Conversational floors in synchronous text-based CMC discourse

A B S T R A C T This article presents a study of the discourse characteristics ofinteraction within a virtual community. The data are from the text-based chatforum of an online community of learners and teachers of English. The forumis the meeting place for community members, and is an international site oflanguage use with participants from a range of linguistic backgrounds. Withinthis context, some pertinent themes are investigated which relate to a relativelyrecent form of discourse, synchronous text-based computer-mediatedcommunication (SCMC). The discussion centres on the interplay between thetechnological attributes of the medium and the linguistic, discourse andsociocultural conditions within which the participants interact. How do theseelements combine to shape the discourse? This question is addressed withreference to the cohesive feature of conversational floor. Because there is a lackof coordination of turn transfer in SCMC interaction, conversational flooremerges as an organizing principle in preference to models of conversationbased on turn taking.

K E Y W O R D S : computer-mediated communication, conversation analysis,conversational floor, virtual community

1. Introduction

This article is an investigation into patterns of interaction in synchronous, text-based computer-mediated communication (henceforth SCMC). As with muchCMC research, the underlying aim is to contribute to an understanding of theextent to which human interaction is affected by mediation via computers.

The motivation for the article is the recognition of the tendency in multi-participant SCMC discourse for certain notable patterns of interaction – conver-sational floors – to develop. What factors account for such patterns? Reference ismade to research into both written and spoken multi-party conversation.

The study starts with a description of the source of the data, and a commenton the analysis of SCMC discourse. In the following section, SCMC is discussed in

A R T I C L E 337

Conversational floors in synchronoustext-based CMC discourse

J A M E S S I M P S O NU N I V E R S I T Y O F L E E D S

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relation to the fundamental concepts of cohesion and coherence in discourse.Then an approach to cohesion in SCMC, the conversational floor, is described; itselements are outlined, and some of its various manifestations in the discoursetext are exemplified. Finally, we turn to aspects of the discourse which influencethe development of floors: the role relations of the participants; the communica-tive action and the topic of the discourse; and certain medium-related factors.Their influence is discussed with reference to an extended stretch of SCMC texttracing the development of conversational floors.

2. Data

Analysis of any discourse, including SCMC, views the language of the discourse(the text) together with the broader context of its use. A preliminary measure isto summarize the source of the SCMC data in this article. The term SCMC encom-passes a variety of CMC system types, from Internet relay chat rooms (IRC), tolocal area networks (LANs), to multi-user domains (MUDs and MOOs). The datapresented here are from a virtual community dedicated to exploring ways oflanguage learning online.

Webheads is a community of English language learners and teachers that hasbeen meeting solely on the Internet since 1998. Participation is entirely free andvoluntary. The Webheads environment is a complex intertwining of CMC modes.Members of the group maintain personal web pages on the Webheads site, whilemuch interaction takes place on the email list. The more technologically mindedmembers of Webheads frequently experiment with other CMC technology, such asvoice conferencing and experimentation with web cams. Webheads has been thesubject of a number of short reports, papers and presentations (Stevens, 1999,2000a, 2000b, 2001; Coghlan and Stevens, 2000; Stevens and Altun, 2001).The present article is associated with a doctoral thesis on interaction in theWebheads community (Simpson, 2004). Interviews with Webheads members also figure in a further doctoral dissertation (Steele, 2002). It is not the intentionhere to problematize the nature of ‘community’ or to go into detail about whattype of community Webheads is. In this study the term is being used broadly assynonymous with ‘group’.

The concern here is with the Webheads synchronous text-based CMC chats.These are held weekly at the MOO Tapped In and until mid-2001 were hosted atthe graphical chat room The Palace. Webheads members – tutors and students –gather for informal text-based chat sessions on a wide range of topics. These sessions are intended primarily for students’ language practice and to explore theuse of SCMC technology in language learning. There is a social function, how-ever, and much communication is phatic communion (Malinowski, [1923]1999: 302): ‘language used in free, aimless, social intercourse’. The entire set ofdata which forms the basis of this article comprises 150 logs of chat sessions inThe Palace and Tapped In and from logs of participation using the chat softwareICQ [‘I seek you’]. These logs were originally saved and archived by members of

338 Discourse Studies 7(3)



the Webheads group. Permission was gained to use the archives for research purposes. These data sources are briefly sketched below.

Tapped In describes itself as: ‘the online workplace of an international com-munity of education professionals’. It is an online environment where: ‘Teachersand librarians, professional development staff, teacher education faculty and students, and researchers engage in professional development programs andinformal collaborative activities with colleagues’ (from the Tapped In website).

At Tapped In the text interface is similar to that of a standard text-based synchronous chat program, and the text of the discourse scrolls up the screen (inplain text format) as it might in IRC. Navigation around the Tapped In environmentis by simple commands. For example, to join a particular participant somewherein Tapped In, the command ‘/join [name]’ is typed. There is also a javascript-enabled graphical interface, TAPestry, which allows for the representation ofthe space of Tapped In as a ‘map of the campus’, around which it is possible tonavigate through mouse clicks.

Figure 1 is a screen shot of the Tapped In interface. Turns are typed in thewhite box at the bottom of the frame; when they are sent they appear in the greybox above, which is seen by all participants. Interaction is one way (Cherny,1999: 154; Herring, 1999) in that turns cannot be seen by other participants asthey are being typed.

The Palace is a recreational chat room, that describes itself as a ‘graphicalavatar chat’ (from its homepage). The Palace (Figure 2) makes yet stronger use ofthe graphical element by allowing for the creation of movable avatars, or pictorialrepresentations of participants.

In the main window we see the avatars with their nickname labels. Turns inThe Palace are typed in the white box towards the bottom of the screen, and

Simpson: Conversational floors in SCMC discourse 339

F I G U R E 1. The Tapped In interface



appear in speech bubbles above the appropriate avatar. A log of the text can beviewed in the box on the right of the frame.

Some mention must be made of a third SCMC tool used by the Webheadsgroup: ICQ. This chat program is a selective SCMC system: to interact, partici-pants must be invited to join one another’s list. Thus, it is more private than anopen IRC system. It is similar to IRC insofar as it is text-only and has no explicitgraphical interface. It was created as a ‘technology which would enable theInternet users to locate each other online on the Internet, and to create peer-to-peer communication channels, in a straightforward, easy, and simple manner’(from its homepage). The ICQ text appears in a small window on the screen; aswith most SCMC, participants often attend to other tasks in parallel to ‘chatting’on ICQ. A feature of ICQ which is lacking in Tapped In and The Palace is that turnsare viewable by other participants as they are typed. One implication of this feature is explored in section 3 below.

