The illusion of argumentation in the dialogue between media and linguistics: the case of internetese

Abstract

This paper is part of a research project dealing with the analysis
of both the discourses found in the press on the subject of
language and the responses that linguistics has tried to offer
them, with a focus on the procedures that constitute an
argumentation inside these texts which broadcast these
discourses. To do so, it employs the concepts of polyphony and
argumentative direction, as defined by the semantics of
enunciation, as well as the concept of argumentative chaining,
which comes from the theory of argumentation in language.
This paper discusses three texts about internet slang, two of
them published in specialized brazilian magazines (one written
by a linguist and the other by a journalist) and a third one,
published in a national Brazilian newspaper. The first results
seem to confirm the initial hypothesis, that the dialogue
between the press and the linguistic science came to be an
area of “unhearing”, since each discourse does not seem to be
affected by the other, which is a consequence of the sliding of
meanings generated by language drift. That comes to show, for
instance, in pieces of journalism which, though quoting the
opinions of linguists, seem to ignore them, creating effects of
meaning which bring out the fact that the argumentation is an
illusion.