458 c ynthia hagstrom It is not sufficient merely to count questions, however (Ainsworth-Vaughn 1998). The definition of “question” is important when doing calculations of control of the floor because some utterances may be genuine questions while others may be quasi-questions such as mishearings or requests for clarifications. Roughly, a question is forward looking – it looks toward an answer. By contrast, the answer looks back to the question, and an “acceptable” answer is one that is appropriate for the question. Quasi-questions, on the other hand, are backward looking. For instance, in extract 4 you can see that the physician’s question in line 4 merely requests a repetition of line 3, which the patient obligingly repeats as line 6. Extract 4 ((simplified transcription)) ((conversation about blood pressure)) 1Physician: . . .’bout one fifty over ninety [Uh-] 2Patient: [How] in the 3world could she have gotten that? 4Physician: Pardon me? 5 (.2) 6Patient: How in the world could she have gotten that? (West 1984: 80–81) Neither the request in line 4 nor the repetition in line 6 should count as a question/ answer sequence; instead they would be counted as quasi-questions (mishearing or clarification). Generally, quasi-questions are equally common for doctors and patients because they are necessary for successful information exchange. They are not related to control of the floor. Getting down to specific parts of the medical encounter we find different pat- terns of talk. Using Conversation Analysis (CA), some investigators have looked at the details of how speakers present themselves in the different parts of the med- ical encounter. In extract 5 we see a fragment of the history-taking in a medical interview. In lines 19–22 the patient is suggesting a possible explanation for her back pain. Extract 5 ((Conversation about history of back pain)) 18 DrA: ’Bout how often does that come. 19 Pt2: Uh (1.0) This can (1.5) m- be like at least 20 once or twice a week. And I’ve been trying to see if 21 I’ve been you know, lifting something or doing 22 something. ((deep breath)) 23 (1.5) 24 DrA: How long does it last when you 25 [ get it.] 26 Pt2: [Ah m] (.) maybe a day or two. Gill (1994) Dr.A with Patient 2 ((simplified transcription)) The language of doctors and patients 459 Lines 18 and 24 are both medical interview questions. The patient responds to the first question (lines 19–20) and then offers up her own possible explanation (lines 20–22) (“And I’ve been trying to see if I’ve been lifting something or doing something”). The doctor, pursuing further details of the history, appears to ignore the patient’s explanation. By ignoring the patient’s remark about possible causes the doctor remains in control of the encounter. Other CA researchers such as Heath have noted that patients are incredibly passive during the diagnosis phase of encounters. Frequently the diagnosis given by the doctor was not acknowledged at all or only with minimal yeah,oruh-huh. Extract 6 ((simplified transcription)) ((ear examination findings and treatment)) 1 Doctor: er Yes (0.3) this one’s blocked 2 (.) the other one’s not. 3 (1.2) 4 Doctor: Well when would you like to have them done 5 (.) next week some time? 6Patient: Yes: (.) yes please. 7 (1.2) 8 Doctor: If you’d like, to (.) call at um (0.5) 9 reception (0.5) the girls (0.2) on your way 10 out (.) the girls will (0.7) sort out the 11 appointment for you. (Heath 1992: 239) Extract 6 occurs in the diagnosis and treatment phase of the encounter. One would expect the patient to be very involved and interested in the doctor’s findings (lines 1–2). The 1.2-second pause at line 3 would have been an opportunity for the patient to acknowledge the diagnosis. When the patient remains silent the doctor moves immediately to treatment (line 4). The patient agrees (line 6) with the doctor’s implicit decision about “having them done” and about the appropriate time (next week, line 5). Then the doctor closes the encounter, sending the patient to reception to make an appointment (lines 8–10). Patients’ reluctance to say anything about the diagnosis may reflect acquiescence to the superiority of the medical knowledge of doctors. Singling out one feature such as the gender of physician or patient or observing question-initiating strategies does not give a complete picture of power dynamics but such studies are useful to index perceived power relationships within doctor– patient encounters (Ainsworth-Vaughn 1998). Patients can and do claim power in encounters with their physicians and physicians can and do conduct themselves in ways that acknowledge and facilitate the patients’ claims to power. For instance patients who are undergoing treatment for cancerand other illnesses which involve consultations with the same doctor over a long period of time are much more likely to collaborate with their doctor on planning and implementing treatment (Roberts 1999). An increasing number of studies show how power in medical encounters can be negotiated. 