Pragmatics of Asynchronous Computer‐Mediated Communication

Abstract

Computer‐mediated communication (CMC) refers to communication that occurs when individuals interact with one another by sending messages via networked computers. Asynchronous CMC (ACMC) occurs when messages are exchanged while the users are not online; messages are stored until the user appears online. There are various ACMC modes, including text‐based one‐to‐one (e.g., e‐mail), multiple participants (e.g., Listserv, discussion forums, Twitter, and Wikipedia), and feedback‐oriented (e.g., blogs and Web pages). Furthermore, some audio‐ or audiovisual‐based ACMC media (e.g., Wimba and voicemail) are also available, and many sites enabling multimodal communication forms that combine various types of CMC (e.g., social networking sites [SNSs]) have become popular. During the early development of ACMC, most studies in pragmatics focused on the specific characteristics of asynchronous media rather than traditional communication modes (e.g., face‐to‐face) and synchronous CMC. However, recent studies in ACMC are paying attention to the interactional practices in various types of ACMC communities, and also attempting to identify the contextually specific pragmatic features (e.g., speech acts and politeness) in each online community by using media affordances and constraints. The findings suggest that expected appropriate linguistic behaviors and innovative strategies for the acts are contextually dependent and that they contribute to widening the field of pragmatics, which has been predominantly developed with traditional communication modes. Furthermore, growing numbers of studies are investigating how bilinguals/multilinguals interact in digital spaces where participants with varied linguistic and cultural backgrounds are required to negotiate the language codes and their identities.