[This is a pre-print version of Bednarek, M. (2017). Fandom. In Christian R.

Hoffmann & Wolfram Bublitz (eds). Pragmatics of Social Media. Berlin/New

York: de Gruyter Mouton: 545-572.]

21. Fandom
Monika Bednarek

Abstract
This chapter focuses on the linguistic practices of fans and other media consumers
as evident in their contributions on social media platforms. The digital environment
has had significant impact on such practices, as summarized by Jenkins (2006a:
141–142):
• It has increased the speed with which fans can communicate with each other
and the development of new fan communities.
• It has allowed fans to access a much wider range of perspectives online and to
practice more effective activism.
• The international reach of the internet has made the community larger and
transnational.
• It has moved fandom towards the mainstream.
Nevertheless, fandom – and audience engagement more generally – has mainly
been considered in non-linguistic disciplines, with only a few exceptions. This
chapter discusses relevant linguistic practices through which audience members
respond to narrative mass media texts on social media platforms. It does so with
reference to fictional TV series and focuses primarily on the linguistic studies that
have been undertaken in this field so far.

1. Introduction

This chapter provides an introduction to the different types of linguistic

actions, or practices, that are undertaken by fans and other audience
members on social media platforms as they respond to narrative mass media
texts (in particular, TV series). Although there is no singular or unified
academic definition of the concept of fan (Costello and Moore 2007: 126),
fans are often defined by their behaviour. In such definitions, a fan engages
in practices of consumption that go beyond viewing the media text and that
reflect a heightened emotional engagement – practices that fall “outside the
common expectations for a member of the audience” (Costello and Moore
2007: 126).
However, in reality, practices of consumption by audience members,
including fans, vary quite considerably. For instance, there are different
types and levels of online fan activity, such as creating a fan site, liking and
commenting on such a site (or on other content), writing fan fiction,
producing fan art, or tweeting as a character (Costello and Moore 2007,
Zhivov, Scheepers, and Stockdale 2011, Wood and Baughman 2012).
Costello and Moore (2007: 130) therefore posit a “continuum of
passive/active audiences”.
In addition, it is difficult to clearly identify audience practices that go
beyond ordinary expectations or norms, in particular as such norms may
also be shifting. For example, are audience members who tweet about a
particular TV program engaging in a practice that is beyond the level of
engagement now commonly expected of members of the audience?
Harrington (2014: 240-241) reports that hashtags or keywords that relate to
television programs frequently appear as “trending topics”, indicating that
live-tweeting about a TV program might be a growing phenomenon, most
often in relation to live sports and other events, but also in relation to prime-
time comedy/drama.
Building on such findings, in this chapter I assume that audience
practices can be situated on a scale in terms of their adherence to norm-
based expectations, and will thus not attempt to strictly differentiate fans
from other audience members. Rather, I will discuss linguistic research on
how audience members engage with narrative mass media texts (in
particular, TV series) on social media platforms, including but not limited to
traditionally understood fandom.
Although the concept of “fan” is hence a fuzzy category with no clear-
cut boundaries, the study of fandom arguably represents an important new
area for linguistic research. Fan audiences are a significant aspect of
contemporary consumer culture in “mediatised” (Lundby 2009;
Androutsopoulos 2014) societies, where new digital means have moved fan
activities towards the mainstream (Jenkins 2006a: 142). While the identity
of the fan may have negative connotations (the stereotype of the geeky or
nerdy obsessed loner-fan), fans can also be conceptualised more positively,
for example as active and creative audiences, as producers who build their
own social identity and culture through selectively “poaching” from media
texts (Jenkins 1992). Through fan activities, people may acquire
considerable language, writing or technical skills, and work through
important issues including social justice, equality and diversity (Jenkins, Ito,
and boyd 2016: 93, 155). Additionally, fans were early adopters of social
media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter (Jenkins, Ito, and boyd 2016:
135) and may thus play an important part in the diffusion of linguistic
innovations, in particular when the form, function and meaning of the
respective innovation encourage such a diffusion from media consumers to
other speakers (Squires 2014). In disciplines outside linguistics, fans have
been an object of systematic and serious academic study for almost 25 years
now, starting with Jenkins’s seminal book in the early 1990s (Jenkins 1992).
Hills (2002: 183) states that there is no longer a need to fight for a place for
fandom in cultural studies research. However, most of this research does not
consider linguistic practices in depth, as it does not focus on language use
per se.1 It is thus high time for a linguistic “fanalysis”.

1
For example, Androutsopoulos and Weidenhöffer (2015: 23) note that “[m]ost existing
research on the use of Twitter by broadcast audiences originates in communication studies
and pays little attention to language use”.

Pragmatics of Fiction 2
 This chapter is not intended to replicate equivalent chapters on fandom,
media engagement, and social media in handbooks of Media and
Communications Studies, and will hence focus squarely on linguistic
research, although I will occasionally draw on non-linguistic literature.
Linguistic media engagement studies have examined different ways in
which audiences deal with media language, especially in relation to young
people, face-to-face interaction, and transnational or minority communities
(Androutsopoulos 2014: 9, 18–25). Some studies have drawn on the notion
of appropriation (Ayaβ and Gerhardt 2012), while there has been recent
interest in the concept of mediatisation (Androutsopoulos 2014). Such
media engagement studies examine a range of different media products,
including narrative mass media texts such as films and TV series (Coupland
2007: 171–176; contributions to Androutsopoulos 2012) but also political
speeches (Cole and Pellicer 2012) or talk shows (Squires 2014). Overall,
these studies are located in interactional sociolinguistics and linguistic
anthropology rather than in pragmatics, and studies on social media have
only emerged fairly recently (e.g. Squires 2014 on Twitter).
In this chapter, I limit my discussion firstly to research on social media
platforms and secondly to research on audience responses to contemporary
fictional TV series. By this I mean scripted series such as House of Cards or
Mad Men, which viewers may consume via a range of different platforms
(television, computer, tablet, mobile phone). This focus is primarily
motivated by the specific characteristics of audience engagement with TV
series (summarized from Bednarek 2012):
Audiences engage with the characters and narratives as well as the
language of the fictional worlds represented in TV series, including in
conversations with others. Simply put, many audience members are very
interested in the lives and experiences of TV characters and in the unfolding
of televisual narratives. Roman (2005: 130) and Creeber (2004: 4) argue that
TV series create audience involvement in unique ways and more than other
media texts. More specifically, audiences spend a lot of time watching
television series in general and often follow a particular TV series over
many seasons – this creates considerable depth of engagement. There is
psychological involvement with television characters, with different ways in
which audience members form interpersonal connections with these media
figures, including parasocial interaction, (wishful) identification, or
affinity/liking (Cohen 1999; Giles 2002). Viewers may thus build up a
particularly close and intimate relationship with characters in TV fiction
(Wickham 2007: 91, 93).
Viewers of television series may also be very active in their online
engagement, and such engagement happens both within and across
countries, and within and across languages. For example, British audiences
engage with British and with American TV series, and both with TV series
in their own and in other languages (for instance, Scandinavian crime series
with English subtitles). In a study of prime-time television series and

