Disagreement in CMC

2.3.3 Disagreement in CMC

Disagreement in CMC seems to be a trend which cannot be ignored. Since the 1990s, computer and the Internet have become thriving in the information explosion era. Since then, CMC has played a significant role in human interaction. This unnegligible force has attracted linguists’ attention and a large body of research has been devoted to the linguistic phenomena in this unique medium. From traditional one-way interaction like blog and online forum to the two-way interaction of instant message like ICQ¹ and MSN Messenger, the interaction mode on CMC never ceases evolving to bring convenience for human life. In recent years, with the development of mobile devices (smart phones, tablets, wearable devices like Google Glasses or smartwatch), social network sites (SNSs) have increasingly become indispensable to people’s social life. Researchers thus investigate not only language phenomenon but social interaction in CMC.

One of the earlier studies about disagreement on CMC is Baym’s (1996) study, which discussed agreements and disagreements in one CMC online newsgroup called Usenet. Though Baym believed CMC is a hybrid form of speaking and written language, the written part is more dominant than speaking. Without the help of interactive features like gesture, intonation, or facial expression, writers need to convey the message explicitly, foresee the possible situation, and pretend to talk to diverse audience (Ong, 1982; Chafe, 1982). Comparing the differences between oral conversation and Usenet, the language production of the same form may lead to different functions. For instance, hesitation in oral conversation often prefaces a disagreement. In CMC, however, response to a post may delay for hours, even a few days, so that hesitation never functions as a preface of disagreements. Hence, it is

1 ICQ is an online media company providing communication tools, content and services to an online community of millions of users worldwide. (http://www.icq.com/info/about.html)

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shown that the context of the medium may change the structure of disagreement. In Internet-mediated communication, anonymity is one of the main dissimilarities to oral conversation, allowing the users to neglect maintaining or saving the face of others, and thus making CMC a more hostile and competitive environment. Overall, users on Usenet discourage the behavior of dispute and flaming arguments, and users should follow the same social norm as that in oral conversation. In sum, Baym emphasizes the great influence of medium on language use. As a hybrid of mass and interpersonal communication, Usenet requires the users to actively “invoke the previous context on which their contributions are built” (Baym, 1996:343). In order to realize how language functions on CMC, it is necessary to systematically compare different types of CMC, including synchronous and asynchronous communications, for us to understand similarities and dissimilarities between CMC and oral interaction.

Bolander (2012) explored the responsiveness of dis(agreement) in personal/diary blog and shows how the social and medium factors affect the language use in CMC.

Personal blog is chosen as the genre of his study since personal/diary blog is so prominent in blogging as a sub-type of blogs that it can represent the prevalent language use on the Internet. Blogs possess several features as a CMC medium (similar to the present study focus: FB). The first feature is asynchronicity; that is, writers and readers do not have to be online simultaneously. The communication on the blog is a unidirectional one-way message transmission. Second, the messages are basically permanent and retrievable. All the messages left on blogs are archived and can be retrieved any time, as long as they are not deleted. The third feature is related to the previous one. All the posts on blogs are mainly composed in written form.

Either bloggers’ posts or readers’ comments are presented as texts. Lastly, the main page of the blog will show the latest posts. The posts appear in a reverse chronological way so that readers can read the newest information directly without

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rolling the webpage. The comment section provides a platform for readers to get involved and interact with bloggers. This unique platform thus produces multifaceted agreements and disagreements, as Bolander (2012:1609) described:

the comments section can entail one-to-one (reader to blogger, or blogger to reader), or one-to-many (reader to blogger and readers, reader to readers, or blogger to readers) participation. Applied to disagreements and agreements, this means that it is potentially possible for disagreements and agreements to be authored by the blogger or a reader and for them to be directed at the blogger, a reader, or even a group of bloggers and readers.

The main focus of the social factor which is discussed in this study is

“participation framework.” The participation framework on blog can be divided into two smaller factors: “one-to-many participation structure and imbalanced participation structure” (Herring, 2007). The two special features are manifest through the peculiar comment section in blogs. One-to-many participation structures include various interaction forms as shown in the quotation from Bolander (2012:1609). The imbalanced participation structure is related to the rights and obligation of bloggers and readers.

(Bolander, 2012:1611)

As clearly shown in the above table, bloggers have more power and obligation

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while interacting with readers as well as maintaining the blog. On the contrary, readers have no obligation and can choose to participate in the posts of blog either actively or passively. The interaction on blog is on the base of interactive comments and posts. “Without a post a comment cannot exist; a comment is, in other words, always responsive to another entry” (Bolander, 2012:1611). The interaction in blog is highly related to the comment section which shows the importance of responsiveness.

The responsiveness on the blog can be signaled through naming, pronoun, and quoting. Quoting is a system device available to all users so that they tend to signal responsiveness through quoting instead of the other two ways. Since the special message format of comment section is so complex, interactants have to signal responsiveness. The asynchronicity of Internet communication not only breaks the limit of time and space, but it also results in the consequence that the messages left require to be explicitly directed to a specific turn. The responsiveness in blog is important, especially while making agreements or disagreements. The results show that a large proportion of agreements and disagreements are found in the responses to the bloggers’ post from the readers. Also, readers’ responses to other readers are more explicit than to the bloggers. This study shows how the medium and social factor influences the construction of language use in CMC, and it provides a direction for further research on the relation between language use and different media.

Baym’s (1996) study indicates the incomparable feature of hybrid form of mass and interpersonal interaction in CMC such as online discussion forum. The Internet has revolutionized the behavior of human interaction. Without the help of nonverbal features, online communication breaks the limit of oral conversation and creates a new interaction mode which is featured with anonymity and asynchronicity. The secret identity on the Internet allows speakers to freely provoke arguments with no supervision of social norms. Spatiotemporal restraint is no longer a barrier so that

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speakers have sufficient time to organize their thought and clearly convey the message. Bolander (2012) presents the interaction on blog, which highly resembles the target medium of the present study, FB, in term of either interactive patterns or medium format. With highly resemblance in many ways, blog and FB are used for different purposes and each of the media has its attraction to the different target users though. More features on FB and the interrelation with language use and medium factors will be introduced.