Punteggiatura in rete: i puntini di sospensione nella comunicazione mediata dal computer

This paper presents a corpus-based study of the functions of ellipses <...> in Italian computer-mediated communication (CMC). The research is rooted in a theoretical framework where Italian punctuation is globally assigned a communicative meaning and, more specifically, ellipses are interpreted as an interactive punctuation mark. I will show that, from a quantitative point of view, the frequency of use of ellipses in CMC is more than 30 times higher than in standard writing. This is not due to the simple imitation of non-communicative prosodic features of spoken language, which is rare and restricted to chat interactions. Most uses of ellipses in CMC have a communicative meaning and can be classified either as: a) interactive uses, which are boosted by the inherent dialogic interactivity of CMC and aim at the construction of a socio-cognitive common ground between writer and reader(s); or as b) desemanticized uses, where ellipses lose their interactive meaning and retain only a basic segmentational function, akin to that displayed by the period in standard writing.