Pragmatics of Fiction 3
daytime serials Costello and Moore (2007) identified hundreds of fan sites
that were related to these programs. The official (i.e., network-managed)
Facebook sites of the US television series The Big Bang Theory, Game of
Thrones and Castle currently have over 32, 16 and 4 million members
(‘likes’) respectively (26/2/2016).
Although this chapter focuses on social media, it is worth noting that
fandom also exists outside social media, for instance at face-to-face events
such as fan conventions and has existed long before the digital age (Jenkins,
Ford, and Green 2013: 30; Jenkins, Ito, and boyd 2016: 17). However, the
digital media environment has expanded participation in fandom (Jenkins,
Ito, and boyd 2016: 17), and the combination of television and the internet
has reshaped fan cultures and practices (Wood and Baughman 2012: 333).
The social media have created “a ‘virtual loungeroom’: an online space
where an audience can commune and centrally share the television
experience” (Harrington 2014: 241). The next section provides a brief
overview of some changes in the audiovisual landscape that are relevant to
the discussion in this chapter. This includes discussion of the new digital
environment more generally and the social media in particular.

2. Background

Since the late 1970s (Sinclair, Jacka, and Cunningham 1996: 1) or mid-
1980s (Barker 1997: 3) there has been a move towards a transnational
television landscape, facilitated by technical developments and changes in
media ownership. There has since been extensive importing and localization
of TV programmes, genres and genre conventions beyond national
boundaries (Sinclair, Jacka, and Cunningham 1996: 13). While these
processes are multi-directional, they initially favoured the West and in
particular the US (Barker 1997: 5; Berry 2001: 267).2 Another important
development lies in technological convergence and transmedia franchises
(Harrington 2014: 237, Jenkins 2006b: 2, Wood and Baughman 2012: 331):
Media content is no longer limited to particular devices but can be accessed
using a variety of technologies (technological convergence), which allows
viewers to engage with TV series independent of their broadcast schedule.
In addition, transmedia franchises “cross both media and genres” (Lemke
2009: 292), with multiple kinds of texts associated with a fictional world
(apps, books, films, games, music, merchandise, advertisements, theme park
attractions, etc.).

2
Recent developments include the export of European TV drama into many countries, for
example Scandinavian series such as The Killling and The Bridge. UK series are also
widely exported, with Downtown Abbey a recent success in the US and elsewhere. Mexico,
Brazil, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Egypt and India export widely in particular geolinguistic
regions (Berry 2001: 267). Asian popular culture (e.g. Japanese animation) has also been
exported successfully into the Western market (Jenkins 2006b: 160–165).

Pragmatics of Fiction 4
 Furthermore, new technologies and the rise of social media platforms
have lowered the barrier for engagement with TV series, since
communicative activities such as tweeting and blogging are less prescriptive
than traditional forms of writing (Richardson 2010: 86, 89). They have also
extended communication about TV watching beyond close circles and
geographical boundaries (Buschow, Schneider, and Ueberheide 2014: 130).
In addition, new technologies have offered audience members new means of
linguistic interaction, starting with early tools such as bulletin boards,
mailing lists, discussion lists, web rings, and chat rooms (Jenkins 2006a:
139). More recent developments include platforms such as YouTube,
Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and Fanpop or other fansites which integrate
multiple tools like walls, videos, forums (with discussion threads), polls,
and so on; there are websites that host fan transcripts, fan fiction, and fan
art, etc. Audience members can provide customer reviews of TV series on
commercial transaction sites or submit comments on dedicated TV/movie
sites. Networks themselves may create websites with official message
boards for their own shows where viewers can comment. There are also
apps where fans can chat about TV shows, vote on polls, answer trivia
questions, watch videos, etc. Figure 1 shows a collage of selected platforms
for the TV series Flight of the Conchords.

Figure 1 Platforms (collage created by author)

Pragmatics of Fiction 5
 Jenkins, Ford, and Green (2013: 30) suggest that such platforms are
“sites where multiple existing forms of participatory culture—each with its
own historical trajectory, some over a century old—come together”. Hills
(2002: 172), on the other hand, argues that online fandoms alter fan
practices and are not simply a version of offline fandoms. Whatever the
case, there is agreement that the digital environment has had significant
impact, as summarized by Jenkins (2006a: 141–142):
• It has increased the speed with which fans can communicate with
each other and the development of new fan communities.
• It has allowed fans to access a much wider range of perspectives
online and more effective activism.
• The international reach of the internet has made the community
larger and transnational.
• It has moved fandom towards the mainstream.

One of the ways in which the digital environment allows audience

members (fans and others) to connect is through enabling searches, allowing
them to find particular topics or communities – whether via web searches or
hashtag searches on Facebook or Twitter. Twitter, for instance, has been
called searchable talk, enabling us to bond with others around particular
values (Zappavigna 2012: 1). This also makes it easier for linguists to
investigate audience discourses that were not produced under research
conditions (Richardson 2010: 89). To illustrate, Figure 2 shows selected
Tweets about the US TV sitcom The Big Bang Theory (BBT) on one day (13
November 2012), which was found using the service “tweetarchivist” and
the search terms “Sheldon” The Big Bang Theory.

(Figure 2, Tweets from http://www.tweetarchivist.com/)

This “searchability” of the digital environment along with the rise of

social media platforms which facilitate sharing among users mean that

Pragmatics of Fiction 6
audience responses to TV series are no longer private and transient, but
public, shareable, searchable, and traceable – in other words, hyper mobile
(Bednarek 2013). As Tagg and Seargeant put it, we are dealing with “a
wider internet discourse characterized by permanence, replicability,
searchability and scalability” (Tagg and Seargeant 2014: 179).

3. TV series and social media fandom

In the remainder of this chapter I will review linguistic research on

audience responses to fictional television series, especially those that
consider the different types of linguistic actions that occur in the digital
environment and on social media platforms.3 Although the reviewed studies
do not draw on speech act theory, their focus on various kinds of actions
makes them relevant to pragmatics in a broad sense (with a focus on
linguistic action, interaction and function). There is also emerging research
on how particular linguistic actions are tied to stances or identities, which is
of interest in pragmatic research (see contributions to this part of the
handbook).