There is little reference made to the graphical interface at Tapped In or at ThePalace by Webheads participants. However, the multimodal merging of the textualwith the graphical with regard to the possibilities for opening other pages andsites creates the potential for multi-tasking, for attending to more than one on-screen task at a time. This potential is exploited, and its effects can be witnessedin the text of the discourse, as can be seen in example 1:

Example 1 (The Palace)

Vance: hi. I’ve got Gosia on icqBrazil: Who is Gosia ??Vance: Gosia is another student. Are you on icq now?Brazil: Is the class finishing ??


F I G U R E 2. The Palace interface



Brazil: yes I amYing-Lan: @64,64 !It’s Ying-LanBrazil: Hi Ying.Brazil: We are in ICQ . . Wanna Join us ??

There are sometimes attempts by Webheads participants (either tutors or students) to specify what is to be discussed, though it is in the nature of SCMCdiscourse that participants will stray from any prescribed topic. There is a strongludic vein running through the synchronous text-based chat sessions; word playand the role-playing possibilities of text-based SCMC are evident here as they arein IRC (see Danet, 1995, 2001; Danet et al., 1997).

It should be borne in mind that when SCMC interaction originally takes place,participants can see the text unfolding on their screens. They are also able toscroll back up the text box on the screen to re-read previous parts of the interac-tion. Furthermore, a particular feature of one Webheads meeting place, Tapped In,is that transcripts of members’ interaction for the duration they are logged on tothe system are emailed to them after they log off. These properties raise interest-ing questions about the relationship of text to discourse. There is commonly aclear distinction made between text and discourse, summarized by Seidlhofer andWiddowson (1999: 206), where ‘text is the linguistic product of a discourseprocess’. In the case of spoken discourse analysis, the interaction is usuallyrecorded and transcribed prior to analysis, effectively separating the text from thecontext. Regarding SCMC, participants have immediate access to the linguisticproduct of the discourse process. They can read the text (the product) as theinteraction (the process) unfolds.

It follows that given the properties of multi-party text-based SCMC, and theirdeparture from the dyadic spoken prototype used in much analysis of conversa-tion, cohesion will be manifest in different ways, and participants will ascribecoherence in different ways, in the written mode. This is so, as we shall see,though there are also striking similarities. It is to coherence and cohesion inSCMC discourse that we turn to next.

3. Coherence and cohesion in written conversation

Example 2 illustrates interaction in a stretch of discourse text from the datasource outlined above. Five different participants (six including OrtiK’s personalrecorder) take nine turns, some of which are in the third person. Participantsenter and exit. Seemingly unrelated turns are juxtaposed with one another. Anumber of conversations run in parallel. It is these interaction patterns – theinterleaved threads of conversation – which are considered broadly as a featureof cohesion. Cohesion contributes to the coherence of the discourse by being the‘actual forms of linguistic linkage’ (Quirk et al., 1985: 1425), that is to say, thelinguistic manifestation of coherence.




Example 2 (Tapped In)

OritK has arrived.

OritK’s personal recorder (recording) has arrived.

OritK goes OUT.

OritK’s personal recorder (recording) goes OUT.

MargaretD exclaims, “he likes coming and going!”

rif [guest] exclaims, “I need to leave guys. It was all nice to see friends and say hi!”

SusanneN says, “I guess he is a student practicing before class.”

VanceS says, “Lian is talking about a 30 day bicycle trip she is going to make with herschool mates next summer”

MargaretD exclaims, “ByeRif !”

This section explains why cohesion in SCMC operates in different ways to cohe-sion in spoken discourse. In subsequent sections conversational threads as theyrelate to certain types of conversational floor are considered more relevant to anSCMC account of cohesion and coherence in discourse.

The issue of coherence is central to the study of discourse. Cook’s (1989: 4)definition of coherence is: ‘the property of being unified and meaningful’.Discourse analysis itself is defined by Cook (1989: 14) as: ‘the search for theanswer to the problem of what gives stretches of language unity and meaning’.This is to say, discourse analysis is dedicated to discovering what makes languagein use coherent to those who use it.

Here, coherence and cohesion are discussed with reference to SCMC discourse. It is suggested that both for participation in and analysis of SCMC discourse, cohesion is not dependent on the coordination of transfer in turn-taking, as it would be in spoken discourse. Rather, broader and looser constructs,such as the conversational floor, as described in following sections, are the cohesive ‘glue’ that contribute towards participants’ ascribing coherence (unity,meaning) to the discourse. In examples 1 and 2, for instance, coherence was notachieved through an adherence to the same principles of conversational interac-tion as apply to much spoken discourse.

The search for coherence, in whatever discourse type, and whether by theparticipants or by analysts, is an interpretive process. It is said that coherence is‘in the eye of the beholder’ (Bublitz and Lenk, 1999). In SCMC discourse we certainly appeal to linguistic form at clause level (lexis and syntax) to aid us inthe process of ascertaining what gives language in use coherence. On a broaderinter-turn level, as with spoken discourse, the formal surface connective linkagesof text – lexical and referential cohesion (Halliday and Hasan, 1976) – go someway to explaining how a text is coherent. In one-way SCMC discourse of the typedescribed here, such inter-turn cohesion as it exists in spoken discourse is oftennot readily apparent. However, it is participants who ultimately accord meaningand unity to the text in the discourse process, and they evidently manage to do




so. The discourse of SCMC is coherent for its participants; if it were not, it wouldnot be so popular, as noted by Herring (1999).

A token of the lack of cohesion in turn taking – what Herring (1999) callsthe lack of sequential coherence – is the resultant disrupted turn adjacency. Example3 is a typical instance of disrupted turn adjacency. Here and in subsequent exam-ples, turns have been numbered for ease of reference.


1 MichaelC: Good evening Ying. How are things?2 Ying-Lan: Not so good. 3 Ying-Lan: I took a test this morning. 4 MichaelC: What’s wrong?

In comparison to spoken conversation, written conversation displays a reducedsensitivity to coordination of transfer in turn-taking. This can be viewed as a lackof fine tuning.

