Software, Software Development and other Atrocities

Introduction

Electronic conversation has been possible since the creation of computer networks. The invention of the Internet has boosted its popularity to the extent that nowadays millions of people use CMC[1] to communicate. From a linguistic perspective, we can see that new forms of interaction are being developed, some adapted from writing, and face-to-face conversations; while some are being created especially for electronic environments (Greenfield and Subrahmanyam, 2003). Researchers are being encouraged to find out how people communicate and develop relationships through the internet. In this regard some people see CMC as an “impersonal medium” (Parks, 1996, 2) and a “socially-impoverished domain” (Baym, 1995, 26) as none of the linguistic strategies used are as efficient in conveying meaning as in written or oral speech. In contrast with this, others see online participants adjusting themselves to the limitations of the written environment and looking for “conversational coherence”(Greenfield and Subrahmanyam, 2003, 728). Although the latter perspectives recognise CMC as a useful tool they do not explain how people adapt to it. What is needed then is an insight into these settings to explain how understanding is possible and to see how other social practices interact with language. Numerous linguistic studies have used the concept of speech community to identify its members and the language they speak. This approach, however, has been limited to linguistic variables. In this essay the concept of Communities of Practice is explored as an alternative to study online-conversations as it may give the tools to understand how the online-linguistic strategies are developed in a process of negotiation among the members of the community. Before this, the limitations of CMC will be reviewed.

CMC and its limitations

CMC is “a hybrid form of interaction” or “written conversation” (Marcoccia, 2004, 2). CMC could be considered as a new kind of register[2], which possesses characteristics of both written and spoken speech. These characteristics appear in different degrees depending on the online setting that is being used (i.e.: e-mail, chat rooms, etc.). Although CMC possesses advantages like reduction of time and financial constraints and the loss of geographical boundaries (Folkman Curasi(2001, 367); Parrish (2002, 3); Sweet (2001, 2)), its limitations, especially the linguistic ones, contribute to the lack of understanding of this media. Some limitations are:

1. The lack of visual and social cues, often present in face-to-face conversations limits the interpretation of texts to the written statements (Sweet, 2001, 40). “Cues signal the nature of the context”, they give the participants an idea of who and where are the others, their characteristics and the relationships between them(Jacobson, 1996, 463) . In CMC indications about the participants’ physical appearance, age, gender, position and the physical appearance of the setting are lost(Sproull and Kiesler, 1986, 1497). Visual signals like nods from an addressee to indicate understanding, agreement or disagreement are also missing.

2. Problems with conversation structure. Online conversations follow different ordering rules than in normal conversations. In face-to-face conversations, people negotiate their turns with cues, showing the others when they can have control of the floor[3]. Turns are also organised by adjacency pairs which are logical sequences that people expect to be followed (e.g. a question followed by an answer). In CMC many people can be typing at the same time and not see the new messages that are arriving. Their messages are posted in the order in which the server receives them (this depends on speed and broadband). Additionally, there could be several parallel conversations taking place at the same time (Parrish, 2002, 10). The result is several threads of conversations overlapping with each other. The overlap causes that turn, which should have followed another one, to appear after several lines. In between there can be turns from other people participating in the same conversation or in others. It is difficult then for the inexperienced, to deduce to which conversation a particular turn belongs and what its place (order) in that conversation is. Although this phenomenon appears more often in synchronous conversation it is also true for asynchronous conversations. Replies of e-mails can carry copies of the previous turns which are not necessarily in order.

3. Interaction is slower than speech, even in situations like chat rooms. Typing and reading are slower than speaking and hearing. Messages are “complete and unidirectional” (Crystal, 2001, 30). Other participants have to wait until we send them. There is no simultaneous feedback (Crystal, 2001, 30). A “speaker” does not know if the “listeners” are following what is being said until a reply is sent. The consequences of this are the mentioned problems with conversation structure and hence the difficulty in following a thread of conversation.

After reviewing these limitations, it becomes unclear how people manage to communicate and perform activities online. As a result, some questions arise: how do participants understand each other? How do online conversations convey comprehension? How can goals be achieved and relationships developed in online environments? Certainly, the answer is not restricted to linguistic terms. There are other factors playing a role in the construction of linguistic forms within online environments, as for example, the personal interests of each individual, personal backgrounds, IT literacy, age, etc. So far, the studies guided by the traditional approach: speech communities have been limited to linguistic interactions. Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (2000) in their paper on language, gender and power propose the use of a new theoretical framework to analysing language: Communities of Practice. It allows the connection of different theoretical abstractions, social and linguistic (e.g. gender and language) that can give a wider perspective. Following this trend, this essay discusses the usefulness of this concept in the study of online conversations.

The old and new perspectives

Let’s compare both perspectives before. A speech community is defined “by participation in a shared set of norms” (Labov, 1972, 121), being these norms mostly related to language use. It has proved to be “a productive and useful tool for research into the orderly heterogeneity of language in its social setting.”(Holmes and Meyerhoff, 1999, 173) The problem is, however, that it does not direct “attention to what people are doing as they engage with one another” (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 1999, 190). For example, it does not take into account the intentions or purposes of an online conversation. It also assumes that the speech population is heterogeneous and focuses only on the language use of central members (e.g. people who speak Standard English).

Community of Practice (CofP) is a concept developed by Lave and Wegner (1991) as part of a “Social Theory of Learning” (Holmes and Meyerhoff, 1999, 174). A CofP is defined by membership and by the practice in which members are engaged (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 2000, 490). The purpose of its introduction to a theory of learning was to explore the concept of learning as a social process. Members of a CofP learn while they perform community activities and while they negotiate the way those activities are to be performed. As language is also a “social practice” (Bucholtz, 1999, 210) we can presume that members also acquire “sociolinguistic competence” (Holmes and Meyerhoff, 1999, 174) as they practice. Unlike speech community, these definitions alone may give us the opportunity to link language use with other social practices. In the case of online communities these could be, helping others and solving conflicts. Holmes and Meyerhoff (1999) mention three dimensions of a CofP:

1. Mutual Engagement: quantity and quality of interaction, it is the “basis for the relationships that make the CofP possible”.
2. Joint Enterprise: a process of negotiating practices and goals.
3. Shared Repertoire: of resources for negotiating meaning, this includes linguistic resources.

There are two more features of CofP which are worth to mention. CofP recognises diversity and conflict among its members. There are core members who are totally engaged with community’s practices and peripheral members who are in the process of becoming full members(Holmes and Meyerhoff, 1999, 174). Finally, it recognises ambiguity in its practices as a “condition of negotiability”. Members do not always interpret meanings in the same way. Therefore social processes become difficult to handle but “dynamic, always open-ended and generative of new meaning” (Wenger, 2003, 84).

Conclusion: Communities of Practice and online conversations

As CofP acknowledges differences within communities it could be a useful tool to explain how the different linguistic styles of the online members blend to create a style for the whole community. Mutual engagement allows members to learn the linguistic repertoire and to participate in the negotiation of new ways of expressing themselves. The concept of joint negotiation could help to explain how such new ways of chatting with multiple, parallel, overlapping and slow conversations and a lack of visual cues, is not wrong but different; as it was negotiated by its members. CofP’s acknowledgement of ambiguity in community practices and their processes of negotiation could explain how people understand each other and develop relationships and therefore could clarify how meaning is conveyed in online conversations. A perspective like this would respond to movements which try to redesign online conversations so that they look more like oral conversations. See Smith et al (2000) paper on Conversation Trees and Threaded chats. It is an attempt to design a chat program that supports the “turn-taking structure of human conversation” that does not result as expected.