The pragmatics of hashtags: Inference and conversational style on Twitter

Journal of Pragmatics

Volumn 81, Issue , 2015, Pages 8-20

  Scott, Kate ^a  

^a KINGSTON UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Computer mediated communication; Hashtags; Relevance theory; Stylistics

Indexed keywords

EID: 84928334873     PISSN: 03782166     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2015.03.015     Document Type: Article

References (44)

1. Androutsopoulos Jannis Code-switching in computer-mediated communication. Pragmatics of Computer-Mediated Communication 2013, 667-694. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin. S.C. Herring, T. Virtanen (Eds.).
2. Baron Naomi The myth of the impoverished signal: dispelling the spoken-language fallacy for emoticons in online communication. Electronic Emotion 2009, 107-136. Peter Lang, Berlin. J. Vincent, L. Fortunati (Eds.).
3. Baym Nancy K. Personal Connections in the Digital Age 2010, Polity Press, Cambridge.
4. Blakemore Diane Semantic Constraints on Relevance 1987, Blackwell, Oxford.
5. Blakemore Diane Relevance and Linguistic Meaning: The Semantics and Pragmatics of Discourse Markers 2002, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
6. Blakemore Diane Constraints, concepts and procedural encoding. Pragmatics 2007, 45-66. Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke. N. Burton-Roberts (Ed.).
7. boyd danah Social network sites as networked public: affordances, dynamics and implications. Networked Self: Identity, Community and Culture on Social Network Sites 2010, 39-58. Routledge, Abingdon. Z. Papacharissi (Ed.).
8. boyd danah, Golder Scott, Lotan Gilad Tweet, tweet, retweet: conversational aspects of retweeting on Twitter. HICSS-43 2010, IEEE, Kauai, HI, January 6.
9. Brake David R. Who do they think they're talking to? Framings of the audience by social media users. Int. J. Commun. 2012, 6:1056-1076.
10. Carston Robyn Thoughts and Utterances: The Pragmatics of Explicit Communication 2002, Blackwell, Oxford.
11. Carston Robyn A Note on Pragmatic Principles of Least Effort, UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 17 2005, 271-278.
12. Clark Billy Relevance Theory 2013, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
13. Crystal David Txting: the gr8 db8 2008, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
14. Ferrara Kathleen, Brunner Hans, Whittemore Greg Interactive written discourse as an emergent register. Written Commun. 1991, 8:8-34.
15. Georgakapoulou Alexandra Self-presentation and interactional alliances in e-mail discourse: the style- and code-switches of Greek messages. Int. J. Appl. Linguist. 1997, 7(2):141-164.
16. Hall Alison Do discourse markers encode concepts or procedures?. Lingua 2007, 111(1):149-174.
17. Honeycutt Courtenay, Herring Susan C. Beyond Microblogging: Conversation and Collaboration in Twitter. HICSS-42 2009, IEEE, Los Alamitos, CA, January 5-8.
18. Huang Jeff, Thorntonn Katherine M., Efthimiadis Efthimis N. Conversational Tagging in Twitter. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia 2010.
19. Iten Corinne Linguistic Meaning, Truth Conditions and Relevance: The Case of Concessives 2005, Palgrave, Basingstoke.
20. Litt Eden Knock, Knock. Who's there? The imagined audience. J. Broadcast. Electron. Media 2012, 56(3):330-345.
21. MacArthur, Amanda, n.d. The History of Hashtags: Shedding Some Light on the History of Hashtags and How We've Come to Use Them. Available from: (accessed 12.10.14) (online). http://twitter.about.com/od/Twitter-Hashtags/a/The-History-Of-Hashtags.htm.
22. Marwick Alice E., boyd danah I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience. New Media Soc. 2010, 13:96-113.
23. Messina Chris Groups for Twitter; or a proposal for Twitter tag channels 2007, Available from: http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2007/08/25/groups-for-twitter-or-a-proposal-for-twitter-tag-channels/ (accessed 07.30.14) (online).
24. Page Ruth Stories and Social Media: Identities and Interaction 2011, Routledge, Abingdon.
25. Page Ruth The linguistics of self-branding and micro-celebrity in Twitter: the role of hashtags. Discourse Commun. 2012, 6(2):181-201.
26. Page Ruth Saying 'sorry': corporate apologies posted on Twitter. J. Pragmat. 2014, 62:30-45.
27. Pilkington Adrian Poetic effects. Lingua 1992, 87(1/2):29-51.
28. Pilkington Adrian Poetic Effects: a Relevance Theory Perspective 2000, John Benjamins, Amsterdam.
29. Scott Kate The Relevance of Referring Expressions: The Case of Diary Drop in English 2010, (Ph.D. thesis), University College London.
30. Scott Kate Pragmatically motivated null subjects in English: a relevance theory perspective. J. Pragmat. 2013, 53:68-83.
31. Sperber Dan, Wilson Deirdre Relevance: Communiciation and Cognition 1986/95, Blackwell, Oxford. 3nd ed. (with postface).
32. Starbird Kate, Palen Leysia, Hughes Amanda L., Vieweg Sarah Chatter on the red: what hazards threat reveals about the social life of microblogged information. ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 2010, 241-250.
33. Tagg Caroline, Seargeant Philip Audience design and language choice in the construction and maintenance of translocal communities on social network sites. The Language of Social Media: Identity and Community on the Internet 2014, 161-185. Palgrace MacMillan, Basingstoke. P. Seargeant, C. Tagg (Eds.).
34. Thurlow Crispin, Brown Alex Generation Txt? The sociolinguistics of young people's text-messaging. Discourse Anal. Online 2003, 1(1).
35. Twitter Inc. About Twitter, Inc 2014, Available from: https://about.twitter.com/company (accessed 02.12.14) (online).
36. Twitter, Inc., n.d. Using hashtags on Twitter. Available from: (accessed 07.30.14] (online). https://support.twitter.com/articles/49309-using-hashtags-on-twitter.
37. Wesch Michael Youtube and you: experiences of self-awareness in the context collapse of the recording webcam. Explor. Media Ecol. 2009, 8(2):19-34.
38. Wharton Tim Pragmatics and Non-Verbal Communication 2009, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
39. Wilson Deirdre The conceptual-procedural distinction: past, present and future. Procedural Meaning: Problems and Perspectives 2011, 3-31. Emerald, Bingley. V. Escandell-Vidal, M. Leonetti, A. Ahern (Eds.).
40. Wilson Deirdre, Sperber Dan Relevance theory. The Handbook of Pragmatics 2004, 607-632. Blackwell, Oxford. L.R. Horn, G. Ward (Eds.).
41. Wilson Deirdre, Sperber Dan Meaning and Relevance 2012, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
42. Wilson Deirdre, Wharton Tim Relevance and prosody. J. Pragmat. 2006, 38(10):1559-1579.
43. Yus Francisco Cyberpragmatics: Internet-mediated Communication in Context 2011, John Benjamins, Amsterdam.
44. Zappavigna Michele Discourse of Twitter and Social Media: How We Use Language to Create Affiliation on the Web 2012, Bloomsbury Academic, London.