A number of commentators on linguistic features of SCMC note the dissimi-larity of turn-taking patterns in SCMC and in spoken discourse. Cherny (1999)and Herring (1999) discuss these differences in detail. Chun’s (1994: 26) remarkis illustrative of the view that turn-taking in SCMC is entirely unlike that inspoken discourse: ‘In terms of discourse management during a discussion, turn-taking as done in spoken conversation is not a factor in CACD [computer-assistedclass discussion].’ Kitade (2000: 149) notes that there is ‘no turn-taking compe-tition’ in SCMC.

The lack of fine-tuning in SCMC turn-taking is the responsibility of two fundamental facts of this type of discourse: (1) turns cannot be seen until theyare sent (except in ICQ, as we see below); and (2) the visual and auditory (paralinguistic and prosodic) cues which in spoken discourse underpin the turn-taking system are missing. The consequence is disrupted turn adjacency. Herringdescribes disrupted turn adjacency in SCMC (1999: 3): ‘. . . a message may be separated in linear order from a previous message it is responding to, if anothermessage or messages happen to have been sent in the meantime.’ And in an earlystudy of SCMC, Murray (1988) notes that: ‘ . . . the sender may make a secondmove before receiving a response to the first and a message may interrupt aturn’.

In the stretch of text in example 3, turns 1 and 2 follow the pattern of anadjacency pair (Schegloff and Sacks, 1973). In an adjacency pair the relationshipbetween the first and second pair parts is one of conditional relevance (Schegloff,[1968] 1972). Put simply, the presence of the first pair part is said to open a slotin conversation for an expected, or conditionally relevant, second pair part.MichaelC’s first pair part (turn 1) is followed by the second pair part (2) fromYing-Lan. This response, ‘not so good’, is a dispreferred response (Heritage, 1984:265–9; Nofsinger, 1991: 71–2). That is to say, although the response is expected,or conditionally relevant, it is not as expected (or preferred) as a response such as‘I’m fine thanks.’ Following a tendency noted in dispreferred second pair parts,




the response is followed by an elaboration in turn 3. But MichaelC’s next turn (4)seems to be in response to Ying-Lan’s turn 2 rather than turn 3. This is a case ofdisrupted turn adjacency.

The disrupted turn adjacency in this extract may well be a result of reducedcoordination of transfer in that MichaelC was typing turn 4 at the same time asYing-Lan was typing her elaboration following her dispreferred response (turn3); it happened that they sent their turns at about the same time, but Ying-Lansent her turn fractionally before MichaelC sent his. Thus, it appears in the log ofthe chat, and appeared at the time on the screen, that Ying-Lan answersMichaelC’s question before he asks it.

At this point it is worth recording that disrupted turn adjacency can have afurther explanation when ICQ is being used. It was stated previously that withICQ, turns can be seen by interlocutors as they are being typed. It is thereforepossible for someone to respond to another person’s long turn while that turn isbeing typed. We see this in example 4:

Example 4 (ICQ)

1 <ying> We hope our government will be better in the future. 2 <Mad> really bad karma then.3 <ying> Who is Gerald Ford?4 <Vance> What were his words? Why did he have to land in an elementary school?

Yeah, not a good choice. Sounds like something Gerald Ford would havedone. But he was harmless.

5 <Vance> He was a preseident of the USA who was prone to accidents.

Ying poses the question (turn 3) ‘Who is Gerald Ford?’ before, it seems, any men-tion of Gerald Ford has entered the conversation. We can surmise that ying wasreading Vance’s turn (4) as it was being typed; when he made mention of GeraldFord she typed and sent her turn (3) before Vance had completed his turn (4). It isof note that a specific feature of a particular SCMC tool can affect the discoursepatterns in subtle but perceptible ways.

On a broader level, these observations on disrupted turn adjacency tend tosupport the view that applying models of turn-taking in spoken conversationdirectly to SCMC discourse is not profitable. For the remainder of this article, weturn our attention to an alternative perception of cohesion: the conversational floor.

4. Floors in spoken and written conversation4 . 1 B A C KG RO U N D

A detailed treatment of the notion of floor in SCMC is found in Cherny (1999).She states:

Given that there is no competition for the [MOO] channel per se, but rather competi-tion for attention or control of the discourse, notions of shared or collaborative floorseem to be more helpful than the standard turn-taking literature. These notions alsoappear more useful for theorising multi-threaded topic discourse. (1999: 174)




Cherny has found that work on floors of conversation in multi-party spoken dis-course was helpful in developing her categorization of floor types in a MOO. Andon the face of it, multi-party SCMC discourse bears more similarity to the fluidthreads of dinner party conversation or discussion groups than to the two-partyconversation which is the foundation of much spoken conversation analysis.

In her review of early conversation analysis work on turn-taking and floor ofconversation, Edelsky (1981) reveals that frequently no distinction was madebetween floor and turn, though in any multi-party discourse such a distinction isvital. Stenstrom’s (1994: 34) definition of the turn as: ‘. . . everything A saysbefore B takes over, and vice versa’ is crude but entirely workable in SCMC, a dis-course environment where turns cannot be co-constructed and where there is nooverlap. It is a technical definition with little ambiguity. Definition of the floor isless clear-cut, dependent as it is upon inferring how participants themselvesviewed the unfolding discourse. For such a definition, we first turn to Edelsky:

The floor is defined as the acknowledged what’s-going-on within a psychologicaltime/space. What’s going on can be the development of a topic or a function (teasing,soliciting a response, etc.) or an interaction of the two. It can be developed or con-trolled by one person at a time or by several simultaneously or in quick succession. Itis official or acknowledged in that, if questioned, participants could describe what’sgoing on as ‘he’s talking about grades’ or ‘she’s making a suggestion’ or ‘we’re allanswering her.’ (1981: 405)

A reading of Edelsky suggests that there are three definable elements to the floor:(1) the topic, the aboutness of the discourse; (2) the communicative action: howthings are being said in the discourse; and (3) the participants’ sense of what ishappening in the conversation. From the analyst’s point of view, these are eachevident only to the extent to which they can be inferred from the text. This con-straint should be acknowledged as a caveat in a discussion of floor. Nonetheless,the text of SCMC allows an analyst to gain a closer participant’s sense of whatwas going on than, for example, a transcription of spoken discourse. This isbecause the participants themselves are denied the range of visual and auralfeedback cues; any ratification must ipso facto appear in the text itself, as we seebelow.

