the GIF (e.g. an actor in a film or TV scene) should not be attributed to that character inside the GIF but to the user sending the GIF (often as a complement to their typed text), and the audience follows that interpretive convention. Therefore, whenever a user feels that some nonverbal behaviour would allow them to convey their thoughts in a more reliable or vivid manner, the system provides users with the choice of a large collection of these nonverbal behaviours, or the users themselves can create and store their personally created GIFs. Another typical reason for GIF usage is a non-communicative one, since this time they are used simply for adding colour to the ongoing text-based interaction or to “stand out from the typing crowd” in multi-party group messaging interactions. In any case, some effects may certainly be derived from this usage, especially affective effects paired with humour or used in parallel with irony or jocularity.

9.3.3 Re-contextualising GIFs One of the most interesting features of GIFs is their re-contextualisation and the requirement for users to have access to background information about the initial purpose and intended interpretation of the filmed scene and how this information contrasts with the new use as a GIF in order to get a full grasp of the intended effects as part of the messaging conversation. This intertextuality is one of the reasons for the popularity of GIFs

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beyond their compressed format and brevity. Huber (2015) remarks that this play between different levels of meaning, both from the original source material and the new context of the GIF in which it is being used, requires a particular kind of expertise, specifically a multi-stratified one at the level of cultural literacy, remix, technology, as well as at a conceptual one. GIFs entail a control of the practices that surround their creation, dissemination, and reception. Accessibility to that contextual information allows the user to reach additional or completely different meanings from the ones literally grasped from the GIF, with obvious pragmatic implications. The attributes of GIFs as intertextual and requiring literacy make them prone to misunderstandings. Problems also arise regarding expectations of mutuality between interlocutors in the messaging conversation upon using a GIF. Participants try to find the perfect GIFs to communicate not only their apparent literal meaning but also personal common ground, such as “inside jokes” or unique experiences specific to communication partners, and communal common ground such as a reference to a movie that they watched together or belonging to the same community. Precisely, the use of GIFs may produce several community-centred non-propositional effects. One of them is the feeling of group membership from the fact that all the participants in sustained interactions on a specific app produce and interpret GIFs in a similar way. The GIFs that populate certain social networking sites, for instance, are often organised around shared identities of specific groups which already maintain shared experiences and lexicon. GIFs entail an engagement with popular culture inflected around these identities.

9.4 Animated stickers Stickers are images, often animated, usually larger than emoticons and emoji, offered as thematic sets in the communication interfaces of instant messaging and social networking apps and often organised in galleries and personalized collections. They portray facial expressions more accurately due to their size, bigger than emojis. Besides, their number increases constantly, not only through galleries of stickers provided by the app itself (free of charge or to be purchased) but also provided by the users themselves, who create and spread them, some of them getting shared and re-used by the community of users. Lately, the fully customisable animoji (a blend of animation and emoji) has become popular. Users exhibit similar motivations for sticker use to those commented upon for GIFs. They also compensate for the loss of nonverbal information in cues-filtered text-based conversations, together with other non-informative, playful reasons. In addition, they strengthen emotional intensity by complementing and enhancing verbal messages. Furthermore, de Seta (2018) complements this main use of biaoqing (“stickers” in Chinese) with a “diversified range of practices: adding contextual clues and localized elements to computer-mediated communication; expanding the limited repertoires

190 Media on the smartphone of proprietary emoticons through irony and ambivalence; combining and repurposing semiotic resources into creative compositions; and, domesticating a fluid assortment of platforms and services through personalization and curation.” Lee et al. (2016) propose two main uses of stickers. The first use is strategic, defined as the communication style in which stickers are used for motivations rooted in the relationship among the interlocutors involved in the conversation. The patterns of strategic use of stickers include: (a) selfrepresentation, to express one’s self in the way one wishes to be perceived by others; (b) maintaining social status quo, to adapt to the communicative behaviour of interlocutors and to maintain social bonds; (c) impression management, to project a particular strategic image; (d) social presence, to draw other users’ attention; and (e) forming sympathy, to create emotional sympathy with others via sticker use. For example, in case of a group chat, when a new member joins the chat room, it was observed that stickers were meant as a welcoming vibe, to create sympathy among the members involved. The second use is functional, defined as having a purpose to effectively achieve the user’s internal goal in online communication. Three patterns were observed: (a) substitute for text, to use suitable stickers instead of texts when texting becomes tiring; (b) social greeting, to use stickers instead of verbal language; and (c) supplement for text. Stickers were used to provide additional explanation and improvement in interpretive accuracy by adding nuance and context to text-based messages. This multiplicity of possible underlying intentions for sticker use may lead to misunderstandings. These may be broadly divided into misunderstandings regarding the meaning of the sticker itself and those provoked by their position in the ongoing messaging interaction. Cha et al. (2018) concluded in their research that misinterpretations of stickers arise from the unique characteristics of stickers, which are rich in expressiveness and have constraints on their placement as independent messaging acts devoid of accompanying text. Some of the conversations analysed by these authors revealed that very often the meaning of the sticker is understood correctly but not the text which the sticker refers or is related to. In other instances, Cha et al. (ibid.) found that a great deal of misinterpretation largely originates from complexity and ambiguity of emotional expressions in stickers. In real chat settings, there are also context misinterpretations in sticker use where senders and receivers interpret stickers’ visual representation or reference correctly but the corresponding textual messages incorrectly.

Notes 1 For example, Su (2018: 998) underlines networking features on YouTube, because the site allows users to provide feedback to video senders and authors, engage in interactions with other viewers, and share videos of their own. YouTube users can interact by rating videos using the “thumbs-up” or “thumbs-down” buttons.

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Comment sections give access to viewer feedback on videos but, crucially, also promote conversations among viewers who share similar interests, generating community bonding. The interface also offers users the option to circulate videos across various social media platforms. By contrast, Murthy and Sharma (2019: 194) claim that YouTube differs from other social media in that it is not profile based and exhibits less cohesive community bonding, together with fewer typical social networking features in its interface. 2 An interesting term in this respect is vernacular digital literacy (Androutsopoulos 2010: 206), classically defined “as literacy practices that are not part of educational or professional institutions but are relatively free from institutional control, rooted in everyday practice, serving everyday purposes, and drawing on vernacular knowledge.” A second sense for this term is also provided (ibid.), in which vernacular would refer to local varieties of language (used on the internet), local and informal, uncodified, and often classified as non-standard, and with a similar capacity to prompt identity-centred non-propositional effects. 3 The sections displayed in image (b) of Figure 9.2 are, from left to right and top to bottom, the following: (a) Row 1: Japanese comics, Chinese comics, articles of varied topics, and music in comics. (b) Row 2: Japanese comic series, general music, miscellaneous, and video games. (c) Row 3: technical or scientific videos, news about mobile and computer technology, topics on people’s everyday life (travel, eating out, sport . . . ), and humorous parodies. (d) Row 4: fashion, advertisements, mass media, and Japanese comic albums. (e) Row 5: internet fora, ranked content, activity centre, and content control. Row 6: video game contests. 4 My thanks to Xiaolin Hu for her comments on everyday uses of Bilibili.

Part IV

The interplay between the physical and the virtual

10 Livestreaming The case of Twitch

10.1 Introduction This chapter is devoted to livestreaming, whose flow of information is typically generated from a specific physical location (e.g. the streamer’s room) but whose reception and interactions often take place on a smartphone app. As will be described in the next sections, what interests cyberpragmatics most, besides the capacity of livestreaming to link the physical and the virtual, is the fact that interfaces for livestreaming exhibit an interesting media convergence, since these platforms often combine the actual video being streamed live but also a text-based chat application, the possibility of synchronous video interaction, commenting on videos or games being played, or inserting text onto the video stream, among other possibilities. There are many streaming platforms that resort to this “livestreamingplus-smartphone reception” pattern. In this chapter the platform Twitch, a rather game-centred streaming service, will be specifically addressed.1 Its terminology is similar to that found in other streaming platforms: There is a streamer (user who broadcasts their gameplay) and viewers (those who watch streaming events). There are also participants who contribute to the chat. Each streamer has a channel and broadcasts from a webcam alongside direct feeds of gameplay, allowing viewers to watch the game and the streamer simultaneously. Text-based chat occurs in the chat window beside the video display on the site and also on the smartphone app. Most streamers try to keep their attention focused on playing the game and also, if possible, on the chat box, replying to questions, reactions, ideas, or demands issuing from the chat. As will be described, Twitch combines video-mediated communication and a text-based chat facility, so all kinds of overlapping interactions of different speeds and options for contextualisation take place in these environments, a very attractive object of research for (cyber)pragmatics. Viewers can send text messages to other viewers and also to the streamer as a communication backchannel among the participants. Those text messages may be integrated within the display of the accompanying video and are often used to express reactions, add commentary, and even make requests to the broadcasting streamer. Since all the viewers can see these chat messages, DOI: 10.4324/9781003200574-10

196 The physical and the virtual they often use them to communicate with each other by building on each other’s reactions or answering questions. This multiplicity of interactions takes place in what Webb et al. (2016) call distributed liveness, where new configurations of audience, broadcasters, and technologies combine in various physical and social environments. Livestreaming can make shared event experiences especially vivid by intertwining physical and digital experiences. As will be concluded from this chapter, Twitch is much more than simply a game streaming site (Robinson 2019: 8). It encompasses different kinds of interaction with different speeds and options for contextualisation and generates a relevance-rewarding offset of non-propositional effects that keep streamers and audiences engaged. The site also blurs the boundaries between the physical and the virtual, allowing for interactions, networking, and sociality. This chapter aims to answer the question of why users find it relevant to watch Twitch streamers playing games and even donate money to the streamer without, apparently, getting any tangible reward in return, a question that still has not been addressed in academic research on Twitch. Ask et al. (2019) provides questions whose answers allow for an initial understanding of the appeal of the site, which will be developed in some of the sections of this chapter. These are briefly summarised in Table 10.1. The organisation of the chapter is pictured in Figure 10.1. The different areas will be addressed in the next sections. Table 10.1 Questions on Twitch (summarised from Ask et al. 2019). Questions

Twitch-related answers

Does Twitch support interaction between users? What kind?

Yes. The Twitch user is interested in interaction, community, and content, with a high level of participation between streamer and audience as both active and passive viewers. See Section 10.6. Yes. Twitch explicitly engages a specific and committed audience but also exploits the rewards of a more general audience. See Section 10.2. Yes. There are community guidelines, and users with special status within the community may expel users who send inappropriate content to the general chat box. See Section 10.6. Yes. Since some streamers are professional, increasingly we can witness not only usergenerated content but also branded content.

Does Twitch allow for multiple types of audience (general vs. specific)? Does Twitch include content moderation?

Does Twitch host different types of content including user-generated vs. commercial content? Does Twitch achieve a balance between highly specialised content and also content for lay audiences?

Yes. It does offer varied types of content suiting different audiences and levels of gaming expertise.

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Figure 10.1 A cyberpragmatics of livestreaming on Twitch.

10.2 Contextual constraints on livestreaming Several platforms offer livestreaming services. Each of them imposes constraints on the acts of communication that may take place there, some being detrimental due to the design of the interface and its affordances, while others are beneficial to the users because they allow for valuable options for interaction. Specifically, the Twitch interface offers both streamers and audiences different means of interaction within a scale of contextual richness, low in the chat box, high in the video-mediated streams, offering convenient means of engagement in any case. Another possible interface constraint is the delay existing between the streamers’ flow of video and the viewers’ reception. The audience and streamer are always slightly out of sync in their interaction, with possible effects on the eventual relevance obtained (Recktenwald 2018: 38). There are also user-related constraints. Specific viewers with certain expectations of relevance are drawn to particular streams due to a specific appeal of the streamer in terms of personality or command of the game, and each kind of streamer/audience will build up different expectations and satisfaction of eventual communicative relevance. Another user-related constraint is gender. Users of streaming services are wary of the presence of female streamers, criticising them for issues ranging from intruding on a man’s world to wearing revealing clothes that distract viewers from the game being streamed. Besides, female and male streamers/audiences are often interested in different topics, with inevitable variations across the gaming board (expectations, content, interaction, feedback, reward . . .). Nakandala et al. (2017) concluded in their study that the content of posts depended on whether the streamer was male or female, e.g.

198 The physical and the virtual female streamers tend to get posts that reference body parts or physical appearance, while posts to male gamer streams tend to focus on gameplay, and more interestingly, the users posting those messages tended to send messages only to streams by female gamers or only to streams by male gamers without mixing posts by gender. A mixed category of interface–user constraint can be found in the number of members of the audience and its impact on the effort involved in streamer–viewers interactions, and especially the effort involved in following and contributing to the text-based chat box. Hilvert-Bruce et al. (2018: 65) acknowledge that there is a strong association between social motivations and stream engagement for viewers who prefer smaller channels, since these provide richer social interactions and a greater sense of community than larger ones. As Hamilton et al. (2014: 1319) describe, in these massive chat sessions, there are many sources of communicative breakdowns. The chat box is transformed into an illegible waterfall of text, scrolling up the page so quickly that it cannot possibly be read.

10.3 Streamer motivations In Figure 10.1, three major streamer motivations are listed: streamer as broadcaster, streamer as player, and streamer as interactant. These are briefly commented upon below. A

Streamer as broadcaster. This motivation is related to providing content and interesting gaming performance for others to watch, trying at the same time to ensure that these viewers remain faithful followers. Indeed, if asked, most streamers will agree that a basic motivation in their streaming sessions is simply to be relevant to their audience, to do the utmost to keep viewers engaged not only watching the game but also contributing to it in different ways. Felczak (2019: 29) cites Mia Consalvo’s concept of gaming capital, according to which gaming is simultaneously pictured as an exchange of knowledge and an exhibition of gaming abilities, the streamer often finding it difficult to make this capital relevant to the audience. The techniques used to engage the audience and make the streaming session relevant to them include using humour, being witty, and adapting to different games and audiences if necessary.

Self-presentation and identity management also underlie the streamer’s broadcasting activity. Streamers frequently construct an appealing personality that fosters an engagement with their viewers. This self-presentation is performed mainly through narration while playing the game, a dual task that many streamers find difficult to manage but which offers the reward of certain social presence in the audience. However, what viewers have access to is more a staged personality. Similarly, Suganuma (2018: 32) correctly uses Goffman’s (1959) term front stage to qualify this kind of self-presentation,

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since we must distinguish between the roles we play in society at the front stage of interactions and the personal reality that lies at the backstage of our identities, which apply to livestreaming on Twitch. B

C

Streamer as player. Here, the streamer is playing the video game with their opponents. The interaction mainly occurs within the boundaries of the digital video game. The number of co-players varies by game (Recktenwald 2018: 17). Streamer as interactant. Very often streamers are only interested in chatting with their audiences. They do not play and simply face the camera and discuss topics and gaming issues with their viewers.

10.4 Audience motivations The viewers of a livestreaming session also possess expectations of eventual relevance and contrast the effects obtained from what they see on the screen to the effort involved in watching the streamer, commenting, and managing conversations, apart from the derivation (or leakage) of essential non-propositional effects that also contribute to the audience’s reward while watching the stream. Research on audience motivations (e.g. Taylor 2018; Spilker et al. 2020) underlines how interests, needs, and moods are intertwined in the viewing practice, with an emphasis on the social aspect of engaging with a streamer. Users want to interact with the streamer and other users within the streaming community and get an offset of connection (affective effects being relevant in this motivation). Taylor (ibid.) lists six major motivations:

Aspirational

Educational Inspirational

Entertainment Community

Ambience

Centred on improving command of the game, to become more skilled. A parallel aspiration may be to become a popular, beloved individual. To investigate something about the game, for instance to preview the game before purchasing it. Another major motivation is tied to so-called fandom. People may discover a pleasure in watching another person playing something they are passionate about. This mode tends to trigger deep engagement in the viewer. The pleasure of being entertained, either through humour or by the on-screen performance by a sharp-witted fellow gamer. The desire to have a feeling of community or a social experience is a powerful motivation, together with a truly relevant non-propositional effect. For many viewers, livestreaming is a collective experience, and there is an emotional bond in connecting to other audience members. Related to the need to socialise and feel one another’s presence, a desire to be connected to something outside one’s immediate surroundings at a deep sensory level.

200 The physical and the virtual

10.5 Interface for livestreaming There are three main areas in the Twitch desktop interface, as shown in Figure 10.2 (top left). On the left there are lists of paid-for channels, recommended channels, and friends. The main middle area is for the unfolding gameplay, the live feed of game streamer (a camera focusing on the gamer and comments to audience), player chat (limited to teammates), and bird’seye view of the game (which gamers use for orientation around the game geography). Finally, the area on the right is for the open chat box (public). It incorporates emotes and enhanced (i.e. iconised) text. Other features of the interface include revenue features such as the subscribe button and informative features such as the profile page, the title of the stream, and the name of the game being played. Unlike the radical differences existing between the Facebook desktop interface and its smartphone app counterpart (see Chapter 12), there are minor differences between the Twitch desktop interface and its smartphone counterpart. As can be seen in Figure 10.2 (bottom left), when the smartphone app is placed in landscape position, the streaming area is emphasised, but there is still room for typing text-based messages on the right-hand side.

Figure 10.2 The Twitch interface (desktop and smartphone).

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When placed in portrait position (image on the right in Figure 10.2), the smartphone app emphasises the chat box and minimises the streaming area. This is an interesting design feature that allows viewers to switch orientations depending on their interactive needs: landscape when the main task at hand is to watch the streamer and portrait when the user needs screen space for typing messages.

10.6 Streaming-centred interaction Interaction lies at the heart of streaming on Twitch, and one of the reasons it has become so popular is its various options for interactions, which in this chapter have been grouped under three labels: streamer–audience, audience– streamer, and audience–audience. The varied possibilities for interaction on Twitch are crucial to the platform’s appeal, allowing for an immersive experience. And as has already been underlined, these ways involve cross-modal exchanges combining typed text, emojis,  image, and voice (Recktenwald 2018: 63). Of course, having multiple options for interaction does not guarantee relevant effects and overall user satisfaction. To the scroll factor (chat messages disappearing rapidly from the top of the screen), we may add the content and objective relevance of these messages. While mundane comments can be annoying for the audience, harassing or offensive comments also abound. Finding the right balance between a stream that is interactive but also not detrimental in relevant effects is a challenge for designers and moderators. A related concept in this section is engagement. Viewers on Twitch interact with streamers and with anonymous people in the audience who are simultaneously watching the broadcast and having interactions in the chat box. Streamers and audiences have explicitly reported feelings of engagement when explaining what they find appealing about the site, even for some members of the audience, whose “default” mode of viewing games was detached and non-interactive. In Ask et al. (2019), interviewees actually reported switching modes (engaged vs. detached) at key moments during viewing. This switch takes place along two dimensions: (a) affective switching (switching between passive and active user roles; these on-and-off shifts in attention being partly related to factors external to Twitch, such as pauses in game play, and partly to internal factors, such as high levels of action in the game being streamed or activity in the chat box); and (b) spatial switching (switching between streaming channels with smaller or larger audiences). Wang (2019: 654) stresses that it is precisely the deep level of engagement at the site that makes Twitch so popular: “the deeper the user is immersed in this space for live, immediate and interactive experiences, the stronger the degree of immersion and driving forces the user will experience in live video streaming. [. . .] At this point, the live video stream is no longer merely

202 The physical and the virtual a type of media; it provides another space for social activity, and this space blurs the boundaries between the real world and the virtual environment.” As has already been mentioned, three kinds of interaction are proposed in this chapter, as listed in Figure 10.1. These are outlined next. A

B

C

Streamer–audience interaction. The streamer often talks to the audience while playing the game. This is a tiring activity because it is not easy to manage the game and at the same time engage the viewers with nonstop comments and anecdotes, witty or humorous remarks, and so on. Audience–streamer interaction. The audience has several options for interacting with the streamer on Twitch. In this case, there are differences regarding the status of the viewer. Those who are subscribers or donate a stipulated minimum amount of money are granted a number of interesting additional options for interaction with pragmatic implications. They can outline text in the chat room so that it stands out (and acquires prominence and/or increased eventual relevance) from the high number of messages sent to the chat box. Besides, the message typed may be read aloud to the streamer by a “computer bot” (software-generated human voice), and this increases the options for the streamer’s reply and further interaction. Finally, if a viewer types a message while donating (in actual money or bits which are then turned into money), this message appears on the streamer’s gaming screen (i.e. interactive text overlays over the video feed), increasing even more the options for streamer–viewer interaction and producing identity-rewarding effects for this “privileged” audience. Audience–audience interaction. This is established mainly via chat box interaction. There are rules about what may be posted, and some viewers are chosen by the streamer as “moderators” and can expel or “silence” users if they misbehave in the chat box conversation by sending inappropriate content, insulting the streamer or other viewers, or by filling the conversation with spam (typically emoji- or emote-related).

In general, the chat box functions just like traditional chat room interactions with the aid of text alteration, “iconised text” (i.e. images of text with different typefaces) and emojis/emotes. However, a deeper analysis shows that due to the number of messages that are often sent to the streamer’s chat, these tend to be short, many of them making no sense and yielding no relevant effects to the streamer, the only effect being the feeling of being part of the ongoing conversation around a gaming performance. Three sample chat box interactions are reproduced in Figure 10.3. Understandably, the messages are not very long due to the speed of publication and the scroll factor.2 On the left and on the right a donator has highlighted the message. Emotes abound in the three samples, especially in the one on the right (more on emotes later). In the middle some “iconised texts” have been sent (yeet, Decent). Typical chat room abbreviations (wtf) and letter

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Figure 10.3 Three sample chat box interactions on Twitch.

repetition (Pooooooggg; holyyy) are also present, although several neologisms are quite site-specific. Although chat box conversations are massive and often nonsensical, many of these conversations do exhibit congruency and inter-message coherence. Ford et al. (2017: 859) propose the term crowdspeak as a label for this quality of some chat box conversations, which reveal the viewers’ ability to avoid the breakdown of large-scale text-based communications while remaining coherent and enjoyable to their members. Crowdspeak may appear chaotic, meaningless, or cryptic. However, “practices of coherence” were discovered that make massive chats legible, meaningful, and compelling to participants, “‘coherence’ meaning that the chat makes sense to participants and is not experienced as a breakdown, overload, or other difficulty” (ibid.). As a result, Twitch chat comments produce enjoyable and productive communication between members if they remain readable and do not disappear too fast from the screen. This productive communication is achieved, according to Lybrand (2019: 7) “through bricolage3 and short-handing, through repetitive and abbreviated comments which allow for greater understanding within the chat despite the rapid pace and numerous messages.” These comments may be grouped into three categories (ibid.): socialising comments

204 The physical and the virtual (viewers not commenting on the game but merely communicating with the community or the streamer), competitive or aggressive comments (mocking players and/or their fans), and information-related comments (centred upon the games). Similarly, Ford et al. (2017: 860) propose the term shared voice for “the position that multiple participants adopt by adhering to a consistent viewpoint, syntax, or style of speech.” Shared voices can be spotted in repetitions of the same or similar emotes or phrases. These authors found a shift on Twitch away from individual, conversational speech towards collectivised chat performances, which maintains coherence by reducing the total volume of meaningful content that participants produce and process (an effortrelieving strategy). Besides text, emotes are also frequent in the chat box. These are specific to the site and are divided into global emotes, free access provided by the system, and streamer emotes that can only be used in the streamer’s chat box and only if the user is a subscriber or donator.4 Figure 10.4 shows some of the global emotes freely available to Twitch users. In general, these emotes do not function in the same way as emojis in messaging conversations. Instead, they tend to “stand out visually from the chatting crowd” or appear in text–emote compositions without aiding in the relevance-seeking inference of the accompanying text. However, emotes do occasionally have pragmatic functions towards the accompanying text. The crucial constraint in whether or not these pragmatic functions appear in the chat box is the number of participants in the chat box session. Indeed, an unwritten rule seems to underlie the use of emotes: The smaller the number of users interacting, the higher the explicit pragmatic uses of emotes towards

Figure 10.4 “Global” system emotes on Twitch.

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the text typed beside them. Viewers do have meaningful conversations when audience size is manageable and they have time to think about the text to type and the emote to use. Graham (2019: 388–389) proposes three functions of emotes: a

b

c

Declarative (i.e. they are used to declare the poster’s feelings or reactions). Normally the emotes that possess a more or less clear and direct translation are declarative. This is the case of emotes such as BibleThump (used for sadness) or EleGiggle (indicates amusement). Reactive or to assess others. For example, the emote HeyGuys shows a female waving, which requires an external entity, another user being waved at. Similarly, BloodTrail shows a character giving a “thumbs up” sign, which again entails an assessment of an external entity or event being qualified positively. Phatic markers, either to convey paralinguistic information or to reinforce the poster’s identity as a member of the community. This is typical of streamer-specific emotes, whose use immediately qualifies the user as one with financial investment in the community.

