Contributions may analyze any genre of verbal exchange that takes place via computer networks, including private e-mail, listserv discussion groups, bulletin board systems, computer conferencing systems, chat, MUDs and MOOs, and multi-media systems. Contributions should report empirical, data-driven research carried out using conversation analysis or other discourse analysis methods. Possible areas of focus include topic development, floor management, turn taking, speech acts and act sequences, use of discourse markers, politeness strategies, framing, etc. In addition, all contributions should address in some way the question: to what extent are the observed properties of the discourse conditioned by the computer medium, and to what extent do they reflect social or other factors that may also be present in face-to-face communication?

Submission information:

Manuscripts should be 15-25 single-spaced pages in length, including references and appendices, and should follow the formatting style of Oxford University Press's Sociolinguistics series (for example, Deborah Tannen's Framing in Discourse , published in 1993). Submissions should be in the form of a hard copy plus a 3 1/2" Macintosh-readable diskette containing the file saved in its original format, as well as in MS Word for Macintosh (version 4 or 5). The hard copy and the diskette should be mailed to the volume editor, Susan Herring, at the following address:

Susan Herring
Program in Linguistics
University of Texas
Arlington, TX 76019 USA

Deadlines:

Oxford University Press has expressed interest in the project, and is requesting a preliminary version of the book manuscript for purposes of evaluation. In the interest of assembling a preliminary manuscript so as to secure a publisher as early as possible, authors are requested to submit their manuscripts to the volume editor by September 15, 1996.

Interested potential authors who are undertaking relevant research, but who do not yet have a written mansucript, have the option of first submitting a 500-word abstract describing the problem, the data, the methods of analysis used, and the findings of their proposed article. On the basis of an evaluation of the abstracts, authors may be invited to submit a complete manuscript for inclusion in the volume. In such cases, the successful abstracts will be included in the preliminary manuscript that is sent to the publishers, and those authors will have until November 1, 1996 to submit a complete version of their chapter to the volume editor. Abstracts should be e-mailed to the editor as soon as possible, but in any event no later than September 15.

Early submissions of both manuscripts and abstracts are welcomed.

About the editor:

Susan Herring is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at the Unviersity of Texas at Arlington who has published numerous articles on computer-mediated communication since she first began presenting her research in this area in 1992. She is also the editor of an interdisciplinary collection entitled Computer-Mediated Communication: Linguistic, Social and Cross-Cultural Perspectives  (John Benjamins, 1996) and guest editor of a forthcoming special issue of the Electronic Journal of Communication  on the topic of "Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis."

For further information:

Inquiries regarding this project may be e-mailed to the editor at susan@utafll.uta.edu.

Kairos: A Journal for Teachers of Writing in Webbed Environments.
Vol. 1 No. 3 Autumn 1996