4 . 2 F L O O R R AT I F I C AT I O N I N S C M C

‘Simply talking, in itself, does not constitute having the floor’, say Shultz et al.(1982: 95). ‘The “floor” is interactionally produced, in that speakers and hearersmust work together at maintaining it.’ Thus, one can be the speaker but not holdthe floor. In her study of floor and gender patterns in asynchronous CMC discourse, Herring (forthcoming) supports Edelsky’s assertion that to be a floor-holding turn, it must be ratified by other participants. In spoken discourse, suchratification can be done verbally or through non-verbal nods and backchannels.In the following examples, we see that in SCMC floor ratification can also be done verbally or through responses which are representations of non-verbalbehaviour.




In example 5, Vance (turns 1, 2 and 4) is holding the floor; ratification is doneby BJB (turn 3) and SusanneN (turn 5) through their verbal responses:


1 VanceS says, “I go to Guangchow and get Maggie (she needs a travel partner totravel in the summer)”

2 VanceS says, “Then we go visit Moral in Kunming”3 BJB exclaims, “sounds like fun, Vance!”4 VanceS says, “Then to Wuhan ot visit Lian (2000 km)”5 SusanneN says, “Oh really, sounds exciting.”

In example 6, BJB ratifies Susanne’s turn with a ‘nod’. This is an action, a turnsent in the third person to represent non-verbal behaviour:


1 SusanneN asks, “Really, Minsk is closer to us in Europe than Pennsylvania, I guess?”2 BJB [HelpDesk] nods

Floor ratification by members of the Webheads group has the dual purpose of sig-nalling both that the participant is paying attention to the floor holder and thatthey comprehend what has been written. In her investigation into backchannelresponses in a MOO, Cherny similarly maintains that:

. . . it is difficult if not impossible to separate affect out from the back channel func-tion in this medium, since an appropriate emotional response to a turn (e.g., a laugh)indicates both attention and understanding just as well as a nod does. (1999: 194)

In multi-party SCMC discourse, problems arise with floor ratification being mis-directed or mistaken. In example 7, Maggi’s response (turn 4) to Gold10’s turn(1) is misinterpreted by Ying in turn 5 as a ratification of her turns 2 and 3:


1 gold10: Is here a lession about reading or writing?2 Ying-Lan: They were worry about the world,,, we will be worry about the computer. 3 Ying-Lan: ^not will be. . . we are worry about the computer. 4 Maggi: which do you prefer?5 Ying-Lan: prefer what?6 Maggi: no, we are worrying about the computer7 gold10: what will be taught at section 7?8 Maggi: I meant Gold Ying. . .

Turns are directed in SCMC by naming the participant to which they areaddressed. This cohesive device characteristic of SCMC, cross-turn reference(Herring, 1999) or addressivity (Werry, 1996), is used by Maggi in turn 8 ofexample 7 to repair the misunderstanding above. In other cases, as with example8, addressivity is included in the original floor-holding and floor-ratifying turns(turns 1 and 4). This can be considered a navigation technique in response to thefact that there are a number of participants:





1 SusanneN [to Maggie]: “A webhead, has a lot of furry hair, and a fuzzy old jacket,thick glasses and is all pale because of the lack of daylight,plus pimlpes due to unhealthy snacks and black coffeee?”

2 PhilB says, “Margaret - that’s right! Jacket & tie become mandatory peda-gogical accessories.”

3 JohnSte says, “Back when I was a Department chair, my dress code wasshorts and a tee-shirt.”

4 MargaretD exclaims, “ROTFL at Susanne description!”

Again, ratification is carried out by a representation of non-verbal behaviour:ROTFL is SCMC shorthand for ‘rolling on the floor laughing’.

4 . 3 PA RT I C I PA N T S T RU C T U R E A N D F L O O R T Y P E S

Research into conversational floors in CMC discourse has quite naturally concen-trated on applying and testing findings from analysis of multi-party spoken conversation. Edelsky’s (1981) research into floors and gender in spoken conver-sation identified two types of floor: a singly developed floor (F1) and one which isa ‘collaborative venture’ (F2). F1s are: ‘. . . characterised by monologues, single-party control and hierarchical interaction where turn takers stand out from non-turn takers and floors are won or lost’ (Edelsky, 1981: 416). F2s are: ‘. . .inherently more informal, cooperative ventures’ (Edelsky, 1981). Herring (forth-coming) found that these two floor types were evident in her study of asynchro-nous CMC discourse on two discussion boards.

Missing from Edelsky’s bipartite distinction are instances where two or morefloors of conversation are continuing in parallel. A broader classification deriv-ing from research into dinner table conversation and classroom discourse byShultz et al. (1982) (also in Erikson and Shultz, 1977) posits categories of partic-ipation structure where floors are single or multiple. Though there are furthersub-divisions in this classification, single floors are, broadly speaking, correspon-dent with Edelsky’s F1 and F2: a single speaker, with a number of attenders; or afloor which is more collective or collaborative. Multiple floors, type IV participa-tion structure in the typology of Shultz et al., are described by these authors(1982: 102) as having: ‘. . . subgroups of the persons present participating intopically distinct simultaneous conversations’.

The summary grouping of floor types by Hayashi (1991) draws on the findings of Shultz et al. and Edelsky. Hayashi also divides floor types into singleconversational floors and multiple conversational floors, and also subdivides thesingle floor type into the single person floor and the collaborative floor. Furthersub-categorizations are described, based on relative levels of interaction.Hayashi’s system is adapted by Cherny (1999: 176ff.) to describe floor types inMOO discourse. Within the context of the Webheads SCMC described here, identi-fication of these floors is straightforward enough, suggesting a similarity offloor structure across contexts of SCMC use. Leaving aside some of the lesscommon patterns, three habitually occurring floor types in SCMC are described




and illustrated below: the speaker-and-supporter floor; the collaborative floor;and the multiple conversational floor.