A further complication, from a cyberpragmatic point of view, is that some emotes are fairly stable in their meanings across conversational contexts, but other emotes sometimes puzzle other participants in the chat rather than aiding in a relevant interpretive outcome of the message as a whole. The other users have to work out what intention lies behind the production of those emotes, which is effort demanding and detrimental for eventual user satisfaction. Table 10.2 lists some of the most popular emotes together with their default interpretations (see Hope 2019). Some of these emotes exhibit interpretative variability, while others demand some background knowledge.

10.7 Non-propositional effects from livestreaming At the beginning of this chapter a question was asked regarding what it is that makes watching a streamer so appealing. As has been the case in several chapters of this book, very often users find interpretive reward in the feelings and emotions that the communicative exchange generates in the interlocutors, sometimes compensating for the lack of relevance that the discourse encoded objectively possesses. This is also the case of livestreaming on Twitch, filled with affective effects, many of them of an addictive quality. Some of these effects are intended, with streamers willing to get viewers to remain engaged and attached to their streaming channels and viewers trying to draw the streamer’s attention and affective bonding with witty comments and donations that make viewers feel acknowledged and personalised, and who try to make other viewers feel part of a bounded group. Some effects are unintended, though, leaking from the streaming sessions but somehow impacting streamers and audiences with similar strength.

206 The physical and the virtual Table 10.2 Some popular Twitch emotes described. Emote

Description Picture of former Twitch employee Josh DeSeno. Typically used for irony and sarcasm, but another use has been proposed: to label the accompanying text as non-serious.

Kappa

TriHard

Picture of streamer Mychal Jefferson. There is no agreement on the most appropriate use and meaning of this emote, which has pragmatic implications (increased effort deciding the correct sense, risk of misunderstanding, and so on). Initially, it seems to code an expression of excitement. It is often claimed that it correlates with the action of “trying hard” (as the name indicates) but it is often perceived as negative or even racist and used extensively in racismconnoted spamming strategies. It depicts Ryan Gutierrez, co-founder of the YouTube channel CrossCounterTV with a facial expression of surprise. This should be the least prone to misunderstanding, since it is consistently used to react with surprise (or disbelief) to some remark or some outstanding gaming performance.

PogChamp It portrays YouTube creator John Bain and has a stable meaning: to indicate that something is funny. Perhaps further inferencing is required to work out whether the funny connotation is directed at the content of the message itself or at its author. LUL

4Head

It features the streamer Josh Meyer. Typically used when the viewer wants to joke about someone or something. However, in Hope (2019: 50) several interpretations were provided by informants: (a) to express something silly or dumb; (b) to express something that’s not easily achievable; and (c) to mock the streamer in a friendly way about something they have done.

cmonbruh

This emote has been controversial. It is primarily used to express confusion over some comment or remark that has been posted on the stream, especially if there is a racist connotation involved. However, it is also used for more general confusion or reaction to some absurdity, similar to when the phrase “come on, brother” [c’mon, bruh] would be uttered. It is based on a photo of Andy Samberg (from a Lonely Island music video). Typically used to connote a text with intense laughter.

haHAA

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Furthermore, although non-propositional effects are mainly produced in streamer–audience or audience–audience interactions, some are also generated out of interface use. For example, in Zhao et al. (2018: 414) livestreamers reported that perceived website attractiveness had an effect in their positive feelings towards the site and parallel desire to continue using the site for broadcasting. The users’ affective attachment to a site is important since it has strong motivational and behavioural implications. However, what interests us more in this section is the nature of non-propositional effects arising from interactions among users on Twitch. Undoubtedly, as already stated, one major non-propositional effect is the feeling of community membership and bonding within the virtual space of the Twitch interface (Spilker et al. 2020). Twitch even self-defines as a community of streamers in both the slogan (“Don’t just watch, join in”) and its definition. On Twitch, new communities focus around particular streamers, and generate a sense of belonging and a shared culture between a streamer and their viewers. This is a major part of the appeal of watching Twitch for many viewers, building up a sense of association with other gamers who share one’s interests and, in many cases, shared cultural assumptions both within gaming and the wider internet culture. In the streamer’s community, constant interaction, participation, feedback, and emotional bonding are generated and fostered. In fact, Twitch communities exhibit most of the attributes that are typically associated with communities in general (Yus 2007; Hamilton et al. 2014): membership (via subscriptions and donations, membership which is marked by the ability to talk to the streamer via computer “bot” and applying changes to chat box messages, among other possibilities), influence (via interaction with other streamers and other viewers), need fulfilment (with rewards such as sociability, status, success, skills . . .), and emotional connection to others (identification with others, shared assumptions, common jargons, and emote use . . .). Hilvert-Bruce et al. (2018: 59) add that “live-stream viewers are attracted to channels where they feel noticed, important, and influential. Livestream viewers can have their membership needs fulfilled by participating in community success and sociability. Shared experiences and continued participation in live-streams helps to develop connectedness with other stream participants and fosters a sense of community in the channel.” Discourse is one of the clear community markers. Being able to use the streaming jargon, to retrieve the accumulated background store of mutually manifest assumptions and the accepted appropriateness in the uses of emotes (Graham 2019: 393; Hope 2019: 6), mark viewers as insiders to the group. Another marker is the viewers’ explicit belonging to a streamer’s channel through subscription and donations. This is visually made explicit by the ability to use certain subscriber-specific emotes and to highlight text, among other privileges, which are mutually manifest to the other users of the community because they see these on the streaming screen. In this sense, although Twitch communities are centred upon fostering the communal,

208 The physical and the virtual many streamers have noticed that part of the viewers’ desire to continue membership in the community is to feel individualised and acknowledged personally by the streamer (Lybrand 2019: 36). A second non-propositional effect (related to the community-related one) is the streamer’s and viewers’ feelings of connection and emotional attachment to each other. The latter is defined in Fu and Hsu (2019) as “the emotion-laden bonds and connections with a streamer that reflect a viewer’s affective commitment and desire to maintain and strengthen the relationship with the streamer. It is a feeling of oneness that drives the individual to invest in the product or service to sustain or strengthen the relationship.” This feeling of connection/identification between streamer and viewers is often established via parasocial relationships, defined by Horton and Wohl (1956, in Fu and Hsu 2019) as an illusion of intimacy felt towards a celebrity media host. The emergence of connecting with media personalities through social networking sites such as Instagram and livestreaming platforms such as Twitch has intensified the pervasiveness of this kind of relationship, where individuals obtain similar feelings of intimacy and closeness to those felt with real friends. In turn, this quasi-friendship bond increases attachment, willingness to spend effort in maintaining the relationship, and loyalty to the media figure followed (Fu and Hsu ibid.). However, Suganuma (2018: 1) questions the applicability of this term to Twitch relationships, because in parasocial relationships, the audience feels a greater sense of connection and identification than the personality/celebrity does, and the latter often has no idea who the audience is. By contrast, Twitch streamers and viewers develop a unique type of relationship due to the interactive affordances of the interface. A term related to feelings of connection and identification is the feeling of co-presence, the capacity of livestreaming to create a bridge between streamers and viewers (and a parallel bridge between online and offline environments), the interface somehow managing to collapse the physical distance between streamers and audiences, connecting them in virtual space beyond scattered geographies. This feeling is close to other parallel labels, for example social presence, when users feel that there is no distance between them, and the interaction is taking place as if they were in a faceto-face environment. Also related is the term immersion, the experience of being together with the streamer while they are playing the game. Haimson and Tang (2017: 597) identify factors that make the users’ experience immersive: when the energy and excitement of the event comes through in the streamer content. Being able to see and hear the other members of the audience, getting the streamer’s perspective also allows for an immersive experience, as does seeing the event from a privileged or special viewpoint (as the Twitch interface seems to offer), and when a viewer can see multiple views and experience multiple perspectives, the event becomes even more immersive. Finally, the term co-experience seems to indicate a similar

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feeling in users. Hu et al. (2017: 597) define it as “the experience that users co-create in social interaction where participants share their feelings and affections regarding to their consumption practices,” and communication is essential to generate this mutual feeling. When applied to livestreaming, it is clear that streamers do not simply transfer video uni-directionally to their passive viewers, but the latter contribute to the streaming session by providing advice and comments on the game being played, which in turn affects the streamer’s performance. These feelings are important to understand why watching a streamer while playing a game is so powerful in creating bonds and connections. An important element of Twitch, in this respect, is the rewarding effects that viewers get by becoming subscribers and by providing the streamer with donations. Some advantages of acquiring this status have been mentioned. This is a typical attribute of a so-called patron economy, in which the boundary between enjoying content and paying for it blurs (Ask et al. 2019). In this case, the aforementioned advantages of being a subscriber or donator aid in this blurring. Streamers themselves are constantly monitoring and modulating their behaviour to appease a potentially paying audience. Interface affordances such as notifications to the streaming community are also crucial for increased donations and affective effects generated out of this practice, since the other viewers greet and explicitly welcome the reception of these payments to the streamer. As Recktenwald (2018: 155–158) comments, notifications are embedded in a wider interactional practice that provides a personalized mark of distinction to the subscriber and isolate these viewers from ordinary non-paying viewers. Finally, streaming on Twitch may generate a number of identity-related non-propositional effects for both the streamers and their audiences. Streamers get an offset of self-gratifying feedback from their viewers, and viewers feel valuable and valued by providing streamers with suggestions and phatic interactions, leading to group cohesion and emphasised collective identity. Hu et al. (2017: 595–596) corroborate this idea when they remark that audiences subtly deliver their identity-related information and perceive others’ identities in a form of collective group identity. In consequence, users identify with audiences when the fit of values and beliefs between the group and themselves is perceived. Besides, a viewer who perceives a high degree of cognitive communion via conversations with other audiences may experience a sense of like-mindedness between oneself and other group members. This inter-member communication among like-minded peers will enhance the sense of connectedness (ibid.: 597). In this sense, sharing information (mutual manifestness) regarding an array of issues, ranging from command of jargon and collective discourse to background knowledge on the streamer and previous streamer–viewer interactions is a means to achieve this feeling of communal identity and parallel effects on self-identity (Lybrand 2019: 62–63).

210 The physical and the virtual

Notes 1 My thanks to Javier Yus for his firsthand comments on the use and communicative resources of this streaming platform. 2 Two options alleviate the speed of chat posts and scroll factor: (1) Sometimes the streamer only allows subscribers to chat; and (2) streamers (and/or moderators) may switch the whole chat session into slow mode (with a 30-second gap between one post and the next). 3 Bricolage indicates opportunistic use and remixing of elements from a fairly small repertoire. Bricolage occurs in massive chats in the use and reuse of a limited set of lexical items. Some may be small variants on prior elements. Lexical items in the Twitch set include words, phrases, emotes, and commands (Ford et al. 2017: 860). 4 At the moment of writing this chapter, an innovation has taken place in the Twitch interface regarding emotes: These can now be animated as long as the user installs additional software.

11 Location-based smartphone interaction1

The advent of mobile phones liberated us from the tyranny of place. Paradoxically, now smartphone locative apps (henceforth LAs) and locationbased services (i.e. locative media) are tying us to physical places again, but in a new, pervasive and unprecedented way.2 This chapter deals precisely with the impact of LAs on today’s interactions and the overall relevance of location-based communication through smartphone apps. In this chapter, LAs will be defined as those apps that enable and focus on the physical location of the user while communicating with peers or acquaintances. They provide users with a mutual awareness of where they and others are located or their mutual proximity (Licoppe 2013: 123) and are managed through smartphone apps that allow users to retrieve placespecific digital information and connect to nearby people depending on their physical location. Locative media are not a new phenomenon, but they have become pervasive nowadays due to smartphones. In the 1990s, Weiser (1993, in Parisi 2015: 3) introduced the concept of “ubiquitous” and “pervasive” computing and prototyped the first tools to explore the relationship between digital technologies and physical space. And as early as 2001, there were games that were supposed to be played with the aid of information gathered from physical locations. In 2003 the social network Dodgeball was created, which enabled users to manage a list of friends and then broadcast their location to those friends, as well as to foster spontaneous coordination of serendipitous urban congregations. Today, users massively engage in location-based interactions that are built and revolve upon their physical location. Most important, LAs have generated alterations, not only in our conceptualisation of place and its relationship with the digital information attached to it but also in the impact of this physical–virtual connection on what is intended, mutually manifest, interpreted, and eventually turns out (ir)relevant in those instances of communication that are mediated by these LAs.

11.1 The physical–virtual interface and the importance of location As mentioned in Chapter 6 devoted to smartphone calls, according to Wellman (2001) internet was one more stage in a long evolution of human DOI: 10.4324/9781003200574-11

212 The physical and the virtual relationships towards personal choices rather than based on physical proximity. Improvements in transport and technological advances led to what he calls networked individualism, where people connect directly to their network of friends and relatives but without needing a delimited physical space to foster their interactions. Similar terms proposed in the bibliography include telecocooning and selective sociality (see Gordon and de Souza e Silva 2012: 92). Smartphones have played an important part in this evolution but, at the same time, have posed challenges for the correct management of the interface between face-to-face conversations and incoming phone calls or internetbased interactions. The smartphone allows for new integrations of the absent and the present in subtle ways, and there is a cost in terms of attention devoted to simultaneous physical and smartphone interactions. Indeed, nowadays the use of smartphones with “always-on” internet connection has increased the challenge for the management of interactions, intended interpretations, mutuality of information, and eventual interpretations. Users are always available for typing texts, recording audio files, or browsing the web even if other people are also physically co-present. Besides, users have now incorporated interactions between their smartphones and physically located information to their everyday lives, to the extent that location-based information is now taken for granted. As Lyons and Ounoughi (2020: 92) correctly remark, “far from being disconnected from places, our experience of mobile technologies is – for many people – still embedded in physical locations from where messages originate. Nowhere is this more clearly evident than in mobile messaging, such as that via WhatsApp, where the microcoordination of meetings is frequently performed with a clear focus on facilitating physical convergence and mediated co-experience of mobility.” Specifically, Lettkemann and Schulz-Schaeffer (2020) suggest three types of locative media use. (a) Annotation, which denotes the linking of geographic coordinates with virtual information in the form of comments, photos or brief reports. (b) Navigation through unknown or unfamiliar spaces. Apps such as Waze and Google Maps aid their users through a space by guiding their movement based on certain criteria. Waze also benefits from the annotated “insider knowledge” of local residents, who leave tips and suggestions for other users as part of the broad gift economy. (c) Orchestration, when apps point out a specific shop that is right along their route and adequate to a pending purchase. Such apps resort to algorithms that align annotated information with personal profiles and search history. Smartphones have always had an impact on the individual’s relationship with and within physical space, providing a multiplicity of channels and extending the social availability of users. Kopomaa (2000, in Özkul 2017: 226) proposes the label nomadic tribe, according to which no place is entirely foreign and consists of individuals always eager to be present in virtual spaces while being physically elsewhere, maintaining bonds with geographically separated places. This duality of spaces for interaction generates

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interactive disruptions and the need to impose rules of smartphone etiquette. Besides, this mobile space “includes gestures and spatial orientation aimed to create one’s own room in public space, to accentuate and protect personal space” (Lasén 2013a). Specifically, what LAs have brought about is a new merging of places and virtual information attached to them, together with an emphasis on the user’s physical movement. And analysts are now trying to come to terms with this overlay of physical and virtual information. As Campbell (2020a: 105) remarks, “rather than tearing at the social fabric, mobile media play an important role in the construction of places by populating them with digital content, in the forms of data, text, and images, that becomes part of their social context.” Similarly, identity-shaping and self-display are now increasingly being performed in the interface between the physical and the virtual. In general, the meanings of places and our identities are built together, as people identify themselves with a spatial environment when they experience that environment as meaningful. [. . .] Location, when understood as ‘a sense of place’, can tell a lot of things not only about a place, but also about the inhabitants of that place, their personalities, preferences, likes and dislikes, and even ideals. One could easily gain an impression of a person by following the traces of the places and events that they share with others. (Özkul 2014: 30–31/99)

Table 11.1 User’s environmental orientations between physical and virtual contexts (Misra and Stokols 2012). Person’s connections

Orientation

Disconnected Physical Placeless Disconnected Virtual

Explanation of orientation

Identity and satisfaction of personal needs come neither from physical nor virtual settings. Connected Physical Place-Based Identity and satisfaction of personal Disconnected Virtual needs mainly come from physical settings, and these individuals are disconnected from virtual contexts. Disconnected Physical Cyber-Based Identity and satisfaction of personal Connected Virtual needs come predominantly from virtual scenarios, and these individuals are disconnected from physical settings. Connected Physical Place-Cyber-Based Identity and satisfaction of personal Connected Virtual needs come from both physical and virtual settings.

214 The physical and the virtual Furthermore, Misra and Stokols (2012) propose a classification of relationships between people and their environments, as summarised in Table 11.1 (where the initial real has now been replaced with physical so as not to bias online environments with a quality of “irreality” that they no longer possess nowadays). (a) Placeless. People have low engagement in their proximal physical environment as well as in the virtual one. Neither place-based nor virtual environments satisfy the individual’s socio-emotional and interpersonal needs. (b) Place-based. These individuals reflect connectedness to immediate physical settings and are disconnected from virtual realms. (c) Cyber-based. It refers to individuals who prefer highly immersive virtual environments and spend substantial amounts of time in virtual settings rather than physical scenarios. (d) Place-cyber-based. This group is connected to their immediate placebased settings as well as to specific virtual ones. Within today’s physical–virtual convergence, several authors have suggested possible labels that convey this idea of merging physical–virtual sources of information the converge in today’s use of LAs. Some of these are commented upon here: 1

Hybrid space. Of all the labels, in my opinion this is the one that best captures the essence of today’s convergence between physical location and digital information. It is defined as a conceptual space created by the merging of physical and digital spaces because of the use of smartphone technologies as social devices. A hybrid space is not constructed by technology but “built by the connection of mobility and communication and materialized by social networks developed simultaneously in physical and digital spaces” (de Souza e Silva 2006: 265–266).

Evans (2015: 19) comments that in this hybrid space the local and the remote cannot be clearly delimited, because the smartphone technology pulls in information to inform the situated person in the local context, and the presence and use of this information in a local context have a transformative effect on the user’s experience of space. In other words, the software transforms the place. This hybridity is very prominent in LAs and also frequent in everyday activity on the internet. Take Facebook, for example. In Georgalou (2015: 361), a user writes about a general strike in Greece as a reaction to austerity measures in the country. This simple post reflects the fluidity with which users now navigate the physical and the virtual, since that particular user is navigating multiple places simultaneously: the one that she is physically located in, the one that she is thinking of, and the Facebook virtual

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space itself. This ability to locate oneself in multiple places simultaneously on Facebook is an example of our ability to navigate hybrid spaces. 2

3

4

5

6

7

Connected presence. The term, coined by Licoppe (2004), captures the idea that we are now able to remain in continuous contact with one another regardless of our physical location, which simulates the feeling of constant social availability and hence of other users’ presence. The concept thus explains the impact of communication technologies on the creation of ongoing and endless mediated interactions “that combine into ‘connected relationships’ in which boundaries between absence and presence eventually get blurred” (Licoppe 2004: 136). In this environment, users manage relationships that tend to be detached from the actual places in which these relationships occur. Digital co-presence. According to Turkle (2008, in Berry 2017: 71), our rapid cycling through mobile media creates a sense of continual digital co-presence, and this creates a perpetual distraction and may cause anxiety. Mobile intimacy. According to Hjorth and Kim (2016: 121), the media traverse different types of public intimacy by way of its smartphone version, understood as the ways in which the various forms of mobility and intimacy allow for multiple cartographies of space. This overlaying of the material-geographic and electronic-social is what is called mobile intimacy, an affective patchwork comprised of new and old media rituals. Spatial self. According to Schwartz and Halegoua (2015), this explores the presentation of the self based on geographic traces of physical activity. It encompasses a variety of instances in which individuals document, archive, and display their experience and/or mobility within space and place in order to represent or reveal aspects of their identity to others. It provides a way of conceptualising the active marking of location as a modality of self-presentation. Augmented space. “Mobile users collectively tag, rate and recommend restaurants, cafés and other public places, crafting and nourishing a digital information layer that augments the urban physical infrastructure in real-time” (Bilandzic and Foth 2012: 66). Physical places would be structured by flows of location-centred information that users generate via networked smartphones, becoming a form of participation and a filter through which other users experience that place. Net/networked locality. It is “the cultural and technological framework through which people manufacture places mediated by location-aware and mobile devices and digital networks” (Gordon and de Souza e Silva 2012: 89). As such, it is related to the aforementioned term hybrid space (de Souza e Silva 2006). As summarised in de Souza e Silva (2013: 118– 119), net locality is hybrid space in practice, developed by the constant

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8

9

enfolding of digital information and networked connections into local spaces. Net locality entails a recognition and awareness of being networked but still tied to local spaces. In net locality, remote connections are still present but become part of the physical space in which the smartphone user exists instead of removing users from it (Gordon and de Souza e Silva’s 2011: 56). Hybrid ecology. The term reflects how different forms of access to a particular place (e.g. through embodied presence and through various screens and terminals) are somehow articulated. This perspective leads to a complete reshaping of our understanding of what was once dubbed virtual practices. Licoppe and Inada (2010: 105) add that locationaware technologies articulate space and place in new ways and may lead to the construction of hybrid territories as an emergent feature of recurring physical–virtual practices. In a nutshell, in hybrid ecologies “user experience is characterized by the need to manage smoothly on-screen and off-screen engagements, and design is to enable users to manage smoothly multiple streams of activity in all kind of situations, and particularly mobile ones” (Licoppe 2016: 103). Ambient media. This term describes the information-rich environment created out of the combination of mass media, new media technology, and mobile devices such as smartphones (Roberts and Koliska 2014). It is an environment created by the networks, websites, and apps that allow us to share information and access information which is constantly and instantly available and the proliferation of communication media use in public spaces, workplaces, and homes.

11.2 Communicating through locative apps As commented upon in passing, LAs are bringing physical places back to the forefront of human interests while interacting with smartphones. “Mobile communication technologies, in general, and locative media in particular, do not only cause a feeling of detachment from places; they simultaneously afford and renew attachment to places as part of being mobile” (Özkul 2015: 103). In general, digital information spreads a layer of information upon the objective information provided by a physical place, which is altered, or at least some aspects of it are made more prominent through (locative) mobile media use. Lemos (2010) coins the term information territory to account for how digital information not only shows what was hidden, locked, or unknown about a place but also opens up opportunities for new interpretations and practices of (or within) that place. In the same direction, Özkul (2015: 103) writes that mobile communication increases our chances to attach to new places, while helping us maintain old attachments. On the other hand, it allows its users to detach from places and co-present situations willingly in

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order to experience different aspects of the spatial environment. [. . .] Through mobile communication technologies such as the smartphone, users can assign meanings to places by attaching geotagged information to locations which others in turn can access while at the location. This enhances the awareness of multiple meanings of places, as users can explore many aspects of a city that are not explicitly there in its visible physical fabric. In this environment, physical places are constantly re-interpreted in smartphone interactions. Overlying physical places, smartphone apps spread a layer of location-based maps and foregrounded “locations of interest” in which the user is turned into a dot navigating across digital layouts and embedded in layers of digital information. Crucially, one of the layers of information spread over these layouts is made up of users’ personal choices, check-ins, tagged venues, and attached comments and reviews, to the extent that a particular user’s background knowledge of and engagement with a specific venue linked to a physical location may differ from other users’ knowledge, and this asymmetry has consequences with respect to what the user intends to communicate via location sharing, what predictions of context accessibility they make, and what inferences other users perform upon finding this location-centred information. Frizzera (2015: 33) points in the same direction when remarking that “mobile media bind virtual and real objects and offer very real experiences, which in turn challenge our perception of what is the real space [. . .] eventually leading to a transformation of spaces into meaningful places.” In some cases, this use of location information may allow users to create new forms of attachment to places. However, as is argued in this chapter, these attachments of a particular user may not be identical to their audience’s attachments, especially regarding feelings and emotions attached to the location being tagged or shared, a very personal emotional bonding, place attachment, which “occurs between individuals and their meaningful environments” (Scannell and Gifford 2010: 1). Crucially, since background knowledge regarding the social connotations arising from LAs differs from user to user, the objective attributes of place end up blurred, the obviousness of the physicality of place turning into a mental abstraction (Lemos 2010: 405). De Souza e Silva’s (2006) term hybrid space, already mentioned in this chapter, is also relevant here, since it is “constituted by a mobile network of people and nomadic technologies that operate in noncontiguous physical spaces.” 11.2.1 Contextual constraints in communication through locative apps With the advent of LAs, many users are now checking in on their locations, tagging venues, commenting on their qualities, and sharing this information

218 The physical and the virtual with others. But the quality and quantity of these sharing strategies are influenced by a number of user- and interface-related contextual constraints. Some of these are listed here. 1

2

3

4

User’s personality, identity, and self-concept. In general, as has been the case in other chapters of the book, the online environment is more prone to self-disclosure due to its cues-filtered quality (Chorley et al. 2015). Specifically, personality traits such as narcissism and extroversion, typically linked to the person’s desire to be liked and acknowledged by others, increase the generation of LA-mediated information. Not surprisingly, individuals with greater narcissistic qualities are more likely to engage in self-promotional content or behaviour and to present themselves better to a large social network. In this environment, information through LAs is a good way to draw other users’ attention. User’s emotional attachment to the place in question (Evans and Saker 2017: 56). The meanings of a place are created through human interactions and experiences (Özkul 2014: 30). Indeed, place can be constructed socially, to the extent that the sense of place ends up being conceptualised as a purely social phenomenon. And the user’s personal attachment to places being broadcast through LAs constrains the way that they are eventually interpreted by the user’s peers, friends, or acquaintances. User’s background knowledge on the place being shared, which may differ from other users’ own knowledge, and this asymmetry may impact the user’s decision to share their location. Group adequacy. As Chang and Chen (2014: 34) comment, part of the reason why people use location-based services is because of a subjective norm set by their friends. In other words, they disclose information on location-based services because their friends do, and they want to fit into the norm of their peer group.

