Subject: Classroom Dynamics; CMC; Discourse Analysis.
Mabrito states that the "purpose of this study was to examine the discourse generated by groups of business writing students as they collaboratively planned individual responses to writing assignments. The focus of the study was to examine the same group of students meeting both face-to-face and via a real-time computer network. Specifically, the intention was to record conversation in both environments as a way of addressing the following questions:
1. Would the amount of response differ for groups and individuals within groups between face-to-face and computer network sessions?
2. Would the linguistic function and specific focus of these responses differ for groups and individuals within groups between face-to-face and computer network sessions?
3. Would participants express different attitudes toward participating in face-to-face and computer network group meetings?
The participants studied were junior and senior college students in a business writing course. The results of the study were as follows:
Groups tended to generate about as much conversation in either medium, although they produced slightly more discourse units in face-to-face sessions. . . . the transcripts further revealed that a leader often emerged in face-to-face groups, a leader who frequently contributed more commentary than did other members of the group. . . . not only were the leaders responsible for generating most of the discourse produced by the group, but they were also self-appointed monitors who often decided on prodecural matters--for example, "I think we need to draw an outline of what we are requesting from the company".
These group leaders were also responsible for topic initiation.
On the other hand, participation in the CMC groups was generally more "egalitarian". Topic initiation and the number of turns were not dominated by one "leader".
As for the function and focus of responses, both groups focused on the writing task, in particular, informing about writing (as opposed to directing or eliciting).
"With respect to group productivity, students tended to rate their network experiences higher. . . than their face-to-face experiences. Similarly, students also perceived their network groups to have worked together more efficiently . . ." Students also "overwhelmingly" indicated that they felt one member of face-to-face groups dominated interactions.
Maynor, N. (1994). The Language of electronic mail: written speech? In G.D. Little & M. Montgomery (Eds.), Centennial Usage Studies (pp. 48-54). Tuscaloosa, AL: Alabama UP.
Subject: CMC; Discourse Analysis.
Maynor discusses e-mail discourse as having its own style. Among the features distinctive to electronic writing are: lack of capital letters, simplified spellings, clippings and icons. These features she writes (with the exception of clippings) are not part of speech, but they seem to exist to make e-mail similar to speech. For example, since capital letters cannot be seen in speech they are left out of e-mail. On the other hand, sometimes words are written in all capital letters to represent "screaming". Other elements such as varied punctuation (more exclamation points and trailing dots) or the lack of personal pronouns also imitate speech. E-mail does have its own lexicon, and many of the expressions are shorter than standard written expressions ("via, re, btw"). However, other typical e-mail expressions are not shorter ("nope" instead of "no"). The same can be said about punctuation--there is in fact more of it than in standard written english. Maynor hypothesizes that the use of these particular lexical items, in the case where they are shorter is coincidental--they are simply "associated with computer communication". The effort to add punctuation and use longer words taken from spoken English seems to be an effort on the part of e-mail users to imitate the more informal medium of spoken language. She does emphasize however that she has not "collected enough data to make definitive statements about e-style". Her essay is merely "intended as a suggestion that perhaps the language of e-mail is worthy of our attention as linguists".
McAdams, M. (1996). Gender without bodies. CmC Magazine, 3, (on-line).
Subject: CMC; Gender Issues.
McAdams' article deals with gender differences on line. She proposes that mind and body are separate and that online gender is not identifiable. The advantage of being online according to McAdams is that one has no body there. Consequently women are in no physical danger of violation (as they are in other spaces such as dark alleys or deserted parking lots). On the other hand, there is the affront of having ones ideas disregarded in cyberspace simply because of one's gender. McAdams considers assuming another identity as a possible solution. According to her, people can adopt whatever identity they choose because "identity is made intelligible through the art of self performance". "Online or off, we create our identities". To do so, she suggests that one might adopt a new name or even multiple names for use online. She claims that people make assumptions based on name, and this affects how they respond to others. She states that one's words will not betray one's gender "if you have decided to be un-gendered in your online persona". In effect her outlook is too existentially "purist" to be realistic--she completely ignores the effect of social conditioning in discourse (whether online or off) in favor of a completely self
determinisitic view of how we express ourselves in electronic environments.