3.1. Types of linguistic actions

When considering relevant research that offers categorisations of

audience engagement with TV series, two broad groups can be
distinguished: The first group focuses primarily on a particular social media
platform such as Twitter or tumblr, and provides a classification of actions
found on that platform, while the second group proposes classification
schemes that are more general and not tied to a specific platform. Three
examples of platform-specific research include Gregoriou’s (2012) critical
linguistic analysis of an official message board, Petersen’s (2014) study of
fan talk on the micro-blogging site tumblr, and Androutsopoulos and
Weidenhöffer’s (2015) study of audience responses to a TV crime narrative
on Twitter:
Gregoriou (2012) analyses the official message board for the US TV
series Dexter provided by its network (Showtime), but her study focuses
specifically on how viewers respond to the programme’s ideologies rather
than categorizing audience responses into different types. However, it is
worth mentioning that some of the linguistic actions that occur in these
message board contributions include references to the real world and
intertextual references, as well as speculation about character reactions and
particular dialogue lines. Gregoriou’s (2012) study is a very targeted
analysis with the aim of answering questions about ideology. Thus, only
some of the message board threads are examined, which means that the

3
All translations in this section are my own.

Pragmatics of Fiction 7
linguistic actions that are mentioned throughout the study may not be all
that occur on the board. As such, this study does not focus on media
engagement or fandom more generally.
This is in contrast to Petersen’s (2014) study of tumblr fan talk by fans
of the British TV series Sherlock (2010–).4 However, this study is located in
Media Studies rather than Linguistics. I nevertheless mention it here, since it
draws on conversation analysis and includes a relevant categorization of
three types of fan talk: talk through appropriation,5 talk through
interpretation, and talk through imitation.
The first category (appropriation) relates to cases where fans converse
about the televisual text but also to those where “conversations ... become
new textual objects, memes or popular fan-made narratives” (Petersen 2014:
93). On tumblr, examples of talk through appropriation include reaction
gifs6 which respond to a blog post/comment (for example showing two
Sherlock characters hugging), or sets of gifs that contain edited material
from different Sherlock movies/TV series, with rewritten dialogue.
The second category (interpretation) concerns tumblr posts that discuss
different reactions and interpretations of the televisual narrative (Petersen
2014: 93), when fans investigate, analyse, dissect, and critique the TV
series, for instance interpreting storylines or character personalities,
proposing scenarios, or commenting on specific scenes. Conversations
between fans may proceed via gifs with added text that are repeatedly re-
used and hence promote “specific lingo and saying” (Petersen 2014: 102),
such as Oh my god. Why would you post that?
The third category (imitation) occurs when fans take on the identity of
a character, including role playing (for instance using character names as the
name of tumblr blogs and posting as those characters) and costume playing
(conversing via pictures or gifs where fans are dressed up as characters).
Such talk “is an aspect of talk as performance” (Petersen 2014: 102, italics
in original) where fans appropriate some of the characteristics of televisual
characters.
Petersen (2014: 96, 93) argues that ‘talk’ (in her definition) can be
wordless and expressed through visuals, that there is overlap between these
categories on tumblr, and that posts can include several types of talk at the
same time. Although she mentions that these types of talk can also occur
offline, for example at fan meet-ups, she proposes that tumblr “enforces a
particular manner of communication that differs from other mediated and
non-mediated contexts” (Petersen 2014: 90).

4
Note that Petersen (2014) uses talk in a broad sense, encompassing both images and
verbal text.
5
According to Petersen (2014: 93) this term derives from Jenkins (2006b) who applies the
term cultural appropriation to various practices by fans (fanfiction, fanart, tropes,
memes…).
6
A gif (graphics interchange format) is usually a short video clip or a small animation on a
loop (Petersen 2014: 90).

Pragmatics of Fiction 8
 This study presents a useful contribution to research on fandom which
is valuable for linguistic research because there is an attempt at categorizing
types of talk and some linguistic practices are also considered. It is also
helpful in its focus on a particular social media platform. At the same time,
there is little systematic or comprehensive micro-linguistic analysis, because
of the disciplinary origin of the study.
The most comprehensive linguistic study of media engagement on a
particular social media platform is arguably that by Androutsopoulos and
Weidenhöffer (2015), who analyse tweets published during the broadcast of
the German TV crime narrative Tatort.7 The researchers’ categorization of
tweets draws on and adapts schemes by Klemm (2001) and Wood (2007).
Thus, #tatort tweets are categorised into four general categories including
seven types of actions (Handlungstypen/-gruppen/-kategorien) depending
on their orientation to the televisual narrative (Table 1).

Table 1 Seven types of actions

General category Type of action Relation to Interaction type
diegesis
Thematising the Framing the reception Outside film Monologic/dialogic
reception
Commenting and Commenting locally Within film Monologic
evaluating the televisual Commenting globally Within film Monologic
narrative Anticipating Within and Monologic/dialogic
outside film
Connections to own Transferring and Within and Monologic/dialogic
experience or knowledge comparing outside film
Emphasis on interaction Asking questions Within and Dialogic
with others outside film
Parasocial interaction Within and Dialogic
outside film

In addition, each of the seven types of action can be performed in

different ways, and Androutsopoulos and Weidenhöffer (2015) also identify
specific linguistic realisations, with multiple examples of tweets. Table 2
gives a flavour of how the types of action are undertaken by German-
speaking users of Twitter, according to the researchers.

7
Tatort is a highy popular German televisual crime narrative, which differs from typical
television series in that it includes different instalments with police teams from cities all
over Germany. In each 90-minute episode a police team solves a crime in a particular city.
For example, there are episodes that feature the Munich police team, or episodes that
feature the Berlin team, but there may be long gaps between the broadcast of episodes from
the same city, rather than distinct seasons. Tatort therefore differs from US crime franchises
with spin-off series (e.g. NCIS; NCIS: Los Angeles; NCIS: New Orleans; CSI; CSI: Miami;
CSI: NY).