Regarding interface-related constraints, we may distinguish between the interface “affordances” (i.e. the availability of actions that may be performed through the interface depending on its design) and the “constraints” imposed on the user’s task due to the good or bad design of the interface (i.e. link coherence, arrangement of frames and tags, user-friendly menus, and expected actions on the screen, etc.). Among the interface affordances, a possible constraint may be the difference between a smartphone app and its desktop counterpart (e.g. Facebook; see next chapter) and how their design options affect the sharing of location. Typically, the smartphone version will be better for these purposes, since users are situated in and move through space carrying their smartphones, and they can bind together spatial information from their sensorial apparatus and contextual data from mobile media to make sense of the surrounding space (Frizzera 2015: 33). Farman and Frith (2017: 142) add that nowadays the mobile interface is important in constraining the management of social

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interaction, and it exhibits a convergence of technologies, cultural values, social bodies, design expectations, political contexts, and infrastructures. 11.2.2 The user’s (intended) manifestness when using locative apps It is logical to assume that when a user shares location-based information with other users, there is some underlying intention to communicate some information to them and to obtain specific interpretations and discursive reactions, but these acts may also generate unwanted interpretive outcomes. To start with, manifestness is selective regarding both content and addressees. Typically, users select the content attached to their locations and hope to get certain effects, such as “bragging or showing off, self-promotion, making inside jokes, recording places as a memory aid, or receiving points or rewards for particular habits or actions” (Schwartz and Halegoua 2015: 1646). Besides, one of the uses of broadcasting one’s location is to meet up with people in physical space. However, many users selectively choose the target of this shared location, and they resort to the affordances of the app for this selective strategy. Tang et al. (2010: 86–87) divide target selection into one-to-one (sharing with a single user), one-to-few (with a small group), one-to-many (with a large group), and one-to-all (with everyone). Finally, sometimes location is requested by another user, and the addressee has to weigh the benefits or drawbacks of their replying, together with how much information on one’s location should be provided. In general, location-based information may puzzle some users, who find little relevance in the information shared and wonder why the user wants to let others know (i.e. make manifest) that they are at a particular location. However, there is much more to the meaning of a shared location than meets the eye. As summarised in Cramer et al. (2011), the value of location technology is about how this is used, read, viewed, and manipulated. Sharing one’s location and knowing the whereabouts of others is not only a practical tool for coordination and communication but also an emotional and moral affair. It is also used to express moods, lifestyle, and events, provide a resource for subsequent interactions, and foster the enjoyment of exchange and friendship. Some users may consider that the information shared is inherently interesting, probably as part of self-presentation and favouring unplanned interactions. Location-sharing can also serve as “a reassurance, communicating and knowing that all is well and as it ‘should be,’ bringing a sense of connectedness, togetherness and identity and moral position within the group you share your location with” (Cramer et al. 2011: 58). Kim (2016: 398) also lists a number of possible intentions underlying location sharing, including the display and expression of one’s identity (more on this later), a desire to be connected and acknowledged by others, or to provide objective information on locations. Many users welcome fresh information about locations such as bars or shops. Users value the tips and comments that previous users leave attached to that location, forming

220 The physical and the virtual inseparable tags that end up making up a combined tags–location whole, that is, a combination of information and location is created, becoming an intrinsic part of the location (de Souza e Silva 2013: 119). Likewise, other users also contribute to this space by leaving their own comments or tips attached to the location. This information has at least a double function, namely to influence users’ mobility patterns around the city and to change the character of locations. By doing so, users validate places (de Souza e Silva and Frith 2014: 35) by telling friends which locations are worth visiting. Nowadays, a common feature of LAs is that “individuals can also access other people’s interpretations of those locations and interact with digital information that has become part of that location” (ibid.). In my opinion, aspects of the user’s personality such as self-disclosure and self-management are among the most important motives for sharing locations. Schwartz and Halegoua’s (2015) term spatial self, already mentioned in this chapter, is interesting here, a “theoretical framework that explores the presentation of the self, based on geographic traces of physical activity.” In a way, the spatial self provides a way of conceptualising the active use of location-related information as a modality of self-presentation. Indeed, as Hsieh and Lee (2020: n.p.) acknowledge, “location tagging allows an individual to achieve self-enhancement by sharing physical presence information at interesting or even conspicuous locations, creating a positive impression that is more likely to increase acceptance and ‘likes’ by others.” Previous research has also indicated that the need to present a positive and interesting impression of oneself is one of the main reasons people use these LAs. Users can show with what places they associate themselves. By controlling (what) to share and (what) not to share (about) a specific place, they not only communicate different aspects of physical places but can also present different aspects of the self. Consider the Facebook dialogue in (1) triggered by a photo posted on User 1’s profile: (1) Text used for tagging the location of the photo by User 1: [Carrera de la mujer/women’s race for cancer society -with User 2] User 3: Me hubiera encantado haber estado ahí con vosotras! Besos! [I would have loved to be there with you! Kisses!]. User 1: Pues al año q viene!!! Y btw a mi también me gustaría estar en Harvard contigo . . . Pero eso lo veo mas crudo. [Next year then! and btw I’d also love to be in Harvard with you . . . But that seems more complicated]. User 3: Eso está hecho! El año que viene la corro con vosotras! Y lo de Harvard es cuestión de proponérnoslo para un futuro próximo! [That’s done! Next year I’ll run it with you! And about Harvard, it’s a matter of planning it for the near future!]. User 4: Guapas! [Gorgeous!].

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In (1), User 1 not only posts a photo of herself participating in a race but also makes identity claims (i.e. she positions herself, see Davies and Harre 1990) by tagging it with location-based information and adding who she is with. The publication indicates certain beliefs of hers regarding the need to make a humble contribution to breast cancer research. The dialogue triggered by the photo also leaks information about her, for example that she is in the broad academic community (“I’d love to be in Harvard with you”), and also produces an offset of identity-rewarding effects, including User 3’s desire to join them in the race and exhibiting bonding feelings with them (female friendship), together with the comment by User 4. Another interesting identity-related term concerning LAs is presentation of place. Sutko and de Souza e Silva (2011) propose this term to explain the performance of identity via LA technologies. However, the term tends to focus on “the impressions of a physical place provided by its visitors or the social construction of place through location-based social media, rather than the harnessing of place to perform identity to a social network” (Schwarz and Halegoua 2015: 1645). These authors add that LA-related activity is constrained by the prospective audience of that performative LA-mediated interaction: the spatial self is not a unique, singular representation but rather a multifaceted and fragmented depiction of the self that has many different versions, each with its own characteristics and targeted audience. Its representations are therefore messy, sometimes even contradictory, as people commonly perform more than one spatial self in different situations or contexts, at different times, and to different audiences. As different social networks cater to users’ interaction with various social groups or audiences, each user can create several distinct depictions of their physical activity, taking into consideration how each platform will showcase their actions and how audiences will interpret them. (p. 1649) De Souza e Silva and Frith (2014: 40) further underline the importance of LA-related information, since the information one accesses about location counts as a personalized “reading” of that location. By writing a locationbased blog post or publishing reviews about locations, people are able to collectively construct locations in ways that were not possible before. Campbell (2020a: 106) mentions the case of the traffc-centred app Waze, which supports location and information sharing at the wider community level to help drivers optimise their travels with insights about routes, traffc, and road conditions. 11.2.3 The relevance of inferred information originating in locative apps One important question for an analysis of LAs is where its relevance to other users, if any, lies. In general, locations may be used to invite other users to

222 The physical and the virtual gather there or simply provide users with substantive location-based information, etc. In any case, apart from the relevance stemming from the very processing of that information, it is evident that some users do find this shared information worth the processing effort, because even their physical activity and whereabouts are altered when that kind of LA-centred information is communicated. For instance, Bertel (2013) showed how Danish smartphone users changed plans on the fly after receiving spatial information from other users, what he calls flexible alignment. Hence, the pattern is that nearby friends get system notifications of a user’s physical location, which encourages users to perform certain physical actions and alter planned behaviours in real time (Schwartz and Halegoua 2015: 1648). This alteration of physical activities is typical of today’s smartphone users, who are always on the move and ready to alter plans if some piece of information related to their vicinity turns out to be relevant. By altering one’s whereabouts and by being informed of features of a particular location, addressee users may also find relevance in the upgrade of information that gets attached to a shared location. Places acquire different meanings not only for the ones who share locational information but also for those who receive it. Hence, locational information is an important – relevant – attribute of a place. 11.2.4 Non-propositional effects from the use of locative apps As already seen several times in this book, certain non-propositional qualities may radically influence the satisfaction obtained from the processing of internet discourses, even if these discourses do not provide users with objectively relevant information, as happens with phatic communication. Several possible non-propositional effects generated by LA-based information and interactions are proposed in Yus (2021) and are summarised here. a

Impact on the user’s self-concept and identity. Location-based information is useful to coordinate meetings and facilitate occasional encounters. LAs play a part in the users’ identity management, the formation and maintenance of social presence and social capital, as well as specific identity-centred feelings and emotions enacted within virtual groups managed by LAs. Despite the apparent simplicity of LAs, their impact should not be dismissed, because they operate not only as a means of information dissemination but also trigger an ego-oriented psychological effect that gratifies self-identity. Besides, Özkul (2015: 112) states that users of mobile technologies use LA-centred information to find, create, or sense new places, empowering them with the feeling of having local knowledge of a new place. Additionally, a personal relationship with a place is created among users simply by sharing their locational information. Remembering feelings and emotions that a place used to

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stir rather than the physical attributes of a place can also contribute to place attachment. Sense of community and group membership. In Yus (2007) it was claimed that virtual groups and communities exhibit similar features to the ones found in delimited physical gatherings, and feelings of group membership are intensely valued in virtual communities nowadays. Sustained virtual interactions not only generate connectedness but also feelings of in-group membership and communal support, of being “attached” to the other members of the group, that is, an awareness of the group members’ affective connection to and care for a virtual community in which they become involved (Carr et al. 2016: 386).

Similarly, LA-mediated information may generate an offset of feelings related to virtual communities and group membership. Users frequently change their movements around the city depending on the social and spatial information arriving at their smartphones, altering or adapting their dwellings around town depending on who is nearby. These findings support the idea that smartphone LAs are often used to transform the ways people come together and interact in public spaces. Similarly, weaker ties that heterogeneously contribute, through LAs, to the information attached to a physical place may also produce feelings of social or group connection. Schwartz and Halegoua (2015: 1649) comment on the so-called character of a place, “a social construct that is continuously created and adjusted by the plethora of visitors to that location and the connotation of that place.” Crucially, when users choose to broadcast their location in relation to a specific venue, they are relating themselves to the values and, most notably, with social groups that are represented by that specific physical place. In this way, users are building their social online identity through attaching themselves to the specific information collected about that physical place. c

Feeling of being connected, of co-presence. Many users engage in frequent acts of communication (typically trivial ones) because they eventually obtain a mutual awareness of their friends and peers, together with a feeling of connectedness. What used to be obvious in physical copresence (the clear view of people gathered together in the same physical setting) is managed nowadays through persistent online interactions, many of which are casual and trivial. The notion of ambient awareness (Thompson 2008) is related to this idea: an awareness of the others arising from non-stop dialogues and uploaded content, often fragmentary, which nevertheless gives users a more or less thorough picture of their friends’ activities and whereabouts. According to Levordahska and Utz (2016: 147), the term ambient emphasises “the idea that the awareness develops peripherally, not through deliberately attending to information, but rather as an artifact of social media activity.” In this sense, today’s pressure to send messages compulsively, many of them related

224 The physical and the virtual to physical locations, also aims at mutual awareness. This would be the case of text messages but also of images, photos (e.g. selfies, food pics, landscapes, etc.), and shared locations (e.g. Facebook check-ins) that are meant to generate a sort of presence in the absence (Zappavigna 2016: 272), a non-stop perpetual feeling of co-presence. These sustained interactions can potentially foster a sense of place. In this case, the smartphone camera works as a technological link between physical place and the re-enacted presence of that place in the other users’ screens. However, in this process the uses, motivations, and sharing practices of the camera have also been altered within this new trend of location awareness. As Hjorth (2014: 835) correctly comments, what we see is that once locative media becomes an almost default setting in much sharing of camera phone practice on social media like Facebook, the motivations and types of images shared changes. With locative media like geotagging allowing users to know the physical, geographic setting, camera phone practices become more about sharing more emotional, social, and abstract qualities of a place. Moreover, with the rapid rise of photo apps that are location based, the ability to share almost immediately via multiple social network sites (SNSs) provides users with numerous options that can both blur different communities and distinguish. Licoppe’s (2004) concept of connected presence, already mentioned several times in this book, is also interesting for LA-mediated interaction. It is related to the impact of communication technologies on ongoing and endless mediated interactions “that combine into ‘connected relationships’ in which boundaries between absence and presence eventually get blurred” (p.  136). LA-mediated relationships would tend to be detached from the actual places in which these relationships occur. Rather than constructing a shared experience by telling each other about small and big events, “interlocutors exchange small expressive messages signalling a perception, a feeling, or an emotion, or requiring from the other person the same type of expressive message” (p. 147). d

Personal feelings associated with place. Different users comment and tag locations for other users. Addressee users contrast this information with their own background store of information regarding that location, and a number of (personal) relevant affective effects may be produced in this mental place-related inference, including an update of background assumptions, the erasure of previously held assumptions and, just as importantly, the growth of new feelings and emotions attached to the place being broadcast. In this sense, Lofland (1998, in Humphreys and Liao 2013) argues that people do not just have connections to other people in a place but also connections with the

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places themselves. She identifies three kinds of places that foster emotional connections, a variety of non-propositional effect: memorialised locales (e.g. statues and monuments), familiarised locales (e.g.  routinised paths and ranges), and hangouts or home territories. Home territories in particular are where people have the greatest sense of connection and intimacy, as happens with a particular coffee shop or a specific street corner.

11.3 Cyberpragmatics of Facebook check-ins Checking in at a particular location is one of the top ten smartphone activities among adults with their smartphones. And location-based informationsharing has also become a trend in the space of social networking sites. Facebook check-ins are a good example of LA-mediated information (see Yus 2021). As can be seen in Figure 11.1, a typical Facebook check-in includes, at the top, the name and profile picture of the user, the name of the location and information on the place and time of the check-in. In the middle, a comment by the user justifies the publication of the check-in or provides additional information on the qualities of the place. The text of the user in the check-in reproduced on the left of Figure 11.1 justifies the presence at the location (“with the family visiting parks”), while the one on the right comments about a visit to a musical as part of a number of places of entertainment which have already been visited. Besides, a map shows the reader the exact location of the venue checked in. Finally, at the bottom, the

Figure 11.1 Facebook check-ins.

226 The physical and the virtual logo, the name of the venue, and the number of positive reviews displayed as 1 to 5 stars are provided, together with the number of reactions that the check-in has triggered, number of comments, and typical further Facebook actions (provide a reaction, share . . .). Upon finding the notification of a user’s check-in, the addressee has to assess its relevance. One default assumption is the expectation that the user is indeed at the location checked in, what in Baik (2020) is called localness assumption. The concept of true location is also related and contrasts with location fraud. Therefore, a basic default assumption during geotagging practices is to be true to the geotagged places. In any case, many users keep wondering what the point is of checking in at a particular location and telling others about it. For example, some informants in Bertel (2016: 167) showed puzzlement at being notified about a user’s check-in, which means that they “often express difficulty in making sense of the practice of checking in; although they understand what the technology does, they question the relevance of using it and its utility to them.” In what follows, some possible areas of pragmatic research in check-ins are listed, with emphasis on contextual constraints, intentions, mutual manifestness, inferences, and non-propositional effects. 1

2

Contextual constraints. Just like any form of smartphone-mediated communication, the broadcasting of check-ins is also constrained by interface designs and user-related issues (interface- or user-related contextual constraints). Regarding the former, Frith (2014: 898) analysed the Foursquare app and concluded that the social norms surrounding how participants treat the check-in as a piece of information are also shaped by its diverse design elements and how people take advantage of those elements. And Cramer et al. (2011: 64) emphasise the role of users in increasing the range of communicative options offered by the interface (or overcoming negative interface-related constraints), since the flexibility offered in the types of venues that can be checked in and then shared with friends opens a service to creative usage and appropriations not considered or predicted in the app design. In the case of user-centred constraints, personality and readiness for self-disclosure and self-management also constrain the number of check-ins produced on LAs. Underlying intentions. There must be an informative intention underlying the user’s check-in on Facebook. Simply informing someone of the user’s actual location seems irrelevant. Normally, the user who is checking in expects some inferred meanings regarding that specific location and not others, even though the check-in does not provide users with a substantive amount of information. Possible intentions are proposed in Noë et al. (2016: 344) including establishing a social connection with friends, discovering new places to visit, keeping track of places already visited, fighting boredom, and gamification. De Vicente (2017: 120) adds the emphasis on the user’s presence at the location and a real-time

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notification to the user’s list of contacts in case anyone is nearby and wants to meet. And it can even be a mechanism to keep a record of the places visited. In any case, that action was catalogued and preserved with the capacity of triggering other people’s actions in the foreseeable future. More generally, Tang et al. (2010) differentiate the purpose-driven use of a check-in (mainly for coordinating actions) from its social-driven use (more related to social communication). However, there may also be no specific reason, so a continuum exists between the fully intentional end and a more casual or even unintentional end of the continuum, with more automatic or non-reflexive productions of the check-in. Bertel (2016: 164), for instance, argues that some users are fully aware of the communicative effect of their check-ins, and they even augment the basic check-in format by attaching text or photos as well as tagging others that are with them at the time of the check-in. By contrast, checking in may in part be something one “just does” from time to time without having a specific reason to do so and without thinking too much about it. Another possible intention underlying the check-in is the user’s self-display and self-management by letting others know that they have chosen precisely that location and not any other when checking in and with expectations of audience validation (from friends, peers, or acquaintances). As Wang and Stefanone (2013: 440) remark, Forming a desirable self-presentation through checking-in at specific places may be understood as a means for enhancing one’s status within the social network. While the fundamental advantages of SNS [social networking sites] can be referred to as dynamic matrices of information through which users can observe others, edit and update status, and exhibit and expand their social network, checking in may facilitate a new level of exhibitionism to satisfy the need to express one’s chosen identity, to validate oneself within the social matrix, and to disclose location information as a method of forging social identities. Finally, check-ins may be interpreted as the user’s attempt to invite other users to engage in an interaction (offline or virtual) regarding the location communicated (Licoppe 2014: 114), also related to what in Yus (2014a) was called interactivity trigger, texts or visual discourses explicitly published with the intention to trigger users’ responses, interactions, or reactions, as is the case with new profile photos, breaking news on one’s life, or, as in this case, a specific check-in. 3

Mutual manifestness. An essential goal of check-ins is not only to make manifest some information (if any), but also – and crucially – to make this information mutually manifest. Schwartz (2015: 95–96) proposes

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4

the term documentation of relationship for the action of checking in, because check-ins are often accompanied by other metadata such as photographs and tips that result in a rich documentation of the user’s daily interactions. Besides, this place attachment promotes a parallel collective attachment to it or, in our terminology, a collective mutual manifestness of the qualities of the location as check-ins are automatically broadcast to the user’s friends, who become mutually aware of the places checked-in and the experiences lived therein. Inference. The addressees of check-ins infer the verbal-visual information and expect to obtain some cognitive reward from these publications. In this case, the relevance of the content of the check-in is influenced by the quality of the ties binding the users sharing the publication. Bertel (2016: 167), for example, finds differences between contacts in traditional mobile communication and Facebook contacts. The former are mostly made up of strong ties with people with whom the user to some extent shares everyday life. In this case, exchanging location information may be useful, for instance, for everyday coordination of subsequent activities. Facebook contacts, by contrast, are more extensive and diverse, consisting of both strong and weak ties (context collapse), and it is less clear how broadcasting locations can be relevant to the wide array of users being notified of that position of the initial user. Curiously, when location information is presented alongside or implicitly as part of more complex content, for instance entries with photos and descriptions, sharing a location may be both interesting and useful; it clearly adds to the experience and interpretation of the attached content (e.g. a photo on holidays) if the addressee user knows where it was taken. Predictably, different users will come up with different (ir)relevant interpretations of the same notified Facebook location (Tang et al. 2010: 87).

Of course, check-ins may generate unwanted interpretations and parallel inferential effects beyond the ones predicted by the initial user, for instance due to a lack of mutuality concerning what is meant by the check-in. Bertel (2016: 169) provides possible reasons for these unwanted interpretations of the check-in. First, the communicative content of a check-in is quite schematic, which means that the sender’s intention has to be inferred without the aid of many communicative cues. Without much contextual support, the meaning and relevance of the check-in are unclear, with risks of misinterpretation. Second, Facebook comes without a set of predefined purposes or rewards for checking in. The social networking site does not offer assistance to help clarify motivations or justifications for checking in. A nice example is provided in Hinton and Hjorth (2013: 120) about a girl – Joon – who either misinterprets a check-in as an invitation to meet her friend at a café or simply takes advantage of her friend’s location since she is in the vicinity:

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While Hyunjin waited for Soohyun in a café in Shinchon, South Korea, she toyed with her iPhone [. . .] she was happy with the Hipstamatic lens that made her coffee look like it was out of some old analogue photo shoot. She then quickly uploaded it, along with the caption “Waiting,” to a few social media sites with location-based services. [. . .] While the relevance of the caption might be lost on many of her friends, for Soohyun it served as a reminder that she was keeping her friend waiting as she dashed from the train station. Another friend of Hyunjin, Joon, was in the area when she saw her friend’s photo message and her location via her phone. She quickly made a detour to the café and sneaked up behind Hyunjin. Both girls laughed and shared a coffee while Soohyun raced to get to the café in busy peak hour traffic. Another possible element that may play a part in (in)correct inference of the intention underlying the check-in is the variety of audiences that follow users in their profles. Audience reactions are an important part of checkin communication. They can show their admiration and support by liking check-ins and also admire and emotionally support a friend for doing a particular activity. They can also show their support by adding comments. It could also be practical support, such as giving them advice or suggestions for visiting a place, by sending them lists of suggestions, or sharing multi-media information such as photos, text, tips, etc. However, the same check-in can be read by intimate friends and occasional acquaintances, workmates, and relatives (the aforementioned context collapse; see Marwick and boyd 2011), with radically different cognitive and affective effects from its interpretation. 5

Non-propositional effects. Finally, non-propositional effects (feelings, emotions, impressions . . .) may stem or “leak” from the act of communication involved in a Facebook check-in. Among others, users may obtain a sense of presence and ambient intimacy within the Facebook network of friends and also create social capital within a Facebookmanaged virtual group or community. Authors such as Crawford (2009: 259) argue that sharing mundane everyday activities may produce ambient intimacy among networked contacts, where “small details and daily events cumulate over time to give a sense of the rhythms and flows of another’s life.” The Facebook check-in would work in a similar way, producing a vivid sense of co-presence and intimacy with the user who is at that particular location.