Mulac, A., & Lundell, T. L. (1994). Effects of gender-linked language differences in adults' written discourse: multivariate tests of language effects. Language and Communication, 14, 299-309.
Subject: Gender Issues.
Mulac and Lundell examine whether or not women and men write differently. They set forth three hypotheses, as follows:
1. "Subjective psychological judgments by untrained observers can distinguish between male and female university student writers of impromptu essays in ways consistent with the Gender-linked Language Effect: females rated higher on Socio-intellectual Status and Aesthetic Quality; males rated higher on Dynamism".
2. "A combination of language features coded by trained observers can distinguish between male and female university student writers of impromptu essays".
3. "Male/female differences in the use of language features can predict differences in readers' subjective psychological judgments of the writers".
Forty essays (20 by women, 20 by men) were randomly selected from a field of 148. The untrained obsevers (who, by the way, were unable to accurately guess the sex of the writers) evaluated the essays according to Socio-intellectual Status, Aesthetic Quality and Dynamism. It was found that women rated higher in the Socio-intellectual Status and the Aesthetic Quality categories, while men rated higher in the category of Dynamism.
Trained observers then evaluated the essays according to language features established by previous studies as being gender-distinguishing. Male "language variables" included: references to quantity, judgmental adjectives, locatives, sentence initial conjunctions/fillers. Female variables included: intensive adverbs, references to emotion, dependent clauses, sentence initial adverbials, uncertainty verbs, hedges, oppositions, and long mean length sentences. "Results indicated that a combination of nine language features provided substantial differentiation between male and female writers". "Male writers tended to make greater use of . . . references to quantity, locatives, elliptical sentences, and judgmental adjectives. Female writers. . . generally made use of. . . uncertainty verbs, progressive verbs, references to emotions, longer mean length sentences, and sentence initial adverbials".
As for the third hypothesis, "two male indicators (judgmental adjectives and eliptical sentences) were predictive of lower ratings on Socio-intellectual Status, whereas two of the female indicators (Sentence initial adverials and references to emotions were predictive of higher ratings on that dimension". Also ratings for Aesthetic Quality were "negatively affected by two of the male discriminators (elliptical sentences and judgmental adjectives), and possibly influenced by two female predictors (progressive verbs and references to emotion)". One male indicator (references to quantity) with a positive effect on Aesthetic evaluation was contrary to the Gender
linked Language Effect. "No combination of the nine gender-discriminating language variables offered adequate prediction of. . . Dynamism".
Overall the findings of the study supported the hypotheses. Mulac and Lundell conclude that their study "establishes for the first time that the ways in which men and women write in informal discourse have judgmental consequences. These consequences are not only consistent with those of their speech, they are also consistent with society's gender stereotypes. The findings suggest that men's and women's writing helps perpetuate these pervasive stereotypes".
Murray, D. (1987). Computer-mediated communication as a tool for language learning. TESOL Newsletter, 6, 13-14.
Subject: CMC; Second Language Acquisition.
Murray's article focuses on "the use of computers to facilitate communication in TESL programs". She points out that "computer-mediated communication is an especially flexible tool for providing learners with a variety of truly communicative . . . and collaborative language experiences". Murry describes four programs using e-mail for various purposes: writing and discussing papers and compositions, collaborative writing of a French Newspaper (all at the college level), and learning letter writing skills (at the elementary school level). She underlines ways in which CMC enhanced the students' learning experiences. Students were highly motivated by the medium. The medium also provides students with a real audience for their writing projects, teaches them computer skills, and facilitates learning across the curriculum. Murray also notes, with respect to the development of language skills, that all four projects described "indicate that language learning is facilitated when language is the means rather than the object".