460 c ynthia hagstrom The future of medical communication The rules for medical communication in the USA continue to change. Most of the changes have been related to shifts in decision-making power, a shift to an increasingly consumerist model. This trend is notable in a number of areas of everyday life. Many common medications are sold directly to consumers today (like Advil TM and Tagamet TM ), which only a few years ago were sold by prescrip- tion only. Drug companies now advertise products in evening prime time that are still “prescription only” with the admonition “Ask your doctor if Xenical TM is right for you.” These advertisements typically conclude with a lengthy disclaimer list of side effects. Such an advertising strategy is proposing that patients should be more active in decision-making about their medications. Recently there has been a “Patient Bill of Rights” movement including the right to choose your provider and the right to a second opinion. Many patients come to the doctor with information obtained from the Internet. And finally there is the issue at the center of so much current political debate: the availability of health care and who decides which medical procedures will be paid for. The bureaucratic intervention of managed care has altered medical decision-making most of all. Doctors have found themselves in the difficult position of having to justify their treatments to insurance companies on the basis of time and cost. At the same time they face increasing demands from their patients. We can see that the concern about how patients and doctors communicate is a complicated topic. Doctors with good communication practices are rewarded with satisfied patients, positive health outcomes, and perhaps fewer malpractice lawsuits. Medical training is long and difficult. Medical schools are devoting more time to the socio-emotional components of medical practice even as they have an increasingly sophisticated medico-biological curriculum to cover. As patients we value the knowledge doctors have. We rely on physicians to have our best interests in mind. We expect a high level of expertise yet we want to be able to have a say in the decisions that are made about our bodies. On the other hand patients don’t always want to make their own health decisions. This means that doctors must not only be able to communicate their medical knowledge to us but they must also be able to take into account what we as patients want from them. Suggestions for further reading and exploration Most discussions of doctor–patient communication begin with reference to the classic sociological work of Parsons (1951) in which he describes theconventional roles of doctors and patients in Western medicine. Roter and Hall (1992) provides a more recent overview of doctor–patient communication, primarily from the per- spective of the physician. Other studies consider how doctors manage the frame of medical talk. Tannen and Wallat (1993) explores how a pediatrician’s presen- tation style shifts when she is talking to the patient, the patient’s mother, or other The language of doctors and patients 461 health professionals. Maynard (2003) examines the conversational intricacies of reporting bad news to patients. Cicourel (1992) describes the role context plays in how physicians speak to medical students, peers, and medical experts from other departments. Lipkin et al. (1996) offers a detailed description of how clinical interaction skills are taught in medical schools. Still other recent studies explore medical communication from the perspective of the patient. Kleinman (1988) contains case studies of what being ill means to patients in Western society and in China. The sociolinguistic papers in Fisher and Todd (1993) focus on how patients talk with their doctors and how treatment is negotiated. Labov and Fanshel (1977) is a detailed discourse analysis of a single case of psychoanalytic talk. References Ainsworth-Vaughn, Nancy. 1998. Claiming Power in Doctor–Patient Talk. New York: Oxford University Press. Byrne, P. and B. Long. 1976. Doctors Talking to Patients. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Caporael, Linnda and Glen Culbertson. 1986. “Verbal Response Modes of Baby Talk and Other Speech at Institutions for the Aged,” Language and Communication 6(1/2): 99–112. Cassell, Eric. 1985. Talking with Patients. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Cicourel, Aaron. 1992. “The Interpretation of Communicative Contexts: Examples from Med- ical Encounters.” In Rethinking Context, eds. Alessandro Duranti and Charles Goodwin. New York: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 291–310. Fisher, Sue and Alexandra Dundas Todd, eds. 1993. The Social Organization of Doctor–Patient Communication. 