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Part of
Participation in Public and Social Media Interactions
Edited by Marta Dynel and Jan Chovanec
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 256] 2015
► pp. 233–257

What I can (re)make out of it

Incoherence, non-cohesion, and re-interpretation in YouTube video responses

The present paper examines patterns of relatedness in exchanges built by the video responses to one of YouTube “Most Responded” videos. The analysis shows the presence of a diversified range of patterns, as a result of the interactants’ creative use of the video response option, which affords text-production through copy-and-paste. The results trace a continuum from fully cohesive and coherent exchanges to exchanges presenting no clues of relatedness, with a great variation in-between the two poles. Videos often respond incoherently, disregarding the meaning, diverting from the topic or foregrounding a background element of the video they respond to. In other cases, responses are created through the reuse of previously made texts, so that their recontextualization reconfigures or scatters cohesive ties, producing a marked implicitness in the exchange. Interactants accept (and at times praise) incoherent and non-cohesive semiotic chains thus acknowledging and reinforcing emerging conventions in video-interaction. Interaction through videos seems driven by the participants’ interested reinterpretation, transformation, and recontextualization of texts, thus shaping distinctively the requirements for successful communication in the semiotic space.

Published online: 12 February 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.256.10ada
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