Pragmatics of Fiction 9
Table 2 Examples for performing different types of actions
Types of action Main subcategories Examples Translations
Framing the naming the TV narrative and #tatort Time ‘tatort time’
reception its beginning
announcing participation or #Tatort leider ohne mich ‘Tatort unfortunately without me’
lack thereof
with optional emotional #So, jetzt #dortmunder #tatort gucken. Freu ‘Ok, now to watch #dortmund #tatort. Looking
expression mich drauf. forward to it’
with optional information jetzt #Tatort :D Schön mit Papa aufm Sofa ‘now #tatort :D Nice sitting on the sofa with dad’
about channel or context of sitzen
situation
thematising the Twitter los geht’s ihr Twerds :3 #tatort ‘here we go you twerds’
medium
asking for silence/attention pscht #tatort ‘shhh #tatort’
good-byes Sie hören zusammen Oper. In diesem Sinne ‘They are listening to the opera together. So
wars das für heute. Danke fürs mitlesen. Gute that’s it for today. Thank you for reading. Good
Nacht. #Tatort # Münster night’
Commenting precise time reference 21.32 Chinesisches Neujahrsfest. #tatort ‘9.32 pm Chinese New Year’
locally evaluation via Awww. <3 #Tatort ‘awww’
interjection/emoticon
evaluation via Guter Klingelton !!!! #tatort ‘Good ringtone’
nominal/verbal group
direct quote … Sie haben mich gegoogelt … Reicht doch ‘You have googled me. That should be enough’
#Tatort
Commenting list and evaluate a range of toller Anfang, spannende Handlungen, sehr ‘fantastic beginning, gripping plot, very beautiful
globally aspects or plot elements schöne Bilder #tatort images’
comment on particular Die erste Hälfte war irgendwie besser … ‘The first half was somehow better’;
sections of the televisual #tatort; bis jetzt leicht unterwältigend. ‘until now rather underwhelming’
narrative #dortmund #tatort
comment on a Diesen Parkamann #Tatort Schauspieler mag ‘I don’t like this Parka-dude actor’
character/actor ich nicht

Pragmatics of Fiction 10
 provide a concluding
evaluative comment
Anticipating Vermutungen (‘guesses’)
Vorwegnahmen (‘revealers’;
knowledge-based
predictions)
Transferring and comparison with user’s
comparing experience
comparison with other
media texts
Asking includes rhetorical and tag
questions questions
Parasocial Addressing
interaction characters/actors, producers,
screenwriters, etc
Ventriloquising the voices of
characters/actors, producers,
screenwriters, etc
Pragmatics of Fiction
Fazit: 2-3 mal geschmunzelt und die restliche
Zeit eher gelangweilt #tatort
Hoffentlich heute mal mit mehr Story und
weniger Klamauk #Tatort];
eindeutig: der psycho-kommissar ist der
mörder! #tatort
#Tatort: Die chinesische Prinzessin – Kritik
[link] #spoiler;
Die fährt übrigens auch so Auto! Aber erst
später. #tatort
Wann sah mein Schlafanzug mal so akkurat
aus? #tatort
Hui, der #Tatort beginnt fast wie ein James
Bond Film.
Wer findet den Fehler im heutigen #Tatort?;
Und wie fandet ihr ihn? #Tatort;
Jemanden mit einem Monitor erschlagen – das
gilt in der Polizei-Statistik auch als IT-
Kriminalität? #tatort;
Habt Ihr bei Euch im Büro auch immer #Ravioli
Dosen rumstehen? #Tatort
Warum nimmst du nicht einfach das Feuerzeug,
du Depp! #tatort;
Gute Arbeit, Herr Werner. #tatort #drehbuch
Lasst uns einen #Tatort mit Sex & Mord
beginnen.
11
‘Conclusion: smiled 2-3 times and rather bored
for the rest of the time’
‘hopefully today with more plot and less
silliness’;
‘definitely: the psycho-detective is the murderer’
‘The Chinese Princess – critique’;
‘BTW, she’s also going to drive like that. But
only later.’
‘When was the last time my PJs looked so slick?’
‘wow, the #Tatort is starting almost like a James
Bond film’
‘Who’ll find the error in today’s #Tatort?’;
‘So how did you like it?’;
‘To beat someone to death with a monitor – does
that also count as IT-crime in the crime stats?’;
‘Do you always have cans of #ravioli somewhere
in your office, too?’
‘Why don’t you just take the lighter, you idiot!’;
‘Good job, Mr Werner #tatort #screenplay’
‘Let’s start a #Tatort with sex and murder’
 The first category (“Framing the reception”) consists of monologic or
dialogic tweets that frame the reception, typically posted at the beginning or
end of the broadcast. This includes naming the TV narrative, announcing
(lack of) participation, thematising the medium, asking for silence/attention
and good-byes. The second group (“Commenting locally”) covers all tweets
that comment on particular scenes or actions of the televisual narrative.
Such tweets may contain precise time references and include minimal
reactions consisting of evaluations using interjections, emoticons or
nominal/verbal groups. These tweets often reference TV dialogue in various
ways, including via direct and indirect ways of speech representation. The
third category (“Commenting globally”) provides comments on larger
chunks of the narrative rather than on particular scenes/actions, including
comments on the episode as a whole.
The fourth category (“Anticipating”) is distinguished from the previous
two categories by its temporal frame. It includes all tweets that anticipate
future aspects of the broadcast televisual narrative or future Tatort
instalments, often with the use of modal expressions (e.g. the adverb
vielleicht/‘perhaps’ or the modal verb sollen/‘be supposed to’). Two sub-
categories are distinguished by Androutsopoulos and Weidenhöffer (2015):
Vermutungen are ‘guesses’ about the televisual narrative, whereas
Vorwegnahmen (‘revealers’) are knowledge-based predictions which may
thus be marked with a spoiler alert.
The category “transferring and comparing” encompasses all those
tweets in which users compare and connect the televisual narrative to their
own knowledge and experience or to other media texts. These are
distinguished as two sub-groups. Also included here are #servicetweets
which provide further information to other users such as informing them
about the brand of a pyjama worn by a character.
The sixth category is called “asking questions” and is fairly self-
explanatory, as it groups together those tweets that pose questions about the
TV narrative or other aspects. The category also includes rhetorical and tag
questions. Questioning tweets may ask others to find errors or to provide an
overall assessment, but may also function to comment locally or to compare
and transfer. This category is thus primarily based on form, rather than on
the type of media engagement or the illocutionary force of utterances (e.g.
request), as seen in the various examples included in Table 2.
Androutsopoulos and Weidenhöffer (2015)’s final category is that of
parasocial interaction and concerns those tweets that either address the
characters/actors, producers, screenwriters, etc. or, more rarely, those tweets
that ventriloquise their voices. Parasocial tweets typically use the second
person singular/plural or imperatives, and may include named addressees.
Requests (at the beginning of the broadcast) and thanks (at the end) also
occur (e.g. Danke für groβartige Unterhaltung #tatort [‘Thank you for the
great entertainment’]).