In sum, location-sharing through LAs is an interesting feature of today’s hybrid interactions at the threshold of physical and virtual environments. It has brought back the importance of physical place even though they are mediated by smartphones which, initially, liberated people from their anchorage to place.

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Notes 1 This chapter is an updated version of the research on locative media done in Yus (2021). 2 Locative media are a sub-group of the higher-order label location-based services, defined in Hsiao (2017: 211) as those services that “allow users to access contextualised and personalised services based on their current location.”

12 Towards online–offline congruence Social networking apps

12.1 Introduction: social networking apps across online–offline environments Social networking apps (henceforth SNAs) are pervasive on the internet nowadays; they have now become an extension of the user’s offline networks and therefore exhibit qualities of what in previous research (e.g. Yus 2018d) was called a phase of physical–virtual congruence. In this phase, users are featured as nodes seamlessly dwelling through online and offline environments without distinguishing them in terms of strength. As proposed in Yus (2011a: 115–116), one of the key functions of social networking is to maintain interpersonal relationships that already exist in physical settings. SNAs extend physical relationships into the virtual realm, although different combinations are possible. However, rather than an extension, nowadays we rather witness a hybridisation of interactions and social networking environments in which the user is a node of converging mixed networks and interactions. In today’s smartphone-mediated SNAs, the user is expected to remain the same unique person online and offline (even if frequently the online version is more an enhanced self). Eisenlauer (2017: 226) adds that “users increasingly interact with offline acquaintances, while anonymous online activities seem to be on the decline.” Today’s trend towards incorporating the user’s location into smartphone-based interactions and into the discourses uploaded onto SNAs points in the same direction: greater congruence between the online and the offline sides of our engagement on these apps. This is related to another notion, authenticity, understood in the context of expectations about the perceived connection between the online persona and the offline self, a connection that becomes very evident when people’s sense of authenticity is violated, e.g. in online impersonations or fake identity claims (Page 2014: 49). SNAs not only play a key role in today’s management of identities and interactions but also exhibit the convergence, within the smartphone ecosystem, of SNAs complemented with other apps for taking pictures, recording video, editing and filtering these discourses, etc. This convergence turns smartphones into the perfect environment for all kinds of users (Ellison and boyd 2013: 158; Herring 2013a). DOI: 10.4324/9781003200574-12

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12.2 Contextual constraints on social networking apps 12.2.1 Interface-related constraints The social networking profile provides users with different affordances that restrict or allow for the kinds of discourse that may be used therein, ranging from text to images, videos, etc. These profiles have evolved to a large extent, and companies have incorporated features from competing sites seeking to offer the richest possible environment for uploading information, engaging in dialogues, and exchanging feedback. The aim sought by profile designers consists in making them as relevant as possible. By making the interface more user-friendly, designers expect to provide an effortless experience for people using their smartphone apps. As stressed by Reid (2018: 185), [w]hen we engage with our smartphone, regardless of our reason for doing so, we are allocating a fraction of our information processing ability towards the device and away from our surroundings. The dedication of our cognitive resources depends on how we use our smartphone; social use, such as scrolling through Instagram photos, is less taxing than process use, such as reading or composing text, which draws more from our cognitive reserve. For this relevance to be achieved, the information presented on the interface has to be clearly arranged, with suitable links that allow users to find, create, and process social information easily. In this regard, SNAs range from those which impose an interface upon their users with little room for innovation or creativity (e.g. Facebook) to those in which users enjoy greater freedom to change the layout or the position of sections, among other features (see Yus 2017c; Eisenlauer 2017: 236). What matters most from the (cyber)pragmatics point of view is whether users’ interactions are favoured or limited depending on site design. Similarly, van Dijck (2013) highlights the implications of platforms’ design when she affirms that platforms act as mediators rather than intermediaries. These design constraints become crucial for the smartphone app ecosystem, where users show less willingness to expend effort in managing their SNAs on small screens. Desktop profiles and their smartphone counterparts are generally similar, but some features inevitably need to be discarded or rearranged from the main desktop interface to the smartphone app in order to simplify the items displayed on the screen and make app management as effortless as possible. The most radical example of this variation between desktop and app interface is Facebook, whose desktop site provides a visual display of several relevant items which become simultaneously available to the user (areas to publish stories, upload entries, and make comments), to list subscribed pages, and to engage messaging conversations with Friends1

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connected to the site. By contrast, the Facebook app entails using two separate apps for the kind of activity that users perform on a single desktop page. On the one hand, the main Facebook app includes profiles with stories, pages followed, and so on (Figure 12.1, left). On the other hand, an independent app, Messenger, is required for interactions with other users (Figure 12.1, right). This may seem like a trivial alteration to some readers, but having to switch between apps to manage communication and interaction on Facebook discourages many users, who bitterly complain about the effort involved. Interface constraints are typically dealt with in the bibliography as site affordances. These are further constrained by the site’s algorithmic procedures, which select who appears on the user’s feed or which content is presented to them, among other filtering activities (supposedly predicting the eventual relevance of these automatic choices for the end user). Bucher

Figure 12.1 Facebook app interface (left) and Messenger app for interactions (right).

234 The physical and the virtual (2013) introduces the concept of algorithmic friendship to categorise the ways in which social media platforms engineer techno-sociality (expressed differently, how social media platforms use algorithms to select and recommend content which is supposed to prove more interesting or relevant; see Jones 2020b). 12.2.2 User-related constraints Although user-related constraints include the user’s age and gender, together with cultural background, the most important constraint is personality. As proposed for images in Chapter 8, several correlations may link user personality and the quantity of publications (and their quality), alongside an impact on the kind of non-propositional effects sought, consciously assessed, and subconsciously obtained through leakage. In this sense, narcissism is perhaps the highest researched personality trait on SNAs. On paper, SNAs constitute perfect venues for narcissists, eager to disclose private information and post more frequently about their accomplishments. Such displays seek to trigger favourable impressions and validation from others. SNAs such as Facebook provide users with the perfect environment for relatively easy social interactions and content uploading, a convenient way for individuals with narcissistic tendencies to fulfil their needs. Extroversion has also been signalled as a personality type that determines SNA activity. Extroverts are characterised as sociable, lively, active, assertive, carefree, dominant, and sensation seeking. This personality trait affects all kinds of interactions between the users and their smartphones: Extraverted individuals are more likely to have a smartphone, tend to receive calls, and overuse their phones. Extraversion is positively related with the daily use of WhatsApp and usage of photography apps. This personality trait is also found to be positively associated with many telephone call variables such as number of calls per day and unique persons called [. . .] Individuals who rate high in extraversion tend to be sociable and gregarious and prefer close and warm interpersonal relationships. They choose and enjoy more social activities than introverts and spend more leisure time with others than introverts. (Tan et al. 2018: 257) On the opposite side of the personality continuum, shyness also seems to impact SNA use and the kind of content uploaded therein. Despite the initial impression that shy users might be less prone to uploading content, research on this issue has yielded mixed results due to the conflicting nature of shyness on SNAs. As Appel and Gnambs (2019: 295) remark, some aspects of SNA communication may appeal to shy individuals, for example the asynchronous mode of interaction, which relieves users from the obligation to reply instantly or from body exposure, unlike what happens in face-to-face

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contexts. Besides, shy users are offered options to hide or embellish parts of their self that do not please them. Other aspects, though, might be clearly discouraging for shy users: “Individuals who tend to be particularly wary about others’ reactions might be concerned about others’ opinions and public feedback on own activities, which makes a SNA a rather unattractive environment for shy individuals” (ibid.). Other personality traits that have been explored in terms of their influence on SNA use include the famous “Big Five” personality traits: neuroticism (related to impulsiveness and emotional instability), extroversion (associated with sociability, assertiveness, being outgoing, and seeking interactions with others), openness (encompassing traits such as originality, curiosity, spontaneity, and imagination), agreeableness (materialises in cooperative, courteous, and empathetic behaviours that are trusting and avoid conflict), and conscientiousness (linked to characteristics like organisation, resourcefulness, diligence, and perseverance), with different research outputs regarding the connection with particular uses of SNAs such as posting frequency and the need to relate to others.

12.3 The discourse of social networking apps Content is king on SNAs, with self-presentation, identity management, and social bonding lying at the heart of compulsive content uploading on such sites and our expectations of relevance in terms of Friends’ replies, reactions, and validation. SNAs are particularly suited to engage in these kinds of content management and socialising because these devices have evolved to become convergent media ecosystems with all kinds of content that may be gathered, collected, edited, and uploaded onto social networking sites. As highlighted in Yus (2016d), the general inferential procedures applied to turn coded discourses (said, written, typed, recorded . . .) into meaningful interpretations are also at work when processing discourses uploaded or transferred onto SNAs. Consider these dialogues from Facebook: (1) User 1: User 2: User 1: User 2: User 1: (2) User 1 User 2: User 1: User 2:

The sooner we talk . . . :) ?? book . . . Ah! YES, AT LAST! :-D Thank God. A relief, isn’t it? Kisses. It is indeed. One less thing :) Kisses. needs vacations already???? Do we have MD in FB already? The thing is . . . this week I feel very tired!! I just need one tiny day . . . juuuuust one User 1: I Invited her, but she hasn’t accepted yet User 2: Well . . . I am going to invite her right now!!!! User 2: Ups! There are several of them . . . Which name did you type?

236 The physical and the virtual User 1: Will MD join some day? This is like Matrix, one never knows . . . (3) User 1: how good how good how gooooooooood User 2: With this sub-sentential utterance I didn’t get a thing hahaha There’s a need for contextual support hahaha kisses User 3: Me not understand User 4: Please, repeat more slowly User 1: What’s with you!!! :-) The context is today . . . The Three Wise Men !!!!! User 4: Ah, with these utterances one can’t understand a thing . . . User 3: You’ll surely get lots of presents because you were very nice !!!!! :-) User 1’s utterance in (1) puzzles User 2, who is unable to contextualise it properly. Therefore, User 1 has to explain – in a subsequent utterance – what she meant initially. As for (2), User 1’s initial utterance is easy to understand, but User 2’s second utterance (“Do we have MD in FB already”) is not, since it demands from the reader some reference assignment that is only accessible to those engaged in the conversation (and probably extending to mutual manifestness stemming from previous interactions), background information hence being expected. A successful interpretation at the end of this conversation also requires some knowledge about the flm The Matrix. Finally, (3) presents us with an initial sub-sentential utterance by User 1 that leaves plenty of information non-coded and forces the other users to assume the responsibility of supplying the absent information by themselves while simultaneously interpreting the utterance (notice that they actually complain that the utterance makes no sense without an appropriate context). Finally, User 1 is more explicit about the intentions underlying her utterance. The need for contextualisation is even more noticeable in utterances sent to and managed on SNAs, insofar as users tend to make comments “on the fly,” expecting others to join the outburst of words that lack proper contextualisation, thereby tending to generate puzzlement. As Eisenlauer (2017: 235) contends, supported by location data provided by their smartphones, users may share information on their current whereabouts. Cues on the physical environment where a status update, comment, or other text was being produced integrate with various contextual cues arising from constantly changing online landscapes in which the text appears. Added to these points, contextualisation not only acquires importance at a purely discursive level but also socially. It helps interlocutors frame utterances within their social and collective environment, and aids users in shaping their identities, their position in groups, and the state of their networks of Friends. Likewise, in addition to being usually co-created and collectively assessed on SNAs, shared, forwarded, and fostering interactions, content is also monitored and managed by the site’s software and algorithms. Lomborg (2014: 2) explains this as follows:

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users of social media may be productive and creative, not only through conversations between users, including interactive and ongoing communicative exchanges of content bits and relations, but also through ongoing elaborations of the interface, its aesthetic, its functional capabilities, and its connectivity to other software and platforms. This implies that the concept of a text must be expanded to encompass not only the communicative contributions of users, but also the software dimension of social media. As emphasised in Yus (2017c), the convergence of media discourses and users’ comments on other users’ content poses a challenge for pragmatics, because discourses are often generated by a group of users on SNAs, and their interpretation relates to the contribution of many users. For example, DeAndrea (2012: 510) concluded that “communicative behaviour that occurs on new, participatory social media featuring content from both webpage owners and other viewers can cloud judgments of intent and intentionality.” The explanation lies in the fact that content is co-created by profile owners and their readers, to such an extent that they end up forming a discursive blend which has to be processed as a discursive whole. 12.3.1 Discourse on social networking apps: typed Although a great variety of discourses may be used, shared, and exchanged on SNAs, typed discourses still remain pervasive on such apps. These discourses exhibit most of the text-enhancing qualities that were addressed in Chapter 5, including text alteration and the use of visual elements (e.g. emojis, stickers, and GIFs). They also prove useful in entry-related interactions or synchronous messaging conversations on SNAs. Besides, as has been argued throughout this book, interface affordances – together with site-specific discursive affordances not found elsewhere – limit or favour the quality and quantity of discourse that may be produced on SNAs. An example is Twitter: Its 280-character limit per post impose clear constraints on the gap between what is typed and the interpretation intended. According to the explanation provided in Yus (2011a: 144f), tweets show a bigger gap between what is coded and what is meant and interpreted, readers being expected to use contextual information when performing inferential strategies on tweets. Several researchers have also addressed the specificity of Twitter from a pragmatic perspective. Puschmann (2015: 30) analyses the sorts of communal bonds that emerge from shared hashtag (#) use. While some hashtags are used playfully to denote specific concepts, others seem to serve as a discursive space where communities arise. In any case, these groups of users form in an ad-hoc fashion around a particular hashtag and have a relatively loose social structure. Uses of hashtags for varied identity-related pragmatic strategies also occur frequently, as attested by Dayter (2016). Another example can be found in Scott (2015), for whom the hashtag performs several other

238 The physical and the virtual inference-directing roles when it comes to obtaining the intended interpretation of the tweet in which they appear. For instance, the hashtag in (4a) allows the reader to locate the referent for “it” and make the derivation of an optimal interpretation like (4b) – more effort relieving. (5a) shows a hashtag which allows for the derivation of the user’s propositional attitude towards the tweet, interpreted as (5b). (4) a She’s done it! An amazing amazing effort. Please txt FIVE to 70510 #davina #windermere. b British television presenter Davina McCall has finished her charity swim across Lake Windermere. (5) a One week from today I can start throwing again. #finally. b The user is relieved that she can start throwing one week from today. Instagram posts often contain hashtags too, as was mentioned in passing in Chapter 8. Matley (2018a, 2018b), for example, addresses self-praise, politeness, and apologies communicated by them. Instagram posters use these hashtags as part of a strategy to come up with an appropriate level of self-praise (the hashtag #brag functioning as a self-directed meta-comment, as exemplified in (6a)) to engage in positive self-presentation (as in 6b) and via transgression of interactional norms: for example, by explicitly stating the intention to brag within the post itself (6c). This adds to an understanding of the pragmatic functions performed by hashtags and their role in positive self-presentation on SNAs (Matley 2018a: 30). (6) a Last night I made chicken Marsala #brag [Photo of chicken curry dish]. b My sunset is better than your sunset #brag #southafrica #africa [Photo of sunset in South Africa]. c I’m totally going to #brag about the birthday setup I have for my girlfriend. She doesn’t even know yet. One further topic of interest in this section is text alteration inside SNA posts, which accomplishes functions similar to those described in Chapter 5. This strategy constitutes the logical outcome of communicative situations within SNAs that stir exacerbated feelings and emotions of users which are hard to express by simply typing plain text. Take, by way of example, comments and dialogues on Facebook related to published photos. These are typically flattering acts of congratulation or sympathy, and, as such, users tend to connote them textually so that the initial user who posted the visual entry can feel a further layer of emotional intensity. This supplementary pragmatic task is added to the inferential filling up between what is typed and what is meant with such typed discourse. Examples include the Facebook dialogues in (7–8) triggered by posted photos:

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(7) User 1: Pedazo concierto se marcaron el miércoles. . . . puffff. . . . [What a concert they gave last Wednesday]. User 2: Dime que estabas allí . . . [Tell me you were there]. User 1: si . . . dime que estabas tu también y te mato por no avisarme . . . [Yes . . . tell me you were there too and I’ll kill you for not letting me know]. User 2: jajajaja OJALÁ!!! Y SIEEEEEEENTO ENVIDIA, MUCHA . . . Y NO SÉ SI MUY SANA!!! jajaja [I wish! I’m very envious, very . . . and not in a very healthy way]. User 1: La próxima vez que vengan te apuntas, que yo no me los pierdo!!!! [Join me next time they come, I’ll certainly not miss them]. User 2: HECHO!!! [Done!]. (8) User 1: eres tu? qué rara sales no?? (pero guapisima) y el otro quien es? tu primo? [Is it you? You look weird, don’t you? (but very pretty) and who’s the other one? your cousin?]. User 2: Sii,soy yo! Y si, es mi primo XXX :-) me convenció para salir de fiesta XD [Yes, it’s me! And yes, it’s my cousin XXX . . . he persuaded me to party with him]. User 3: WUAPOSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS [Gorgeous]. User 4: Q guapa q sales User 2!!!!!! bueno como siempre jejejeje, muuuak [You look so pretty, user 2! well as you always do hehehe kiss]. These dialogues contain many text-altering strategies meant to add affective, nonverbal, or intonational non-coded information. Similarly, capitalisation adds emphasis; repetition of letters and punctuation marks oralise the typed text, and these text-altering strategies are complemented with onomatopoeias such as pufff, muuuak, and jejeje. In the context of this book, such onomatopoeias are best analysed under the saying/showing distinction (see Wharton 2000, 2001, 2009). As described by Sasamoto and Jackson (2016: 42), showing often arises when a speaker wishes to communicate something that can hardly be put into conceptual terms by using language (saying). On some occasions, what the speaker wants to convey may be too vague and ineffable – for instance, a complex feeling or a sensory experience. Alternatively, providing direct evidence may prove more convincing (e.g. pointing at black clouds to communicate that rain is expected). Speakers can also decide whether saying or showing is more appropriate in a communicative situation when prompted by another speaker’s utterance.

240 The physical and the virtual Sasamoto (2019: 49) shows how the interlocutor’s reply to the utterance in (9a) may be shaped as a coded linguistic input (saying, as in 9b)) or noncoded evidence of their respective intentions (showing, as in (9c)): (9) a. Tom: Shall we play tennis tomorrow? b. Jim: I’ve injured my wrist and can’t play tennis for another three weeks. c. Jim shows Tom his bandaged wrist. It seems consequently reasonable to state that showing often involves sharing experiences or draws on experiential context elements. But onomatopoeias do not have a bodily or visual nature either; instead, onomatopoeias exploit resemblances between phonetic forms and events happening in the world. In a sense, showing by means of onomatopoeias exemplifies cross-modal showing. As such, different uses apparently exist along the saying/showing continuum, ranging from very novel transcriptions of sounds that may only be characterised in terms of showing, through a middle range of terms where showing and saying are combined, through such fully lexicalised cases where no showing whatsoever can be identified, as happens with famous cross-cultural differences in the fixed coding of certain onomatopoeias (hahaha and woof in English vs. jajaja and guau in Spanish, to quote but a few). Finally, a number of expressive discourses also abound in typed SNA conversations including emojis, animated stickers, and GIFs. These are particularly frequent in discourses that convey emotion-laden non-propositional information (affective effects), helping the user express affective states and affective stances (Barton and Lee 2013: 86–106), either on their own or referring to previously typed feelings and emotions. Examples of the latter can be found in these tweets (Zappavigna 2017: 441), where emojis complement the emotional states already typed with the verb feel (in italics): (10) Why do I feel so awkward when I talk to you? 🙈😖 I feel Good Today 🙌 . . . I feel really really shitty 😷 Needless to say, emojis do not only play the role of communicating affective non-propositional information on SNAs. Certainly, there is no reason why they could not perform the range of emoji functions proposed in Chapter 5. For example, Spina (2019) emphasised how emojis prove useful for conversational management on Twitter, where they may even blend with hashtags and thus offer contrasting perspectives on visual affect and discursive flexibility enabled on social media. Figure 12.2 depicts reactions to two different users’ posts on the Facebook app which are mainly managed by means of emojis and animated stickers.

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Figure 12.2 Stickers and emojis in replies to users’ posts on Facebook.

They range from the attempt to express a more intense feeling to some purely decorative uses of such discursive elements (e.g. to add colour), including the user’s “need to stand out visually from the commenting crowd.” Lim (2015) values the role of these expressive discourses in achieving what is referred to as communicative fluidity, whereby the interaction can become smoother and more seamless thanks to these multiple channels that we can draw upon to express ourselves, our attitudes, and our emotions. In addition to text, emojis and stickers are now at our disposal on top of voice and video calls, and we can strategically choose the best means by which to express our feelings, opinions, and intentions so as to attain communicative fluidity. Furthermore, the utilisation of different spellings, symbols, and stickers or GIFs makes it possible for the user not only to engage in the expected social ritual of textually and visually flattering the initial user’s post but also to publicly show linguistic creativity and originality.

242 The physical and the virtual 12.3.2 Discourse on social networking apps: visual SNA users can easily incorporate images taken with the smartphone camera and use them to initiate interactions and engage in visual self-presentation strategies. This entails editing and enhancing those images and tagging and commenting on them, as well as tailoring them to achieve the desired effect and audience validation. As highlighted by Miller et al. (2016: 156), people are now accustomed not only to photographing and visually displaying what matters to them but also to capturing things that might previously have been not important enough to merit being photographed. SNAs imply much more than posting one’s photographs, though. Users now edit and embellish images, using filters on Instagram, adding their own text overlays and sharing, recirculating, and reconstructing images that may later become memes as well. As suggested in Chapter 8, images are likely to achieve relevance in themselves, i.e. due to the objective value corresponding to the referent depicted in that image (image–referent contiguity). However, images on social media often seem trivial or banal (e.g. memes, images with humorous texts, “food pics,” and selfies). In that case, our contention was that their relevance lies in the user–audience contiguity (through the image). Millions of these seemingly banal low-quality photos are shared every day on SNAs. An individual who captures and shares such casual photos does not try to obtain the most aesthetically impressive photo, but a whole array of valuable effects may derive from these acts of causal image taking and sharing, both for the “sender user” (who expects to obtain rewarding reactions from users) and for the audience (feelings of connection, increased mutuality . . .). Needless to say, users may also engage in more aesthetic photo taking and editing. In any case, image-centred smartphone conversations promote visible speech, an informal way of taking and consuming images – including visual jokes and visual notes – on the fly. In any case, images are ubiquitous discourses on SNAs, and they acquire relevance for users’ self-presentation and social bonding strategies. Users act upon all the stages of image publishing (taking, editing, or enhancing images with dedicated apps, after which they tag and eventually comment on them). And images are mainly posted for one main reason: to trigger reactions and interactions, many of them of a phatic nature (Yus 2019a), which cause significant affective effects for the users involved. Users likewise have the chance to increase the prospective relevance of their photos by tagging them (see Dhir et al. 2015, 2016b). Tagged users receive notifications after being tagged, which results in a mutual awareness of the user–audience contiguity through the image. These notifications generated by the system have obvious implications when it comes to developing and maintaining SNA-mediated interactions. Most importantly of all, tagging means connecting two users through a visual discourse, bringing them closer, and reminding them of their affective bonds (Hand 2020).

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Firstly, images are made by using smartphones, which enjoy the status of intimate devices, being always carried “always on” and “always on the person,” present in almost every aspect of our personal lives. Secondly, because the smartphone is “always there,” no limits exist on what is available for photographing, including very personal, intimate moments. Thirdly, smartphones are mostly connected to apps that encourage immediate visual communication. Images managed by apps communicate each person’s location, convey emotions, and are expected to be distributed to others in real time, often while simultaneously undertaking multiple engagements with other social practices within the app ecosystem. SNA-mediated images shape and transfer affective feelings that cannot be shared face to face. However, tagging also presents a number of drawbacks that sometimes make users untag the photo for reasons ranging from privacy issues to loss of control over eventual audiences (see Dhir et al. 2016b). For example, tagging means multiplying and distributing those images across potentially unknown audiences, and some conventions need to emerge in this environment that seek to address both the uncontrollability of the smartphone-ascamera and its ubiquity that encourages an exponential increment in photo taking, tagging, and uploading.

