‘Type you soon!’ A stylistic approach to language use in a virtual learning environment

Abstract

The starting point for this article is that although new communication technologies have become an integral part of much educational provision, the nature of virtual learning environments (VLEs) remains underresearched, particularly in terms of the language skills required of participants. Existing research paradigms from linguistics, especially those from formalist traditions, offer inadequate and simplistic accounts of new communication contexts. Drawing on the field of Mediated Discourse Theory and of Scollon’s central concept of discourse as a ‘nexus of practice’ (Scollon, 1998, 2011), the article brings together interactionist approaches with insights from stylistics in order to analyse a specific aspect of synchronous written language use within a VLE, that of ‘response cries’ (Goffman, 1981). The analysis acts as an exemplar, illustrating the complexity of new communication systems and the associated skills required by interlocutors to negotiate meaning in unfamiliar spaces. Response cries, as examples of utterances that are neither speech nor writing in any formal sense, show how ‘new representational technologies are simultaneously producing new forms of representation and mediational means’ (Scollon, 2001: 170). A number of pedagogic implications arise from this study, including the need to build a more sophisticated understanding of the nature of VLEs in order to assess participant performance accurately. For example, the study shows that in order to represent aspects of expressive language, which have traditionally been associated with speech, participants need a high level of literacy skill and metalinguistic awareness. In addition, participants who are part of international online study communities need to be able to negotiate new norms of usage as English is elaborated as a virtual lingua franca.