Pragmatics of Fiction 12
 Comparing these categories of linguistic action with face-to-face
communication, the researchers argue that live tweeting in reaction to media
events is a new communicative practice which borrows conventions from
face-to-face audience engagement, with both similarities and differences
(27–29): There are Twitter-specific equivalents to particular types of face-to-
face audience engagement (e.g. evaluations) which make use of integral
Twitter elements such as the hashtag (#). At the same time, Tweets are
based on digitally-mediated written language, dislocated,
public/anonymous, less interactive, and constrained by the character limit.
They may also be circulated and disseminated by other media platforms.
In sum, Androutsopoulos and Weidenhöffer’s (2015) study focuses on
tweets that occur during broadcast of a particular televisual narrative (and
five minutes before/after) and that are marked with a particular hashtag. It
does not incorporate analysis of non-verbal elements, such as images. The
analysis seems to capture tweets by fans, by other viewers, and even by non-
viewers – for example, one tweet that is provided simply states Während ihr
#Tatort kuckt schaue ich das #NCIS Staffelfinale [‘While you are watching
#Tatort, I’m watching the #NCIS season finale’]. While the focus on live-
tweeted posts may be appropriate in the context of this particular German
media product (Tatort), with other TV narratives such an approach might be
less successful. As mentioned earlier, many audience members now engage
with TV series without close temporal connection to a live televisual
broadcast, through services such as streaming or download. For example,
several German-speaking users of Twitter had clearly seen episodes from
the 2016 The X-files season before its German broadcast, as evident from
tweets that were posted before the day of broadcast (8/2/2016) or that state
as much:

(1) Gerade die 3. Ep. der neuen Akte X Staffel gesehen. Eine fantastische Folge
#AkteX [‘Just watched the 3rd ep. of the new The X-files season. A fantastic
episode #TheX-files’], posted 5/2/2016
(2) Hab mich noch nicht entschieden, ob ich neue #AkteX Staffel cool oder
schrecklich finden soll. Wie war es bei euch? [‘Haven’t yet decided whether I
should find new #TheX-files season cool or terrible. How was it for you?’],
posted 5/2/2016
(3) Der Zahn der Zeit hat auch an Scully und Mulder genagt. Alles andere wäre
ja übernatürlich. Hehe. Neue Staffel #Akte X [‘Scully and Mulder have also
been subject to the ravages of time. Everything else would of course be
supernatural. Ha ha. New season #TheX-files’], posted 5/2/2016
(4) @ProSieben ich konnte einfach nicht mehr warten. Ich hab 3 Episoden
#AkteX auf Englisch angeschaut [smiley face emoticon] [‘@Channelname I
simply couldn’t wait any more. I’ve watched 3 episodes of #TheX-files in
English’]

Further, Androutsopoulos and Weidenhöffer’s (2015) data collection is

hashtag-based, which may not be suitable for analysis of posts by fans that

Pragmatics of Fiction 13
tweet as televisual characters, as such users do not necessarily mark their
tweets with hashtags (Kalviknes Bore and Hickman 2013: 2). Finally,
Androutsopoulos and Weidenhöffer (2015) use a combination of functional,
content-based and formal criteria to distinguish their categories, which
sometimes makes a dual or alternative classification possible, as they
acknowledge themselves (p. 50). Their most problematic category (in my
view) is that of “asking questions”, which is primarily form-based. Rather
than seeing it as a distinct category, this could instead be recognized as a
particular linguistic practice through which several categories of media
engagement can be realized.
As noted above, not all linguists take a platform-specific approach to
the analysis of linguistic actions in audience responses to fictional TV
series. Thus, Richardson (2010) and Bednarek (2017) make more general
claims about audience responses that are not tied to a specific social media
platform.
Richardson (2010: 89–90) lists different “genres” for audience
responses to TV drama, namely fan forum thread, blog entry, review
column, customer review, fan fiction, and twitter stream, and mentions a
range of different responses throughout her chapter: criticism, character
sketches, general and specific comments on a televisual episode (including
on the acting performance, character personality or plot), appropriating
particular memorable lines or catchphrases, and creating fan fiction. She
notes that online audience responses may either focus on meaning and
performance or focus on form (dialogue lines), but argues that even “when
audiences respond to meaning (in their interpretations of particular
characters for instance), dialogue— in other words, form— helps create
those interpretations, as it is intended to do” (Richardson 2010: 85). When
dialogue is singled out by audience members, it “can be cited in evidence of
a particular interpretation, […] criticized as unsatisfactory in a range of
different ways, quoted as tribute to the pleasure [it] has provided, and
remembered, as catchphrases” (Richardson 2010: 104). While Richardson
(2010) is not concerned with a typology of audience activities but rather
focuses primarily on writing personae (see section 3.2 below), this chapter
has served as a starting point for my own classification scheme:
In Bednarek (2017), I distinguish four ways of responding to TV series
– four key processes of (re-)circulation, which are not limited to online
contexts and which include multimodal practices. The label (re-)circulation
“is not meant to imply mere repetition, re-play or re-broadcasting of mass
media content and mass media language; rather, the label serves as a
reminder that these practices can ultimately be traced back (in different
ways) to a fictional TV series”. The four categories are: performative (re-
)circulation, (re-)circulation of the narrative, of the production, or of the
dialogue. These processes are summarised in Table 3 but will be illustrated
with examples from different social media platforms below. Since this is my
own research I will provide new examples for each category here rather than

Pragmatics of Fiction 14
re-using examples from Bednarek (2017). Though I provide examples from
specific social media platforms, the classification scheme is meant to apply
more generally to media engagement with TV series.

Table 3 Four key processes of (re-)circulation

Type of process
performative (re-)circulation
(re-)circulation of the
narrative
(re-)circulation of the
production
(re-)circulation of the
dialogue
Definition
impersonation of television characters
references to the narrative world of the television series,
its characters and plots without any citing of dialogue
references to the production or broadcast rather than the
narrative world
partial or complete quotations of dialogue lines

Performative (re-)circulation concerns the impersonation of television

characters.8 The category label was chosen in analogy to Georgakopoulou’s
(2014: 228) use of “performative enactment”. Accounts that are created for
or named after television characters are a good example from Twitter. For
instance, the “Peggy Olson” Twitter account for a Mad Men character has
over 24,000 followers (Figure 3).

Figure 3 @Peggy Olson Twitter account, 17 December 2014)

What do tweets by such TV characters look like? What kind of

linguistic actions can be found? In their discussion of Mad Men characters
on Twitter, Jenkins, Ford, and Green (2013: 31) note that during broadcast
of the series these characters’ posts were often playful, self-referential, fit
within the existing storyline and deepened engagement with plots. It would

8
Compare Petersen’s (2014) category of imitation for tumblr fan talk. Impersonation also
existed in the pre-digital area and still exists in face-to-face environments, whether at fan
conventions or in performative enactments in everyday classroom peer-talk, where pupils
may imitate TV characters (Georgakopoulou 2014: 221).

