Abstract

This paper enquires into the ELF-mediated online communication modes developed by a group of Nigerian migrants living in Southern Italy during the lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic emergency. The paper illustrates how such modes, though propositionally conveyed as written language, actually retain the analogical immediacy of spoken discourse through which migrants express their anguish at feeling caught in a situation of distress and even more marginalisation. Case-study data demonstrate that the migrants’ linguaculturally-marked use of syllabic notations, acronyms, emojis, and phrasal verbs triggers processes of semantic relexicalisation and morphological decategorialisation that undermine in many ways what so far has been regarded as the universal trends in language evolution governed and bound by natural principles of economy