Linguistic Reduction and the Construction of Textuality in Children’s Digital Discourse: An Approach with in Text Linguistics

Abstract

This study seeks to approach the phenomenon of linguistic reduction in children’s digital discourse from the perspective of text linguistics, considering it a manifestation of the transformation affecting the ways textuality is constructed within digital environments. It proceeds from a central problematics: how can a reduced discourse—based on deletion, abbreviation, hybrid writing, and semiotic elements—achieve textual coherence and produce meaning within a rapid and multimodal digital context?

The study assumes that reduction does not necessarily represent a decline in linguistic competence; rather, it may be understood as a textual and communicative mechanism that contributes to redistributing meaning between linguistic structure, context, situation, and accompanying visual elements. Through a theoretical and analytical approach, the study demonstrates that deletion, abbreviation, hybrid writing, and emojis perform textual functions related to cohesion, coherence, and intentionality, thereby making reduced digital text a dense semantic structure rather than merely an incomplete one.

The study concludes that children’s digital discourse calls for an expansion of the tools of text linguistics to include reduced and multimodal forms, moving beyond normative approaches that reduce the phenomenon to deterioration or error.