12.3.3 Discourse on social networking sites: multimodal Multimodal discourses abound on SNAs alongside text and images. Video stands out as one of these pervasive discourses, typically managed by dedicated apps such as TikTok. Once again, the app ecosystem allows for an effortless recording of the video and its circulation on social media, together with apps for editing, enhancing, in-video commenting, and the like. Other frequent multimodal discourses include comments that combine text and emojis, stickers and GIFs, and the image macro memes so often uploaded on SNAs to generate humorous effects. Multimodality also becomes visible in typical cases like those portrayed in Figure 12.2, where a visual discourse (a photo) prompts multimodal “textemoji-sticker responses” by Friends, also through photographs, videos, and GIFs also inserted sometimes in the flow of the multimodal conversation. An interesting additional element that may appear in SNA interactions is the link to some content outside the site which the SNA system turns automatically into a broader piece of discourse that includes not only the link itself but also an image of the linked content and some of its initial lines of text. Just like visual discourses, multimodal discourses are frequently shared with other users. In the context of this book, one of the major reasons for sharing is to engage in self-presentation, identity shaping, and community bonding, including expectations of reward facilitated by Likes, praising comments, or further discourse-triggered interactions. In short, sharing allows users to position themselves in the SNA community and obtain

244 The physical and the virtual effects already mentioned such as ambient awareness (Thompson 2008) or connected presence (Licoppe 2004) as gratifying non-propositional effects. An interesting research topic related to multimodality on SNAs revolves around how users increase the production and circulation of these mixedmedia discourses in the wake of global events that trigger massive concern across users. An example is the hugely increased circulation of multimodal discourses on social networking and messaging apps that occurred during the 2020 worldwide coronavirus crisis. Amongst hundreds of critical posts, many other discourses were humorous, trying to ease the global suffering of people who were either depressed under lockdown or afraid to lose their jobs under these unusual circumstances. Figure 12.3 reproduces some of these humorous coronavirus-related multimodal discourses shared or forwarded on SNAs during the pandemic. Multiple possible interactions may exist between the text and the image in such discourses. Image (a) (© José Manuel Puebla, reproduced with permission) depicts a lockdown scene with people inside their flats. One of them shouts Soy abogada especializada en divorcios (I am a lawyer specialising in divorce) while other people shout ¿teléfono? (phone number?) from their flats. A relevant interpretation of (a) entails the retrieval of coronavirus-centred background information such as (11a-b) in order to yield the implicated conclusion (11c). Image (b) in turn shows a denotative image of pigeons that conveys a supplementary connotative meaning due to the accompanying text (Pigeons obeying the “social distancing” protocol due to coronavirus). As for image (c), it depicts a surreal image of a dog that watches sheep on a computer screen, and the text ahora trabaja desde casa

Figure 12.3 Some of the multimodal humorous discourses shared on SNAs during the coronavirus pandemic.

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(now he works from home) connects the user to the current state of affairs. For the meme shown in (d), the user needs both background information (12a) about the film to which the still belongs and contextual information about the pandemic (12b) and must combine this contextual information with the meme text (A: Doc, why isn’t there anybody in the street?/B: Damn it, Marty. It’s 2020) in order to draw the implicated conclusion (12c). Image (e) shows a typical scene in some Spanish festivities that involve bulls chasing people. However, the image acquires a more pandemic-related connotative meaning with the aid of the textual caption (The Health Authorities test new methods to force people to stay at home). (f) portrays an image where sport trainers and slippers merge. The name of a famous sports brand next to the image leads to the premise in (13a) as well as the implication in (13b). Image (g) offers a sharp contrast between connoted interpretations of the same image: one supposedly from 2019, in which the man is categorised as vago de mierda (lazy git), and another from 2020, where the same man, depicted in exactly the same way, is now a responsible adult (adulto responsable). Full humorous effects will only be achieved if the user retrieves clashing contextual assumptions such as those in (14a-b), whose resolution via pandemic-related contextual information yields the desired effects. Finally, image (h) entails the retrieval of the well-known stereotype of Spanish workers in (15a) plus background information (15b) in order to derive the humorous implicated conclusion (15c) when (15a-b) are combined with the text (The works to build the first macro hospital in Spain have started) and the image. (11) a Having to share a flat with one’s spouse for a long time is challenging. b During lockdown, personal differences between spouses are aggravated. c Due to lockdown, many married couples are willing to get divorced. (12) a The image of the meme belongs to the film Back to the Future, in which the character on the right designs a car that can travel back in time. b The coronavirus pandemic took place in 2020 and, during lockdown, nobody was allowed to leave their homes. c The characters have travelled forward to a full-blown pandemic time. (13) a During lockdown, jogging is forbidden, and one has to remain at home. b Slippers are the only suitable shoes during lockdown. (14) a (Normally) one is not supposed to spend the whole day doing nothing. b (Nowadays) it is comprehensible that one spends the whole day doing nothing. (15) a Spanish workers are lazy, and normally one of them works while the others simply watch.

246 The physical and the virtual b In Wuhan (China), in the midst of a major coronavirus spread, workers managed to build a hospital in just ten days. c Spanish workers are lazy and useless, unable to match Chinese efficiency. As can be inferred from these examples, the accompanying text very often forces alternative connotative meanings that become superimposed on the direct denotative referent initially inferred from the image; such meanings rely on users’ retrieval of background knowledge about the different issues related to the pandemic during their interpretation.

12.4 Interaction on social networking apps SNAs are not only sites used for content uploading and news feeding purposes but also areas of intense interaction between physically scattered peers, relatives, and acquaintances that generate effects both cognitively and at an affective level. Some of the issues involved in SNA interactions are briefly commented upon below. 12.4.1 Dialogue Dialogues on SNAs, synchronous and asynchronous, typically develop as reactions to a user’s (textual, visual, or multimodal) entry and involve different interlocutors (one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, manyto-many, and so on). They may likewise be dyadic or adopt the form of group interactions taking place within the messaging area embedded in the interface. SNAs arise as the perfect digital environment for dialogues and interaction, where users create and manage social relationships with proximal or distant users. The shape and intensity of the relationships depend on the affordances of the different sites and on a wide range of personal constraints. SNAs “facilitate a distinctive form of social interaction online, creating a constantly expanding network of social relationships characterized by varying degrees of familiarity and tenuousness and by the exchange of symbolic content in multiple formats and modalities that is made available to others with varying degrees of openness and restrictiveness” (Thompson 2020: 6–7). However, despite the possibility to interact with hundreds of users on the site in question, users tend to interact with only a handful of Friends, the others being left in a permanent state of “to be contacted if ever required or desired.” Within an environment of context collapse (Marwick and boyd 2011) with varied users and heterogeneous audiences, many users do not really know how many people make up their Friends’ list, and those with many Friends can only identify a smaller percentage of their network correctly, so this “interactive narrowing” comes as no surprise. Besides, both

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Friends and their entries are managed by the site’s algorithm that decides which users are visible and which of their content can be accessed. On SNAs such as Facebook, interactions normally comprise chains of successive messages related to an initial post which are sequentially uploaded by the system. This attribute does not necessarily mean that these interaction messages are disorganised or lack cohesion and coherence. In fact, users tend to build on one another’s contributions, and these turns are thematically organised. Take the Facebook conversation in (16) (translated from original in Spanish), where the interaction begins with a central future-oriented post, [1], which acts as an interactivity trigger (Yus 2014a): a post clearly intended to obtain other users’ comments and reactions. This initial post about being accepted as a trainee teacher at a high school is commented upon by several friends who are also in the teaching community, and they coherently co-construct an account of what her activity as a teacher in training will be like, both by User 1 herself (post 4) and her friends (posts 6, 12 – this post being interesting since User 7 welcomes User 1 into the community of teachers, thus stressing group membership, 15, 17). Simultaneously, several parallel comments enhance mutual friendship and emphasise group cohesion by praising and verbalising their group-related feelings for one another. Several users show that they are glad to hear the news (posts 2, 5, 8, 13, 14 – this post being interesting in the way the user positions herself as belonging to the teaching community, 16, 18), which are reciprocated (posts 7, 9 – this post also revealing another collective identity of User 1: the community of gym users), whereas others praise User 1 regardless of that piece of news (posts 3, 11). The initial post by User 1 also leads to future meeting plans with her friends (post 10). (16)

[1]

[2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

[7] [8]

[9]

User 1: I have been accepted as a teacher in training at IES X! and I am going with my mate User 2!!! I cannot be happier!! User 3: I am happy for you. User 4: You are the best! User 1: Hope I’ll get my pupils to love me, even if it is nothing compared with how much yours love you. User 5: congratulations! :-) User 4: It will be the best experience in your life, unforgettable, enriching and full of learning .  .  . They will certainly become very fond of you. User 1: thanks Nina!!!xx User 6: User 1!!! Those pupils should get ready for what is coming up for them! haha just kidding, you know, enjoy because that’s the best thing you can do (ah! when shall we talk, potato face? today? tomorrow? User 1: I can’t today ’cause I am going to a gym dinner .  .  . haha, I rarely go to the gym but I couldn’t miss the

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[10]

User 6:

[11]

User 1:

[12] [13] [14]

User 7: User 8: User 9:

[15]

User 2:

[16] User 10: [17] User 11: [18] User 12:

dinner! :-) tomorrow evening-night suits me! when are you free, goatface? hahaha ehmmm!! I see my friend, tomorrow’s “ferpect” then. I will call you before dinner or so, I hope you won’t reply with a “User 6” voice hahaha, I mean, don’t return home shattered. I can’t promise you anything! but you know that it won’t be like in Oxford, I won’t go to such extremes! hehehe I miss you so much!!! pk, send me a whatsapp my dear and I’ll get connected!! I’ll be in town. You’ll succeed for sure . . . welcome to the community!!!!. Congratulations!! how good User 1!! you deserve it!!! Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez, I wanted you to be at my high school, since you’re one of the best hahaha I hope everything will be fine although you’d be better off at my school. Luv u. kisses. Congratulations User 1!!! both of you at large in the school is dangerous! We’re going to enjoy ourselves!! :-) I looooove it!!! Heyyy, High School X is a good place for teaching practice!! :-) You can’t imagine how happy I am!!! .  .  . well, you actually do!! :-) Watch out for the pupils, because you are such a hot teacher!! I adore you beautiful

In-post interactions become threaded with parallel dialogues on many occasions. This happens, for instance, in the presence of a triggering discourse that elicits responses by users making up a dialogue, as already mentioned. At some stage of this dialogue, some users reply to a specific message or comment uttered by one of the users who replied to that triggering post (and often interact with one another), while other users keep replying to that initial post. Nonetheless, even when faced with a threaded situation like this one, the system arranges the messages in such a way that the threads can be visually identified and never get mixed up. For example, those which may be labelled as comment-centred interactions on Facebook are visually distinguished from entry-centred interactions, the former appearing with a smaller letter size and being placed by the system immediately below the comment that triggered the post. Dialogues on SNAs are often phatic in nature (Yus 2019a), intended to emphasise both group relatedness and the existing bonds between the interlocutors and to provide a way to check which information is shared (mutually manifest). Phatic messages predominate in a time when, despite being physically scattered, people crave contact and connectedness. As Radovanovic and Ragnedda (2012) correctly state, the dependency on an evidence

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of mutual presence and connectivity awareness creates a new sociability pattern which revolves around being constantly online and present and in relationships which become a fluid, ever-changing continuum. New technologies enable the exchange of communication practices which they call phatic expressions, “phatic posts that enable creating, fostering and sustaining relationships and social interaction through non formal conversations, online presence and intimacy.” Even though the content itself tends to be banal or trivial in these phatic expressions arising from non-stop connectivity, the array of affective effects generated out of such phatic interactions exceeds the effort involved in interpreting the turns making up the conversation. Examples include (17) below from Facebook (my translation from original in Spanish). (17) User 1: If only it could stop raining and being cold in Oxford? Thanks! User 2: When you are in Spain you’ll die of HEAT and ask for the rain and the cold. Now it’s between 28–30 degrees. User 1: how wicked! And you tell me that! here it’s raining and the windy is going to blow my umbrella away! I’ll be back on Friday! We’ll all go to the nice little beach together! 🙂 User 3: I don’t mean to make you jealous but 38º here this evening . . . There had to be something good about returning from Oxford, right? Kiss! User 4: Yesss we can go to the beach after June the 6th when exams are over, so this week you will stay at home WITHOUT GOING TO THE BEACH because you tan very fast and wait for us to go together 🙂 This dialogue between several girls in (17) is triggered by an initial rhetorical question posed by User 1 with the obvious intention of arousing reactions and interactions within her close circle of female friends. The interaction revolves around a typical phatic topic, the weather, and the information conveyed in the dialogue is not the most relevant part of the interaction. Instead, it is the urge to feel connected to one another and the mutuality of information about their bonded group along with their longing to get together again that really makes the exchange relevant to all of them. And some information also becomes foregrounded during the conversation (e.g. exams, User 1 tanning easily, etc.), is taken for granted, and is also enjoyed in its mutual manifestness. 12.4.2 Users’ responses and reactions Most entries on SNAs aim at causing an effect on the audience, who are for that matter expected to react to such entries in a number of ways (clicking on Like, commenting on the post, or engaging in entry-triggered dialogues,

250 The physical and the virtual to quote but a few). These responses and reactions generate highly relevant effects in the initial user, most of them relating to the user’s identity management and identity shaping (i.e. self-expression, self-concept, self-identity, self-worth, engagement and sense of belonging among other notions; see below). The Like button (thumbs-up) stands out as one of that so-called paralinguistic digital affordances (henceforth PDAs) that users resort to when they wish to react to another user’s text, link, image or video (Sumner et al. 2020).2 Like used to be one of the few available options to react on SNAs such as Facebook, but now these have been extended to include “angers me” and “surprises me” buttons, for instance (Figure 12.4, top). Furthermore, in April 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic, two further PDAs were added (Figure 12.4, bottom). Their creators thought that sometimes users needed a hug in those times under lockdown, and it was hard to get or give one because of social distancing, so Facebook offered two new emoji reactions (for Facebook and Messenger) featuring a smiley face hugging a heart and a pulsing heart, respectively. Alexandru Voica (Facebook communication manager) wrote on Twitter: “We’re launching new Care reactions on @facebookapp and @messenger as a way for people to share their support with one another during this unprecedented time. We hope these reactions give people additional ways to show their support during the #COVID19 crisis.” These reactions are easy to click on, and therefore users value them to a lesser extent than typed comments and the subsequent associated interactions as a means towards self-gratification. Overall, the relevance of these

Figure 12.4 Paralinguistic digital affordances on Facebook plus recent coronavirusrelated reactions.

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PDAs seems to lie in quantity rather than in quality. Reich et al. (2018) concluded that who gives the Likes matters far less than the sheer number of Likes received, thus proving this preference for quantitative reward. In general, then, users who publish a brand-new profile photo of themselves will be disheartened to see that it triggered few Likes, probably engaging in social comparison with other users. These non-propositional effects resulting from users’ reactions and responses may fall within the initial user’s full awareness – this happens, for example, when individuals consciously deem their self-presentation successful based on the number of PDAs received, or they may produce an array of (dis)satisfying effects on the user beyond full conscious assessment. Why engage in (dis)liking PDA behaviour? These feedback cues demand little effort but may still be produced out of several motivations which are not always easy to work out. For example, when a user reacts to an entry with an “angers me” button, the poster of that entry will not be sure of whether this is a reaction to the content of the entry or to the user’s decision to post that entry on the news feed.3 Similarly, a Like to a photo on SNAs may mean that either the photo or the photographer, or both, is liked. To make matters more complicated, the value that users ascribe to these seemingly simple iconic expressions sometimes differs from the meaning intended by the interface developers. In fact, users are continuously coming up with new meanings to PDAs that they eventually develop into important interactional tools. Sumner et al. (2020) argue that receiving PDAs can provide users with a sense of social support and inclusion, yet social comparisons and failed expectations based on PDAs sometimes make users feel ostracised. After all, “it can feel hurtful to receive fewer Likes than your friends do or to have your post overlooked by a loved one. Therefore, while social media users appreciate PDAs as a form of communication, many also feel pressure regarding how to interpret and provide these cues in an appropriate way.” Hayes et al. (2016) asked their informants for possible motivations to use and receive PDAs such as Likes and concluded that, although these are sometimes used literally when liking the post, their use may be ironic too, thus going beyond their literal referent (with a social connotation). Further reasons include the acknowledgement of having viewed a message and engaging in social grooming. As a closely related aspect, their informants also signalled that the Like button makes easier the enactment of social support, which becomes important in relational behaviour. Liking posts is also a relatively low-effort way to show alignment with important topics and beliefs, especially when compared to other SNA options such as writing on a post, commenting on it, or even sharing it. Comments on a user’s entry are more valuable as a source of selfgratification and audience validation because they take effort to code and expectations of relevance immediately increase simply by seeing notifications

252 The physical and the virtual that a certain entry has led to comments. Instead, PDAs are too easy to click on (see Zell and Moeller 2018: 31).

12.5 Non-propositional effects from social networking app use The most important non-propositional effects associated with SNA use fall within the realm of identity management. In fact, as already claimed in previous research, identity shaping and self-expression drive a large proportion of user activity on these SNAs. Section 12.7 will deal with these identityrelated effects. SNAs serve as a pool in which all users fish for others’ and their own affective effects, to which the sites themselves should be added, using algorithms to grab and exploit users’ feelings and emotions in their own interest. It has been stressed in this book that such non-propositional effects add to the relevance of the content uploaded on these sites, but they may constitute the main source of relevance as well. In general, users expect a relevant affective reward in exchange for their effort to provide the audience with substantive (or emotionally rewarding or both) content. Needless to say, when expressing feelings and emotions, the SNA environment is usually cues-filtered in comparison to the rich face-to-face setting. However, users manage to convey their affective states by resorting to discursive affordances such as emojis, text alteration, images, stickers, and GIFs, among others. Indeed, several scholars argue that emotions can be expressed just as well online as in face-to-face situations and are even expressed more openly online, given the lack of social constraints and the disinhibition factor that the internet fosters. This particularly holds true for introverts, who can benefit from the lack of contextual richness of many forms of SNA communication when willing to express their emotions. Affective effects are often consciously sought. The user holds certain feelings and emotions while engaging in SNA use and expects affective reciprocity. In this sense, Valkemburg (2017) states that it is only in recent years that analysts have paid attention to another affect-related phenomenon: the socalled self-effects, i.e. “the effects of messages on the cognitions (knowledge or beliefs), emotions, attitudes, and behavior of the message creators/senders themselves.” Therefore, the creation of SNA content may not only affect the cognition, emotions, attitudes, and behaviours of followers but also those of the posting users themselves. Need of belonging stands out from the other affective effects sought, influencing not only SNA use but also the quality and quantity of the content uploaded, as well as the interactions held there. According to the so-called belongingness hypothesis, humans have an innate drive to seek, form, and maintain stable interpersonal relationships, and the same applies to SNA environments (Wong et al. 2019). This inherent urge favours ongoing positive social interactions and exchanges between “individuals who feel a sense of belonging report greater relationship satisfaction, higher self-esteem,

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reduced loneliness, and better social and psychological functioning. Research has consistently found that a desire to belong is a motivator for SNA use generally and image-sharing in particular” (Wong et al. 2019: 466). This desire for a feeling of belonging would correlate with feedback in terms of feelings connected to social support, as concluded in Grieve et al. (2013: 608), which showed that on Facebook, there are mental health and well-being benefits that are associated with feeling connected to others in the Facebook environment. Facebook relationships appear to be a useful avenue for social bonding, with the benefits associated with Facebook connectedness similar to those obtained from offline relationships [.  .  .] it seems that Facebook use might provide an alternative form of social connection to the connection experienced in offline environments. If so, the utility of Facebook connectedness may have specific implications for the social bonding of those individuals who are either unable, or unwilling, to connect with others in traditional environments. The expression of affective meanings is ultimately constrained by user and interface qualities, as has been the case throughout this book. Predictably, gender and personality factors impact the expression of feelings and emotions. Non-propositional effects on SNAs may be consciously assessed; other effects may also leak from online interactions rather than fall within the users’ full awareness, though they still play an important role in today’s dependency on SNAs for affective satisfaction. Plenty of research suggests both positive and negative non-propositional effects of SNA use, especially on Facebook, which aid in maintaining connections and identity management thanks to reactions, comments, and overall audience validation. They may also provoke loneliness, anxiety, and depression, though, especially in the younger generations, who become frustrated when they engage in social comparison with other users and find that their Friends have more exciting lives than theirs, when they long for a better body shape that fits current beauty standards, dream of obtaining more popularity, and so on. Consequently, research often reveals contradicting positive–negative affective outcomes from SNA use.

12.6 The specificity of social networking apps Compared to desktop SNSs, SNAs exhibit distinctive qualities in the way they are managed (on small touchscreens), the interface (content, menus, tags, frames, and so on), and the constant interaction between the smartphone and physical location (Chapter 11), which determines what kind of content is obtained and shared on SNAs, particularly regarding photos (of food, selfies, landscapes . . .) and videos (recorded directly with the smartphone’s

254 The physical and the virtual in-built video camera). Schrock (2015: 322) adds that smartphone SNAs have shifted functionality from a focus on “profiles” as the main source of online identity (see Section 12.7) to an ever-changing stream of information generated by smartphones in the shape of status updates and messages. Broadly speaking, it can be stated that unlike desktop-based SNSs, SNAs offer users a number of positive features. These include, according to Jabeur et al. (2013: 72–73), immediacy (users receive answers to their questions or report on important events on the fly); relevance (apps use location-aware devices to send queries and messages to people within a defined geographic area, enabling groups of users to share a physical experience virtually); brevity (short messages delivered through smartphone devices are easier for others to understand and respond to); and retrieval (conversations can be archived and retrieved later, creating a kind of real-time archive of social interactions). In my opinion, relevance through location awareness constitutes the most distinctive quality of smartphone SNAs compared to their desktop counterparts. The importance of location becomes obvious not only in the actual position of a user while sharing discourses and interacting with others but also in the presence of the broader notion of offline place during conversations on SNAs. This happens in two main topics of SNA interactions: nation and migration, with clear implications for online identity shaping. For example, Georgalou (2015, 2017) has studied the importance acquired by a broader notion of place and its role in Greek (migrant) identity, as enacted, coconstructed, and assessed on social media, specifically Facebook (see Section 12.7). For her, “place is not just a position in space; it is the location plus everything that occupies that location, that is, tasks, practices, routines, everyday life, seen as an integrated and meaningful phenomenon” (2017: 44). Furthermore, note that the capacity of smartphones to track down user’s location not only affects the kind of communication which develops on SNAs (e.g. taking a photo of a dish in a restaurant and engaging in a subsequent conversation triggered by that photo) but also has more general implications for the configuration of users’ online–offline friendships, communities, and everyday lives. One of the consequences derived from smartphone qualities regarding location awareness and non-stop connectivity is increased options for interactivity and interpersonal communication. Interactivity correlates with the degree to which communicating parties act on each other, on the communication medium, and on the message. And “perceived interactivity” would reflect whether or not users regard their experience on SNAs as a simulation of interpersonal interaction and feel that they are in the presence of other SNA users. Figeac and Chaulet (2018: 409) rightly emphasise that SNAs extend smartphone communicational resources and amplify connected presence, with smartphone technology leading users to interact more often with close others than they did when social encounters relied on face-to-face

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interactions (although criticism has pointed out that frequency does not always equate to depth in those interactions). In this “connected mode” of communication, composed of short and frequent contacts between users, what is said matters to a lesser extent than the fact of keeping in touch (as has been stressed several times in this book). One of the best-known SNAs is Facebook, whose success – compared to its desktop interface – lies in its locative emphasis, exploiting the possibilities of location-based, mapping, computing, and data-processing technologies. Goggin (2014) argues that Facebook depends on personal information being posted, shared, and forwarded via smartphones, which currently serve as a portal through which to access Facebook while on the move, making it a trans-mobile space (ibid.: 79). The Facebook app also differs from its desktop counterpart in the kinds of interactions that users engage in on these sites, mainly due to the “always on” quality of interlocutors and to the possibility of incorporating physical surroundings into the ongoing SNA dialogue. Furthermore, the social interaction allowed by smartphones tends to be synchronous, which inevitably boosts a feeling of non-stop interactivity. For example, posting a selfie on Facebook while taking a stroll in a tourist resort will produce Likes and comments immediately and repeatedly, thus facilitating synchronous feedback. Unlike Facebook, Instagram was born as a smartphone app which heavily relies on photos (taken either by professionals or simply by ordinary users) as its default discourse. These photos are hashtagged, edited, and subsequently shared and commented upon. For Lambert (2013: 3), this has to do with what he calls intensive intimacy: Instagram fixes the different characters met throughout a smartphone lifespan within an online public space and transforms photographs into complex objects which must be negotiated on a permanent basis. As for microblogging sites such as Twitter and Weibo, which did not initially exhibit the core features of an SNA, they have certainly evolved to acquire them, including a profile for the user and the possibility to upload different types of discourse and engage in interactions based on them, to quote but two (i.e. they have somehow become facebooked). The most prominent feature of microblogging sites like Twitter is text limitation, which proves particularly convenient for users carrying their devices who want to make brief comments on the fly. Repeated publication of short tweets results in increased feelings of intimacy via immediacy between Twitter users. In the context of smartphone-mediated communication, where interaction between individuals occurs within a virtually managed space that is physically anchored too, the characteristics of intimacy and immediacy become particularly critical to generating non-propositional effects such as feelings of connection and social presence. Because smartphones provide perpetual connectivity and users have an innate desire to relate to others, carrying a smartphone allows for non-stop satisfaction of the need to be connected

256 The physical and the virtual and their readiness to communicate with others. This phenomenon has been labelled in different ways, amongst which constant touch and perpetual contact stand out. Finally, the non-propositional effects likely to be derived (or which may “leak”) from smartphone-mediated acts of communication, as addressed earlier, are also at work in SNA use. Matthes et al. (2020) focus on the fact that smartphones ensure permanent online interaction with other users. This may ultimately result in a negative information overload effect during smartphone SNA use, or expressed differently, “a state in which a person perceives an imbalance between environmental demands and the available resources to respond to and cope with those demands.” When it comes to SNAs, users may suffer negative effects when trying to get to grips with the latest Facebook news, dealing with a backlog of tweets, or responding to numerous social demands posed by other network members, all of which will most probably exceed the users’ inferential capacities. On the upside, Choi (2019) checked that the advanced media capabilities of SNAs enable users to develop social capital (i.e. the aforementioned intangible resources or benefits obtained through social relationships). According to this study, advanced media richness (with parallel options for contextualisation) enhances social presence as regards the feeling of being connected with others in these SNA environments: “smartphone-based SNAs as a rich communication medium plays a key role in developing social relationships, by facilitating instant feedback, conveying multiple cues and various languages, and exchanging personal feelings and emotions during communication” (p. 618). Rodríguez-Ardura and Meseguer-Artola (2019: 922) place the emphasis on a different feeling prompted by the Facebook app: the feeling of being immersed. Exploring the medium and the interactions therein can unleash positive inner mechanisms of a non-propositional quality. On SNAs, users are more likely to feel at ease seeking out and discovering new interaction opportunities, which in turn allows them to feel virtually present in the environment or the events depicted on the app, becoming so absorbed in the actions happening online that they might eventually disengage and withdraw from their immediate physical surroundings.

