Multimodal joint fantasising as a category‑implicative and category‑relations‑implicative action in online multi‑party interaction

Abstract

Drawing on interactional pragmatics and membership categorisation analysis, with a focus on (un)accomplished intersubjectivity, categories and social action, this paper explores some new aspects of multimodal joint fantasising in online interaction. The data for this study comes from the public Facebook event page regarding the ‘ski field opening’ in Brisbane, a sub-tropical city in Australia. The first part of the analysis examines how intersubjectivity is accomplished through joint fantasising co-constructed among the posters, serving entertainment purposes. Invoking their membership in the category ‘fantasisers’, this is done in two ways: (1) flat co-construction gradient; and (2) upgraded co-construction gradient. The second part focusses on the instances wherein intersubjectivity in relation to the fantasy world is unaccomplished. It is indexed through (1) metapragmatic labels of humour types; (2) treating the event as real; and (3) doubting the authenticity of the event and challenging the joint fantasising posts. As a result, additional categories emerge, thereby constructing category relations, namely, oppositional categories such as ‘fantasisers’-‘the gullible’ and ‘fantasisers’-‘sceptics’. This in situ change, I argue, creates a shift in the pragmatic function of joint fantasising, moving from a category-implicative action (serving entertainment) to a category-relations-implicative action (serving jocular criticism). This paper adds to the research on joint fantasising, categorial work and social action, and broadly contributes to our understanding of how members of the society orient to contexts and categories in and through talk-in-interaction.