Tagging the World: An Augmented Idea of Felicity Conditions

Computer-mediated communication, especially in its latest developments (Web 2.0, Augmented Reality systems, tagging-based standards) seems to call for a radical rethinking of the basic tenets of linguistics. The Gricean maxims of quantity, quality, relevance and non-ambiguity have deeply been shaken by these forms of verbal and visual exchange. The boundary between the world and the web has increasingly become a thin and permeable membrane: the real and the virtual environments have mixed so inextricably that it is no longer possible to discuss them in terms of mutually-exclusive dimensions. In our deeply-layered and mixed world fundamental issues like semantic continuity, indexicality and figurative language need to be re-defined. After a general overview on how linguistic assumptions – with particular regard to pragmatics - have been transformed by the existence of hybrid ecosystems, my paper will focus on the phenomenon known as “tagging”, which has once and for ever established a constant isomorphism between the net and the planet. Tagclouds are the most significant example of how texts can embody Grice’s maxims from this new perspective.