David Crystal by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Internet linguistics

A common technique is to introduce a message with an explicit reference to a previous posting, usually in the form of a quotation from it or a paraphrase of it, as in these opening sentences:

(1) We're all democrats at heart? I don't think so.

(2) I never thought I'd hear someone talking about people power, not in 2000.

(3) >I was living in a different universe. [The writer has pasted this sentence from a previous message.] Isn't that the truth!

(4) Animated more, I'd say. [The writer is referring to a previous question: 'Are we animals?']

Lengthy quotation is unusual - indeed, unnecessary, because the previous messages are readily available in full. Little attention is paid to the accuracy of quotation, and quotation marks are unusual. It is the spirit rather than the letter of a message which is seen to be significant, and earlier phrasing can be adapted to suit the new

21 In this situation. An important difference between asynchronous and synchronous groups is that contributors to the latter do acknowledge the group in greetings and farewells. Indeed, it is considered bad form if they do not (pp. 154-5).

22 'Hello' sequences, often ludic, were a feature of the classroom sample studied by Gillen and Goddard (2000).

writer, as in the last example above. Even when contributions do not start in this way, the body of the message contains a significant re-use of salient individual lexical items. The term democrat, used in (1), resurfaced in several succeeding messages from different participants, until the conversation moved on. Extensive lexical repetition (in words and phrases) was found to be a major feature of the Davis and Brewer student conference, for example, suggesting that a useful way of identifying thematic threads (or topic shifts) in this kind of data will be to trace the use of individual lexical items and their sense relations (synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms, etc.). 23

From a pragmatic (as opposed to a semantic) point of view, what is interesting about a quotation is that it performs two roles. First, it conveys the illusion of adjacency, and thus makes the interaction more like the real conversational world. Second, it is another way of acknowledging group membership. In some respects, the explicit harking back to previous content performs some of the function of a greeting. Indeed, the strategy is common enough in face-to-face conversation, where we may hear people beginning a conversation by quoting something from their previous communicative encounters. An arrival at Holyhead railway station was met by someone whose opening remark was 'Who's never going to travel on Sundays ever again, then?' - the point being that it was a Sunday, and the person being met had evidently vowed, in those words, never to undergo that experience again. Then there was the following exchange, based on the participants' shared knowledge:

Colleague [introducing me]: This is David Crystal New contact: Ah, Language Death.

The reference was to my narrative not causative role in this topic, I am pleased to say, my book on that subject having recently appeared. In

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