Prominent among the social developments that the web 2.0 has facilitated is digital social reading (DSR): on many platforms there are functionalities for creating book reviews, 'inline' commenting on book texts, online story writing (often in the form of fanfiction), informal book discussions, book vlogs, and more. In this article we argue that DSR offers unique possibilities for research into literature, reading, the impact of reading and literary communication. We also claim that in this context computational tools are especially relevant, making DSR a field particularly suitable for the application of Digital Humanities methods. We draw up an initial categorization of research aspects of DSR and briefly examine literature for each category. We distinguish between studies on DSR that use it as a lens to study wider processes of literary exchange as opposed to studies for which the DSR culture is a phenomenon interesting in its own right. Via seven examples of DSR research we discuss the chosen approaches and their connection to research questions in literary studies.

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This chapter provides an overview of the participation structure in fictional discourse by discussing the relevant theoretical participation frameworks. The main focus is on the discourse of film and television, which is discussed in-depth, before the participation structures of literary fiction and drama are also addressed. The discussion highlights the participant roles each of the models describes for authors/producers, characters, and particularly for recipients/readers, which are given most focus in pragmatic research. One of the key differences between different frameworks has been the conceptualization of recipients/readers as either ratified participants or unratified overhearers. The chapter explains the terms as they are used by Goffman (1976, 1979) as well as the different positions that the respective theoretical approaches adopt. Frontal medium close-up of George. Jerry Can you relax?

The paper investigates formal language in persuasive discourse on the r/ChangeMyView subreddit. We collected a corpus of 100 million messages, split into subcorpora based on the user-awarded marker delta, which rewards changing an original poster’s view. Assuming that formality/informality is potentially an important factor in the persuasiveness of a message, we examine the two subcorpora with respect to formality markers. The results indicate no systematic variation along the formality/informality continuum between persuasive and non-persuasive posts on r/ChangeMyView. The posters use personal pronouns, suasive verbs, emphatics, imperatives, elaborate connectors and WH-questions with similar frequency, and express themselves using vocabulary and syntax of similar complexity. Moreover, keyword lists and n-gram rankings indicate no register difference. A qualitative analysis of concordance lines for persuade and change PRONOUN view paints a picture of a community that values factual, evidence-based discourse and openness to logical persuasion, with a linguistic norm of relatively formal, sophisticated register.

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