Abstract

It is often said that the communicative functioning of social networks is based on the "fatic function" of language and, in general, of semiosis. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the conceptual meaning of this notion, returning to the fundamental authors who have coined it; and therefore to show its relationships with the referential function, on the one hand, and the expressive one, on the other. Hence, another aim of the paper is sketch a typology of facebook users, halfway between desire to share and self-construction project.