4 . 4 S P E A K E R - A N D - S U P P O RT E R F L O O R

The speaker-and-supporter floor is a single conversational floor. One participantcan be regarded as the floor holder, and others are supporting through the use of back-channel devices and other short interjections. In example 9, Vance isholding the floor; his short turns are interspersed by the occasional supportingcomment, question and back-channel from Maggie and Ying-Lan:


1 Vance: Go to this url: http://www.geocities.com/members/tools/file_manager.html2 Vance: You might want to bookmark that url.3 Vance: You can’t use it just yet.4 Vance: But you’ll want to come here later:

http://www.geocities.com/members/tools/file_manager.html5 Ying-Lan: ^why?6 Vance: Geocities will now email you a password.7 Maggi: Hey, I’m getting the hang of this.8 Ying-Lan: ^I got it. 9 Maggi: great. . .10 Vance: You got the password?11 Ying-Lan: ^yes12 Ying-Lan: ^I am a member of geocities.com now13 Vance: Great. OK, you can enter the file manager.14 Ying-Lan: ^My email address is [email protected] Vance: Go to that url and press the Enter the File Manager button.16 Vance: You will be asked for your user name and password.17 Vance: Your user name is yinglan and your password is whatever they sent you.18 Maggi: sorry, I accidently clicked on the films. . .19 Vance: Here’s what you have to do next:20 Vance: When you visit your new url, you will see the file index.html by default.21 Maggi: ok22 Vance: Geocities created an index.html file for you. If you put in your url you’ll

see it.23 Maggi: ok24 Vance: What you want to do now is replace that file with your own, which has to

be called index.html25 Maggi: ok26 Vance: So you create a little web site. The introductory page to your site is called

index.html. And you just upload the files to your server space using thefile manager.

27 Maggi: neat!!!1111t28 Vance: I make my web sites in ms Word. I just start a document, save it as html,

and link it to other documents.29 Maggi: a whole lot easier than I thought!!!!!!!!!!




4 . 5 C O L L A B O R AT I V E F L O O R

The single floor is constructed by a number of participants. In this example (10)Ying-Lan, Vance and Maggi co-construct the collaborative floor:


1 Ying-Lan: How long will you take your vacation?2 Ying-Lan: Sounds nice. 3 Vance: I will take 6 days for my vacation.4 Vance: But it’s not a vacation, really.5 Ying-Lan: You will go alone?6 Vance: I will be in Europe alone but my son will fly to New York and camp out 7 in my hotel room.8 Ying-Lan: You son who lives in California?9 Vance: Yes, he’s never been to New York City before.10 Maggi: Be sure the mini bar is stocked with snacks. . .11 Vance: No way, I’ll stock up at the deli.12 Vance: He’s been trained to stay out of mini bars in upscale hotels.13 Maggi: That’s a good place to start. . .14 Vance: The mini bar?15 Maggi: no. . .the deli’s16 Ying-Lan: ^New York is a big city . . . why do you call her as “Big Apple”?17 Maggi: . . .best in the world18 Vance: Good question!19 Maggi: Has to do with jazz Ying. . .20 Maggi: or at least one story does. . .21 Vance: Does it?22 Ying-Lan: Has to do with Jazz?23 Ying-Lan: one story?24 Maggi: Yes. . .remember I was born in New York. . .

4 . 6 M U LT I P L E C O N V E R S AT I O N A L F L O O R

When two or more floors exist in parallel, a multiple conversational floor is evi-dent. In the following stretch of 12 turns (example 11), the floors have beenidentified and labelled by their primary feature, topic. Five turns are associatedwith the topic of thanksgiving (floor A), while seven relate to discussion of theTOEFL test (floor B):


1 A Ying [guest] says, “Hi.. everyone.. it is a little late to say “Happy Thankgiving!””2 A sara [guest] says, “hi ying”3 B SusanneN [to Sara [guest]]: “the TOEFL Exam tomorrow, how can we help you

prepare for that?”4 A Ying [guest] asks, “How was your turkey at the table?”5 B sara [guest] says, “i have one practice i will do it later”6 B Ying [guest] asks, “Toefl Exam?”7 B sara [guest] says, “yes”8 A SusanneN asks, “And vance, how was the turkey outing with your Spanish

friends?”




9 B SusanneN says, “it is the Test Of Englsih as a Foreign Language”10 B Ying [guest] says, “I knew that.”11 A BJB [to Ying [guest]]: “it is never to late to say happy Thanksgiving. . .we all have

so much to be thankful for!”12 B SusanneN [helpdesk] smiles to Ying I just learnt a new acronym.

Within a multiple conversational floor, as Cherny (1999: 176) notes, there canbe a main floor and side floors, or there can be two or more main floors runningin parallel. In SCMC discourse it is possible for an individual participant to beinvolved in more than one floor of conversation. In the above example of a multi-ple conversational floor, three of the four participants contribute to both floors.This tendency of the proficient SCMC participant to switch between floors is anecho of other traits of CMC use. For example, multi-tasking – attending to anumber of different on-screen activities at once – is common (Jones, 2002). Andin SCMC, participants are known to cycle between on-screen identities whichthey have created (Turkle, 1995; Kendall, 1998; Donath, 1999).

It may be noted that in example 9 (the speaker-and-supporter floor), one par-ticipant was explaining to others how to do something – in this case, how to builda website. This is in contrast to the pattern in example 10 (the collaborativefloor). Here, the participants could be said to be ‘chatting’, which is, after all, theprototypical activity in a chat room. In the following section, we ask whetherfloor development is shaped by the relationships of the participants and the topicand purpose of the conversation, and the computer-mediated nature of the discourse.

5. Accounting for floor development

Many factors may influence the development of particular floor types. Here weoutline three contextual aspects of the discourse which shape floor development:participants and their roles within the group; verbal activity (topic and commu-nicative action); and a selection of medium-related features. The effects of theseare then investigated with reference to examples of the floor types outlined insection 4. These occur within a single stretch of SCMC discourse text.

