‘If I could really... smell the (digital) manure in summer’: Transmission of Place through Text-Messages

In: Dialectics of Space and Place across Virtual and Corporeal Topographies
Author:
Agnieszka Lyons
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The fact that texting constitutes (traditionally) a one-to-one communication between remotely located participants results in the existence of at least two separate deictic centres (the sender’s and the recipient’s here and now). The mediated channel through which communication takes place leads to the emergence of an additional set of potential deictic centres: ones located on the sender’s and recipient’s mobile screens and in a virtual space. Referring to Deictic Shift Theory and Fauconnier’s concept of mental spaces, I identify a number of ways in which space is constructed by texters – social location, negative location, and joint communicative space – including the importance of motion (explicit actions of entering and leaving joint communicative space) in establishing deictic centre(s) in texting. Additionally, I argue that texters construct alterae personae, i.e., virtual bodies which interact in these spaces and through which users enact kinaesthetic and sensory information (e.g., sounds, images, and actions). Finally, I show what discursive tools are employed by texters to express all these phenomena, and conclude by stating the need to recognise texting as a communicatively rich modality capable of creating embodied spaces.

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