Linguistic knowledge and digital discourse genres: potential connections based on variable phenomena in online chats

• Autor(a) principal: Ferreira de Carvalhaes Pinheiro, Andrei
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: Paredes Silva, Vera, Abreu Gomes, Christina
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.21814/diacritica.4821
• topic: Modelos baseados no Uso; Variação linguística; Conhecimento linguístico; Gêneros discursivos digitais; Chat; Usage-based Models; Language variation; Linguistic knowledge; Digital discourse genres; Chat

Several studies on the English language have identified strategies of syntactical reduction or simplification in digital informal communication, such as the non-expression of the first-person singular subject. This paper focuses on a digital discourse genre with the goal to verify whether linguistic uses in the digital environment are distinct from those observed in prototypical speech and written interactions, since digital discourse genres might incorporate different frequencies of morphosyntactic variants. We analyse data of the following variables: the expression of the first-person singular pronominal subject, and the third-person anaphoric direct object in Brazilian Portuguese. These data were retrieved from chat interactions (or instant messaging), which are typically informal by nature. Results indicate that the null variants are predominant in both cases, thus replicating rates of subject expression in written texts, and of the anaphoric direct object in speech. Therefore, it constitutes a specific pattern of this digital discourse genre. Adopting the approach of the Usage-based Models, we argue that linguistic patterns observed in discourse genres, digital ones included, also integrate the speaker’s linguistic knowledge.