Reading Between Digital Lines: Toward A Pragmatics Of Ambiguity And Discursive Responsibility Online

This research examines how, in ordinary digital interactions, a completely banal message can suddenly drift, slip, and multiply. One may begin with a simple request or question and end up facing a cascade of comments, divergent readings, and rapid judgments. Based on a corpus composed of public threads from social networks, the study shows how users attempt to reconstruct context with very limited resources: a blurred photo, an emoji, an exclamation mark. Intentions are inferred, identities are assumed, and group norms are reaffirmed or contested. Misunderstandings are no longer accidental; they become the ordinary engine of exchange, prompting escalation, positioning, and the sudden formation of coalitions. Compensatory strategies—such as swift apologies, reformulations, and brief disclaimers—reveal an ongoing effort to maintain face within an unstable interactional space. On the basis of these observations, the article proposes a simple yet urgent pedagogical orientation: training learners to read, reread, and anticipate possible interpretations in order to develop genuine digital pragmatic literacy—more cautious, more aware, and more responsible.