Book review: Smartphone Communication: Interactions in the App Ecosystem

Abstract

The growing body of pragmatics research on smartphone communication has primarily focussed on intentionally-conveyed propositional information. Building on his earlier cyberpragmatics framework together with Relevance Theory (RT), in this volume Yus adds the communication of emotions as an essential element to analyse smartphonebased, app-mediated discourses, developing a unique model for understanding how the interfaces of different apps and users’ personal attributes influence smartphone communication. The book comprises 13 chapters. The introductory Chapter 1 illustrates the ubiquity of smartphone communication and outlines the main aims of the book: first, to describe the issues involved in production, communication and interpretation of discourse on smartphones, and to provide a theoretical, (cyber)pragmatic account of the kinds of interaction that are sustained through apps; and, second, to explain why people find smartphone communication so interesting and even prefer it to face-to-face interaction. Much information on smartphones, which is typed and devoid of adequate contextual information, requires greater effort from users to achieve the intended interpretation compared to face-to-face interaction. Yus argues that contextual constraints and non-propositional effects are key to the understanding of these cyber discourses. The first part provides the theoretical foundation for the whole book. Chapter 2 presents the basic ideas of RT, Internet pragmatics and cyberpragmatics. While inferential gap-filling activities occur in both face-to-face interaction and smartphone communication, studies on the latter should highlight the ‘altered or blurred interactions in virtual medium’ (p. 23) of the Internet. Chapter 3 proposes that non-propositional information such as users’ feelings, emotions and affects in human communication are essential to understanding the appeal of smartphone communication. Chapter 4 delineates the interface usability in smartphone interaction, namely ‘the extent to which a product can be used by specific users to achieve specific goal with effectiveness, efficiency, and 1131383 DAS0010.1177/09579265221131383Discourse & SocietyBook review book-review2023