9. Communicating in CMC: making order out of miscommunication

Everyday, thousands of subjects engage in computer mediated communication (CMC) using a novel linguistic genre, which combines characteristics of both written and oral language. This “virtual” communication may be described as a particular form of miscommunication: a necessarily “pared-down” form of conversation, which lacks the many features and some rules on which traditional forms of interactions depend. According to the “cues-filtered-out” approach, CMC lacks the relational features (social cues), which enable interactors to identify correctly the kind of interpersonal situations they find themselves in. The conclusions of this approach are that CMC occurs in a social vacuum where the personal identities of subjects tend to fade and vanish. This chapter tries to counter this vision by integrating in its theoretical framework five different approaches: the Miscommunication as a Chance Theory (MaCHT), the Positioning Theory (PT), the Situated Action Theory (SAT), the Social Identity Model of Deindividuation Effect (SIDE) and the Social Information Processing (SIP) perspective. In particular, starting from the analysis of the miscommunication processes typical of CMC, the chapter outlines how CMC users are able to make order and create relationships out of the miscommunication processes typical of this medium. Moreover, it presents the emerging forms of CMC instant messaging, shared hypermedia, weblogs and graphical chats – and their possible social and communicative effects.

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