The use of diminutives and their relation with linguistic courtesy in chats. A contrastive analysis of Spanish and Italian virtual communities

The focus of this article lies on the exploration of politeness / impoliteness strategies ocurring in "chat" conversations in Spanish and Italian. The birth of the new forms of virtual socialization has permitted the users to exploit the characteristics of the computer system to experiment different ways of communication while creating social relations not available in the past. By resorting to morphopragmatics and Politeness theories, the analysis undertaken tackles: the most important linguistic devices used by speakers / writers in the two languages within the framework of polite / impolite behaviour; the differences and similarities of practices adopted in Spanish and Italian chatgroups, with especial reference to the use of diminutives; the purpose attached by users to such devices, whether the desire to be appreciated by listeners / readers (Brown and Levinson, 1987), or the construction of alternative levels of proximity (Koch and Oesterreicher, 1990).