5 . 1 PA RT I C I PA N T RO L E S

Both Edelsky (1981) and Herring (forthcoming) concentrate on gender as keycontextual aspects of floor development. Edelsky is careful to note that the F1and F2 floor types are gender-independent, though participation by men in F1floors was far greater than participation by women (1981: 415). Herring con-cludes that her findings are of two gender styles rather than two different floortypes: a male style associated with individual power and a female style associatedwith accommodation to others (forthcoming: 18). In the discourse of the virtualcommunity in question here, Webheads, the status of the participants and theirvarious role relations may be more influential than gender in shaping floor struc-ture. A primary though troublesome distinction is between expert user teachers




of English, on the one hand, and learners of English, on the other. The termexpert user is used in preference to the term native speaker for the obvious reasonthat expert users of a language are not necessarily native speakers. For discus-sion of this and other issues surrounding the notion of the ‘native speaker’, seeRampton (1990). Though there are students and tutors in the Webheads group,care is taken by tutors to minimize any perceived divide. Nonetheless, the role of participant as learner, as tutor, or as other interested party (e.g. help-desk volunteer; researcher) is often, though not always, clear. Incidentally, Webheads‘learners’ are sometimes English language teachers in off-screen life. Anotherdistinction may be made between the more and the less technologically able, orelectronically literate members of the group, regardless of their level of English.Proficiency in English does not automatically confer proficiency in the use of thetechnologies of CMC, as any first-time visitor to an Internet chat room will testify.Thus a proficient technophile may find him- or herself cast in the role of tutor,but tutor in the use of the technologies of electronic literacy.

There is a growing body of research on role relations in virtual communities.See, for example, Cherny (1999) on life in a MUD community; Turkle (1995) onroles and identity on-screen, and Smith and Kollock’s (1999) collection of paperson online communities. On the subject of the roles of language teachers and students face-to-face and online, see Salmon (2000); Kern (1995); Warschauer(1996, 1999).

5 . 2 V E R B A L A C T I V I T Y A N D T O P I C

The research of Shultz et al. (1982) showed that floor patterns were associatedwith the speech activity, and that changes in floor patterns occurred when thespeech activity changed. ‘Speech activities’, say Shultz et al. (1982: 96), are:‘units of discourse in conversation that are longer than a sentence and may consist of one discourse topic, or may consist of a set of connected topics andsubtopics’. The term speech activity is from Gumperz (1977) and is a synthesis ofthe current communicative action and the broad topic of the conversation, forexample, ‘discussing politics’; ‘chatting about the weather’ (Gumperz, 1977:206). The communicative action is the name given to the type of conversationwhich might be happening at any time, for example chatting, explaining, discussing, or arguing.

Shultz et al., when making the important link between conversational floorpatterns and speech activity, found that certain types of speech activity often corresponded to certain types of floor. That is to say, when the speech activitywas ‘chatting about how much everything costs in the stores nowadays’, theappropriate floor was a multiple conversational floor with overlapping speech.And when the speech activity was ‘explaining why and where the father . . . isgoing out of town’, there is only one floor, where the parents are the primaryspeakers (Shultz et al., 1982: 97). Because SCMC is written rather than spoken,the term verbal activity is used here in preference to speech activity.

The floor, then, is not defined by topic, or aboutness, alone. This is partly, but




not entirely, because topics and their boundaries themselves are such difficultthings to identify. Like Brown and Yule, we can consider topic as ‘what is beingtalked about’ (1983: 71). In addition, Brown and Yule explain that within abroad topic framework there are elements of personal ‘speaker’s topics’. By considering speaker’s topic, they recognize that within a particular frameworkwhere the general topic may be generally or loosely agreed, the individualparticipants sometimes have differing views on what the topic is or where thefocus should be. When investigating speaker’s topic, text of discourse is analysed:‘. . . not in terms of how we would characterise the participants’ shared informa-tion, but in terms of a process in which each participant expresses a personaltopic within the general topic framework as a whole’ (1983: 88).

Topics frequently drift; that is, they move gradually from one area into others,without an easily discernible topic boundary. Topic drift, or shading, as a featureof spoken conversation has been commented on by Hobbs (1990), Schegloff andSacks (1973) and Jefferson (1984) among others. In SCMC rapid topic drift – ortopic decay – is the subject of work by Herring and Nix (1997).

The broad topic itself as it relates to focus of attention is a concern here. Inthe Webheads SCMC sessions, it is common for a learner to explicitly raise a language learning point. When the topic of the discourse is so obviously relatedto the acquisition of the L2 (English), it is expected that attention would befocused towards that floor of conversation. It is also common for a participant(and no distinction is made here between learners and tutors) to discuss anaspect of the technologies of SCMC. Particular floor patterns are associated withtopics relating to the development of second or foreign language skills and withtopics relating to the development of electronic literacy skills. This is demon-strated and explained in the analysis and discussion below.

5 . 3 M E D I U M - R E L AT E D FA C T O R S

There are also medium-related reasons for particular floors to develop in SCMC.In particular, the emergence of the multiple conversational floor may be associ-ated with the way in which a written conversation occurs. Cherny (1999: 180)maintains that: ‘Multiple participant floors are in fact easier to achieve [in SCMCdiscourse] than they are in face-to-face conversations.’ She claims this is due tothe lack of overlap (i.e. the inability to co-construct turns) in the medium. Wemight also note that the ability to scroll up and re-read previous turns, coupledwith the slower speed of the unfolding discourse compared to spoken conversa-tion, facilitate the emergence of multiple floors, and enable an individual to participate in a number of floors simultaneously.

Topics in SCMC are prone to recur, leading to the re-emergence of particularfloor types. This is the case when participants are carrying out more than oneon-screen activity. That is to say, when they are multi-tasking. At certain pointsin the discourse something happens in another space on the Internet which is relevant to a previous topic which then over-rides the current topics. The floortype may consequently revert to a previous one.




5 . 4 A N A L Y S I S A N D D I S C U S S I O N : F L O O R D E V E L O P M E N T

This discussion is based on a stretch of SCMC discourse text of 36 turns inlength, presented in example 12:


1 VanceS says, “I never knew what chili was exactly before”2 BJB . o O ( that will open a web window to go with your text client )3 LianA says, “come to china, then you will know what it is, vance.”4 BJB . o O ( I hope )5 LianA oO6 PhilB says, “Vance, there’s a lot of confusion between the words “chili” and “chile”

(borrowed from Spanish.”7 Sue [guest] asks, “Lian, how much did you take on GRE?”8 LianA asks, “what does burn the scandle from the two ends mean? who can help?”9 LianA says, “not very high, only 2160”

10 BJB [to Lian]: “how long do you think a candle will last if you burn both ends?”11 LianA says, “nol not candle but scandle”12 LianA says, “no—typo”13 Sue [guest] says, “so hight? i am wondering i can only take 1500”14 PhilB says, “Lian, it’s a play on words.”15 VanceS says, “I’ve been to China several times, but never to Wuhan”16 LianA says, “it said if you burn the scandle from 2 ends, you will be a busy man.”17 BJB thinks there are several threads to this conversation18 VanceS says, “Also you will burn yourself out”19 LianA says, “welcome vance to wuhan next time to china.”20 PhilB says, “Normally to “burn the candle on both ends” means to work so much you

tire yourself out. With “scandal” instead of “candle” it sounds like Bill Clinton withhis hot interns. <g>”

