Featured post - assignment #1

Each week we will select on post as the featured post. Feature posts are selected because they were really good, raise particularly interesting posts, or generated a lot of comments. Last week's featured post by Helena focused on the convention/nonconvention distinction, and how various signals within IM can or cannot be considered a conventional form of coordination.

Also, Will, Keith and Evan all had posts that generated a lot of commentry (4 each) - some very nice discussions there.

Here is the featured post:

#1 The Convention/Nonconvention Dichotomy

According to Clark, conventions are defined as the following: “arbitrary regularities in behavior [that are] coordination devices for recurrent coordination problems.” To clarify, Clark provides four broad categories of conventions, which he further distinguishes from other “nonconventional” forms of joint action coordination. With this dichotomy in mind, I will discuss a phenomenon I’ve observed in the online space of AIM. My examination leads me to conclude that Clark’s neat categorization of coordination devices may not be the best way to examine language in a computer-mediated context.

When thinking about online conventions, I immediately identified a device I use often in my AIM conversations: sandwiching words I wish to emphasize between two asterisks. Initially, it seemed appropriate to call this behavior a convention of use. The asterisk sandwich is a behavior AIM users undertake regularly, and we use the behavior to solve the problem of being unable to create emphasis with vocal or nonverbal cues. In addition, it seems arbitrary – another convention, such exclamation points, might easily have developed.

The more I thought about this “convention,” however, the more I began to think that it could also be a somewhat nonconventional coordination. The use of asterisks could be a way of creating “perceptual salience,” which Clark asserts “can be brought about by … almost anything.” For example, the phrase “what was that?” as a clear reference to a recent loud noise makes perfect sense – that is, when considering the world of face-to-face communication.

In AIM conversations, participants are (probably) not sharing the same physical environment, and thus Clark’s idea of perceptual salience does not apply. And unlike virtual games, AIM conversations do not take place within a realistic virtual “world.” Therefore, I propose a new idea of AIM perceptual salience, one that does not involve referencing a particular object or environmental event. In AIM, words reign supreme, and participants use devices such as the asterisk sandwich to visually emphasize important words and phrases. These devices make certain words stand out, making them more perceptually salient to the participants in text-based AIM conversations.

In my opinion, the use of asterisk sandwiches may have evolved as a way to create emphasis in situations where the use of another device, such as italics, was impossible or inconvenient. In other forms writing (such as novels), font-change is often used for this purpose, and it seems natural for written emphasis to manifest itself online.
The above possible history of the asterisk sandwich supports the idea that it is a convention of use that has simply relocated. However, the idea of perceptual salience in an online environment seems too important to ignore, and I conclude that Clark’s cut-and-dry model, while useful, is not the perfect way to describe online language behaviors. Perhaps the asterisk sandwich could be classified as “semi-conventional,” as it seems to exhibit characteristics common to both categories of coordination.