Pragmatics of Fiction 15
be interesting to see how these linguistic practices have developed over
time, now that the series has come to an end (but can still be consumed).
Wood and Baughman’s (2012) analysis of Glee character accounts identifies
two key practices: first, augmentation of existing storylines through first- or
third-person tweets about specific events or invention of new narrative
events, and second “identity control” through posts that reinforce the
respective character’s personality as it is constructed in the series (Wood
and Baughman 2012: 338). In their analysis of the practice of tweeting as a
character from The West Wing, Kalviknes Bore and Hickman (2013) point
to “its emphasis on improvisation, its combination of creative role playing
and political participation, and the emphasis on dialogue between
participants and between participants and external individuals.” Note that
the emphasis on political engagement here reproduces the thematic concerns
of the TV series (Kalviknes Bore and Hickman 2013), and the findings may
not be generalizable to other in-character tweeting. This means that findings
that are based on only one media text (i.e. one TV series) may not be fully
generalizable to other media texts, and that the nature of a TV series may
have an effect on the kinds of activities that occur on social media.
The next category – (re-)circulation of the narrative – encompasses any
references to the narrative world of the television series, its characters and
plots which does not include any partial or complete citing of dialogue. An
example is provided below:

(5) Ich finde das tattoo schick [smiley face emoticon]

[‘I find the tattoo stylish’]
Above an image of Malcolm in the Middle character Dewey with naked upper
body with the tattooed words “LOIS IS MY MOTHER”)
(posted on a German Malcolm in the Middle Facebook fan site; image not
reproduced here for copyright reasons)

In this example, the user provides an evaluative and affective comment on

the posted image/scene through an evaluative adjective and emoticon,
‘citing’ the image (and represented tattoo), but not citing any dialogue lines.
Other social media posts in this category may feature evaluative comments
on characters, the episode or the plot, or interpret and speculate on those
aspects of the narrative.
The next category, “(re-)circulation of the production”, refers to
references to the production or broadcast rather than the narrative world
itself. Such references may be about the performance, actors, directors,
channel, network, broadcast schedule, etc. and include comments about
post-production aspects such as subtitling and dubbing. For example, when
The X-files was revived in 2016, the German version (Akte X) broadcast on
the TV channel Pro Sieben featured a new dubbing actor. This was much
commented on via Twitter, with a selection of tweets presented below:

Pragmatics of Fiction 16
(6) @ProSieben Ich freu mich zwar auf die neuen Folgen #AkteX aber mit der
neuen Syncrhonstimme für #Mulder wird es nie wieder das selbe sein. [‘I’m
looking forward to the new episodes of #TheX-files but with the new dubbing
voice for #Mulder it will never be the same again.’]
(7) Tragisch, wie die eigentlich coolen #AkteX-Teaser von @ProSieben wegen
der vollkommen unbekannten Mulder-Stimme einfach null funktionieren.
[‘Tragic how the actually cool #TheX-files teasers by @ProSieben don’t work
at all because of the completely unknown Mulder voice’]
(8) Wer heute Abend #AkteX schaut oder schon hat und ihm die #akteXsynchro
nicht gefiel, dann bitte hier unterschreiben [LINK] [‘Anyone watching
#TheX-files tonight or who has already and didn’t like #TheX-filesdubbing,
then please sign here’]
(9) Da freust du dich erst das es neue #AkteX Folgen gibt, bis du erfahren hast
das @ProSieben das mit der Synchro mal so richtig versaut hat [thumb down
emoticon] [‘There you are at first happy about the new #TheX-files episodes
until you find out that @ProSieben completely fucked up the dubbing’]
(10) Wie kann man so eine unpassende Syncronstimme [sic] nur nehmen?
@ProSieben #Akte X #Mulder [‘How can anyone use such an unsuitable
dubing voice?’]

Finally, as linguist I am most interested in the different ways in which

dialogue is re-circulated through partial or complete quotations. From
Richardson (2010: 104), we know that this includes dialogue that is “quoted
as tribute to the pleasure [it] has provided”. I call this type of linguistic
action tribute quoting. Tribute quoting occurs in tweets, on Facebook, in fan
forum discussions and on YouTube, with several examples provided in
Bednarek (2017). I will just offer one new example here: A typical instance
of tribute quoting on YouTube can be seen in the posting of video
compilations of sampled “best of” quotes. Figure 4 is a screenshot from a
YouTube video that is a collection of dialogue from The Wire – here the
user’s commentary is also verbalized through the title “100 greatest quotes”.

Figure 4 The Wire quotes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-

Sgj78QG9Bg, 23 August 2013)

Pragmatics of Fiction 17
 Another key way in which TV dialogue is cited is through
appropriation and play with memorable lines or catchphrases. In her
discussion of a fan website and a blog, Richardson (2010) notes that
catchphrases in the form of templates enhance audience creativity, but that
more fixed catchphrases are also “played around with” (Richardson 2010:
102). With respect to social media, Zappavigna discusses viral memes
involving phrasal templates with slots that can be modified, “allowing the
meme to ‘mutate’ as users add their own elements to the slots” (Zappavigna
2012:106). Such memes include templates based on TV dialogue lines like
the I for one welcome our [ ] overlords from The Simpsons (Zappavigna
2012: 116) or those based on the phrasal template Brace yourselves, [ ] is
coming from the fantasy TV drama Game of Thrones which often co-occur
with visuals (Zappavigna, personal communication).9 Dialogue lines can
also be appropriated as hashtags on Twitter or Facebook (e.g. #D’oh from
The Simpsons, #bazinga from The Big Bang Theory, #thetruthisoutthere
from The X-files).
While Richardson (2010: 101) proposes that the fragmentation of
audiences means that “[t]he catchphrases of the future are less likely to
achieve the distribution that those of the past were able to do,” social media
may in fact help to distribute them more widely than in the past. The
searchable digital environment will allow researchers to approach such
questions confidently, drawing on large-scale empirical analysis.
While tribute quoting and the appropriation of catchphrases and
memorable dialogue lines are two key ways of citing TV dialogue on social
media, they are not the only ones. Thus, Androutsopoulos and Weidenhöffer
(2015: 48) mention that quotes can be recontextualised in tweets that are
posted at/after the end of the broadcast so that they function
communicatively as “essence” or epigram/motto of the televisual narrative.
Dialogue can also be cited to support an interpretation or be criticized for
quality/appropriateness (Richardson 2010: 104). In addition, Leyda (in
press) mentions “supercuts” (e.g. montages of each instance of a character
uttering Yo or Bitch in Breaking Bad) and “vids” where clips are
reorganized into new narratives. Such remixing of dialogue also exists for
other series on YouTube, e.g. supercuts of Sheldon’s bazingas in The Big
Bang Theory or Clay Davis’s shiiiiits in The Wire. Generally, the
recontextualisation of TV dialogue offers fertile ground for future linguistic
research into different social media platforms.
It must be emphasized that the different categories may co-occur in one
social media post, as in the following tweet, which allows for a three-fold
categorization:

9
In both examples, [ ] stands for the slot that is filled with a variable element, e.g. Brace
yourselves, school is coming.

