SAY WHAT? (笑): THE REPRESENTATION OF LAUGHTER AS A CONTEXTUALIZATION CUE IN ONLINE JAPANESE DISCOURSE
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| Title | SAY WHAT? (笑): THE REPRESENTATION OF LAUGHTER AS A CONTEXTUALIZATION CUE IN ONLINE JAPANESE DISCOURSE |
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| Abstract | In this paper, I compare two variants for representing laughter in synchronous Japanese Twitter discourse: (笑), the kanji symbol meaning “laughter” situated between two parentheses, and w, the first letter of the romaji transliteration of that same word wara. I argue that they are digital equivalents of what Gumperz (1982) calls contextualization cues and that users employ each variant to convey a pragmatic tone, or what Goffman (1981) refers to as linguistic keys. To demonstrate, I analyze the public Tweets of saywhat327, a male Japanese university student. I find that saywhat327 (1) uses (笑) to key his utterances as warm/friendly in the formal register of Japanese, (2) uses w to key his utterances as playful in the informal register of Japanese, and (3) uses both variants with informal Japanese to key two separate utterances within the same Tweet as warm/friendly and playful, respectively, based on the semantic content of each utterance. In each of these cases, I argue that @saywhat327 builds rapport with his interlocutor by keying his utterances via the (笑) and w cues. Keywords: digital discourse, contextualization cues, discourse analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, orthographic variation. SAY WHAT? (笑): REPREZENTACIJA SMEHA KOT KLJUČ KONTEKSTUALIZACIJE V JAPONSKEM SPLETNEM DISKURZU V prispevku primerjam dva načina reprezentacije smeha v sodobnem japonskem diskurzu na Twitterju: (笑), med dvema oklepajema uporabljena pismenka zapisa kanji, ki pomeni "smeh", in w, ki je v latiničnem zapisu romaji prva črka besede wara. Menim, da ta dva načina zapisovanja predstavljata digitalna ekvivalenta ključev kontekstualizacije (Gumperz 1982) in da z izbiro enega od možnih načinov zapisa uporabnik doseže želeni pragmatični ton, kar Goffman (1981) poimenuje tudi jezikovni ključ. Tezo dokazujem z analizo javnih sporočil na omrežju Twitter uporabnika saywhat327, japonskega študenta moškega spola. Analiza pokaže, da saywhat327 uporablja (1) pismenko (笑) za kodiranje tistih izrekov, ki predstavljajo topel oziroma prijazen ton znotraj uradnega jezikovnega registra v japonščini, (2) črko w za kodiranje igrivih izrekov v neformalnem registru in (3) obe varianti pri neformalnem diskurzu, kadar želi v dveh ločenih izjavah istega tweeta ustvariti najprej topel, nato igriv ton, s čimer tvori končno semantično podobo vsake od izjav. Na podlagi zgornje analize menim, da zapisa (笑) in w kodirata odnos, ki ga @ saywhat327 pri svojih objavah vzpostavi z naslovnikom. Ključne besede: elektronski diskurz, ključi kontekstualizacije, analiza diskurza, interakcijska sociolingvistika, ortografska variacija. |
| Publisher | Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia |
| Date | 2013-07-12 |
| Source | Linguistica Vol 1, No 52 (2012): Spoken discourse |