Email Hoaxes

Form, function, genre ecology
Erscheinungsjahr 2008
ISBN: 978-90-272-5418-4
Verlag: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Buch, Englisch, Band 174, 239 Seiten, Format (B × H): 164 mm x 245 mm, Gewicht: 600 g

Reihe: Pragmatics & Beyond New Series

How genres emerge and evolve on the Internet has become one of the central questions in studies of computer-mediated communication (CMC). This book addresses the issue of genrefication by giving an in-depth analysis of email hoaxes as a candidate for digital genre status. Email hoaxes are deceptive messages that spread in digital social networks; they are a fascinating object for discourse linguistics as they exemplify a major pragmatic tendency in CMC, namely deceptivity and a lowering of sincerity standards. This study examines formal and functional aspects of email hoaxes and provides ample evidence both from a systematized corpus and in situ data collected online. Besides a structural and microlinguistic analysis, it identifies key issues such as pragmatic duality, narrativity and textual variation and change in email hoaxes. In conclusion, a digital genre model is outlined that bridges both the old/new and the formal/functional gaps and may be applied to many other digital genre ecologies.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Heyd, Theresa

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Textlinguistik, Diskursanalyse, Stilistik
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Sprachsoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Soziolinguistik