21 BJB chuckles. Same result, though.22 VanceS . o O ( this is a normal consequence of multitasking )23 VanceS says, “he must have had too many hot interns in the fire”24 LianA giggles25 PhilB asks, “Hey, I found a new free resource called “stuffincommon virtual commu-

nities”. Anyone heard of it?”26 VanceS says, “never”27 Sue [guest] says, “no”28 LianA says, “no”29 PhilB asks, “Wanna see?”30 VanceS says, “sure”31 Sue [guest] says, “sure”32 PhilB says, “It has chat, tools, and a neat whiteboard.”33 LianA says, “yes.”34 PhilB asks, “I’m going to project. Sue, Lian, do you know about projections?”35 LianA says, “yes”36 Sue [guest] says, “not sure”

There are three distinct phases to this stretch of SCMC text:

1. Turns 1–22: a period where a number of conversations continue simultane-ously (a multiple conversational floor);




2. Turns 8–24: a period where there is one main conversation where many participants hold the floor (a collaborative floor);

3. Turns 25–36: a period where one participant is the floor holder, supportedby others (a speaker-and-supporter floor).

It will be immediately noted that the first and second phases overlap considerably,while there is a clear boundary between the second and third phases. Floorboundaries in SCMC are not necessarily distinct. On this occasion, a collaborativefloor is the main floor in a multiple conversational floor; when the other conver-sations in the multiple floor are completed, it becomes briefly the only floor in asingle collaborative floor. Here the multiple floor continues from turn 1 to turn22. The floor which emerges at turn 8 becomes the main floor. At turn 23 itbecomes the only floor, as previous conversations are completed. At turn 25 thepattern shifts decisively to a single speaker-and-supporter floor.

An analytical technique for discussing floors in SCMC is to isolate individualconversations from the text. Naturally, the objection to this might be: how can weknow post hoc and without being informed by the participants which turns belongto which conversation? The answer must be that we cannot be certain.Nonetheless, despite the possibility of there being other interpretations, it seemsquite clear that all but one turn (turn 5) can be accounted for in the waydescribed below.

In examples 12a to 12f the individual floors and elements of floors in thestretch of SCMC discourse presented above as example 12 are discussed with ref-erence to the features which can be said to influence floor development. Beforewe turn to these isolated sections, there are three points to note. First, this stretchof discourse text is not a complete textual record of the interaction. The log wasoriginally recorded by VanceS, and begins 40 turns after his arrival at Tapped In.However, the other participants had already commenced the interaction. Thus,some of the conversations in the example are incomplete; either because theyhad started before the extract begins, or because they continue after it ends. Theexample contains no instances of a participant entering or leaving the conversa-tion. (See Rintel et al. (2001) for an illuminating study of openings in SCMC.)Second, it should be recalled that the disrupted turn adjacency inherent in themedium gives a certain arbitrariness to the position of the individual turns in the text in relation to the other turns. Third, we should also briefly note some relevant contextual details about the participants:

– VanceS is the founder tutor of the Webheads group.– LianA and Sue are English language learners with Webheads.– BJB works as a volunteer on the helpdesk at Tapped In.– PhilB is an English teacher who coordinates another group at Tapped In.

In example 12a, the turns of Vance, LianA and PhilB belong to the end of thesame conversation, a collaborative floor within a multiple conversational floorwhich has the verbal activity chatting about chilli and China. The discussion about




chilli had been continuing for a number of turns before the beginning of thisextract:

Example 12a

1 VanceS says, “I never knew what chili was exactly before”

3 LianA says, “come to china, then you will know what it is, vance.”

6 PhilB says, “Vance, there’s a lot of confusion between the words “chili” and “chile”(borrowed from Spanish.”

15 VanceS says, “I’ve been to China several times, but never to Wuhan”

Contextual and temporal aspects of the discourse would suggest that muchattention is paid to personal speaker’s topic (writer’s topic?) in SCMC. In example12a above, within a broad topic framework which could be said to be about chilli,LianA’s speaker’s topic is China. This also becomes Vance’s speaker’s topic in turn15; a topic drift has taken place within a floor of conversation. Neither the topicof chilli nor of China are developed any further in the interaction.

In Example 12b we see the end of another conversation. BJB has beenexplaining to Sue how to open the graphical interface of Tapped In:

Example 12b

2 BJB . o O ( that will open a web window to go with your text client )

4 BJB . o O ( I hope )

We note that BJB is using a device whereby her turn is displayed inside an ASCII‘thinks’ bubble. This is done in Tapped In by prefacing the turn with the command‘/thinks’. We might infer that she uses this technique because the turns aredirected towards only one among many participants. It is possible in Tapped In tosend a turn privately to another participant using the ‘/whisper’ command. ThatBJB does not do this suggests, in the light of her role with Tapped In, that she feelsthe information might be of use to more than one participant.

Example 12c is an exchange of three turns spread over seven turns of theextract:

Example 12c

7 Sue [guest] asks, “Lian, how much did you take on GRE?”

9 LianA says, “not very high, only 2160”

13 Sue [guest] says, “so hight? i am wondering i can only take 1500”

The two language learners here are discussing an English language test.Although perhaps not highly proficient in English, they are both adept at SCMCdiscourse. Both Sue and LianA participate in more than one conversation in thisextract; turns by LianA appear in four of the six isolated examples highlightedhere.

Example 12d is an aside:




Example 12d

17 BJB thinks there are several threads to this conversation

22 VanceS . o O ( this is a normal consequence of multitasking )

The topic here is the conversation itself. In spoken discourse the turns would beexpected to appear together, as an adjacency pair or as the initiation andresponse of an exchange. However, here in SCMC they are separated by fourunrelated turns. Also of note is the fact that BJB’s turn is posted in the thirdperson as an emote or metacomment; that is, a comment on the unfolding con-versation. Vance’s turn is also a representation of something other than speech,using as BJB did earlier the cartoon ‘thinks’ bubble.

Example 12e is the main floor of the multiple floor. The previous examples(12a to 12d) can be considered side floors, or even mere asides, in the multiplefloor.

