The digital discourse and the concept of textuality

new challenges for Text Linguistics

Abstract

This paper, that mainly focus on the Analysis of Digital Discourses (MAYEUR; PAVEAU, 2020; PAVEAU, 2021) aims at showing how the concept of textuality, traditionally described in Text Linguistics studies, should be taken to a more complex level when we analyse discourses in the digital media. Thus, in order to achieve this goal, we consider two categories for the analysis of those discourses: the non-linearity and the enunciative enlargement. Actually, in these discourses, textuality is created by the writer-reader himself/herself who combines, in a dynamic and simultaneous way, both writing and reading. This enunciative attitude towards the management of the hyperlinks fosters several possibilities for the construction of the textual/discursive units. Then, to illustrate our approach, two posts will be analysed: one hyperlink from the magazine Superinteressante and a tweet from the epidemiologist Paulo Lotufo (with the comments). The qualitative results showed that, regarding the digital native genres, the readers-users are the ones who “make the text”, either by non-linearization or by an enunciative enlargement; these processes are built simultaneously through the use of a plurissemiotic language and technology; such features of these digital discourses demand thus a review of the concept of textuality as it is traditionally assumed.