The linguistic-cognitive essence of virtual community (original) (raw)
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On the linguistic nature of cyberspace and virtual communities
Virtual Reality, 1998
This paper argues for a linguistic explanation of the nature of Virtual Communities. Virtual Communities develop and grow in electronic space, or 'cyberspace'. Authors such as Benedikt Meyrowitz and Mitchell have theorised about the nature of electronic space whilst Lefebvre, Popper, Hakim Bey (aka Lamborn Wilson) and Kuhn have theorised more generally about the nature of space. Extending this tradition and the works of these authors, this paper presents a language based perspective on the nature of electronic spaces. Behaviour in cyberspace is based on and regulated by hardware, software tools and interfaces. A definition of electronic space cannot be given beyond its linguistic characteristics, which underlie and sustain it. The author believes that the more users and developers understand the relationship between language and cyberspace, the more they will be able to use specific metaphors for dwelling and inhabiting it. In particular, MUDs/MOOs and the Web are interesting places for testing and observing social behaviours and dynamics.
Memory , Interpretation and Connectedness : The Imagined Part of Virtual Communities
2016
This article focuses on the contemporary sociability built in the technological texture of everyday life. The virtual communities re-opened a large debate about human solidarity, collective identity, and sense of belonging. Their specific characteristics produced multilayered interpretations and polarized theories. I choose to point out the importance of the very act of interpretation and to follow the presupposition that the virtual community is, in fact, an imagined community. The usefulness of this presupposition will be analyzed in this article, with an emphasis on the role of memory in the imagined part of virtual togetherness.
'Context collapse' (CC) refers to the phenomenon widely debated in social media research, where various audiences convene around single communicative acts in new networked publics, causing confusion and anxiety among social media users. The notion of CC is a key one in the reimagination of social life as a consequence of the mediation technologies we associate with the Web 2.0. CC is undertheorized, and in this paper we intend not to rebuke it but to explore its limits. We do so by shifting the analytical focus from "online communication" in general to specific forms of social action performed, not by predefined "group" members, but by actors engaging in emerging kinds of sharedness based on existing norms of interaction. This approach is a radical choice for action rather than actor, reaching back to symbolic interactionism and beyond to Mead, Strauss and other interactionist sociologists, and inspired by contemporary linguistic ethnography and interactional sociolinguistics, notably the work of Rampton and the Goodwins. We apply this approach to an extraordinarily complex Facebook discussion among Polish people residing in The Netherlands-a set of data that could instantly be selected as a likely site for context collapse. We shall analyze fragments in detail, showing how, in spite of the complications intrinsic to such online, profoundly mediated and oddly 'placed' interaction events, participants appear capable of extraordinarily 'normal' modes of interaction and participant selection. In fact, the 'networked publics' rarely seem to occur in practice, and contexts do not collapse but expand continuously without causing major issues for contextualization. The analysis will offer a vocabulary and methodology for addressing the complexities of the largest new social space on earth: the virtual space of online culture.
The Technological Expansion of Sociability: Virtual Communities as Imagined Communities
The reception of Benedict Anderson's ideas was very fruitful in many disciplines, and his work provided key concepts that can now throw a clarifying light in some blurry matters. The expression "imagined community" has known a remarkable proliferation, a situation that led to both the formation of a research direction and to the perpetuation of a cliché. In this respect, my article pointed out some suggestive characteristics of virtual communities, explaining why the imagined community is a valuable subject for the theorists of new media.
The Cyberians : an empirical study of sociality in a virtual community (with Julia Velkovska)
1999
This paper presents some field results of a study of an on-line community : the cyberians. Backed up by our empirical findings we discuss the concept of community in order to gain a better understanding of the sense of the still problematic notion of virtual community. We suggest a set of issues defining, in our opinion, virtual communities and allowing their empirical study. We follow two main lines of investigation : the construction of Self and the relationship to the Other in the CMC settings and the social structures of the virtual community of the cyberians. This paper 1 discloses the first results of a research on the practices of an active minority : the " cyberians 2 ", Internet users clients of Cyberia, a French access provider. We selected a population who is active on newsgroups and has its own homepage. Five newsgroups are reserved to Cyberia clients, and namely one dedicated to technical help. This newsgroup is quite active : an average of around 200 messages are posted every day, to be compared with the average of 24 messages a day calculated on 500 newsgroups by . We started with an ethnographic account and analysis of productions of cyberians on the net : their homepages and their messages on the newsgroups. Those provide new communication spaces, which are opportunities for relations in public in Goffman's sense (presentation of self, meeting and interacting). Three issues are of concern to us here : the presentation of self, the building of the relations with others, and the construction and social life of Internet communities. We tried to use the classical sociological notions on community, and see to what extent they were useful for the study of " virtual " groups. We hope to contribute to clarify the term " virtual community " and facilitate its empirical description. We use the notion of sociality in Alfred Schutz's (1976, p. 230) sense as " the common intersubjective world of communication and social action ". This definition highlights the founding value of common-sense shared knowledge for the constitution of social groups. The notion of sociality refers here to the social constructs which enable communication and interaction. When studying cyberian everyday life, we tried to see whether there was a specific form of sociality in the situation of CMC 3 (forms of relationship to the Other, shared system of references, etc.). We shall first briefly review the notions of community, classical and virtual, and we shall retain what seems relevant for our problem (section 1). Methodology (section 2) is followed by the analysis of the presentation of self and of relation to other in Internet setting (section 3). Finally, we consider community level, and describe the role structure, the social network, and some components of common knowledge (section 4).