Pragmatics of Fiction 18
(11) a. No nominations for Big Bang’s Jim Parsons? What a farce. Is this one of
Sheldon’s classic jokes? Bazinga? #Emmys #BigBangTheory

b. No nominations for Big Bang’s Jim Parsons? What a farce. [(re-

)circulation of the production: comment on actor]
Is this one of Sheldon’s classic jokes? [(re-)circulation of the narrative:
comment on character]
Bazinga? [(re-)circulation of dialogue: appropriation of dialogue]

In this tweet, a comment on the actor Jim Parsons’s performance is

combined with a comment on the character he plays (Sheldon), and the user
further appropriates Sheldon’s catchphrase bazinga. (12) is an example from
a different social media platform, a post from a German Game of Thrones
Facebook fan site:

(12) “Jaime and I are more than brother and sister. We are one person in two
bodies”, sagte Cersei einst.
Hat sich das jetzt geändert? Bereits im Finale von Staffel 3 zeigte sich, dass
sie zurűckhaltend auf ihren veränderten Bruder (mit nur einer Hand) reagierte.
Und die erste Folger der 4. Staffel scheint das zu bestätigen. Was denkt ihr,
wie es zwischen den beiden weitergehen wird? Hier geht’s zu einem kleinen
Artikel mit Mini-Spoiler: [link]
[“…” Cersei once said.
‘Has this now changed? Already in the finale of season 3 it became apparent
that she reacted with reserve towards her changed brother (with only one
hand). And the first episode of the fourth season seems to confirm this. What
do you think, how are things going to develop between the two? Here’s a brief
article with mini-spoiler.’]

Here, the recirculation of dialogue occurs in the context of the user’s

plot and character speculation, i.e. is embedded in a broader recirculation of
the narrative, with direct appeal to other audience members to speculate
with the writer and establishing a community.
In relation to social media practices, it must be noted that Bednarek
(2017) only includes a brief application of this new classification scheme to
social media and excludes a range of fan practices such as fan fiction and
fan art. A wider quantitative basis is missing and the scheme is perhaps too
general as it encompasses both offline and online (re-)circulation processes
without attention to the particularities of specific media platforms. However,
as noted by the platform-specific studies reviewed above, different social
media platforms may indeed encourage particular types of communication
and particular realisations (linguistic and multimodal). Even if all four key
processes of (re-)circulation can be identified on all platforms as well as in
offline environments, there might be differences in how linguistic actions
are performed and the frequency with which they occur. More empirical

Pragmatics of Fiction 19
research is thus needed to identify both commonalities and differences in the
types of linguistic actions that occur in different contexts and media.

3.2 Stance/identity

As mentioned earlier, there is also an emerging interest in how

particular linguistic actions are tied to stances or identities. Richardson
(2010: 89–90) distinguishes five different types of audiences: “wannabe
writers, journalistic reviewers, scholarly critics, fans, and casual viewers”
who are seen as “ideal types” with overlapping interests (Richardson 2010:
88). Her particular interest is in the writing persona or authorial voice,
where she distinguishes between “The Professional Reviewer,” “The Fan,”
and “The ‘Ordinary’ Viewer” (Richardson 2010: 94–97). For her:

It is in its online voices that the writing audience identifies itself— that
members of the viewing public constitute themselves as ordinary viewers,
fans, or critics. Stances are variously offered by writers to their readers. At
one end of the spectrum viewers provide unarguable expressions of personal
taste at the level of “I never liked ER [Emergency Room] as much after
George Clooney left”, whereas at the other end there are lengthy and highly
articulate accounts of strengths and weaknesses (Richardson 2010: 92, italics
in original).

Richardson (2010) illustrates this by exploring audience activity in

relation to one episode of the British BBC series Doctor Who. For example,
she argues that reviews in the voice of the professional reviewer typically
focus on performance over dialogue and that fans construct themselves as
“serious” viewers through their detailed critical engagement and familiarity
with characters and plots. Her analysis of the “ordinary” viewer focuses on
comments on a journalistic review provided on a Guardian blog, with these
viewers distancing themselves from other viewers and providing general
and specific comments as well as expressions of disagreement and debate.
As Richardson herself notes, her approach is selective (Richardson
2010: 93). The brief discussion of authorial voices thus remains rather
vague on where the line would be drawn between the different
personae/identities (e.g. fan vs. ordinary viewer), and Richardson does not
analyse contemporary social media platforms such as Facebook, tumblr or
twitter. Further, the extent of variation within the three personae is noted by
Richardson – for instance, “the different flavors of fandom” (Richardson
2010: 95), but not explored further, and transnational engagement is not
considered.
However, Bednarek (2017) emphasises that fandom of TV series is a
transnational phenomenon (cf section 2 above), using various examples of

Pragmatics of Fiction 20
engagement with US TV series by European fans. To provide some new
transnational “fandom” data here, Table 4 shows selected “unofficial”
German/French Facebook community fansites for US TV series which had
more than 2000 “likes” in the period between 29 January and 18 February
2016.

Table 4 German/French Facebook fan sites for US TV series

Number of “likes” on German (G) or French
Name of US TV
(F) community Facebook site (between
series
29/1/2016–18/2/2016)
Breaking Bad 2069 (G)
Malcolm in the Middle 2488 (G)
Castle 2849 (G)
Glee 3252 (F)
Two Broke Girls 3842 (G)
Supernatural 4918 (G)
Teen Wolf 5949 (F)
The Vampire Diaries 5963 (G)
Grey’s Anatomy 8246 (F)
Two and a half men 9151 (G)

To be clear, not all English-language TV series have a German/French

Facebook fan site, and those that do vary in terms of their number of
“likes”, active status, and (inter)activity. Fans may also communicate on
other Facebook sites (for instance on “official” sites created by TV
channels/networks) or on other social media platforms. Thus, the official
German Facebook site (Warner Home Video) has over 54.000 members
(“likes”), while the unofficial German Facebook fan site A Game of Thrones
(deutsche Fanseite) has less than 3000 members. This exemplifies the
importance of corporate activity in fandom.10 Further, not all users who
“like” a Facebook site are likely to post to the site (Zhivov, Scheepers, and
Stockdale 2011: 8), since the “most common role in most, if not all, online
communities is that of ‘lurker,’ the person who reads but never posts”
(Baym 2015: 97). It is possible that smaller fan-managed Facebook sites
show a higher level of interaction than bigger official sites (Zhivov,

10
Several researchers have noted that there is a high level of corporate intrusion and
commodification, since corporations try to encourage fan activities and also (re-)circulate
televisual content themselves, including on social media (e.g. Jenkins 2006a: 147; Zhivov,
Scheepers, and Stockdale 2011; Jenkins, Ito, and boyd 2016: 14, Bednarek 2017). Fan
cultures, according to Hills (2002: 182) both intensify and challenge commodification.
Wood and Baughman (2012) point out that fan activities themselves may be seen as
uncompensated labour that benefits the entertainment industry, and ask: “Do these practices
benefit the fan, or the producer, or both?” (Wood and Baughman 2012: 330).