12.7 Identity on social networking apps4 Identity has been broadly defined as the ways in which individuals and groups are distinguished from other individuals and collectivities in terms of their social relations. Identity should be conceptualised as constructed, shaped, and adapted to different contexts (and exhibiting parallel discursive variability) rather than as inherent, stable, and unique. As Tagg (2015: 221) summarises, “identity is not a predetermined, stable property of an individual, but a set of resources on which people draw in presenting and expressing themselves through interactions with others.” As already explained

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elsewhere in this chapter, the main reason for using SNAs is to engage in self-presentation, identity-shaping, self-management, and strategies of group membership, all of which have to do with audience validation and identityenhancing responses as well as reactions. 12.7.1 Personal identity on social networking apps The profile on social networking sites is the locus of all discursive construction and identity shaping, and on smartphone SNAs too. These profiles are “digital bodies, public displays of identity where people can explore impression management. Because the digital world requires people to write themselves into being, profiles provide an opportunity to craft the intended expression through language, imagery and media” (boyd 2006). Profile information comprises different kinds of discourses, all of them suited to identity management. Images, for instance, play an important role on SNAs since they often act as interactivity triggers (see next section).5 Images are “conversation pieces, necessary starters for the exchange of complimentsqua-gifts, which enable not only the formation of relations, but also their maintenance” (Schwarz 2010: 174). This becomes even more prominent on today’s SNAs, where social networking apps, camera, and image-editing apps coexist on the same device in a convenient app ecosystem. Both profiles and the information made manifest therein work as indices of the user’s identity attributes. Inside the profile, the main profile photo has a key function in the discursive shaping of self-identity. Its display significantly impacts the willingness to initiate friendships with the profile owner. This profile image is also relevant because it works as a form of authenticity, stressing the congruence between the “offline” identity that can be obtained from the image and the “online” identity displayed on the profile (the online–offline congruence that was mentioned at the beginning of the chapter; see Mallan and Giardina 2009). Furthermore, self-disclosure and self-presentation are essential for personal identity shaping on SNAs, discourse being a key part of this task too. Despite no longer relying exclusively on typed text (Bolander 2017), which demands a greater depth and breadth of self-disclosing strategies (Trepte and Reinecke 2013: 1102–1104), users nevertheless expend much effort on how to make successful identity claims to other users. The same as in other interfaces, self-presentation on SNAs is influenced by the characteristics of social media and their respective audiences. Users edit their discursive selfpresentation in a kind of “coherent and polysemic performance of the self that makes sense to multiple publics without compromising one’s authentic sense of self” (Papacharissi and Gibson 2011: 46). In any case, self-presentation on SNAs is a more conscious and crafted strategy than in face-to-face scenarios. Harley et al. (2018: 59–60) qualify that the affordances offered by online spaces (e.g. asynchronous timing of interactions, emphasis on verbal and linguistic cues, disembodied communication, etc.) enable online

258 The physical and the virtual self-presentation to be more malleable and subject to self-censorship than face-to-face self-presentation. Indeed, users take their time when posting information about themselves, carefully selecting what aspects they would like to emphasise and enhancing them with filters and dedicated apps. In this sense, Meeus et al. (2019: 2387– 2388) associate self-presentation with impression management (a targeted process aimed at causing a favourable impression on others). Within this strategy, users control the information that they disclose about themselves, accentuating or downplaying certain aspects of the self, for instance. Users innately exhibit a propensity to adopt an outsider’s perspective to evaluate their own presentations. Therefore, two evaluations – internal and external – influence the kinds of adaptations made in public identity portrayals and self-presentation strategies. Crucially, SNAs lack immediate visual cues in comparison to physical contexts, and users are committed to constructing a representation of the self in a more active and conscious fashion. Added to that, SNAs provide users with varied “interface tools” to manage information about themselves that foregrounds positive or interesting features of the self in order to gain affectladen reactions or admiration from others. Especially during the transitory years of adolescence, Meeus et al. (ibid.) highlight these transitory years as a period during which strategic online self-presentation plays a particularly important role when it comes to identity development. Lasén (2020) also comments that mobile communication practices support multiple and multimodal ways of representing the self, with a clear – and predictable – prevalence of the visual and text–image combinations. These practices allow users to depict, perform, and make themselves present to themselves, friends, and connected audiences. Besides, these practices are a way to engage in “embodiment processes” in the way users’ bodies are “digitally inscribed, seen, touched, grabbed and circulated, as images, sounds, texts and all kind of data, in screens, devices and mobile apps; as well as regarding how our physical bodies are inscribed, mobilized and shaped by what we learn and acquire through these practices” (n.p.). Lastly, attention must be paid to the importance of the discourse used for identity shaping and self-presentation and also for reacting to these strategies, including comments, reactions (e.g. Likes), and other forms of audience validation. The presence of comments on SNAs enhances users’ identities by positioning them within their group of Friends, and the same applies to comments on the user’s photos. Salimkhan et al. (2010) underline the fact that especially young users’ peers “legitimize the images through public comments, and the information is made permanent and real, magnifying the meaning and gestures behind the image. This process enables users to convey elaborate messages within each image. In this way, emerging adults are adapting the multimedia online props offered by a virtual environment to convey elaborate messages about their selves.”

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12.7.2 Interaction as an “identity hinge” on social networking apps Several studies have stressed the importance of interactions as far as identity management is concerned. Xinaris (2016: 59) claims that identity needs a network of others for recognition, so much so that “identity is now, more than ever, located not in an essential self or a fixed body, but rather in one’s relations and communications with others.” Gheorghiu (2008: 67) conceptualises identity as a product of interaction; we need to spend quality time with others in order to differentiate ourselves from them. And the experiences arising from such interactions shape both personal and social identity. For Bolander and Locher (2015: 102), engaging in interactions allows individuals to “construct their own identities and make assumptions about the identities of others. This process is fundamentally relational in that ties between interactants are created and recreated, shaped, challenged and confirmed” (see also Tagg 2015: 146). On SNAs, interactions are of paramount importance for identity shaping, self-expression, and audience validation, both personally and at a social level. Hence the proposal of interaction as a “hinge” which articulates the two main kinds of identity: personal and social. The whole structure of SNAs is designed to satisfy the user’s desire to engage in interaction as a means to achieve self-affirmation and to be acknowledged as part of a group. This impact on personal and group identities is typically achieved by exploiting shared assumptions that can be accessed by the SNA group or community, generating feelings of connection and in-group bonding. For example, the Facebook conversation in (18) exhibits phatic qualities, and its relevance lies in assessing the extent of mutuality of information (mutual manifestness) between the interlocutors, alongside the fact that certain users belonging to their group of Friends are the only ones who may be aware of what they are talking about: (18) User 1: So, how was the actual film? As you know I HATE British musicals. You can’t beat the Yanks for a good musical! User 2: It was very good! I liked it, but I thought it was a bit too long . . . User 1: Too much oo la la! User 1: juh, juh, juuu User 2: He, he, he! User 1: No, juh, juh, juh User 1: I bet no-one knows what the hell we are talking about, eh! Except User 3 and User 4. Good old private jokes! User 2: ;-)) You crack me up! Indeed, by means of discursive “acts of identity” and positioning on SNAs (Davies and Harre 1990), users manage their selves through successful

260 The physical and the virtual validation, with posts being reacted upon, by receiving notifications of comments, feedback, and so on. As Mallan and Giardina (2009) describe,“the comments area adds to the identity represented in the profile, particularly through the kinds of comments, the number of friends commenting, and the information revealed about the user. [. . .] Specifically, comments social networking friends make on a user’s profile contribute to that user’s presented identity so that social network users are indeed known by the company they keep.” Receiving acknowledgement for one’s entries seems to be the essential reason behind the decision to publish certain posts. These publications were called interactivity triggers in Yus (2014a), since they explicitly seek to arouse reactions and comments that may be textual and visual. Regarding the former, consider the following example taken from Facebook: (19) User 1: acaba de recibir la mejor noticia del mundo/just got the best news ever! User 2: Now I’m curious -what is your good news? :-) User 1: We have been very worried about my mom’s health, but she is OK!! User 3: So happy to hear that! Hurray:) User 4: That is excellent news!! User 5: I didn’t know anything but I am really happy that she’s ok. She won’t remember me but I am sending her a kiss anyway. User 6: What news?? User 7: I am glad, User 1. User 8: That’s great news! User 9: I am really happy, but please contextualise a bit because we are puzzled with these messages hahaha. The interaction in (19) starts with a statement by User 1 (both English and Spanish in the original post) that is clearly devoid of the information needed to yield a proper interpretation, and she knows that this limited contextualisation will lead to her Friends’ reactions. They actually react by asking about the reason for the good news, and User 9 even complains that her under-contextualised message puzzles him. Anyhow, the message has been successful in triggering Friends’ responses. Similarly, User 1 provides incomplete information in (20) about the good time she has had, which calls the attention of another user, who in turn asks why. Once again, she has triggered reactions, and these enhance her identity. (20) User 1: The best night of my life no doubt =D User 2: Why????? User 1: Cos I made my dream come true :) These things you always want but it very unlikely that they’ll end up happening, but fate finally lets it happen ;) User 1: Ok then . . . whatever it is . . . I’m happy for you

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Figure 12.5 Image-based interactivity triggers.

This interactivity trigger can also be conveyed via images that are meant to provoke reactions and comments by Friends. Figure 12.5 reproduces comments on three image-based interactivity triggers posted by three different users. On the left, a female user changed her main profile photo, and that triggered a number of comments praising her beauty with text and embellishing props such as stickers and emojis. In the middle, a young man published a photo of himself at a distant tourist resort, which explains why the praising comments were not only directed at him but also at how lucky he was to be there. Finally, on the right a young woman publishes a recent tattoo of hers with no accompanying text and with the obvious expectation that it will lead to a number of comments and reactions. Immediately, her Friends reply by showing awe, envy, and admiration. Another typical interactivity trigger consists in stressing the user’s presence on the SNA and draw other users’ attention for subsequent interactions by sending “a chain” of messages on the same topic, normally about the user’s ordinary activities, feelings, or emotions. This strategy is particularly frequent in posts on microblogging apps such as Twitter. An example is quoted in (21) below: (21) User 1: How good a little shower feels :). User 1: [The next day] I don’t know if I have a head or a helmet . . . Total congestion. User 1: [Two days later] Still deaf in one ear . . . =(

262 The physical and the virtual User 2: Anyway . . . there’s little worth listening to . . . GET BETTER SWEETIE !!!!! User 1: Hahaha, thanksssss muak! User 1: Getting better. User 1: Blimey, 3rd day in bed . . . =( These comments seem to be utterly irrelevant, but there is a phatic quality to this kind of message which underlines interactivity and group membership, enhancing the user’s identity at the same time. These chained messages create a kind of “proximity in the virtual” or at least a mutual awareness of its existence. Along the same lines, boyd (2011: 45) explains that while this sort of typed conversation may appear to make little sense from a purely communicative point of view, apparently useless comments are used by participants to acknowledge one another in a public setting, more or less as they would greet each other if they met by chance in the street: “Comments are not simply a dialogue between two interlocutors, but a performance of social connection before a broader audience. [. . .] While individual updates are arguably mundane, the running stream of content gives participants a general sense of those around them. In doing so, participants get the sense of the public constructed by those with whom they connect.” 12.7.3 Social identity on social networking apps If the main profile image arises as the main area for self-identity management, and the comments section of the profile and the in-site messaging application constitute the main areas for interactions, then the Friends list (and the visual evidence of the user’s network of Friends) is the place where other users can manage collective identities. This list acquires huge importance because it demonstrates popularity, proves membership of a social group, marks one’s status, and provides a way of making new Friends (Mallan and Giardina 2009). Users exhibit and manage their social identity by uploading verbal, visual, or multimodal content that links the user to likes-dislikes, tastes, and activities involving groups of peers or collectivities (photos of Friends having a meal, teachers gathered at a conference .  .  .). The main source of relevance often lies in audience validation (i.e. their positive reaction) rather than in the objective relevance of the uploaded content. In fact, when users post some content, they constantly predict their Friends’ reaction to it.6 Discourse is undoubtedly also essential for social identity shaping on SNAs. Images, text alteration, emojis, and other stylistic resources aid in conveying the joy of belonging to a group or community. For example, in (22), a group of female friends use emoticons and text alteration (repetition of letters and punctuation marks) to flatter one another, rejoicing at the happiness of being together in a posted photo. By uploading this visually

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connoted discourse, they manage to express a more emotionally loaded picture of their group membership: (22) User 1: Bellezas de hermanitasss!!!!! [Such beautiful sisters!]. User 2: Tú mucho más preciosaaaa [You much more, precious]. User 3: ehhhh!!!!!!! y de los acompañantes no decis naaaaaa!!!!! que tambien son guapos!!!!!!! un saludo User 4 y felices fiestas!!!!!!! [Hey! and you say nothing about the accompanying boys? they are also handsome! Greetings and happy holidays]. User 2: los acompañantes tmb! :-) [The accompanying boys too!]. Furthermore, discourses and interactions may communicate a sense of group or bonding in different ways. On the one hand, users may have the aspiration that their discourses will make their audience feel connected and bounded as part of its intended interpretation and associated affective effects. On the other hand, these socially connoted assumptions may simply leak from these discourses and interactions beyond users’ awareness, nevertheless allowing them to feel connected and part of the group without that being intended or consciously assessed. In short, from a pragmatic standpoint, these social identity-related effects may be conveyed (a) explicitly by using words that refer to the “bonded and bounded” quality which characterises the group of interactants; (b) as strong implicatures, when the implicated conclusions clearly form part of the intended recovery and derivation of assumptions from the coded discourse; (c) as weak implicatures, when such assumptions are triggered by the user’s discourse and may not be overtly held (the audience also taking responsibility for their derivation); (d) as what could be called audience implicatures, when the audience knows that, despite not being meant by the user, these group-related assumptions are nevertheless derived consciously by those interlocutors; (e) as part of the affective attitude, when users intend certain feelings and emotions to be associated with the discourse so as to achieve greater relevance beyond the cognitive effects obtained from propositional content; and (f) as affective effects, which may fall (or not) within the audience’s awareness (i.e. intended vs. leaked) but which nonetheless add to the relevance of the coded discourse all the same. Consider the dialogues in (23–24), from Facebook: (23) User 1: Equipazo!!!! [Such a great team!]. User 2: Que bien me lo pase!! Jajaja [I had such a great time! hahaha].

264 The physical and the virtual User 3: vaya ekipazooooo!!!! yo keriaaaa!!!! 😋 [What a great team! I wanted to!]. User 4: Oeoeoeoeoe . . . menudo equipoooo . . . vaya poderioooooo!!!! [What a team! How powerful!]. User 5: Si nuestras rodillas, tobillos, espalda . . . nos lo hubieran permitido, hubiéramos llegado a la final!!! jajaja Qué somos? LEONES!!!!jajaja [If our knees, ankles, back had allowed us, we would’ve reached the final! hahah What are we? LIONS! hahah]. (24) User 1: Allí nos veremos!! [See you there!]. User 2: Lo organizas tú, User 4? [Do you organise it, User 4?]. User 3: Wish I was there too . . . Va a ser un precioso encuentro de analistas y amigos. CONGRATS! [It will be a very nice meeting of analysts and friends]. User 4: User 1, yes, ¡por fin podremos hablar en persona! [At last we will be able to talk face to face!]. User 4: Yes, User 2, junto con X, y gracias a la aprobación de un nuevo grupo del plan propio sobre Turismo y Comunicación. Es mucha tarea pero estamos muy contentas de poder hacer algo así]. [Together with X, and thanks to the approval of a new group at our university about tourism and communication. It’s hard work but we are very happy to be able to do something like this]. Example (23) shows an explicit desire to verbalise group cohesion and how happy the girls are to be together in a team, thus emphasising their social identity. They use connoted discourses peppered with text alteration that reflects marked intonations (ekipazoooo), alongside sound transcriptions (oeoeoe, a typical singing tune in Spanish when celebrating sport victories). They praise one another (we are lions) and verbally code their happiness and feelings of belonging, generating positive affective effects of a social kind (social capital, group bonding, feelings of connectedness and solidarity . . .). Instead, (26) does not seemingly reveal any overt urge to use language for the purpose of making users feel connected and part of the group (or expressed differently, it is probably not envisaged in the explicature or the implicit import of the utterances exchanged in the conversation). Even so, (24) does indicate that a group (community) of researchers are willing to enjoy each other’s company and gather to perform a typical activity of the researchers’ community: to attend a conference. This shows in the praising

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tone and language that permeates the whole conversation and also in the desire by one of them (User 3) to be there, to which must be added that one of the organisers (User 4) emphasises the importance of getting the researchers together when she says that organising a conference is hard work but worth the effort. The underlying assumptions in (24) regarding their bonded community of researchers aids in a relevant and effort-relieving processing of the whole exchange. On the one hand, framing the conversation as “a group of researchers getting together at a conference” directs the interlocutors towards certain inferential paths when enriching strategies to turn the utterances into fully contextualised and relevant interpretations. These include: reference assignment (See you there [at the conference]), specification of what the lexical denotation of “organise” means for conferences, implicated premises and conclusions about the fact that this community of researchers typically communicate online (At last we will be able to talk face to face), and interpretation of specific jargon such as grupo meaning grupo de investigación (research group) or plan propio meaning “research initiative at one’s own university.” On the other hand, affective effects are meant and/or leak from this conversation, enhancing the relevance of the content conveyed and exchanged. For example, User 1 not only says that they will meet there but that she is “happy at” the prospect of meeting them at the conference (affective attitude). SNAs offer several discursive options to show and acknowledge social bonding and connectedness between users. One of them is language itself, which can be strategically used in order to signal group membership and affiliations. Certain jargons, slang words, and registers generate barriers of discursive specificity. Moreover, on SNAs, where multilingual discourses are enacted and strategically deployed, choosing one against the other points to parallel social choices. Language-mixing strategies (or those related to language choices) are likewise vital to create distinct in-group language style and alignment, as recently analysed by Pérez-Sabater and Moffo (2019; see also Locher and Bolander 2014). Following along the same lines, Mancera Rueda (2016) has shown how non-conventional uses of Spanish on SNAs – illustrated by repetition of letters, graphemic substitutions (e.g. ke instead of que), and text alteration, amongst others – may serve to mark the social identities of those users who engage in such non-normative discourse. Of course, visual and multimodal discourses are also pervasive in the exhibition of social identities by users. Group selfies and photographs at certain events certainly “do the trick” of making manifest social connections and belonging. Finally, SNAs also host online communities that match, overlap, or complement their offline counterparts in some respects (Yus 2005b, 2007). When it comes to SNAs, showing bonds and group connections in the shape of communities arises as one of the key activities that users engage in. Such

266 The physical and the virtual connections are discursively anchored and range from very tight community markers (as in communities of migrants or certain delimited social groups that gather on an SNA) to loosely bounded communities whose members only relate to one another because of a certain common interest. One example of the latter is the hashtag communities mentioned in Seargeant and Tagg (2014: 12), where people revolve around an ambient affiliation (Zappavigna 2011, 2014) with a topic or issue around which they interact. Such a shared, transitory virtual space allows people to identify a particular interest, which they can then comment on and interact about. Understandably, ambient affiliation is less tightly bounded than in offline communities, as a group with shared practices and culture. Similarly, interaction and levels of engagement will be lower than in traditionally conceived communities. As further specified by Zappavigna (2019: 725), community building involves “bonds” realised in discourse as patterns of values. These bonds are negotiated in the course of interactions, producing different types of membership or fellowship. These connections may be ambient in the sense that they do not necessarily require direct contact between users and may simply draw on mass forms of communion of feelings. 12.7.4 Online identity versus offline identity on social networking apps At the beginning of this chapter the picture that was proposed of today’s SNA user was that of a node of intersecting networks and interactions, of both online and offline qualities, together with a picture of online–offline congruence. As a consequence, identity shaping, self-presentation, and community bonding may be managed online, offline, or with a combination, mirroring or overlapping of those environments. In this sense, users may expect their SNA identities to be a mirror to their offline identities. On other occasions, the user will present an enhanced version of themselves. In more extreme situations, certain users may have a negative impression of themselves in offline scenarios, and it will be on SNAs where they can “be themselves” and use all the discursive options on these sites strategically. For example, the conversation in Figure 12.6 was triggered by a pandemicrelated image that I posted on the Facebook group Pandemic. The image contains three drawings in a row showing the relationship of a woman with her plants: a single plant before the pandemic; two plants during the pandemic, and a huge amount of plants filling the room after the pandemic. One reply by a user regarding the amounts of plants she has at home prompts a dialogue with a physical–virtual overlapping and affective effects centred on group identity. The user offers to leave a plant by another user’s door (hence, an impact on a physical action), and later, another user emphasises the importance of that Facebook group and how neighbours (an offline group) are ready to help, in both physical and virtual scenarios, with clear identity-enhancing effects beyond the virtual space of the SNA.

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Figure 12.6 Dialogue cross-cutting the physical–virtual realm and group-identity effects.