2nd edn. Norwood NJ: Ablex. Frankel, R. 1990. “Talking in Interviews: a Dispreference for Patient-Initiated Questions in Physician–Patient Encounters.” In Interactional Competence, eds. George Psathas, G. Coulter, and R. Frankel. Washington DC: University Press of America. Pp. 231–62. Gill, Virginia. 1994. “How Patients Explain, How Doctors Respond: Lay Explanation in Med- ical Interaction.” Paper presented at the American Sociological Association meeting. Los Angeles. Greene, M., S. Hoffman, R. Charon, and R. Adelman. 1987. “Psychosocial Concerns in the Medical Encounter: a Comparison of the Interactions of Doctors with their Old and Young Patients,” The Gerontologist 7(2): 164–68. Heath, Christian. 1992. “The Delivery and Reception of Diagnosis in the General-Practice Con- sultation.” In Talk at Work, eds. Paul Drew and John Heritage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 235–67. Kleinman, Arthur. 1988. The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing and the Human Condition. New York: Basic Books. Korsch, Barbara M. and V. F. Negrete. 1972. “Doctor–Patient Communication,” Scientific American 227: 66–74. Labov, William and David Fanshel. 1977. Therapeutic Discourse. Psychotherapy as Conver- sation.New York: Academic Press. Lipkin, Mack, Jr., Samuel M. Putnam, and Aaron Lazare, eds. 1996. The Medical Interview: Clinical Care, Education, and Research.New York: Springer-Verlag. Maynard, Douglas. 1991. “On the Interactional and Institutional Bases of Asymmetry in Clinical Discourse,” American Journal of Sociology 92(2): 448–95. 2003. Bad News, Good News: Conversational Order in Everyday Talk and Clinical Settings. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mischler, Elliot G. 1984. The Discourse of Medicine: Dialectics of Medical Interviews. Norwood NJ: Ablex. Ong L. M. L., J. C. J. M. deHaes, A. M. Hoos, and F. B. Lammes. 1995. “Doctor–Patient Communication: a Review of the Literature,” Social Science & Medicine 40(7): 903– 18. 462 c ynthia hagstrom Parsons, Talcott. 1951. “Social Structure and Dynamic Process: the Case of Modern Medical Practice.” In Parsons, The Social System.New York: Free Press. Pp. 438–79. Roberts, Felicia. 1999. Talking about Treatment: Recommendations for Breast Cancer Adjuvant Therapy.New York: Oxford University Press. Roter, Debra and Richard Frankel. 1992. “Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches to the Evaluation of the Medical Dialogue,” Social Science & Medicine 34(10): 1097–103. Roter, Debra L. and Judith A. Hall. 1992. Doctors Talking with Patients, Patients Talking with Doctors.Westport CT: Auburn. Shorter, Edward. 1985. Bedside Manner: the Troubled History of Doctors and Patients.New York: Viking. Shuy, Roger. 1998. Bureaucratic Language in Government and Business.Washington DC: Georgetown University Press. Tannen, Deborah and Cynthia Wallat. 1993. “Interactive Frames and Knowledge Schemas in Interaction: Examples froma Medical Examination Interview.” In Framing in Discourse, ed. Deborah Tannen. New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. 57–76. Waitzkin, Howard. 1985. “Information Giving in Medical Care,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 26: 81–101. West, Candace. 1984. Routine Complications, Troubles with Talk between Doctors and Patients. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Zimmerman, Don. H. and Candace West. 1975. “Sex Roles, Interruptions and Silences in Conversation.” In Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance, eds. Barrie Thorne and Nancy Henley. Rowley, MA: pp. 105–51. 25 The language of cyberspace DENISE E. MURRAY Editors' introduction Like a few chapters in this volume, this one could not have appeared in the earlier edition of Language in the USA. When Denise E. Murray started her research into the language of cyberspace in 1984, the World Wide Web did not exist. Now many people, especially younger ones, can hardly imagine life without “the web.” In just a couple of decades, computer-mediated communication (CMC) has developed characteristic uses and characteristic linguistic features, as well as a “netiquette” of e-interaction. So prevalent and so important has computer-mediated language become – and of such excitement to so many people (though not to everyone) – that a book treating language in the USA but lacking a chapter on this topic would disappoint many student readers and their teachers. The basic question this chapter asks is what effects the new form of communication has had on language and language use, and Murray tackles the question from three perspectives: Which new communicative situations does CMC enable and foster? Which metaphors do we use in our discussions about CMC and its venues – and what effect do those metaphors have on our