#7

1.
"Jorge's AIM study Homework ... I might be studying you right now as you read this...



Just kidding!"

Three speech acts:
* "Jorge's AIM study Homework ..."
Assertive: asserting that the user is doing homework, and which homework. For full understanding, assumes that reader is also in 450.
* "I might be studying you right now as you read this..."
Assertive and humorous: the user is asserting the possiblity that he is studying the person reading his away message as they read it. No conventional content.
* "Just kidding!"
Expressive and humorous: the user is expressing a light-hearted feeling and negating his previous speech act. No conventional content.

2.
"back into quarantine"

One speech act. Commissive. Assumes that you know this person is sick.

3.
"I'm not here right now"

One speech act. Assertive. No conventional content.

4.
"Ah child of countless trees
Ah child of boundless seas
What you are, what you're meant to be"

One speech act. Quotation. Assumes the common ground of having knowledge of Grateful Dead lyrics.

5.
"class"

One speech act. Assertive. No conventional content.

I believe the study's approach accurately captures the generally informative nature of away messages well, particularly with humor and common ground (e.g. inside jokes), but glosses over some interesting complexity in some areas. In my experience, people use quotations in away messages in a variety of ways, and I think simply grouping quotations as one category of speech act is over simplifying. A quote could be assertive, expressive, or any of the other categories of speech act. For example, somebody might conventionally use the away message "once more unto the breach" to signify that they are taking an exam: this is an assertion which relies upon convention (a friend's knowledge of what this quote as an away message signifies), and could also be called humorous (comparing an exam and war). On the other hand, people often quote song lyrics to express how they are feeling. I think the method of the study could have been much improved by using 'quotation' as a binary characteristic of the message, much like 'humorous', as opposed to a category of speech act.