Talk, Type, and Text: Conversation on the Internet Jon Camfield TC660H Plan II Honors Program The University of Texas at Austin April 26, 1999 Joel F. Sherzer Anthropology Supervising Professor Heidi Johnson Linguistics Second Reader i Abstract Author: Jon Camfield Title: Talk, Type, and Text: Conversation on the Internet Supervising Professor: Dr. Joel Sherzer Second Reader: Heidi Johnson On the eve of Y2K, the extent that computers are interwoven with our lives is painfully obvious, yet only relatively recently has the academic eye taken interest in the events going on on-line. Despite this attention, there still remain new frontiers that have not been explored on the Internet. The phenomenon of real-time interaction is the best example of these. Some commentaries have treated the social aspects of MUDs, a special subspecies of real-time interaction, but more pure textual conversations have not been examined closely. This paper seeks to remedy this. I will, by necesity, place my investigations into the frame of the Internet at large, and discuss websites, e-mail and newsgroups. I will focus, however, on data from real-time interactions which use text as their only channel of communication. i Table of Contents ABSTRACT.................................................................................................................................................................. i TABLE OF CONTENTS............................................................................................................................................ 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS........................................................................................................................................ 3 INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................................................................... 5 THE IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNITY ........................................................................................................................... 6 BACKGROUND........................................................................................................................................................... 8 A short History .................................................................................................................................................... 8 Terms................................................................................................................................................................. 10 SOURCES................................................................................................................................................................. 11 Primary Data Sources ....................................................................................................................................... 12 The Ethics of Quoting........................................................................................................................................ 13 AN OUTLINE OF THE REST OF THE PAPER ............................................................................................................... 14 PART I: FROM TALK TO TEXT.......................................................................................................................... 15 CHAPTER 1: ANALYSIS OF INTERNET DISCOURSE ................................................................................... 16 SCHIFFREN'S LIST.................................................................................................................................................... 16 THE CHOICE............................................................................................................................................................ 17 Gricean Pragmatism ......................................................................................................................................... 18 Framing in Discourse........................................................................................................................................ 21 Conversational Patterns: Stubbs and Erikson................................................................................................... 24 Speech Act Theory: Action Verbs as Illocutionary Acts? .................................................................................. 26 Intonation on-line?............................................................................................................................................ 29 CONCLUSION........................................................................................................................................................... 31 CHAPTER 2: TYPE BETWEEN TEXT AND TALK ......................................................................................... 32 THE WORLD- (AND STYLE-) WIDE WEB ................................................................................................................. 32 MOVING TOWARDS DIALOGUES ............................................................................................................................. 33 E-MAIL: THE TRUE E-EPISTOLARY STYLE .............................................................................................................. 37 THE 'SPOKEN' AREAS OF THE INTERNET.................................................................................................................. 38 CONCLUSION........................................................................................................................................................... 41 CHAPTER 3: THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS ........................................................................................... 42 LOOKING IN FROM OUTSIDE.................................................................................................................................... 42 THE LIFE OF THE "NEWBIE" .................................................................................................................................... 45 1 FROM THE INSIDE.................................................................................................................................................... 47 CONCLUSION........................................................................................................................................................... 48 CONCLUSIONS FROM PART I............................................................................................................................ 50 PART II: TYPING AS CONVERSATION ............................................................................................................ 52 CHAPTER 1: SPEAKING OUTSIDE THE BOX ................................................................................................. 53 EXTRA-LINGUISTIC FEATURES ON-LINE.................................................................................................................. 54 DIFFERING MEDIA................................................................................................................................................... 56 CONCLUSION........................................................................................................................................................... 57 CHAPTER 2: TEXTUAL REALITY ..................................................................................................................... 58 INTENTIONALITY OF ON-LINE TEXTUAL REALITY................................................................................................... 58 OTHER TEXTUAL REALITIES ................................................................................................................................... 63 VIRTUAL REALITIES................................................................................................................................................ 65 CONCLUSION........................................................................................................................................................... 69 CHAPTER 3: GAMES PEOPLE PLAY ................................................................................................................ 70 ANONYMITY AS FREEDOM ...................................................................................................................................... 72 BORDERLANDS BETWEEN COMPUTER-MEDIATED AND COMPUTER-GENERATED .................................................... 75 CONCLUSION........................................................................................................................................................... 80 CHAPTER 4: MULTI-CHANNEL COMMUNICATION ................................................................................... 81 CHANNELS OFF-LINE ............................................................................................................................................... 81 CHANNELS ON-LINE................................................................................................................................................ 83 EVEN MORE CHANNELS.......................................................................................................................................... 85 MULTI-THREADED CONVERSATION ........................................................................................................................ 94 CONCLUSION..........................................................................................................................................................