Pragmatics of Fiction 21
Scheepers, and Stockdale 2011: 9). In any case, Table 4 indicates that there
is a significant amount of social media data that can be explored for
linguistic research into identity construction, transnational fandom and
associated language practices.
Bednarek (2017) suggests that both social media platforms and
transnational contexts allow for different “styles of fandom”. For example,
“expert” status – being a serious viewer – may be constructed through
curation of selected media content (such as “best of” quote compilations on
YouTube) or through the quoting of TV dialogue in the original, rather than
dubbed version. Viewers may also explicitly refer to their consumption
practices, showing that they are ahead of the game, as it were, and that they
engage with (English) original versions rather than dubbed TV broadcasts:

(13) @ProSieben #akte X habt ihr euch selbst versaut Pro7. Und den XPhiles
schön in den Hintern getreten damit. Ich schaue nur Original! [‘@TVChannel
You have managed to ruin #TheX-files all by yourself. And with that have
given the XPhiles (X-files fans) a good kick in the butt. I only watch the
original version!’]

4. Conclusion

In conclusion, this chapter has shown that there is much room for
linguistic research into media engagement on social media platforms. Given
the wealth of research from other disciplines but the lack of relevant
linguistic research, it is high time for a linguistics of fandom. From a
pragmatic perspective, a first task might be to consider the different types of
linguistic practices that can be identified. While the above schemes all have
their limitations (in particular in relation to the fuzziness/overlap between
categories and the criteria adopted to differentiate them) and further
refinements are possible, a number of points have become clear:
Androutsopoulos and Weidenhöffer’s (2015) and Bednarek’s (2017)
research suggests that there are similarities between offline and online
audience engagement, and between engagement on different social media
platforms. This also becomes apparent when we compare findings from
Petersen (2014) on tumblr and Gregoriou (2012) on message boards with
findings from research on other platforms where some of the same activities
occur.
At the same time, there are also differences between offline and online
audience engagement (Androutsopoulos and Weidenhöffer 2015), and
between linguistic practices on different social media platforms. Petersen
(2014) makes a persuasive argument for taking into account the specifics of
communication on a particular social media platform. Other non-linguistic
research seems to confirm that there are similarities as well as differences
across platforms (Wood and Baughman 2012: 339, 341).

Pragmatics of Fiction 22
 Androutsopoulos and Weidenhöffer’s (2015) study demonstrates that a
comprehensive qualitative analysis can provide useful insights into typical
linguistic realisations of audience engagement practices, while Petersen
(2014) highlights the importance of visuals and multimodal combinations
(e.g. gifs and verbal text). Finally, both Richardson (2010) and Bednarek
(2017) illustrate how linguistic practices can be tied to
stances/identities/styles, while the latter also points to the need to consider
the transnational media landscape.
With respect to the pragmatics of social media, the social media
platforms that are mentioned in these studies include a wide variety, from
fan forum discussion, blog entry, fan fiction, to Facebook and YouTube, but
only Tumblr and Twitter have been analysed systematically in terms of
types of linguistic actions. For example, the classification scheme that I
propose in Bednarek (2017) distinguishes four ways of responding to TV
series regardless of social media platform, but such a claim needs empirical
testing. In addition, the reviewed studies can only be classified as pragmatic
in a broad sense, sharing an interest in linguistic action, interaction and
functions, including the construction of identity. However,
analytical/theoretical frameworks are more often taken from
sociolinguistics. Not only is there scope for a linguistics of social media
fandom, there is also the need for a pragmatics of social media fandom.
It is also important to emphasise that the focus on TV series is not
meant to imply that other cultural products do not result in fandom or media
engagement. For example, there is fandom around anime and manga, video
games, contemporary and classic literature, science fiction, music, sports,
etc. I hypothesise that findings from the studies I reviewed in this chapter
(on media engagement with TV series) may be applicable to audience
engagement with similar types of media products, for instance other
narrative texts (e.g. films, novels), but not necessarily to other kinds of
fandom (e.g. sports).
I want to conclude this chapter with some recommendations for future
linguistic research into media engagement and fandom on social media
platforms. Such research would arguably be well advised to:
• adopt clear criteria for categorizing media engagement activities in
general, and for sub-categorising what people do with dialogue in
particular;
• consider the variety of such audience practices and tie them to
different stances/identities/styles, practices of community
building/affiliation, constructions of group identity (Zappavigna
2012, Baym 2015: 98–99), and “norm-based” participation (Jenkins,
Ito, and boyd 2016: 66);
• consider media engagement activities with respect to a wide range of
different media texts;

Pragmatics of Fiction 23
 • provide a uniquely linguistic perspective on the data, identifying the
different forms in which categories of talk can be and typically are
realised;
• take into account non-linguistic elements and adopt a multimodal
approach to the data where relevant;
• explore both similarities and differences between audience practices
in various digital and non-digital contexts, for example on different
social media platforms;
• look beyond national boundaries and monolingual contexts.

Last but not least, research into audience engagement on social media
platforms must continue to wrestle with ethical concerns (Kalviknes Bore
and Hickman 2013; Page et al. 2014: 58–79) and explore more deeply the
role of corporate intrusion and commodification (Bednarek 2017). As
Jenkins puts it, “any understanding of participatory culture today has to
factor in the wave of commercialization that has impacted contemporary
digital culture” (Jenkins, Ito, and boyd 2016: 13).

Acknowledgments
The research leading to these results has received funding from the People
Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union’s Seventh
Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under REA grant agreement no
[609305]. I am grateful to the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies
(FRIAS), University of Freiburg, Germany, for awarding me an FCFP
External Senior Fellowship. Thanks are also due to Roland Muntschick for
undertaking the survey on German/French Facebook fan sites. My gratitude
also goes to the editors for their constructive comments on a previous
version of this chapter.

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