Hacia una caracterización lingüística de las interacciones en WhatsApp

Abstract

The emergence of new communicative contexts and new forms of interaction has led to changes in the ways of communicating. Some authors speak of a new communicative paradigm caused by a new level of interaction arisen in the technological context. In this article, we focus on a new technology that can be included in the so-called computer mediated communication: WhatsApp. The aim of this work is to study WhatsApp interactions understood as a particular type of computer-mediated talks. Specifically we will: 1) Characterize the language used in WhatsApp interactions at every linguistic level, from phonetics to pragmatics, through morphology, vocabulary and syntax. 2) Analyze how the absence of nonverbal communication (paralanguage and kinesics) in such interactions is managed. 3) Determine whether WhatsApp interactions are manifestations of spoken or written language, or, on the contrary, they are a new type of language that cannot be classified as oral or written. And 4) determine whether WhatsApp interactions can be qualified as conversational.