Does context really collapse in social media interaction?
'Context collapse' (CC) refers to the phenomenon widely debated in social media research, where various audiences convene around single communicative acts in new networked publics, causing confusion and anxiety among social media users. The notion of CC is a key one in the reimagination of social life as a consequence of the mediation technologies we associate with the Web 2.0. CC is undertheorized, and in this paper we intend not to rebuke it but to explore its limits. We do so by shifting the analytical focus from "online communication" in general to specific forms of social action performed, not by predefined "group" members, but by actors engaging in emerging kinds of sharedness based on existing norms of interaction. This approach is a radical choice for action rather than actor, reaching back to symbolic interactionism and beyond to Mead, Strauss and other interactionist sociologists, and inspired by contemporary linguistic ethnography and interactional sociolinguistics, notably the work of Rampton and the Goodwins. We apply this approach to an extraordinarily complex Facebook discussion among Polish people residing in The Netherlands-a set of data that could instantly be selected as a likely site for context collapse. We shall analyze fragments in detail, showing how, in spite of the complications intrinsic to such online, profoundly mediated and oddly 'placed' interaction events, participants appear capable of extraordinarily 'normal' modes of interaction and participant selection. In fact, the 'networked publics' rarely seem to occur in practice, and contexts do not collapse but expand continuously without causing major issues for contextualization. The analysis will offer a vocabulary and methodology for addressing the complexities of the largest new social space on earth: the virtual space of online culture.
Community and Language in the Information Age
Sociology and anthropology, 2013
This article argues that the electronically mediated communication contributes to the construction of new, mediated forms of communities which are based on the interaction or operational synthesis of virtual and physical communities. The appearance of these new forms of communities leads to a new conceptualization of the relation between self and community. The aim of this essay, on the one hand, is to show that with the mediatization of communities, our conce pt of community becomes more complex. On the other hand, in this article I try to prove the assumption that the medium of the mediatization and new conceptualization of community is a specific pictorial language of electronically mediated communication.
Social media and computer-mediated communication
The Cambridge Handbook of Language in Context, 2024
Within a cyberpragmatic framework rooted in cognitive pragmatics (Yus 2011), context is basically information that is brought to bear in turning the schematic coded input (e.g. spoken, written or typed words) into interpretations. Although it is undeniable that contextual information may stem from different sources, eventually what is at stake in contextualisation is to mentally assess and select the appropriate quality and quantity of information that allows us to reach meaningful interpretations. Regarding the specificity of social media and internet communication overall, several challenges for pragmatic analysis arise, some of which will be addressed in this chapter. Specifically, what interests most in an analysis of context online are: (a) the role of the interfaces in favouring/limiting the contextualisation of utterances; (b) the role of the physical-virtual interface in today's internetmediated communication; and specially (c) the differentiation of the user's personal, interactive and social contexts managed in everyday virtual communication.
THE NATURE & PURPOSE OF VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES
1999
Virtual communities can be described as a modern extension of traditional communities, through a new medium-information technology. The mediation of communications through computers does, however, have systemic effects on the behaviors of the members of the community. Many of the shortcomings of virtual communities may be resolved through a better understanding of their nature and purposes. This paper outlines some of the differences between virtual communities and traditional communities which result from use of the intermediating technology. The purpose of the virtual community as a social system is then described in terms of the four ideals suggested by Ackoff & Emery (1972), applied both to the community in its parts (i.e., the members) and of the whole (i.e., the community). The "five ways of knowing"-categorizations of inquiring systems, as suggested by Mitroff & Linstone (1993)-are then applied to describe the interaction, development and maturity of purpose for virtual communities.