Users can strategically select the information that they share (using photos depicting them doing activities that they truly enjoy and editing them with apps to improve their quality). Besides, as most SNAs may be used asynchronously, users have more time to tailor what and how they upload their messages. This is why users with low self-esteem or those who are unhappy with their lives offline are less prone to maintaining a high degree of congruence between their online and offline identities. This overlay between online and offline sources of identity yields a variety of scenarios ranging from weak connections to solid and intimate bonding. Users may rely on either scenario to manage their networks and communities. Zhang et al. (2014: 109) also state that [o]n one hand, people can form a social network anytime, anywhere, which removes the constraints in space, and people do not need to be bound to desktop PCs. On the other hand, the computing and sensing capability in mobile devices and environments makes it possible to

268 The physical and the virtual capture the context and situation of both individual and group, which can be leveraged to facilitate the creation of social communities and interaction among mobile community users. In such a way, the mobile social networking can be enabled virtually and remotely just like online social networks; it can also take place to support spontaneous and faceto-face interaction. A special case in this online–offline interface is what Chin (2014) calls ephemeral social networks, specifically related to microsocial gatherings where users physically interact with others and are surrounded by them during an activity at a specific event or location. Such connections between people have a spontaneous (usually not scheduled) and temporary (ephemeral) nature, even if feelings of self-worth and social bonding sometimes arise. They occur at a specific place or event and at a specific time and entail the use of smartphones to ensure coordination and content accessibility, thus creating an array of mutually manifest assumptions across online–offline environments. An example would be a conference, “where people meet during the demo session in the meeting room. It is possible for some people to know each other; some may be friends, and some may not. However, the ephemeral social network is created by interaction, potentially socially, among the participants during the session” (p. 28). Finally, an interesting term which appears in the merging of online/ offline settings for identity shaping is the spatial self. Schwartz and Halegoua (2015) proposed this label for the interplay of resources from physical and online environments that can be used for engaging in interactions and obtaining self-affirmation. These dual (online and offline) instances are resources through which individuals “document, archive and display their experience and/or mobility within space and place in order to represent or perform aspects of their identity to others” (p. 1644). These authors focus on the app-favoured articulation of the spatial self. Apps record activities and experiences in physical places that are subsequently shared with others via social media. In this scenario, geocoded digital traces, geographical data visualisations, and maps of individual patterns of mobility from the physical context impact the activity of the user in the online context.

Notes 1 In this book, the user’s followers, close peers, family, and acquaintances connected to them on an SNAs are grouped together under the generic and capitalised label “Friends.” 2 These are also called social buttons, one-click feedback cues, and social bookmarking icons in the bibliography. 3 In a sense, then, we could then talk about a “PDA paradox,” since albeit easy to produce, their meaning is often difficult to guess. Scissors et al. (2016) hold a similar opinion. “Because a Like takes only one click to produce, it may be an easy way for acquaintances and more distant friends to maintain relationships without requiring a lot of effort or context.”

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4 This section is an update of previous research on discourse and identity done in Yus (2011a, 2014a, 2015d, 2016d, 2018d, 2018f). 5 Of course, strategic identity shaping and self-presentation are not restricted to the SNA profile. Other areas and actions on SNAs permit to carry out for this task, for example Facebook status updates, audience’s reactions to these updates, actions like “friending,” “liking,” or ritual acts such as sending birthday messages; as well as through multimodality (Bolander 2017). 6 Manago et al. (2008: 454) mention theories that fit this idea of selective selfpresentation and audience validation: shared reality theory (aspects of one’s sense of self derive from public displays of behaviour) and theory of social comparison (individuals are more likely to rely on people’s consensus when faced with situations in which physical reality is ambiguous).

13 Concluding remarks and future projections

In this book, several research topics on smartphone communication have been addressed from a cyberpragmatic perspective, but also taking into account insights from other research areas that have been considered as good complementation for understanding the complexity of today’s use of these devices. It is likely that the smartphone, as we conceptualise it nowadays, will continue to be an essential device in everybody’s daily lives in the foreseeable future. Undoubtedly, changes in design and capabilities will take place at a fast pace, but the app-mediated design of the smartphone and the touchscreen as main input area are bound to remain basic qualities of these devices for years to come. In this sense, some research issues for a cyberpragmatics of smartphone communication may be foreseen, at least in the short term. In Yus (2019b) some of these issues were listed and are summarised here: 1 What is coded versus what is meant. A major interest in (cyber)pragmatics, as commented upon in Chapter 2, is to determine the way addressees fill the gap between what the communicator codes (says, writes, types, records . . .) and the interpretation meant (and eventually obtained). Smartphone discourses exhibit a great variability of possibilities for contextualisation, so this “filling up” demands different levels of inferencing. Users will continue to use text-enriching strategies to get a more reliable interpretation of their discourses as well as to convey the feelings and emotions associated with them. 2 The pervasiveness of multimodal discourses. The smartphone holds many visual and multimodal discourses. Cyberpragmatics will be particularly interested in those instances in which the intended interpretation of multimodal discourses on the smartphone cannot be obtained from the partial meanings of the modes making up the discourse but from their combination to yield implicated conclusions. 3 Typed discourses with visual support. Despite having the option to engage in contextually rich video calls, many users prefer to resort to cues-filtered discourses such as typed texts, as addressed in Chapter 5. However, users also feel that these typed texts do not convey all the DOI: 10.4324/9781003200574-13

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nuances that are communicated in an oral, face-to-face scenario, and this is why they tend to “colour” these texts with emojis, stickers, text alteration, and GIFs. While these messaging apps remain fashionable, this will be a genuine objective for cyberpragmatics. Voice-based communication. Although not the norm in today’s smartphone use, especially by younger generations, voice-mediated communication through phone and video calls will still take place in the future. Importance of the physical in virtual interactions. The smartphone is carried as a device “always on” and “always on the user,” and therefore a lot of the information gathered and shared among users comes from the users’ physical location (food pics, location-based social networking interactions, and so on). Future cyberpragmatic research will have to focus on the impact that physical location has on ordinary communicative practices among users. Varying sources of mutuality in the physical–virtual interface. As smartphones are used continuously by people in physical scenarios and even in offline social gatherings where oral communication should be the norm, there are prospects of research for (cyber)pragmatics regarding sources of mutuality of information and how online and offline sources of information overlap, complement, or contradict each other. An example is the mixed face-to-face and virtual interactions, for instance the situation of interlocutors who chat face to face and at the same time text other physically absent interlocutors with their mobile phones. Decreasing importance of substantive content in exchange for phatic interactions. Phatic communication has traditionally been regarded as important for sociability but irrelevant for the transfer of substantive content. Phatic elements are “primarily aimed at establishing and maintaining social bonds between individuals over and above the exchange of information and hence do not necessarily express any particular thought nor aim to exchange facts” (Vetere et al. 2009: 178). Most definitions, one way or another, emphasise the contrast between the lack of interesting information and the eventual “social” relevance of the phatic acts of communication. Regarding smartphone communication, many exchanges taking place on these devices aim at “phatic relevance” rather than “informational relevance.” Socialisation, fostering bonds, and feeling connected and part of the group through trivial conversations are very frequent nowadays and therefore an important future research area for (cyber)pragmatics. The importance of contextual constraints. Throughout this book, smartphone interactions have been framed in what has been labelled contextual constraints, divided into “user” and “interface” constraints. It has been claimed that the quantity, quality, and frequency of interactions are ultimately conditioned by these constraints. This kind of framing will remain an important issue in future cyberpragmatic research.

272 The physical and the virtual 9 Increasing importance of non-propositional effects (feelings, emotions). Pragmatics has been reluctant to include non-propositional information in the analysis of human communication, but this information (covering feelings, emotions, and impressions) plays a crucial role in smartphone communication (as well as in offline face-to-face communication). Nonpropositional effects have therefore been incorporated into all the chapters of this book and will remain important in future cyberpragmatics research. 10 Big data and their impact on users’ interactions. Nowadays, algorithms decide which content is offered to the user and which user may interact with whom. As such, it is an interesting area for future cyberpragmatic research. Although this is not user-to-user communication proper, this automatic assessment of sources of interest by algorithms does resemble relevance-seeking interactions between users. The system attracts the users’ attention and suggests to them that certain information is worth attending to. This calling for attention plays a similar role to the communicative intention underlying interactions between humans on smartphones. 11 Pragmatics of virtual agents. Nowadays, computer assistants, bots, and agents (e.g. Cortana, Siri, Alexa) are increasingly entering our daily lives. These have an amazing capacity to access information on the Net and come up with supposedly relevant answers to the user’s queries. They are still in their infancy and face challenges in such pragmatic issues as the interpretation of humour, the determination of ironic intentions, or the ability to access specifically the amount of contextual information that the user intends as part of explicit and/or implicated interpretations. In the near future, though, researchers in computer science will be interested in how to “train” these devices to become more “pragmatic” and move closer to a human way of processing information and therefore to a more natural feeling in the synchronous conversations sustained between these systems and users. This is especially noticeable in the case of online bots, which can interact through typed dialogues with users (especially customers in shopping websites) and access a lot of background information available online in order to tailor the conversation to the user’s needs. 12 Social networking sites and identity-shaping. What is mainly at stake in the use of mobile social networking apps is the shaping, assessment, presentation, impact, and audience validation of the user’s identity. As summarised in Yus (2018c), users shape their identities on these smartphone-mediated sites by means of non-stop interactions, many of them of a phatic quality, engage in dialogues based on different types of uploaded (verbal-visual-multimodal) discourses, position themselves as unique individuals, and upload content on their profiles with expected audiences and interpretations, a kind of identity performance. Thanks to the affordances of new media, addressee users also co-construct and

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co-produce discourses in a joint generation of content. This identitycentred use of social networking apps is bound to remain a big issue for cyberpragmatics in its attempt to explain why users are addicted to their smartphone screens while engaging in their social networks and dismissing their physical whereabouts. Online polylogues. Smartphones are fostering interactions that are increasingly devoid of the traditional dyadic quality, that is, utterances are no longer exchanged between one single sender and one single receiver with a single intended interpretation. This constitutes an interesting area of cyberpragmatic research on smartphone communication. Indeed, thanks to messaging groups and multiple group video calls through social networking apps or dedicated apps  such as Zoom, Google Duo, or Slack, among others, interactions are now more frequently multi-party and form different layers of interaction or polylogues, either text-based or with the aid of visual and multimodal content. Media convergence and multiple simultaneous areas of interaction. New interfaces for interaction are becoming popular for smartphones in the shape of either dedicated apps or interfaces that “migrate” from the desktop environment to the new screen-size realm of the smartphone ecosystem, with inevitable changes in the presentation and management of the content made available through these apps. Some of these include different areas for interaction which have different options for contextualisation and different speeds for production and interpretation of the messages. Blurring of traditional elements in communication (author, discourse, audience). Pragmatics has typically analysed a clear-cut communicative situation between one addresser who intentionally produces a piece of discourse (or nonverbal behaviour) with an intended interpretation to be inferred by an audience. This discourse provides analysts with evidence of underlying intentions, expectations of relevance, expected effects on addressee users, intended interpretation(s) arising from initial decoding of the schematic discourse that is coded (typed, said), and expected mutuality of information. This prototypical communicative schema is no longer the norm nowadays, thanks to the affordances of new interfaces and the new ways of generating content that the internet offers users, especially when managing their communicative needs through smartphones. Future research within cyberpragmatics will be interested in how content is co-created and conveyed to multiple audiences, generating differing interpretations due to varied forms of contextualisation. Interactions in scenarios in which a virtual layer of information is superimposed on the physical. Locative media produce a layer of information that users superimpose on physical locations with the aid of smartphone apps. This information generates different areas of mutuality and different conceptualisations of space according to the users’ comments.

274 The physical and the virtual However, nowadays we are witnessing the incorporation into our everyday lives of another possible layer of information superimposed on the physical. This layer is not managed by the users but by the companies making mobile interfaces and apps that provide supplementary information related to the place where the user is located or the user’s whereabouts. One of the terms fitting this additional layer of information is augmented reality. It is still not widely used by smartphone users, but some apps do resort to this technology, for example showing bargains and products offered by the shops in a street when the user directs the smartphone camera to that street. In the future, though, this technology will be pervasive in smartphones, and cyberpragmatics will be interested in studying the implications of that technology. 17 Cross-cultural issues. The internet is a typically globalised phenomenon. However, very often the smartphone interfaces and apps are specially tailored to specific cultures, and even if the interface is the same across cultures, as happens with Instagram, culture-specific uses of these platforms abound, and cyberpragmatics should differentiate these cultureconnoted discursive uses of smartphone apps. Among other research issues, possible research areas include the discursive impact of individualist versus collectivist cultures, how different types of interactions are biased by cultural protocols and principles, how access to information and the use of certain apps are limited in some cultures and controlled by authorities (censorship), and how text alteration (or text deformation, oralised typed text) and the use of emoji are also culturally biased, including culture-specific sets of textual strategies and galleries of emojis, among other interesting culture-bound research topics.

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Index

Abele, T.S. 103 accompaniment, virtual 113 Adipat, B. 50 adjacency 62 adjustment: ad hoc concept adjustment 21; concept 21, 88; referent adjustment 87–88, 95 affect 28, 32, 87; positive 53; see also attachment, affective; attitude, affective; bandwidth, affective; bonding, affective; computing, affective; effect, affective; reciprocity, affective; technology, affective affiliation, ambient 138, 266 affinity, social capital 164 affordance 2, 9, 34–35, 47, 127, 131, 133, 187; interface 64, 111, 151, 161, 167–169, 175, 182, 184, 197, 209, 218–219, 232–234; paralinguistic digital 8, 250–252 agent, virtual 272 Aharony, N. 103 Ahn, A.-A. 197 Albawardi, A. 69 Albritton, A. 60 algorithm 178, 184, 212, 232–233, 252, 272; see also data, big; friend, algorithmic alignment 170–171, 265; flexible 222 Allaman, E. 58 Allan, S. 149 Allen, S.M. 218 Alleva, J.M. 167 Al Rashdi, F. 82 Al Rousan, R. 68 alternant 77 Amon, K.L. 252–253 Andreassen, C.S. 163 Androutsopoulos, J. 105n8, 176, 182, 191n2

app 1–4; locative 211–230; social networking 231–269; see also ecosystem, app Appel, M. 234 appreciation, ritual 170 Arminen, I. 114 Ask, K. 196, 199, 201, 207, 209 attachment: affective 207; emotional 41, 208, 218; mobile 40 attitude: affective 21, 27, 30, 32–33, 36, 76–77, 86–88, 97–98, 263, 265; propositional 21, 84–85, 92, 98, 238 audience 126–128, 133, 140n2, 152–153, 166–168, 174, 176–178, 197–199, 202, 208–209, 273; validation 9, 156, 162–164, 169, 170–172, 186, 227, 251, 257–259, 262; see also implicature, audience Aull, B. 100 authenticity 160, 165, 167, 231, 257 awareness, ambient 102, 136, 150, 223, 244 Aylett, R. 124 Baik, J. 226 Bakare, L. 185 bandwidth, affective 34, 41 Bañuelos, J. 150 Baranauskas, M.C.C. 78, 99 Bárány, T. 144 Barger, V.A. 105n3 Barker, V. 161, 163–164 Baron, N. 109–111, 118 Barton, D. 151, 172n2, 240 Batty, C. 121, 129 Baym, N.K. 114, 118 Beckert, B.E. 58 belongingness hypothesis 252 Bengtsson, E. 140n1 Benson, P. 173, 175

308

Index

Bernicot, J. 60 Berry, M. 149, 158, 215 Bertel, T.F. 1, 3, 63, 222, 226–228 Bert-Erboulet, A. 60 Beullens, K. 258 Bevan, J.L. 162–163 Bhandari, U. 52 biaoqing 189 Bieswanger, M. 69 Bilandzic, M. 215 Bilibili 183–184 Binder, J.F. 3 Birnholtz, J. 70 Boase, J. 59 Bolander, B. 257, 259, 265, 269n5 Bonacin, R. 78, 99 bonding, affective 205 Borreguero, M. 60 Bou-Franch, P. 179 Bouraoui, J.L. 111 Boyd, D. 133, 152, 177, 229, 231, 246, 257, 262 Bradner, E. 102 Brennan, S.A. 105n4 Bromberek-Dyzman, K. 33 Brown, A. 58–59, 62 Brown, P. 100 Brunner, T. 103 Bucher, T. 233 Buglass, S.L. 3 Burgess, J. 150, 175 Burke, M. 268n3 Buschek, D. 82 Caffi, C. 28 Calero Vaquera, M.L. 71 camera, networked 160 Campbell, S.W. 115, 117, 213, 221 Cantamutto, L. 59, 106n13 capital: gaming 198; social 40, 103, 106n18, 108, 159, 222, 229, 256, 264; see also affinity, social capital Carolus, A. 3 Carr, C.T. 103, 223, 250–251 Carston, R. 6, 15, 41n1 Cassany, D. 105n8, 180 Cavalheiro, B. 68, 104 Ceccucci, W. 64 Cesar, P. 196 Cha, Y. 190 Chae, J. 168, 170, 212 Chalfen, R. 148 Chan, C.-L. 219, 227–228, 234 Chang, C.-W. 218

Chang, K. 52 Chang, L.J. 101 Chang, Y. 43 Chaulet, J. 254 Chen, C.-D. 207 Chen, G.M. 218 Chen, J.-S. 43 Cheng, H.-W. 207 Chin, A. 268 chitchat, visual 150 Chiu, J. 49 Chock, T.M. 167 Choi, M. 34 Choi, S. 256 Choi, S.M. 170 Choo, H.J. 52 Chorley, M. 218, 226 Chua, W.Y. 52 Chung, J.E. 58, 63, 66 Church, K. 66 Ciampaglia, G.L. 197 Clark, B. 15, 17, 144, 147 Clark, H.H. 105n4 Clin, C.M. 75 Clinciu, D. 45 closeness, distant 158 co-experience 208–209 cohabitation, virtual 113 Cohen, R. 171 Cohn, N. 95 Cole, J. 166 Collister, L. communication: cross-cultural 240, 274; ostensive-inferential 17; phatic 37–38, 62, 69, 100–102, 108–109, 155, 248–249, 271; visual phatic (see chitchat, visual) community 24, 26, 103, 109, 118, 139, 164, 180–181, 189, 191n1, 196, 199, 207–208, 223, 247, 264–266 companion, digital 3 computing, affective 53 conclusion, implicated 15, 18, 185, 263 connection, feeling of 118, 157, 164, 186, 208 Consalvo, M. 198 constraint: on app usability 47–50; contextual 5, 23, 36–39, 271; on emojis 68–69, 71; on GIF use 187; on image-centred interaction 151–152; interface-related 63–66, 70–71, 105n5, 106n17, 112, 133, 151, 161, 167, 175, 179, 182, 184, 187, 191n1, 197–198, 218, 226,

Index 232–234; on live streaming 197–198; on locative apps 217–219, 226; on selfie-based communication 161–163; on smartphone messaging 68–71; on SMS use 62–64; on social media apps 232–235; technical 105n5; userrelated non-propositional 48, 62–64, 68–70, 152, 161–163, 197–198, 226, 234–235; on video interaction 175–176 contact, perpetual 40, 72, 117–118 context 5–6; collapse 133, 152, 161, 228–229, 246 conversation 7, 23–24, 34, 66–67, 72, 80, 96–97, 108, 110–111, 115–117, 165; visual 155 co-presence 65–66, 103, 186, 208, 223–224, 229; ambient 32, 105n6; digital 215; feeling of 208, 224; permanent 39; physical 5, 34, 69, 73, 113; visual 158 Costa, E. 242 Cougnon, L.-A. 111 Coulthard, N. 171 Cramer, H. 219, 226 Crawford, K. 229 Crocker, E.T. 113, 161, 170 cross-modality 177 crowdspeak 203 cue multiplicity 50 Cui, D. 50 culture 45, 63, 69, 152, 163, 176, 186, 207, 274; Kodak 148, 155; participatory 180 Cupples, J. 62 cybergenre 122–123 cyberplace 109 cyberpragmatics 4–6, 13, 25–26 Dabek, M. 124 Dainas, A.R. 68, 82, 96 Danesi, M. 79, 89, 99–100, 105n10 danmu 105n8, 180, 184 Darics, E. 76, 101 Dashow, E.M. 75 data, big 272 Davies, B. 221, 259 Davies, H. 85 Davies, J. 135 Davis, K. 2, 69 Davis, M. 149, 157 Day, C. 1–2 Dayter, D. 132, 134–135, 138, 237 DeAndrea, D.C. 237

309

decoding 20, 145, 147 de Fina, A. 127, 130, 134 Degges-White, S. 113 Dennis, J. 68 de Oliveira, R. 66, 185 DeSanctis, G. 60 design, emotional 41, 53 de Souza e Silva, A. 212, 214–217, 220–221 de Vaate, A.J.D.B. 167 de Vicente, J.L. 226 Dhir, A. 156, 163, 242–243 disambiguation 20–21 discussion, intergroup 179 disposition, mediated 176 Dodgeball 211 Donner, J. 114–115, 117–118 dos Reis, J.C. 78, 99 Dresner, E. 99 Drumm-Hewitt, A.M. 75 Duce, D. 50 Durante, C.B. 60, 75, 81, 89 Dynel, M. 177, 179 ecology, hybrid 216 ecosystem: app 1–3, 9, 148–149, 154–155, 182, 243; convergent media 235; smartphone 3, 231, 273n14 effect: affective 30, 73, 75, 102, 108, 127–128, 138, 153, 157, 164, 171, 186–187, 199, 240, 252, 263; cocooning 59; cognitive 17, 36, 39; interface-related non-propositional 101–104, 207; non-intended nonpropositional 24; non-propositional 5–7, 27–33, 35–39, 41n1, 101–104, 272; non-propositional from app use 52–53; non-propositional from calls 117–118; non-propositional from emojis 104; non-propositional from images 150, 153–154, 157–158; nonpropositional from live streaming 205–209; non-propositional from locative apps 222–225; nonpropositional from messaging 101–104; non-propositional from narratives 134; non-propositional from selfies 171; non-propositional from SMS 64–66; non-propositional from social networking apps 229, 252–253, 256; non-propositional from video 108–109, 175, 180–181, 186–187; phatic 37, 62 Eggermont, S. 258

310

Index

Eisenhart, M. 58 Eisenlauer, V. 231–232, 236 Ekman, P. 27, 90, 106n16 Ellison, N.B. 231 emoji 77–101, 105n10, 106n11, 106n13, 106n15, 106n16, 240–241, 243; adjunctive use 87; see also story, emoji; WeChat, emoji on emote 202, 204–207 emotion 27–31, 33–35, 39–41, 41n2, 45, 53 emotionality factor 34 engagement 49, 124, 199, 201 Engelen, J. 95 entrapment 114, 118 environment, cognitive 16; mutual 16, 113, 116–117; narrowed 116 ephemerality 130, 149–150 Ersoy, M. 44 etiquette 117 Evans, L. 214, 218 explicature 15, 18–19, 21, 98; higherlevel 98; visual 144–146, 164–165 explicitness, degrees of 146–147 extroversion 159, 161–162, 218, 234–235 Facebook 130, 133, 135, 156, 171, 214–215, 233–234, 240–241, 247, 250, 253, 255–256, 269n5; check-in 225–229 Farci, M. 160, 168 Farman, J. 218 Farzan, R. 104 feeling 24, 27–28, 30–36, 39–41, 53, 65–66, 77–78, 86–89, 97–99, 102–104, 108–109, 118, 159, 164, 188, 208–209, 222–224, 252–253, 256 Felczak, M. 198 Feng, J. 185–186 Feng, Z. 185–186 Fernández Robin, C. 66 Figeac, J. 254 Filik, R. 85 filter 143, 151, 153, 242, 258; filter bubble 178 Flickr 156, 172n2 Flood, D. 50 fluidity, communicative 214, 241 Fodor, J. 145 fomo 3 Fontcuberta, J. 167 Forceville, C. 144, 147 Ford, C. 203

form, logical 20 Fortunati, L. 34, 41, 110–111, 115 Foth, M. 215 Foursquare 226 Freedman, A. 68 friend 40, 59, 63; algorithmic 234; in social networking sites 133, 247, 262 friending 269n5 Friesen, W.V. 90, 106n16 Frith, H. 257 Frith, J. 218, 220–221, 226 Frizzera, L. 217–218 Frontini, F. 82, 89 Fu, F.-L. 44, 47–48 Fu, J. 208 Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. 179 Garcia, J.R. 87 García-Gómez, A. 69 Garde-Hansen, J. 28, 35 Gardner, D. 203–204, 210n3 Gardner, H. 2, 69 Garett, R. 49 Garretson, O. 198, 207 Garrido, M.V. 68, 104 Gaspar, R. 68, 104 Ge, J. 78, 82, 93, 95 genre 140n3, 147; photographic 160; video 177; see also cybergenre Georgakopoulou, A. 120, 131, 134, 138, 140n5, 160, 166, 170, 179 Georgalou, M. 214, 254 geotagging 220, 224, 226 Gergen, K.J. 117 Gergle, D. 74, 76 Gesselman, A. 87 Gheorghiu, A. 259 Giardina, N. 257, 260, 262 Gibbs, M. 102, 271n7 Gibson, P.L. 257 Gibson, W. 68–69, 79, 81, 87 GIF 70–71, 187–189 Gifford, R. 217 Gn, J. 70 Gnambs, T. 234 Goffman, E. 169, 198 Goggin, G. 130, 150, 255 Gómez Cabranes, L. 34 Gómez-Cruz, E. 154 Gordon, E. 212, 215–216 Gore, J.S. 152, 157 Gorton, K. 28, 35 Gould, S.J.J. 79 Goumi, A. 60