perceptions and judgments about CMC? What is the place – now and in the future – of English in cyberspace? While the discussion of how CMC has affected English and other languages will interest many of you because of your familiarity or fascination with CMC, the processes influencing the formation of new words and practices in CMC are subject to the same general principles that influence language use and language change in other domains and that are discussed in the other chapters of this volume. Still, there is much that is unique to the virtual world and much that makes its language use distinctive. Among the interesting matters addressed here are the ways in which CMC is more writing- like than speech and more speech-like than writing. Another fascinating part of the discus- sion concerns how the metaphors we use as part of our computer-mediated communication influence our perceptions – and affect our judgments and assessments. Our metaphors have anthropomorphized computers, making them appear more human-like and less machine-like. The chapter also raises important questions about the distribution of this extraordinary resource across users – and its accessibility to current non-users. In 1984, when I first began research into the language of cyberspace, the World Wide Web did not exist, the Internet was not a household world, and whenever I said I was studying e-mail I needed to explain in great detail just what it was. Now the World Wide Web, e-mail, and surfing the net are commonplace terms in the USA. What effect has this new form of communication had on language 463 464 denise e. murray and language use? We examine this effect from three perspectives: computer- mediated communication as a new site for using language, the use of metaphor to describe the new technology, and the place of English in cyberspace. This chapter focuses primarily on the first perspective and discusses the other two; still, other aspects of computer technology are also of interest to linguists and others – for example, the analysis of language for the purposes of artificial intelligence (AI) and language translation programs, but we will not examine them in this chapter. Computer-mediated communication (CMC) includes many uses of computer technology for communication. Some researchers (e.g., Herring 1996a, Hiltz and Wellman 1997, Jones 1998) include e-mail, bulletin boards, computer confer- ences, Internet Relay Chat, listservs, chat rooms, and World Wide Web home- pages as forms of CMC. Others (e.g., Warschauer 1999) restrict CMC to those forms through which people send messages to individuals or groups; they place hypermedia and its most familiar implementation, the World Wide Web, into a different category. In this chapter, I expand the broader and more common def- inition – “. . . CMC is communication that takes place between human beings via the instrumentality of computers” (Herring 1996a: 1) – to include only those uses of the computer that are transparent but modify communication to include only text-based modes. I do this to reflect current CMC. Once we begin using voice-activated CMC, we’ll need to research language use and refine our termi- nology. This definition includes the World Wide Web, but excludes text (such as this book) that is produced on a computer, but delivered via print. CMC can be either synchronous, that is, occurring in real time, or asynchronous, where a reader reads the message at a later time. Chat rooms are an archetypal example of synchronous CMC and e-mail of asynchronous CMC. Even the so-called syn- chronous modes can be considered asynchronous because of the time delay in typing a message and its being sent electronically, even when no breakdowns in communications networks occur (Murray 1991). In a chat room, for example, the sender types the message, which appears on his/her screen as it’s being typed, but does not appear on recipients’ screens until the sender hits the enter key. In the meantime, one or more of the recipients may have sent their own message, causing an overlap. Participation in a chat room conversation has more immedi- acy and is more dynamic than e-mail interactions, but it is neither as extensive nor as interactive as telephone or face-to-face communication. Although CMC use has only recently become ubiquitous, appearing in cartoon strips, general newspaper articles, talk-back shows, and in legal cases, its use dates back to the 1970s. That use was largely in businesses and other proprietary organi- zations for internal communications or among researchers whose work was sup- ported by federal grants. This communication system has grown to where an esti- mated 350 million (Ipsos-Reid 2001) to 429 million people (Nielsen//Netratings 2001) access the Internet in some way using computer chip technology, lead- ing many writers to comment on the potential for