(In)appropriate online behavior is an attempt within the general framework of pragmatics to investigate how people behave on online message boards. The book is split into nine chapters. After a brief introduction to the general structure of the book in chapter 1, chapters 2 and 3 offer a critical review of relevant approaches to Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) analysis. Chapter 2 introduces how the idea of hypertext laid the foundation for the development of the internet and discusses four features of hypertexts: multi-linearity, multimodality, dynamics, and interactivity. The most revealing part of chapter 2 is the discussion of two opposing views about the social potential of CMC: technological determinism and social constructionism. The former view accuses CMC of being anonymous, asocial, impersonal, and indifferent, whereas the latter view holds that interpersonal relationships can be established online, but in a way that is different from face-to-face interaction. Chapter 3 approaches online gatherings through a social perspective. The notion of communities (as opposed to groups) is discussed first, and the community of practice (CoP) in TSR (The Student Room, a type of online message board) is described in terms of four processes: forms of expression, identity, relationship, and norms. It is interesting to note that shared group identities and new internal power hierarchies are formed in some online communities such as TSR boards.
Chapter 4 focuses on earlier studies of politeness and the related concepts of face and facework. Investigations of politeness are grouped along three lines: the social-norm view, the conversational-maxim view, and the face-saving view. Politeness, in the social-norm view, is considered to be the default setting in conversational encounters in which participants fulfill a conversational contract. The conversational-maxim view of politeness is based on Grice's (Reference Grice, Cole and Morgan1975) well-known Cooperative Principle. Some politeness rules or principles are then formulated according to Grice's maxims of quality, quantity, relation, and manner. Then the face-saving view of politeness is introduced in greater detail. According to Brown & Levinson (Reference Brown and Levinson1987), politeness can be understood through the notions of positive face and negative face as well as the concept of face-threatening acts (FTAs). To be polite means mitigating FTAs so that the threat to the hearer's face is minimal. This approach is criticized as neglecting the dynamic process of interaction and as thus being in need of refinement. The chapter is rounded off with some significant notions proposed by Goffman (Reference Goffman1967) such as line (the behavioral materials in interaction) and facework (mutual care for the interlocutors' face). These are adopted throughout the following chapters.
Chapter 5 reviews later studies on politeness with a focus on Locher & Watts' (e.g. Reference Locher and Watts2005) framework of interpersonal relations, under the umbrella term relational work. Under Locher & Watts' framework, three types of behaviors are differentiated: polite, impolite, and nonpolite. Polite behaviors are split into positively marked polite, which are appropriate; and negatively marked polite (over-polite), which are inappropriate. The author develops this framework by further differentiating the impolite behaviors into negatively marked impolite and positively marked impolite. Negatively marked impolite corresponds to the impolite behavior in Locher & Watts' framework. Positively marked impolite, or ‘mock-impolite banter’, is proposed to refer to impoliteness with good intention, as in joking behaviors among intimate friends. In this new framework, impoliteness mirrors politeness in terms of appropriateness. The chapter is concluded with a discussion on the inappropriate online behavior of flaming, which roughly means provoking a heated argument among participants online.
Chapter 6 discusses the contextual and environmental variables in message boards. It first sets forth three dimensions of context including personal context, interpersonal context as well as (extra-)medial environment. Personal contextual factors cover appearance, demographics, current feelings, cultural background and knowledge gathered in past experiences. Our attention is drawn to how the users in TSR portray themselves through compensatory mechanisms to imitate real life conditions. The author suggests that users in CMC environments do not reconstruct their identities, because one's own identity is too deeply entrenched to be altered. He argues that self-portrayal moves can be seen as face constitution, which represents a user's need for association and disassociation. Instances of association on message boards include contributing messages to threads, assuming responsibility for the board, or filling in details in templates of personal information. Instances of disassociation are found in empty user profiles or trolling, which is a means of strategic deception about one's image online. It should be noted that while flaming aims at inciting all users, trolling targets the inexperienced and vulnerable readers (p. 121). Interpersonal contextual factors comprise social distance, power relations, social norms shared between interlocutors, content-related and interpersonal motives, participation structure, as well as previous exchanges. Most of these factors can be expressed in the TSR environment through specific technological means. For example, registered users have access to ‘buddy lists’, which mirror online friendships. The medial environmental factors are then discussed briefly in terms of how the offline world is incorporated into the online world through embedded objects such as photos, graphics, or videos.
Chapters 7 and 8 delve into the TSR corpus. At the outset of chapter 7, the concept of metapragmatics is introduced, referred to as speakers' quotes or comments on their own, someone else's, or the speech community's use of language. This concept is important in that metapragmatic utterances will be regarded as one of the important criteria to assess the appropriateness of online behaviors. It leads to two perspectives on the investigation of interpersonal relations on message boards: participant observer and outside observer. In other words, we might judge the appropriateness in question by users' reactions or by putting ourselves into the users' shoes. Then our attention is drawn to how interpersonal relations are established in thread beginnings in the form of headings and first entries in TSR. The thread starters are investigated in terms of how much information is disclosed in their personal profiles, and the users' standing revealed in the reputation and warning system of TSR. Two major groups of thread starters are distinguished, namely ‘do-gooders’ as opposed to ‘trouble makers’. Some intriguing connections between the face claims and the first posts of thread starters are found. For example, face claims, especially those concerning interests, are often mirrored in the choice of topic for the post. At the end of this chapter, six communicative purposes of the posts in question are discussed, including getting to know others, looking for like-minded others, asking for advice, asking for opinions, blowing off steam, and offering advice/information. These serve as yardsticks for measuring thread interaction in chapter 8.
Chapter 8 analyzes thread interaction using two lines of investigation: facework and relational work. These two lines correspond to qualitative and quantitative approaches, respectively. The six groups of posts with different communicative purposes in the TSR corpus are examined, in turn, within the analytical framework developed in chapter 5. More specifically, the number of posts is counted according to their (in)appropriate relational work, from marked polite at one end to marked mock-polite at the other end. As mentioned in chapter 7, the appropriateness of a post can be assessed through users' reactions (metapragmatic utterances). If there is a reaction, the appropriateness is labeled as explicit. If there is not, it is marked as implicit. Furthermore, the degree of interaction of threads is measured through an interaction quotient formula: IQ = 1 – U:P. This interrelates the number of users (U) with the number of posts (P). A meticulous analysis of the data suggests that there is a predominance of the users' need for association over their need for dissociation when getting together on message boards. A somewhat more striking finding is that the group of posts with the highest average interaction quotient is also the highest one in terms of appropriate behavior, whereas the group with the lowest average interaction quotient behaves most inappropriately.
Chapter 9 draws conclusions from the research, claiming that it is false to treat online communication as unsuited for interpersonal purposes or as a hotbed for uninhibited and rude behavior. Rather, interpersonal relations in online message boards should be judged very carefully as they are sensitive to context, users, and even topics.
To sum up, this book has made some groundbreaking efforts in developing a pragmatic approach to the study of CMC, which is inspiring to researchers interested in both fields. The contextual framework discussed in chapter 6, however, seems to be less clearly incorporated into the analyses in chapters 7 and 8. A further issue is that the analysis of politeness of a post sometimes draws too heavily on the subjective judgment of the analyst. Although this book has already demonstrated some solutions, how to assess politeness more objectively is still a challenge to all linguists who study behavioral appropriateness.
