Il linguaggio del trolling. Ingredienti semiotici, cause socioculturali ed effetti pragmatici

Massimo Leone

doi:10.4396/SFL2019EC4

Massimo Leone

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4396/SFL2019EC4

Parole chiave: Trolling, Language, Emotions, Semiotics, Public discourse

Abstract

The article singles out and describes the main rhetorical ingredients of trolling through contrasting it with comparable discursive practices: provocation, joke, defensive anonymity, critical public discourse, controversy, and lie. The following elements are found to play a major role in the discursive construction of trolling: topic-insensitive provocation; time-boundless jest; sadistic hierarchy of sender and receiver; anonymity of both the troll and her or his audience; choral character of the ‘actant observer’ of trolling; construction of artificial contradictory semantics; disruption of argumentative logics; irrelevance of the relation between beliefs and expressions. Trolling profoundly disrupts the conversational ethics of the human civilization because it severs expression from content, signifier from signified, communication from intention.

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