interconnectedness. But is this potential realized? “In fact, the world could be said to be growing less and less con- nected, if only because the gap between the few of us who babble about the wiring The language of cyberspace 465 of the planet and the billions who do not grows ever more alarming” (Iyer 1997: 28). Even if people are on-line, we have limited accurate measurement of their on-line use – for communication, for surfing the Web for information. Collecting data on usage is fraught with methodological peril. Some data available on-line reports regular use, other reports mere connectedness, some reports per house- hold, others per user, making comparisons and accurate statements extremely difficult. In countries like the USA with technological infrastructure, CMC is still not universal, its distribution and use mirroring wider socio-economic patterns, whether within or across countries. Access to CMC varies widely, with limited access in poor urban and rural areas, among minority-group families, among those older than eighteen, and among the less well educated. The 2000 Census reports that 63 percent of homes with residents aged 18–49 use the Internet, compared with 37 percent of households aged 50 and over (Digital Divide Network 2001). Yet there are anecdotal and small study reports that indicate that the number of older users is increasing. On a trip in 2001 to Australia’s outback, I was stranded in a small town because of flooded roads. The town had an Internet Centre, one of a dozen such funded by the Australian government to bring greater access to new communications technology to people in remote areas. The manager of the project said her greatest users were older folk who wanted to keep in contact with family members spread all over the country. They were using this relatively cheap medium instead of the more conventional telephone or letter writing. Such stories are often reported, but the only firm statistical data we can rely on are from Census, large-scale government funded research, and market research companies. And these all indicate that more young people are on-line than older people. In 1995, surveys of Internet users found that 65 percent were affluent and 67 percent were male (Castells 1996). The most comprehensive series of studies, undertaken by the US Department of Commerce has shown changes over time. The most recent study, reporting data for Fall 2000 found that 41.5 percent of all US homes had Internet access. An earlier gender divide seems to have disap- peared, with men (44.6 percent) and women (44.2 percent) equally likely to be on-line, although Usenet users are still predominantly male. So the gender gap may not be one of how many people are on-line, but in terms of what types of CMC males and females engage in. Divides other than gender remain: the affluent were still most likely to be on-line (86.3 percent); Blacks and Hispanics are mostly not on-line; nor are people with disabilities, those living in inner cities, single-parent families, or those fifty years of age and older. These data also show that the major use of the Internet in the USA is for e-mail. By 2000, 98 percent of schools in the USA had Internet access, but only 77 percent of classrooms are wired. This percentage is lower in schools with high poverty rates or with a large number of minority students and higher in affluent, white schools. Just because a school is on-line or a classroom wired does not ensure student access. The ratio of students to computer has decreased steadily over the last few years down to seven students per computer in 2000 (the Department’s target is one for every five students). But again, this ratio is vastly different for poor and minority schools. Even in schools 466 denise e. murray wired to the Internet, only about 4 percent have a computer for every five students (US Department of Education 1996). When we move outside the USA, we find that while the number of Internet sites has increased and e-mail use is increas- ing, access is limited, often for lack of infrastructure, or because of unreliable power or a limited number of telephone lines. In 1997, the USA accounted for 60.5 percent of the world’s Internet host computers (Network Wizard 1997). In 2001, the USA has more computers than the rest of the world combined (Digital Divide Network 2001). According to the Nielsen//Netrating, in 2001, 41 percent of these 429 million global users are from the USA and Canada; and 429 million means less than 6 percent of the world’s population has access to the Internet. While 6 percent is a threefold increase from 1999 estimates, it still represents a miniscule section of the world’s population. So while this chapter examines the effects of new technology on language and its use, it is important to remember whose language and whose use we are referring to. The second