JoLIE 16:1/2023

 

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APPLYING PRAGMATIC PRINCIPLES TO SOCIAL MEDIA INTERACTIONS: A CASE-BASED ANALYSIS

 

 

Gabriel Bărbuleț A green circle with white letters AI-generated content may be incorrect.

1 Decembrie 1918 University of Alba Iulia, Romania

 

 

 

Abstract

 

This study investigates the application of pragmatic principles to social media interactions by examining three real-world examples from platforms such as X, TikTok and Facebook. Drawing on foundational theories in pragmatics, particularly Grice’s Cooperative Principle and its associated maxims, as well as Brown and Levinson’s Politeness Theory, the paper explores how digital discourse challenges traditional models of meaning-making and implicature. In online contexts where messages are brief, multimodal, and often asynchronous, the interpretation of meaning relies heavily on shared contextual knowledge, cultural norms, and paralinguistic cues such as emojis, hashtags, and platform conventions.

The study begins with a literature review outlining key pragmatic frameworks and their relevance to digital communication. While Grice’s maxims of quantity, quality, relation, and manner provide a baseline for cooperative interaction, social media discourse frequently exhibits strategic flouting of these principles to achieve humour, irony, solidarity, or criticism. Politeness strategies, both positive and negative, are likewise adapted to online spaces where identity performance and face negotiation take place under conditions of limited accountability and high visibility. This dynamic environment invites creativity in language use, but also increases the risk of miscommunication and pragmatic failure.

Through a corpus of five case studies, the analysis investigates how users draw on pragmatic resources to manage face, infer intended meanings, and establish stance in public or semi-public digital arenas. The first case analyses a heated political exchange on X, focusing on violations of the maxim of relevance and the role of sarcasm and indirect implicature. The second examines a TikTok comment thread on a viral video, revealing how positive politeness strategies—such as emoji use, alignment markers, and in-group slang—are employed to express affiliation and soften disagreement. The third case study delves into a Facebook group discussion on a controversial topic, demonstrating how flouting the maxims of quantity and quality supports persuasive positioning and strengthens ideological alignment.

Findings suggest that while pragmatic principles remain essential for interpreting digital interactions, their application is shaped by platform-specific affordances, audience expectations, and evolving communicative norms. The study reveals a tension between the theoretical coherence of pragmatics and the pragmatic fluidity of online discourse, emphasising the need to update traditional models to account for multimodal, rapid-turnaround, and culturally diverse communication practices. Ultimately, this research contributes to the growing body of work on digital pragmatics and underscores the role of implicit meaning, politeness, and context in shaping online interactions. The case study format also offers a pedagogically valuable tool for teaching pragmatics in applied linguistic and communication studies.

 

Key words: Pragmatics; Social Media; Cooperative Principle; Implicature; Politeness Theory.

 

 

References

 

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.

 

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Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Doubleday.

 

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Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics, Vol. 3: Speech acts (pp. 41–58). Academic Press.

 

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Horn, L. R. (1984). Toward a new taxonomy for pragmatic inference: Q-based and R-based implicature. In D. Schiffrin (Ed.), Meaning, form, and use in context: Linguistic applications (pp. 11–42). Georgetown University Press.

 

Levinson, S. C. (2000). Presumptive meanings: The theory of generalized conversational implicature. MIT Press.

 

Locher, M. A., & Watts, R. J. (2005). Politeness theory and relational work. Journal of Politeness Research, 1(1), 9–33. https://doi.org/10.1515/jplr.2005.1.1.9

 

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Zappavigna, M. (2012). Discourse of Twitter and social media: How we use language to create affiliation on the web. Bloomsbury Academic.

 

 

How to cite this article: Bărbuleț, G. (2023). Applying pragmatic principles to social media interactions: A case-based analysis. Journal of Linguistic and Intercultural Education–JoLIE, 16(1), 7–19. https://doi.org/10.29302/jolie.2023.16.1.1

 

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