CMC versus Traditional Spoken Communication: Exploring the varying use of language in communicating individual social identity in face-to-face interaction and email.
Abstract: As often noted, the constantly growing use of CMC (computer-mediated communication) has naturally created a (nascent, constantly and rapidly evolving) unique standard language or dialect—it is not just a cultural context, but a culture of its own, which itself includes standards of etiquette for different contexts. Just as cultural differences in regional dialects, or between people of different genders, or ethnic or socioeconomic backgrounds have been shown to lead to miscommunications if they are not translated properly, the differences between individuals’ use of language online and in person can lead to equally drastic miscommunication. The same factors, such as personal warmth, politeness, and proficiency—or the ability to appropriately assess register and interlocutors, which may be misinterpreted and lead to inaccurate negative (or positive) perceptions are communicated through interactional style via telecommunication, as in any spoken dialect.
Due to the relatively recent emergence of the technology, and the unprecedented rapidity of its prevalence, it is impossible to have established the cultural norms of other spoken and written dialects. While these are also constantly undergoing changes, these changes are gradual in comparison to the changes of a language born out of almost daily technological revolution! There has been countless speculation and study about the efficiency of CMC in the workplace and the possible democratization or “leveled playing-field” which results from its faceless interface, eliminating discrimination based on race, sex, age, etc. There have also been studies to the contrary, showing that tendencies among different genders, and certainly education levels, exist online much as they do face-to-face. One of the most troubling aspects of cyber-communication is that of “cyber-bullying,” and the fact that, even when not concealing their identity, teenagers (and adults… or their mothers, as in the tragic case of (cit. needed)) behave extremely cruelly online, expressing themselves through words and images far more rarely used in “real life” interaction—all id all over a computer screen.
These phenomena have been examined by psychologists and sociologists, but it is hard to find a sociolinguistic study of the way people establish their social identity through CMC—specifically, through e-mail, which is not as new, or limited (and necessarily terse) as “texting” or “chat,” or as contrived and formal (and necessarily hierarchical) as discussion forums. If there are consistent patterns in the way people communicate via one medium that correlate with the stylistic, linguistic choices they make in the other—if this sort of code-switching can be studied, understood, and thus decoded, then perhaps people can communicate more naturally, more honestly, and more clearly in this new modality, that must be really be considered the “fastest-growing language in history.”
10 random subjects were asked the same six basic questions on two different occasions—once in person, and once via email—in an informal setting. While the subjects were informed that their answers were being used as part of a survey, they were not aware of the topic of the survey—which perhaps would have affected the responses—but rather informed simply that it was a sociological study, and four of the six questions pertain to their opinions of life in Los Angeles. The subjects were initially interviewed in a public setting—a café or bar, after initiating conversation with the interviewer. The interviews were conducted in a conversational tone, with the interviewer including some follow-up questions or supportive minimal responses when appropriate. The conversations were recorded and the responses transcribed. Each subject was then asked for their e-mail address and informed they may be contacted for some follow-up questions within a week. Each was then sent an email with the same six questions and three additional questions, including their age. The email was written simply and rather informally, in order to keep a similar tone by the interviewer, and avoid a shift into asymmetrical language. The follow-up emails were sent 5-7 days after the initial interview in order to avoid responses potentially affected by the perceived need to answer the questions in exactly the same way; however, in some subjects this was a noticeable effect.
Each individual subject’s spoken and email interview were then analyzed for differences in the amount of information given and candor, the linguistic style—politeness, formality, and dialectical choices, and the linguistic security or insecurity reflected by the responses, in order to identify a consistent difference between CMC and unmediated conversational styles. While a few variant trends were generally consistent among all respondents, certain qualities varied greatly, and then the interviews, both email and recorded, were compared between the respondents, considering gender and age, and the documented tendencies among these factors. A noteworthy possible finding of this study relates to the prominence of these variant tendencies within CMC and unmediated communication, respectively. Limitations of this study include small sample size, time and resources, and the inability to account for demographic factors such as education level and socioeconomic status, which may account for individual proficiency or access to computers, and issue of timeliness for each respondent (two of the ten subjects did not respond to the follow-up email). These are considerations for future study.
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