perspective concerns the language we use to talk about cyberspace. As with any new field or technology, the formation of new words obeys general linguistic principles. Words already in use have been redefined for the new tech- nology (e.g., virtual, lurking, flaming). Some of this narrowing of meaning has then been broadened as the words have re-entered other semantic fields with the additional cyber meaning. Virtual is an excellent example. In 1969 a Random House dictionary defines it as “being such in force or effect, though not actually or expressly such” and to illustrate cites “reduced to virtual poverty.” The word became used in the technical term virtual memory to refer to the ability of the com- puter to use hard-disk space to simulate high-speed storage. From this, it replaced the word simulated in many computer applications. Thus, IBM developed a main- frame operating system called VM for ‘virtual machine.’ Other extensions include virtual reality, virtual community. From this we now find its use in non-computer language to mean ‘simulated’ or ‘the opposite of real.’ So we hear someone talk about a virtual policy, referring to an unexpressed policy, one that has never been articulated but everyone knows. Words have also been created for cyberspace through blending (netiquette from net and etiquette, emoticons from emotion and icons), through compounding (database, wordprocessor), through backfor- mation (net from network) and other well-established word-formation processes. Cyberspace itself is an interesting example of several of these processes. The term cybernetics was coined in the 1940s by Norbert Weiner to encompass the field of control and communication theory, both human and machine. Weiner’s work was primarily with trying to understand life mechanisms and actions and build machines that could imitate such human actions. The term was created from the Greek word for ‘governor.’ Through the process of back formation, cyber became used adjectivally (e.g., cyber chat, cyber punks, cyber marriage). Having been around the longest, cyber + space has become compounded. I have also noticed others, mostly proprietary names that have become compounded (e.g., Cybersit- ter,asoftware product for filtering out adult material from the Internet to protect children; CyberAtlas, which provides Internet statistics and market research for The language of cyberspace 467 the Web). These uses of cyber are designed to invoke ideas of computer technol- ogy + another concept, especially when a short adjectival form is required. We will not pursue this linguistic perspective further because in this respect CMC does not demonstrate any new linguistic principles. Instead, we explore the use of metaphor to describe cyberspace because these metaphors demonstrate how we make computers seem more human – we anthropomorphize the computer – as though the potential for artificial intelligence were already realized, and we thus reveal society’s attitudes to the technology. The third perspective, the role of English as the language of cyberspace – whether on the Internet or in publications in the various disciplines that support the technology – raises questions ofgreat interest to linguists. If English dominates cyberspace, which variety is privileged? What will happen to other Englishes and other languages? How does the use of privileged varieties of English affect access to CMC? Computer-mediated communication Like the introduction of the telephone, the introduction of computer technology has created a new site for discourse, and just as telephone conversation came to differ from face-to-face conversation, researchers are now asking in what ways the language of CMC is similar to or different from the language of face-to-face conversations, telephone conversations, and written texts. For which functions is computer-mediated communication used? The language of CMC Users of CMC immediately note its similarity to spoken language, even though it appears as written text on a screen. CMC demonstrates that text is no longer located only on a page and that the space for writing is not permanent. Some have claimed that CMC has diminished the importance of the written word, which has dominated communication for the past three hundred years and empowered those who are literate while disempowering those who are not. Thus, as one commentator notes, “The historical divide between speech and writing has been overcome with the interactional and reflective aspects of language merged in a single medium” (Warschauer 1999: 7). Others, however, see it differently, and the book title Page to Screen (Snyder 1998) suggests that CMC is merely written text appearing on a computer screen. How oral or written is CMC text? CMC as genre or register A number of models for examining language variation across media have been used to categorize the characteristics of spoken language compared with written language. One model identifies six dimensions in terms of their communication [...]