Theresa Heyd

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.

Form, Function, Genre Ecology

Email Hoaxes

Ferdinand von Mengden

Britta Schneider

This volume explores the linguistic diversity and language variation in Berlin. The analytical focus is on the emergence of linguistic, cultural, political and spatial discourses and communities, or discursive and institutional responses to these. The volume provides new insights into language in its local but transnationally conditioned socio-economic embeddedness.

Theresa Heyd

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