Addressing the notions of convention and context in social media research

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to discuss two fundamental pragmatic notions, convention and context within the framework of communication on social media. By presenting an overview of theoretical perspectives on the two notions and analyzing concrete examples from Twitter we put forward the importance of the dynamic and constant synergy between convention and context in communication on social media, but also in communication in general. Examples of tweets (Twitter posts) will show that the core principles of traditional communication – conventionalization and contextualization – remain strong and are visible in concrete realizations through new ‘communicative items’ such as hashtags (i.e. #onokad) and handles (i.e. @username). The technology behind the media opens up new avenues of creativity for the participants (users, speakers), yet the creativity remains situated within ‘contexts’ (micro- and macro-level) and perpetuated (or dismissed) through mechanisms of ‘conventionalization’. Pragmatics is shown to be a highly relevant and appropriate scholarly field for comprehensive research into language and communication on social media.