Example 12e

8 LianA asks, “what does burn the scandle from the two ends mean? who can help?”

10 BJB [to Lian]: “how long do you think a candle will last if you burn both ends?”11 LianA says, “nol not candle but scandle”12 LianA says, “no—typo”

14 PhilB says, “Lian, it’s a play on words.”

16 LianA says, “it said if you burn the scandle from 2 ends, you will be a busy man.”

18 VanceS says, “Also you will burn yourself out”

20 PhilB says, “Normally to “burn the candle on both ends” means to work so much youtire yourself out. With “scandal” instead of “candle” it sounds like Bill Clinton withhis hot interns. <g>”

21 BJB chuckles. Same result, though.

23 VanceS says, “he must have had too many hot interns in the fire”24 LianA giggles

This is a collaborative floor in so far as four participants are involved in its devel-opment. The contention is that it dominates because the verbal activity is explain-ing about a phrase LianA has read, which involves the communicative actionexplaining. The topic, raised quite explicitly by LianA in turn 8, is a phrase thatLianA has presumably read or heard and that she wants help in understandingwhat it means. As noted above, LianA is an English language learner, andWebheads is a virtual community dedicated to language learning. In other words,when a language learner raises a language learning point, much of the focusredirects towards that particular floor, the floor becomes collaborative, and thecommunicative action of the verbal activity orients towards ‘explaining’.

In example 12f, the floor type can also be attributed directly to the participantand the verbal activity:




Example 12f

25 PhilB asks, “Hey, I found a new free resource called “stuffincommon virtual communities”. Anyone heard of it?”

26 VanceS says, “never”27 Sue [guest] says, “no”28 LianA says, “no”29 PhilB asks, “Wanna see?”30 VanceS says, “sure”31 Sue [guest] says, “sure”32 PhilB says, “It has chat, tools, and a neat whiteboard.”33 LianA says, “yes.”34 PhilB asks, “I’m going to project. Sue, Lian, do you know about projections?”35 LianA says, “yes”36 Sue [guest] says, “not sure”

This is a single floor with one floor holder being supported by other participants.In the terminology adopted here, from Hayashi (1991) and Cherny (1999), it is aspeaker-and-supporter floor. The communicative action of the verbal activity isprimarily didactic: PhilB is demonstrating an Internet resource called ‘stuffincom-mon’. There is a sub-topic in turns 34 to 36: using the project command in TappedIn. The communicative action of the sub-topic remains explanatory.

In this section the concern has been with a limited set of patterns of partici-pation and floor types. There are undoubtedly many other patterns which relateto the development of other floor types. This notwithstanding, the conclusioncan be drawn from this analysis that floor development is related to verbal activ-ity. When the topic of the verbal activity is a language point raised by a learner,the floor becomes collaborative. It either develops as the single collaborativelyconstructed floor or as the main floor of a multiple conversational floor. Whenthe topic is related to the technologies of electronic literacy (for example, how tobuild a website; or where a particular resource can be found), the floor developsinto a speaker-and-supporter floor. The participant role is also important. In eachcase the communicative action (explaining/demonstrating) is pedagogic.However, when the verbal activity is directly related to the acquisition of thesecond or foreign language (English), a number of participants contribute sub-stantive turns. When the verbal activity is related to the development of the skillsof electronic literacy, other participants focus their attention on the single floorholder.

6. Conclusion

Conversation in SCMC is quite different in many ways from spoken conversation.It follows that established approaches to spoken discourse analysis do not neces-sarily map directly on to a novel form of discourse. For example, as shown in thisarticle, patterns of turn-taking in SCMC are affected by disrupted turn adjacency,itself a characteristic of the discourse setting – the virtual environment. Hence




certain axioms concerning turn-taking in spoken discourse do not apply to con-versation in the computer-mediated discourse setting. In this article it has beenmaintained that the notion of the conversational floor is a useful one in the studyof discourse where cohesion is looser than in the spoken mode. Furthermore, aclaim has been made that the development of certain floor types is associatedwith (1) the roles of the participants in the discourse; (2) the topic of the dis-course; (3) the current communicative action or, generally speaking, the purposeof the discourse.

The conclusions can be broadened by engaging with the notion of commu-nicative competence (Hymes, 1972; Canale and Swain, 1980). Effective partici-pation in a particular SCMC environment requires a measure of electroniccommunicative competence. The elements of electronic communicative compe-tence, as they apply to the context and discourse features described above andadapted from the model of Canale and Swain, include the following:

1. A knowledge of the linguistic system. The Webheads virtual communityincludes both learners and expert users of English. However, only a mini-mum level of English is needed to communicate effectively in SCMC discourse; perhaps less than is needed for similar communication in thespoken mode. The speed of turn-taking is slower than in spoken discourse;participants can scroll back up the screen to re-read parts of the conversa-tion, and logs of the text can be saved and studied at a later time. There arethus arguments for the use of SCMC in language teaching.

2. A knowledge of the discourse patterns involved. The view of cohesion positedhere suggests that it operates through the organization of various types ofconversational floor. For participants, managing these floors and perhapspartaking in different floors in parallel, requires new skills. Regardless ofone’s level of competence in the language of the virtual environment, theability to manage threads of SCMC discourse is a primary skill.

3. A knowledge of the technology. This knowledge encompasses both access tothe technology (the computer hardware and an Internet connection) butalso a technical knowledge enabling a participant to download particularsoftware, to log on to the system, and to join a virtual community amongother things.

4. A knowledge of the sociocultural rules of a particular virtual community. Notall SCMC settings are the same. The final aspect of electronic communicativecompetence includes a knowledge of the roles of participants, the topicrange expected in the context, and the broad purposes of communication inthe context.

This article has only touched on these matters by looking at discourse patterns inone particular SCMC context. There is undoubtedly much scope for the investiga-tion of other areas of floor development in SCMC, and more generally, applyingany findings to a nascent theory of electronic communicative competence.




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JA M E S S I M P S O N is a research fellow in the School of Education, University of Leeds. Heholds an MA in English Language Teaching from the University of Essex and a PhD fromthe University of Reading. His research interests are in discourse, literacy, computer-mediated communication, and in the teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages.A D D R E S S : School of Education, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK. [email: [email protected]]




Conversational floors in synchronous text-based CMC discourse

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