Assignment 7

Following are the five away messages I chose to code:

1. First day back and already going nuts!!!!

This away message contains two speech acts. The first ("First day back") is assertive and is based on common ground, because it is not immediately apparent that it is her first day back at college. The second speech act ("already going nuts!!!!") is expressive - it describes the way she is feeling. It also contains emphasized punctuation, a CMC convention.

2. Time for food......:-D hit up da cell..... Muah!

This message contains three speech acts. The first ("Time for food......:-D") is assertive and contains the CMC conventions of ellipses and emoticons. The second ("hit up da cell .....") is directive and contains ellipses and an intentional misspelling - both CMC conventions. The final speech act ("Muah!") is expressive; she is conveying her emotions.

3. Sleeping - will wake in x hours, where x is a real number on the interval [0,2]

This contains two speech acts. The first ("Sleeping") is assertive. The second part is commissive - he is committing himself to waking up within the specified amount of time.

4. class, work

This message is comprised of two speech acts. The first ("class") is assertive – he is saying that he is currently in class. The second is open to interpretation, but most likely commissive. One assumes that the "work" will take place after class, and he is thus committing himself to working sometime in the future.

5. eating dinner... be back later

This contains two speech acts. The first ("eating dinner...") is assertive and contains ellipses, a CMC convention. The second ("be back later") is commissive.

Coding the away messages was fairly easy. There were a few times when the interpretation was a bit ambiguous (like with "Muah!" from #2), but the categories seemed to do a good job of associating each message segment with a speech act. However, as with normal language, problems can certainly appear. For example, one away message that I chose not to code is as follows: “reading an analysis of the predictive power of credit rates in the recovery of the 1994 currency crisis in Mexico.” This is clearly assertive, but should it also be coded as being based on common ground? The basic meaning of statement is completely understood without knowing the author; there are no “foreign” words that are only in the lexicon of people who share the same common ground. Crucially, however, the intended tone and effect of the message is entirely dependent on the author. It can be a completely serious statement, or it could be meant to be ironic. Would the message, therefore, be coded as containing humor and/or being based on common ground? If so, coding would require an intimate knowledge of the people writing the away messages. Should this bias be a part of the study?

Additionally, there was one other type of away message that I was surprised to see did not end up in the study - the question, or interrogative speech act. For example, an away message could say, "mike, when do you want to meet?" This person is awaiting a response from Mike, and will be able to see it when he returns to his computer. It is clear that this contains an element of common ground; however, the speech act itself cannot be classified by the categories listed in the paper. Why was this omitted? Was it for some reason assumed that this sort of question would not appear?