It is proposed that participants attempt to 'frame' their contributions in order to signal in what way the post is meant to be read, and how others are to understand their orientation to the subject or topic under discussion, as well as to the other participants. In order to look at some features of text which may act as signals to readers, individual messages from a particular thread, as well as sections from several other messages have been selected. A number different perspectives are mentioned as relevant for an understanding of the functions realised by certain posited structural categories identified within messages: a tentative rank scale model of exchange structure, its relationship to Bauman's notion of 'performance', and Brown and Levinson's model of politeness strategies; the textual cohesion of the text across the body of the post by using the notion of 'projection' and 'lexical cohesion' as outlined by Hoey (1994); and the interpersonal metafunctional aspects of the text, that is, the mood and modality features which are apparent and which serve to mark the role and reader positions of the writer. Using these descriptive tools, it should be possible to account for the means by which a reader might interpret what is being said in what situation with what purpose to whom.
However, while Halliday (1985: 38) maintains that 'given the text, we construct the situation from it', I posit that unless we have had actual experience of a similar context, and in some cases the specific context or 'material situation' in which the text has arisen, then we will have quite a measure of difficulty reconstructing the context to any degree of delicacy. The reader will need to have had access to both the material and the cultural context of situation, as well as to the code of the language itself.
Because of the very Mode of communication involved here, a vast array of 'misinterpretations' and misunderstandings are possible, and indeed, actually seem to be projected onto the other participants, which tends to result in the use of overt signals in order to alert the audience to the writer's stance, and hence the interpersonal aspect of all contributions to the discussion. In effect, writers tend to try compensate for the lack of normal F2F cues and knowledge of their own and the audience's actual 'material situation'. In some cases, writers are known to exploit these avenues for misinterpretation, using discourse styles that at the surface level seem to flout certain unstated norms of politeness such as outlined by Grice (cf Levinson 1983: 101-112). The reason for this seems to be related to the requirement, stated earlier in this paper, and reflected in the taxonomy (The Big Six) posited by one of the participants (cf Appendix 1), that for the interaction to continue at all, responses need to be made. It is not much use for the ongoing discussion if nobody makes a response, although in other types of mailing lists, informative 'monologues' are the norm and no response is sought or expected. Unfortunately, one of the 'norms' that is frequently posited within the domain of CMC, is a disdain for what has come to be known as 'me too' messages, where another's post is quoted, sometimes at length, with the only addition a simple 'I agree'. In other words, if there is no 'hook' in one's message, or post, one is unlikely to get a response, and so one's point, and hence, one's self, one's voice is seemingly ignored. Kress (1985: 32) sums up this need for difference in positioning; this 'conflict' in order to create drama; "Texts are constructed in and by [this] difference. Where there is no difference there is silence." Indeed, reference to 'The Big Six' will show that one of the methods of obtaining a response is to be contentious; to disagree with what has been posted, or to break some norm or taboo.
It is obvious that the Mode of the interaction is significant for this context. To help define it more delicately, I make reference to Hasan (1985: 58) who describes the relationship between the channel and the medium of interaction. It has already been pointed out that with respect to email list discussion the channel is entirely located at the graphic end of the continuum. Hasan relates the channel of communication to the concept of process-sharing:
"..the physical presence of the addressee impinges on the textual processes in a way that the writer's own awareness of the needs of the addressee can hardly ever do: for one thing, in the phonic channel both the speaker and the addressee hear (and often see) the same thing at the same time. This is obviously not possible when the channel is graphic."
This means that mailing list discussion does not seem to favour conditions where active process-sharing can be undertaken, and because this is the case, participants, in the struggle to reproduce a multilogue comparable to that of real time F2F discussion engage in various means through which aspects of the spoken medium can be used, most significantly through quoting parts of another's message to which they wish to make a response. In terms of conversational exchange structure, or the turn-taking mechanism, this quoting helps to set up a 'transitional relevance' for the responses made to another's post, sometimes long after, in temporal terms, the post was originally sent.
The 'medium' refers to the degree to which the discussion is undertaken in either the written or the spoken mode. Because the matter of 'phonic' representation has been taken care of in locating the channel, medium can be used as a purely textual construct, and therefore retrieved from a consideration of the patterning of the formal features of the text itself - the use of the lexicogrammatical options in the service of creating meaning within the constraints of this 'material context'.
In a study undertaken by Yates (1996) for example, it was found that within the selected data, a comparison between CMC, 'written', and 'spoken' corpora revealed that along the dimensions type/token ratio, lexical density, and modality, CMC-mediated data was found to be comparable to that of speech, rather than writing. In the case of the use of modal auxiliaries, it was found that in CMC, the frequency was higher than in speech or writing (op cit: 44). While it would be enticing to draw conclusions regarding the reasons for these findings, it must be said that such conclusions would be based on intuitive and experiential knowledge only. That being said, however, from my experience it seems that posters find it necessary to make their strategies for being polite, and their need to express solidarity /power distance attitudes much more explicit in such a medium than they would need to do in normal conversational settings.
Furthermore, I believe that, as stated above, a prospective member of the community of any email list will not only have to have had experience of the signals for textual 'frames of coherence' that may have evolved in order to compensate for lack of process-sharing, but must have had some background knowledge of the field and tenor of the discussion, or 'list culture' before they can usefully join the discussion without drawing responses of veiled exasperation from the older participants.