Book Reviews
Computer-Mediated Communication: Linguistic, Social, on a comparison of oral speech, written text, and CMC. Is CMC closer to one or the other, or a new hybrid? Collot and Cross-Cultural Perspectives. Susan C. Herring, ed. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins North America; 1996: 324 pp. and Belmore examine electronic Bulletin Board Systems, in specific Input Montreal, and compare the data to two elec-Price: $29.95. tronic text corpora in terms of types of verbs, first and third person pronouns, and other linguistic elements. Yates de-This volume consists of 14 chapters, four of which origiscribes methodological problems in constructing a corpus nally were papers presented at a conference on pragmatics from the CoSY conferencing system, particularly data from in 1993. The rest were prepared in response to a solicitation an information technology course-related conference and a via the Internet. The book was assembled in response to a multi-topic conference. Both determined that there are signeed for ''descriptive and empirical research'' on computernificant differences in the different types of English, the evimediated interaction, in response to the exuberant promises dence stronger in the second article. of ''sweeping changes in the social order'' as well as ''dys-Condon and Cech investigate ''how synchronous computertopic visions'' of its consequences. The intent was not for mediated interaction resembles oral or written interaction'' completeness but for presentation of a variety of approaches (p. 65). The experiment involved recording pairs of students to the problems of computer-mediated communications as they planned two short vacations. One group did so face ( CMC ) . The editor puts a positive spin on the relative age to face, the other, electronically via a CHAT or TALK-type of the papers by asserting that the continued growth of CMC software. has demonstrated that it is not a passing fad, but rather a Werry identifies Internet Relay Chat (IRC) as ''interactive ''new communication modality'' that is now simply a fact written discourse'' (p. 47), closer to speech than written text of life in Western society ( pp. 1 -10 ) .
because of its real-time interactivity. He examines the log files She notes in the introduction that the three key issues for of one English and one French channel in terms of overlapping CMC are its language (with a mix of written and spoken characand sequencing, conventions used for addressing, abbreviations teristics), participants converse without ''extra-lingistic cues'' such as gender and personality of the others, and the degree or used, uses of letters to mimic oral patterns (observing ''an nature of community-building that is present. The fact that she almost manic tendency to produce auditory and visual effects did not use these themes to organize the chapters suggests the in writing'') (p. 58) and physical life (hand-shaking, offers of difficulties in classifying this kind of research, as well as the coffee, e.g.). The author discusses the channels in parallel, and ''sea of variables'' as one author put it, in conducting it. And does not appear to observe differences in their structure or it is an extensive set: Researchers are working with ''naturally patterns of activity based on language: That is, the Frenchoccurring'' discussions such as listservs, as well as experimental speaking participants abbreviate and emulate noises as freconditions; single-language and multi-lingual settings; elecquently as the English. In this case, the written language of IRC tronic fora wherein response is immediate (such as chats), or is closer to oral speech. delayed (such as listservs or E-mail based discussion groups),
The lack of a physical context prompts discussion of both or somewhere in between. They can look at characteristics of gender and multi-cultural issues. Gender issues played a role the posters that affect communication practices (such as gender in three chapters. Herring's own article investigated the notion or community cultures), at activities attempted or accomplished that men's contributions to general discussion groups are ''more (such as sex or writing papers), at end results (such as withinformation oriented'' (p. 81), while those of women are more drawal of a product from the market), and at the application socially or personally oriented. She studied extended discusof various rules of behavior. And, of course, they can look at sions from the WMST (Women's Studies) list, and to the relationship of an electronic version of an activity and its LINGUIST, which contains predominantly male postings. Postreal-life counterpart. All of these make for research reports that ings to LINGUIST were hypothesized to be more expository in are most difficult to generalize, but make interesting reading nature, those to WMST more interactional: Assuming a ''list nonetheless.
effect'' wherein the dominant tone of discourse of the list would The themes used to organize the chapters (Linguistic Perinfluence communication practices of the whole, regardless of spectives, Social and Ethical Perspectives, Cross-Cultural Perthe gender of the individual poster. Hall, on the other hand, spectives, and CMC and Group Interaction) illustrate part of explores two aspects of cyberfeminism as a response to CMC: the problem in getting a handle on this kind of research: Many Liberal feminism, which advocates gender fluidity and does not of the articles could have fallen into two or more of these recognize dichotomies of male/female, and radical feminism, categories. We will, therefore, use the issues noted above to which argues for the opposite: The development of ''women organize the discussion.
only'' enclaves. She compares the magazine Future Sex, repre-Investigating the nature of language used in CMC focuses senting the former, with the discussion list SAPPHO, representing the latter. These two essays were presented in different sections of the book itself, however it is interesting to juxtapose