Index Grace, A. 60 graduation, upscaled 75 Graham, M.B. 269n6 Graham, S.L. 205, 207 Green, J. 175 Greenfield, P.M. 258, 269n6 Gretzel, U. 93, 169 Grieve, R. 253 Grigar, D. 128 Griggio, C.F. 67 Grogan, S. 166 group: enhancement 118; membership 24, 26, 65, 103, 109, 118, 134, 139, 159, 223, 262, 265 Guerrero-Pico, M. 127 Gumperz, J.J. 84 Gunraj, D. 75 Guo, B. 267 Gupta, K. 169 Haimson, O.L. 208 Halegoua, G.R. 215n5, 219–223, 268 Hall, A. 186 Hall, J.A. 114, 118 Hall, M. 166 Halpern, D. 66 Hamari, J. 198, 207 Hamilton, C. 130 Hamilton, W.A. 198, 207 Hancock, J.T. 50 Hand, M. 242 Hansen, M. 196, 199, 201, 207, 209 Harley, D. 257 Harper, R. 70 Harre, R. 221, 259 Harrison, R. 50 Harvey, N. 85 hashtag 132, 157, 168–169, 237–238, 255; community 266 Hassanein, K. 44 Hayes, R.A. 103, 223, 250–251 Haynes, N. 242 Head, M. 44 Herbert, S. 51 Hermida, A. 132 Herring, S.C. 6, 68, 78, 82, 95–96, 99, 105n8, 123, 231 Hertzum, M. 44, 48 Hess, A. 160, 164 Hilvert-Bruce, Z.J.T. 198, 207 Hinton, S. 228 Hjorth, L. 40, 150, 186, 215, 224, 228 Hofstede, G. 48, 69, 152 Holmquist, L.E. 219, 226

311

Hong, J.-C. 43 Hong, J.I. 219, 227–228 Hong, N. 190 Hope, H. 205–207 Horgan, L.E. 203–204, 210n3 Hornung, H.H. 78, 99 Horton, D. 208 Hsiao, C.H. 101 Hsiao, K.-L. 230n2 Hsiao, Y.-J. 234 Hsieh, S.H. 73, 104, 220 Hsu, C.W. 208 Hu, M. 184, 209 Huang, C.-M. 152 Huang, P. 68–69, 79, 81, 87 Huang, T.K. 44, 47–48 Huber, L. 189 Hudson, A.M. 152, 157 Huertas, A. 185 Humphreys, L. 117, 224 Hur, J.H. 52 Hussmann, H. 82 Hwang, M.Y. 43 hygiene factors 44 hyper-coordination 114 iconicity, scales of 146–147 identity, acts of 259; constraints 159; effects 65, 159, 181, 202, 209; enhanced 157; location-based 221–222; online-offline 267–268; performance 272; personal 68, 139, 157, 186, 218, 257–258; -shaping 131, 164, 213; social 103, 109, 139–140, 186, 205, 262–266; on social networking apps 256–266 Ijsselsteijn, W.A. 34 immediacy cues 115 immersion 201, 208, 256 implicature 15–16, 18–22, 32; audience 263; strong 21, 263; visual 144–145, 164–165, 263; weak 32–33, 37; see also conclusion, implicated impression 5, 31–33, 166, 220, 234; diffuse 166; management 40, 64, 190, 257–258 Inada, Y. 216 Indian, M. 253 individualism, networked 109, 212 inference 14, 20, 29, 47, 146, 178, 228 inferencing, backwards 78 information: overload effect 256; richness, theories of 35, 42

312

Index

Instagram 134, 143, 151, 153, 155–157, 161, 167, 169, 184–185, 238, 255, 274 insularity, social 118 intention 13–17, 25, 28–31, 37, 145, 163–164, 226–229; communicative 14, 67, 73, 111; informative 14, 67, 111 interaction 2, 4–5, 23, 33–36, 52, 59, 61–63, 67, 96, 102–104, 109–110, 139, 174–177, 179–182, 196, 198–199, 201–205, 212, 221, 246–252; dual front 117; phatic 209, 249, 271 interactivity 254–255; perceived 254; trigger 143, 155, 159, 163, 170, 227, 247, 260–261 interface 8, 34–36, 40, 43–53, 68, 120, 122–123, 135–136, 178, 200, 208–209, 210n4, 257–258, 273–274; physical-virtual 211–216, 268, 271; see also constraint, interfacerelated; effect, interface-related nonpropositional interjection 29, 77 intimacy 40, 65, 102, 104, 108, 118, 208, 255; ambient 229; embodied visual 149; intensive 255; mobile 40, 215; visual 158, 172n1 iPhone 2; photography 148 Ishii, K. 58, 63–64 Iten, G.H. 48 Ito, M. 62

Keep, M. 252–253 Kemp, N. 60 Kenaan, H. 169 Kerne, A. 196, 198, 207 Kidron, Y. 27 Kim, C. 51 Kim, E. 170 Kim, H.-S. 215, 219 Kim, J. 190 Kim, J.W. 167 Kim, K.-H.Y. 215 Kim, S. 190 Kivinen, T. 48 Klaiber, I. 121 Klein, G. 43 Klimek, S. 119 Knop, K. 103 Kobayashi, T. 59 Kock, N. 59 Kofoed, J. 155 Koliska, M. 216 König, K. 62, 77 Konijna, E.A. 167 Kopomaa, T. 212 Korhan, O. 44 Kowalczyk, C.M. 162 Kruck, S.E. 64 Kuo, Y.-C. 43 Kurzon, D. 177, 180 Kuzar, R. 27 Kwak, N. 117

Jabeur, N. 254 Jackson, R. 239 Jaffe, A. 60 Janney, R.W. 28 Janssen, J.H. 34 Jansson, A. 1 Jenkins, H. 126, 180 Jiang, J. 43 Jiang, L.C. 50 Johansson, M. 177 Jones, R.H. 172n4, 234 Jung, Y. 2 Jurgenson, N. 153–154

Lacasse, J. 170 Lambert, A. 255 Lammi, H. 48 Lange, P.G. 176 Langlotz, A. 30 language 181, 256, 265; module 20, 146 Larsen, C. 155 Lasén, A. 34–35, 40–41, 154, 213, 258 Laursen, D. 111 Lee, A.J. 104 Lee, C.T. 220 Lee, H.K. 52 Lee, J. 190 Lee, J.A. 170 Lee, J.Y. 190 Lee, S. 58, 63, 66 Lee, U. 190 Leiendecker, B. 168 Lemos, A. 216–217 letter repetition 75–77 Lettkemann, E. 212

Kaasinen, E. 48 Kagawa, N. 58, 63–64 Källquist, R. 140n1 Kalman, Y. 74, 76 Kang, J.-S. 45 Karsay, K. 256 Kaskaloglu, K. 51 Katz, J.E. 66, 113, 161, 170

Index Leung, L. 58 Levin, S. 50 Levinson, S. 100 Levordahska, A. 223 Li, X. 50 Li, Y. 71, 100, 155, 167 Libaque-Saenz, C.F. 43 Licoppe, C. 65, 102, 118, 211, 215–216, 224, 227, 244 Like, Facebook 8, 139, 143, 157, 168, 172, 172n6, 176, 250–251 Lim, S.S. 40, 241 Lin, H. 40 Lin, J. 219, 227–228 Lindgaard, G. 53 Lindgren, S. 180 Ling, R. 63, 109, 114–115, 117–118, 155, 167 Linke, C. 116 literacy: digital 51; SM 68; transmedial 127; vernacular digital 191 Liu, C. 203–204, 210n4 Liu, L. 152 liveness, distributed 196 LizzieBennet Diaries 124 Lo, V. 2 Lobinger, K. 155–156, 158 Lobo, D. 51 locality, net/networked 215–216 location 3, 8, 111, 114, 130–131, 150–151, 167, 211–212, 214–230, 254, 271 Locher, M.A. 30, 259, 265 Lofland, L.H. 224 Lomborg, S. 236 Lopesa, D. 68, 104 López Quero, S. 60 Lorenzo-Dus, N. 179 Louchart, S. 124 Lovink, G. 170 Lu, X. 184, 187 Lu, Z. 184, 187 Luangrath, A.W. 105n3 Lundström, R. 180 Luo, N. 184 Lybrand, E. 203, 208–209 Lyons, A. 63, 74, 76, 105n1, 129, 212 Ma, H. 186 Ma, L. 185–186 Mackay, W.E. 67 Madianou, M. 1–2, 9 Maíz-Arévalo, C. 70, 72–73, 84

313

Mallan, K. 257, 260, 262 Manago, A.M. 258, 269n6 Mancera Rueda, A. 265 Mandell, D.L. 97 manifestness: collective 228; mutual 5, 7, 113–118, 259 Márquez, I. 1 Marwick, A. 133, 152, 229, 246 Masanet, M.-J. 127 Mascheroni, G. 40 Massanari, A.L. 48 Massimi, M. 70 Masur, P.K. 3 Matley, D. 238 Matthes, J. 256 Mattila, E. 48 McCallum, K. 145 McCoy, S. 66 McDonald, T. 242 McRoberts, S. 186 McSweeney, M. 60, 65, 75 media: convergence 26n2; locative 8, 128, 211–212, 224; naturalness theory 60 mediatisation 1 Meet 34, 112 Meeus, A. 258 Meschtscherjakov, A. 40 Meseguer-Artola, A. 256 metamedium 1 metaphor, visual 147 metonymy 79, 89–91, 95–96, 106n16, 147–148 Michikyan, M. 68 Mikos, L. 140n2 Miller, D. 2, 242 Miller, V. 38 mind, modularity of 145–146 Misra, S. 213–214 Mitchell, S. 145 model, hyperpersonal 35, 60 Moeller, L. 252 Moeschler, J. 29, 32 Moffo, G.M. 265 Moghaddam, M.E. 152 Montero Fleta, B. 105n2 Morgan, J. 257 Morris, J. 70 motivation factors 44 Muench, R. 3 multimodality 125, 243–246; see also narrative, multimedia Murphy, K. 112 Murthy, D. 181, 191n1

314

Index

Nakandala, S. 197 narcissism 162, 218, 234 Nardi, B.A. 102, 203–204, 210n3 narrative: cross-media 125, 130–131; digital 119–140; imported offline 128; locative 128, 131; multimedia 125, 129–130; smartphone narrative 127–131; on social networking apps 131–139; transmedia 125–127, 131, 140n1 Naylor, J.S. 52 Neben, T. 52 Neill, J.T. 198, 207 nesting 127 networking: ephemeral 268; social 121, 231–269; see also narrative, on social networking apps Newton-John, T. 171 Nicolescu, R. 242 Nielsen, J. 44 Nisi, V. 126, 131 Noë, N. 226 nomophobia 3 Nouwens, M. 67 Ogden, J. 171 Oghuma, A.P. 43 Oh, J. 190 O’Hara, K. 70 Ohbuchi, K. 34 Okabe, D.B. 62 Öncü, J.S. 103 onomatopoeia 239–240 Oppegaard, B. 128 Opwis, K. 48 Orefice, M. 160, 168 Ortner, H. 35 Ounoughi, S. 212 outeraction 102 Özkul, D. 212–213, 216, 218, 222 Page, R. 121, 133–135, 137, 139–140, 140n3, 140n4, 160, 164, 166, 231 Pallesen, S. 163 Palmer, D. 148, 172n1 Palmer, J.W. 43 Panckhurst, R. 82, 89 Papacharissi, Z. 257 paradox: interactive 124; paralinguistic digital affordance 268n3 paralanguage, textual 105n3 Parini, A. 26n2 Pariser, E. 178 Parisi, L. 211

Park, D. 152 Park, N. 58, 63, 66 Park, S. 190 Parkwell, C. 83 participation, knowing 170–171 Parush, A. 53 Peck, J. 105n3 Pee, L.G. 43 peer pressure 104 Pentoney, C. 185 Penzel, J. 103 Pérez Sabater, C. 68, 105n2, 265 period 75–76 Perrino, S. 140 personality 62–63, 68, 69, 152, 159, 161– 162, 187, 198–199, 218, 220, 234–235 Peslak, A. 64 Peter, J. 104 Peters, C. 149 Pettegrew, L.S. 1–2 phaticness see communication, phatic photography: camera 148–149; iPhone 148–149; networked 155 phubbing 115 Picard, R.W. 41 Pink, S. 186 Piskorska, A. 29, 33 place 109–110, 156, 211, 213–218, 220–225, 254, 268; attachment 217; character of 223; communication place 67; presentation of 221; sense of 213, 218, 224 playfulness 73, 82, 104 Poff, M. 57–58, 60, 63 politeness 100–101, 106n13 Pollet, T.V. 226 polylogue 179, 273 polymedia 1 Poole, M.S. 60 Pounders, K. 162 Poyatos, F. 77 Prada, M. 68, 104 pragmatics 14; internet pragmatics 22–24 Pranjic, J. 82 Preotiuc-Pietro, D. 152 presence: absent 40, 58, 117; connected 38, 65, 102, 105n6, 117–118, 215, 224, 244, 254; mediated 158; social 103, 108, 190, 198, 208, 255–256 Pritchard-Berman, M. 185 produser 126 proposition expressed 21 prosumer 126

Index Provine, R.R. 97 Pugliese, M. 53 punctuation 64, 73, 76–77, 97, 105n5, 239 Puschmann, C. 237 Qiu, L. 40 Radovanovic, D. 102, 248 Rafaeli, S. 177, 180 Ragnedda, M. 102, 248 reality, augmented 131, 274; see also space, augmented reciprocity, affective 252 Recktenwald, D. 197, 199, 201, 209 referent 20, 172n5; adjustment, ad hoc 87–88, 95; visual 79, 83, 89, 91, 92–94, 145–147, 153–156, 165 Reid, A.J. 2, 232 Reid, D. 59, 62, 64 Reid, F. 59, 62, 64 Reinecke, L. 257 relationship 58, 62–63, 70, 82, 104, 109, 118, 187, 208, 214–215, 224, 246, 253; documentation of 228; parasocial 208 relevance: conditions of 16–18; of image-referent contiguity 153, 242; principle of 16–18; theory 4, 6, 13–14; of user-audience contiguity 153–155 Remil, E.H. 68 repurposing 79 Rettberg, J.W. 160 Rey, G. 27 Rickman, J. 203–204, 210n3 Rife, T.S. 58, 63–64 Riordan, M.A. 63, 105n4 Ritchie, J. 128 Roberts, J. 216 Robinson, N.E.I. 196 Rodrigues, D.L. 68, 104 Rodriguez, N.S. 161, 163–164 Rodríguez-Ardura, I. 256 Rosenbaun, L. 177, 180 Rosenberg, E.L. 27 Rost, M. 219, 226 Rothery, L. 166 Rousseau, S. 154 Rubens, S. 70 Rubenstein, D. 148 Sadeh, N. 219, 227–228 Sadler, N. 132, 136 Saker, M. 218

315

Salimkhan, G. 258, 269n6 Samani, Z.R. 152 Sampietro, A. 70, 82, 89, 91, 97, 99–100 Sanchez, C.A. 52 Santarossa, S. 170 Saraceni, M. 145 Sasaki, M.U. 34 Sasamoto, R. 239–240 saturation 21 Sauer, J. 53 Saussure, L. de 29, 41 Sayed, B. 254 saying/showing continuum 240 Scannell, L. 217 Scenepad 121 Scenetweet 129 Schandorf, M. 105n6 Schegloff, E. 111 Schilperoord, J. 95 Schlote, I. 116 Schmidt, C. 3 Schmuck, D. 256 Schneebeli, C. 96, 100 Schneider, F. 3 Schrock, A.R. 254 Schulz-Schaeffer, I. 212 Schwartz, R. 215, 219–220, 222–223, 227, 268 Schwarz, O. 221, 257 Scifo, B. 152 Scissors, L. 268n3 Scolari, C. 126–127 Scott, K. 237 Scott-Phillips, T. 145 Scrivener 129 scroll factor 201–202, 210n2 Seargeant, P. 266 self 115, 152; -affirmation 164; -awareness 139; -concept 68, 104, 131, 139, 159, 171, 218, 222–223; disclosure 103–104, 159, 164, 184, 220, 227, 257; -display 213; -effect 252; enhanced 157, 231; -esteem 65, 68, 104, 153, 159; -expression 160, 259; -gratification 251; -identity 68, 157, 186; looking-glass 164; -management 157; -presentation 62, 65, 72, 159–160, 164, 198, 227, 242, 257, 269n6; spatial 215, 220–221, 268; -theory 164; -worth 157, 163, 184 selfie 158–162; assemblage 160; recycled 168

316

Index

Sendall, P. 64 Serafinelli, E. 152 Serrano García, P. 76 Serrano-Puche, J. 34 sharing 67, 102, 140, 154–155, 164, 169, 219–220, 224; photo- 152, 157–158; social 34 Sharma, S. 169, 181, 191n1 Shepherd, M. 122 shyness 69, 159, 234 Siever, C.M. 82, 89, 96, 106n15 Siever, T. 89, 96 Siewiorek, D.P. 219, 227–228 Sinanan, J. 242 Sindoni, M.G. 177 Siyang, L. 87, 89 Sjöblom, M. 198, 207 Skierkowski, D. 58–60, 64, 65 Slater, A. 171 smartphone 1–4; call 107–118 Smith, J. 102, 271 Smoreda, Z. 102 SMS 57–66; novel 129 Snapchat 50, 161; story 50, 150–151, 186 sociality, digital 62 Soffer, O. 105n5 Sonderegger, A. 53 space 40, 109, 112–116, 130–131, 212–213, 217; augmented 215, 217; hybrid 214–215, 217; trans-mobile 255 Spagnolli, A. 58 speech, visible 148, 242 Spencer, R.J. 97 Sperber, D. 5, 13–17, 21, 25, 29, 31, 41n3, 47, 163, 166 Spilker, H.S. 196, 199, 201, 207, 209 Spina, S. 97, 240 Spyer, J. 242 Srivastava, S. 169 status update 135, 269n5 Stefanone, M.A. 163, 227 Stevic, A. 256 sticker 189–190 Stöckl, H. 125 Stokols, D. 213–214 Storrer, A. 123 story 124, 134; breaking 134–135; emoji 95; shared 135; small 134–135; see also Snapchat, story storytelling 130, 133; transmedia 126, 140n2; see also narrative Stowers, K. 162 streaming, live 8, 195–200

Strey, C. 27, 29, 32, 41n2 structuration theory, adaptive 60 Su, L.Y.-F. 190n1 Su, N.M. 197 Subrahmanyam, K. 68 Suganuma, N.K. 198, 208 Sumner, E.M. 250–251 Sundsøy, P.R. 63 Sung, Y. 170 Sutko, D.M. 221 Sveningsson, M. 140n1 Szymanski, M.H. 111 Ta, V.P. 87 Tagg, C. 63, 65, 256, 259, 266 tagging 156–157, 168, 172n2, 217, 220, 242–243; see also geotagging Tai, K.-H. 43 Tan, W.-K. 219, 227–228, 234 Tang, J.C. 208 Tang, K.P. 219, 227–228 Tang, K.-Y. 101 Taylor, T.L. 199 technology, affective 40 Tereick, J. 176, 182 territory, hybrid 216 text: alteration 26, 57, 60, 73–77, 105n2, 171, 202, 238–240, 263–264; circles 59; deformation 26, 57; -message 105n1; oralised written 26, 57 textism 60–61, 64, 70 theory: grounding 105n4; shared reality 269n6; social comparison 168; social information processing 35 Thompson, C. 102, 136, 223, 244 Thompson, D. 85 Thompson, J.B. 246 Thompson, L. 62 Thomson, L. 104 threshold, narrative value 128 Thurlow, C. 57–60, 62–63 Tifentale, A. 160 TikTok 183–184, 186–187, 243 Toh, Z. 163 Toma, C.L. 34 tone modification 99 Torsheim, T. 163 Toscano Gore, B. 127 Tov, W. 40 Tovares, A. 181 transmedia 125; see also narrative, transmedia Trepte, S. 257 tribe, nomadic 212

Index Trichtinger, L.A. 63, 105n4 Troendle, A. 48 Tsaasan, A.M. 203–204, 210n3 Tscheligi, M. 40 Tseng, S.-F. 234 Tseng, T.H. 73, 104 Tseronis, A. 147 Tulane, S. 58 Turcan, A. 85 Turkle, S. 215 Turner, A. 85 Twitch 195–210 Twitter 132–133, 135–136, 237, 255, 261–262; thread 137–138 Uebelbacher, A. 53 Undrum, L.V.M. 166, 168 Ungar, L. 152 Upadhaya, P. 169 Upadhyay, S.S.N. 75 usability 43–53 Utz, S. 223 Valkemburg, P. 104, 252 Välkkynen, P. 48 Vanden Abeele, M. 115 Vandergriff, I. 76, 85, 100 van Dijck, J. 156, 173, 178, 232 van House, N. 149, 157 van Hugten, C.H.M. 167 van Kleef, G.A. 30 Vaterlaus, J.M. 58 Vela Delfa, C. 106n11, 106n13 Veldhuis, J. 167 Venema, R. 158 Venkatraman, S. 242 Vetere, F. 102, 271 Veum, A. 166, 168, 172n5 video 173–191; annotation, collaborative 105n8, 180, 184; boomerang 184–185; call 107–118; snapshot 185–186 Villi, M. 152, 158 Vincent, J. 34, 39–41 voice, shared 204 Volckaert-Legrier, O. 60 Völkel, S.T. 82 von Dran, G.M. 44 Vorderer, P. 103 Wagner, N. 44 wall, the 135 Wallace, A.R. 45 Walther, J.B. 35, 60

317

Wang, C. 196 Wang, J.-L. 207 Wang, L. 185–186 Wang, M. 71, 100 Wang, S.S. 227 Wang, T. 186 Wang, X. 242 Wang, Y. 209 Wang, Y.-S. 201 Wang, Z. 267 Watters, C. 122 Waze 212, 221 Webb, A.M. 196 WeChat, emoji on 86, 95, 100 Wei, R. 2, 58 Weibo 95, 255 Weiser, M.D. 211 Wellman, B. 109–110, 211 Wengrovitz, S. 268n3 Wessler, H. 103 Westerink, J.H.D.M. 34 Wharton, T. 27–29, 31–32, 41n2, 41n4, 144, 166, 239 Whitaker, R.M. 218 Whittaker, S. 102, 226 Wilde, L.R.A. 79 Wilfinger, D. 40 Wilson, D. 5, 13–17, 21, 25, 29–31, 41n1, 41n3, 47, 166 Wiseman, S. 79 Witteveen, K. 253 Wohl, R. 208 Wohn, D. 252–253 Wohn, D.Y. 103, 223, 250–251 Wong, S.F. 43 Wood, R.M. 58–60, 64–65 Woodruff, S.J. 170 Xinaris, C. 259 Yáñez, D. 66 Yarosh, S. 186 Yi, M.Y. 190 Yittri, B. 114 Young, S.D. 49 YouTube 132, 173–176, 178, 179, 181–183, 190n1 Yu, Q. 68–69, 79, 81, 87 Yu, Z. 267 Yue, Z. 163 Yus, F. 4, 13–14, 21–26, 28, 30–31, 33, 35–39, 43, 57, 59–60, 62, 66–68, 70–73, 78–79, 84–86, 88–89, 97, 99, 101–102, 105n7, 105n9, 106n12,

318

Index

106n17, 107–109, 112, 119–120, 136–137, 139–140, 143–147, 156, 158, 163, 170, 174, 207, 210n1, 222–223, 225, 227, 230n1, 231–232, 235, 237, 242, 247–248, 260, 265, 269n4, 270, 272 Zappavigna, M. 75–76, 138, 158, 166, 224, 240, 266 Zeadally, S. 254 Zell, A.L. 252

Zhang, D. 50, 267 Zhang, L. 49 Zhang, L.-T. 105n8, 180 Zhang, M. 184, 209 Zhang, P. 44 Zhang, Y. 71, 100 Zhao, D. 136 Zhao, Q. 207 Zhao, S. 166 Zoom: anxiety 113 Zuo, H. 186