How to do things with websites: Reconsidering Austin's perlocutionary act in online communication
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Stefano Tardini
Stefano Tardini (b. 1972) is a postdoctoral researcher at Università della Svizzera italiana 〈stefano.tardini@usi.ch〉. His research interests include eLearning, online communication, social networks, and virtual communities. His publications includePensare e comunicare (with N. Di Blas et al. 2008); “From paradigmatic to syntagmatic communities: a socio-semiotic approach to the evolution pattern of online travel communities” (with L. Cantoni et al. 2009); and “Health virtual communities: Is the self lost in the Net?” (with L. Camerini & N. Diviani 2010).
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Asta Adukaite
Asta Adukaite (b. 1985) is a PhD candidate at Università della Svizzera italiana 〈asta.adukaite@usi.ch〉. Her research interests include information and communication technologies in tourism and learning contexts.Lorenzo Cantoni (b. 1967) is a professor at Università della Svizzera italiana 〈lorenzo.cantoni@usi.ch〉. His research interests lie where communication, new media and education overlap. His publications includeComunicazione. Teoria e pratiche (with N. Di Blas 2006);Internet (with S. Tardini 2006); “Towards online content classification in understanding tourism destinations' information competition and reputation” (with A. Inversini 2011); and “The online reputation construct: Does it matter for the tourism domain? A literature review on Destinations' online reputation” (with E. Marchiori 2012).
Abstract
The importance of online communication has pushed researchers from several communication-related fields to contribute to its design and evaluation; when it comes to websites, usability studies have highly contributed to improve the quality of online applications. Even though usability has taken the point of view of users, its main focus is on the application itself, and on how it should be better designed, and implemented accordingly. This article argues that actual usages by a website's users, as well as the business goals of its publisher should be included in the analysis, to offer a better understanding of website communication. To provide a wider, and more adequate approach to the issue, it is suggested that Austin's model of communicative acts can offer a clear map of all involved elements and needed viewpoints, helping in designing a comprehensive model for researchers in website communication.
About the authors
Stefano Tardini (b. 1972) is a postdoctoral researcher at Università della Svizzera italiana 〈stefano.tardini@usi.ch〉. His research interests include eLearning, online communication, social networks, and virtual communities. His publications include Pensare e comunicare (with N. Di Blas et al. 2008); “From paradigmatic to syntagmatic communities: a socio-semiotic approach to the evolution pattern of online travel communities” (with L. Cantoni et al. 2009); and “Health virtual communities: Is the self lost in the Net?” (with L. Camerini & N. Diviani 2010).
Asta Adukaite (b. 1985) is a PhD candidate at Università della Svizzera italiana 〈asta.adukaite@usi.ch〉. Her research interests include information and communication technologies in tourism and learning contexts.
Lorenzo Cantoni (b. 1967) is a professor at Università della Svizzera italiana 〈lorenzo.cantoni@usi.ch〉. His research interests lie where communication, new media and education overlap. His publications include Comunicazione. Teoria e pratiche (with N. Di Blas 2006); Internet (with S. Tardini 2006); “Towards online content classification in understanding tourism destinations' information competition and reputation” (with A. Inversini 2011); and “The online reputation construct: Does it matter for the tourism domain? A literature review on Destinations' online reputation” (with E. Marchiori 2012).
©2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Munich/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Semiotic degeneracy of social life: Prolegomenon to a human science of semiosis
- Heterosemiosis: Mixing sign systems in graphic narrative texts
- Do speakers really unconsciously and imagistically gesture about what is important when they are telling a story?
- On the institutional aspect of institutionalized and institutionalizing semiotics
- At the intersection of text and talk: On the reproduction and transformation of language in the multi-lingual evaluation of multi-lingual texts
- Cave paintings of the Early Stone Age: The early writings of modern man
- Revisiting legal terms: A semiotic perspective
- Two child narrators: Defamiliarization, empathy, and reader-response in Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident and Emma Donoghue's Room
- The development of an idea in a context of rejection
- Stopovers at logic and cybernetics: Georg Klaus's road to semiotics
- The sign in Heidegger's Sein und Zeit
- The semiotic logic of signification of conspiracy theories
- Biopolitics, surveillance, and the subject of ADHD
- Signification in atonal, amotivic music? Extending the properties of actoriality in Ligeti's second string quartet
- Translation, materiality, intersemioticity: Excursions in experimental literature
- Teleological historical narrative as a strategy for constructing political antagonism: The example of the narrative of Estonia's regaining of independence
- Testing the limits of oral narration
- How to do things with websites: Reconsidering Austin's perlocutionary act in online communication
- Fashionable yet strategic similarities: Diego Velázquez's creative consciousness seen through Saussurean-Hegelian composite approach
- Piaget's system of spatial logic: The semiosis of index
- The types of codes and their combinations: Visual perception and visual art
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- Semiotics, theatre, and the body: The performative disjunctures between theory and praxis
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- Phytosemiotics revisited: Botanical behavior and sign transduction
- Review article
- The dialogic lacuna in Fenves's Messianic Reduction: Walter Benjamin and the Shape of Time
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Semiotic degeneracy of social life: Prolegomenon to a human science of semiosis
- Heterosemiosis: Mixing sign systems in graphic narrative texts
- Do speakers really unconsciously and imagistically gesture about what is important when they are telling a story?
- On the institutional aspect of institutionalized and institutionalizing semiotics
- At the intersection of text and talk: On the reproduction and transformation of language in the multi-lingual evaluation of multi-lingual texts
- Cave paintings of the Early Stone Age: The early writings of modern man
- Revisiting legal terms: A semiotic perspective
- Two child narrators: Defamiliarization, empathy, and reader-response in Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident and Emma Donoghue's Room
- The development of an idea in a context of rejection
- Stopovers at logic and cybernetics: Georg Klaus's road to semiotics
- The sign in Heidegger's Sein und Zeit
- The semiotic logic of signification of conspiracy theories
- Biopolitics, surveillance, and the subject of ADHD
- Signification in atonal, amotivic music? Extending the properties of actoriality in Ligeti's second string quartet
- Translation, materiality, intersemioticity: Excursions in experimental literature
- Teleological historical narrative as a strategy for constructing political antagonism: The example of the narrative of Estonia's regaining of independence
- Testing the limits of oral narration
- How to do things with websites: Reconsidering Austin's perlocutionary act in online communication
- Fashionable yet strategic similarities: Diego Velázquez's creative consciousness seen through Saussurean-Hegelian composite approach
- Piaget's system of spatial logic: The semiosis of index
- The types of codes and their combinations: Visual perception and visual art
- Minimal acting: On the existential gap between theatre and performance art
- Visual semiotics and the national flag: A Kenyan perspective of Anglo-America's globe-cultural domination through mainstream music videos
- Dinner is ready! Studying the dynamics and semiotics of dinner
- Linking transculturality and transdisciplinarity
- Towards a semiotic theory of historico-cultural cycles: The semiotic contours of Spengler's “prime symbols”
- The taxicab-hailing encounter: The politics of gesture in the interaction order
- A semiotic model of visual change
- Semiotics, theatre, and the body: The performative disjunctures between theory and praxis
- On Peirce's diagrammatic models for ten classes of signs
- Phytosemiotics revisited: Botanical behavior and sign transduction
- Review article
- The dialogic lacuna in Fenves's Messianic Reduction: Walter Benjamin and the Shape of Time