... aborigines are going on-line in their mother tongue There is certainly a growing number of examples of uses of languages other than English Many indigenous groups use the Internet to promote their development and rights, but when not in English these are often in the local language of wider communication, not the indigenous language For example, using Spanish as the medium of communication, the Ashaninka... English dominates communication using and about the technology both because the Internet and much of the technology originated in the USA and because English is the language of international communication Much of the early work that led to the digital computer originated with English speakers – the Analytical Engine originated with Charles Babbage of England and the Universal Machine with Alan Turing, also... dislike them – partly because of the way they speak In this chapter, Dennis Preston recounts his investigation of language attitudes among college students in the Midwest and William Labov’s earlier investigation in New York City Respondents college students in Michigan identified fourteen dialect areas of the USA, the most important being the South, the North, the Northeast, and the Southwest In characterizing... branching at Interactive Relay Chat and embarked on an ongoing voyage leading to joining an IRC and participating in the conversation Others might have wanted to explore the notion of turn-taking in face-to-face conversation and chosen to link to scholarly articles on the subject But those possibilities exist only if links are provided In exercising my authority as author of the chapter (notice where the. .. implementation of the original idea and subsequent advances in the technology occurred mostly in the USA The Internet, for example, was an outgrowth of Arpanet, the network developed by the US Department of Defense to connect the department with several universities so that researchers could access each other’s work and share information via electronic messaging Because the technology was largely developed in English,... found incidents of flaming It seems that if politeness norms already exist in a particular community, as in one corporation studied, they become reflected in CMC (Murray 1991) “All interaction, including CMC, is simultaneously situated in multiple external contexts Rather than disappearing when one logs on, the preexisting speech communities in which interactants operate provide social understandings... and desktop metaphors raise the question of adaptation – either we have to adapt ourselves to the design of the computer or we have to adapt the computer to our own strategies Our own adapting lies within our control, but adapting the computer is the province of the computer industry, unless educators and others make their needs known Another group of metaphors involves the use of terms that usually... and Georgia) are the only other areas rated in the 4.00–4.99 range In short, the importance of southern speech would appear to lie in its distinctiveness along one particular dimension – it is incorrect English If that were not thought to be so, why would the Michigan journalist who wrote the lines at the beginning of this chapter have felt compelled to say that Charles Kuralt’s “crisp intelligence” was... North and South independently show that there is no significant break between any two adjacent mean scores for ratings of the attributes for the North On the other hand, there is such a significant difference for the South between the group 2 (and –1) attributes and the group 1 attributes, as shown by the “*” in table 26-2 In other words, there is a continuum of relatively positive scores for the North and... Meta-Analysis,” Human-Computer Interaction 7: 257–80 Murray, Denise E 1989 “When the Medium Determines Turns: Turn-taking in Computer Conversation.” In Working with Language, ed Hywel Coleman The Hague: Mouton Pp 210 22 1991 Conversation for Action: the Computer Terminal as Medium of Communication Amsterdam: Benjamins 1993 Knowledge Machines: Language and Information in a Technological Society London: . present themselves in the different parts of the med- ical encounter. In extract 5 we see a fragment of the history-taking in a medical interview. In lines 19–22 the patient is suggesting a possible. practices in CMC are subject to the same general principles that in uence language use and language change in other domains and that are discussed in the other chapters of this volume. Still, there. single-parent families, or those fifty years of age and older. These data also show that the major use of the Internet in the USA is for e-mail. By 2000, 98 percent of schools in the USA had Internet