DISCURSIVE COMPLEXITY ON THE INTERNET

Abstract

This paper aims to indicate, according to the perspective of discursive-semiotics, some particularities of internet discourses in general, focusing on four main questions: the definition of these discourses, regarding written and spoken modalities of language; the enunciative and veridictory organization of internet discourses, from which derive the specific matters of “authorship” and “anonymity”, and the public and private characters of these discourses. Having carried out the exam as proposed, we were able to define some of the main characteristics of internet discourses: exacerbation of the interaction intensity and the extension of duration and reach of these discourses, due to their complexity, between spoken and written language; negation of the opposition between private and public, as a consequence of public/private complex creation; the discursive subject establishment as a public person, although anonymous, from the enunciation actor’s viewpoint of “authorship”; and also as a reliable subject, since he presents the truth and the knowledge, but free of responsibility for what is said, and as subject of power. Complexity, in its semiotic sense, seems to be the defining notion of internet discourses.