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A Faceted Classification Scheme for Computer-Mediated Discourse

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 A Faceted Classification Scheme for Computer-
Computer-Mediated Discourse

Susan C. Herring
Indiana University, Bloomington

Abstract
This article describes a classification scheme for computer-mediated discourse that classifies samples in terms of

clusters of features, or “facets”. The goal of the scheme is to synthesize and articulate aspects of technical and social

context that influence discourse usage in CMC environments. The classification scheme is motivated, presented in

detail with support from existing literature, and illustrated through a comparison of two types of weblog (blog) data.

In concluding, the advantages and limitations of the scheme are weighed.

1. Introduction
It is by now a truism that computer-mediated communication (CMC) – defined here as

predominantly text-based human-human interaction mediated by networked computers or mobile

telephony – provides an abundance of data on human behavior and language use. Confronted with

such abundance, researchers and practitioners have naturally sought to group, label, or otherwise

organize CMC into categories that would facilitate its analysis and uses. However, there has been

neither systematic discussion of how this should be done nor consensus regarding individual

attempts to do so, many of which have been implicit and ad hoc. As a consequence, how to

classify CMC remains a significant unaddressed problem of information organization.

This article is concerned with the classification of CMC for research purposes, with a focus

on online language and language use, hereafter referred to as computer-mediated discourse (CMD;

Herring 1996, 2001). Specifically, it proposes an approach to the classification of CMD based on

multiple categories or “facets”, a concept borrowed from classification theory in the field of

library and information science. In contrast to applications in that field, however, which are

primarily concerned with information storage and retrieval, the goal of the CMD scheme is to

articulate aspects of context – both technical and social – that potentially influence discourse

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usage in CMC environments, and thereby to bring them to the conscious attention of the

researcher. In this, it is akin in spirit to Hymes’ (1974) etic grid, also known as the SPEAKING

mnemonic, which is treated here as an early example of faceted classification in a research

context.

The organization of this article reflects its goal to motivate, articulate, and illustrate a

model. The next section identifies the basic problem that gave rise to the need for a CMD

classification scheme. Following a review of research on discourse classification, I then present an

overview of the proposed faceted classification scheme for CMD and describe its dimensions and

categories. This is followed by an illustration in which the scheme is applied to characterize

contrasting computer-mediated (weblog) data samples. In concluding, the advantages and

limitations of the faceted classification approach to online communication are weighed.

1.1 The problem

Various attempts have been made by linguists to classify CMD, starting in the 1980s and early

1990s. Accustomed to dealing with two basic modalities of language – speech and writing – these

linguists first asked: Is it a type of writing, because it is produced by typing on a keyboard and

read as text on a computer screen? Is it “written speech” (Maynor 1994), because it exhibits

features of orality, including rapid message exchange, informality, and representations of prosody?

Or is it a third type, intermediate between speech and writing, or in any event characterized by

unique production and reception constraints (Ferrara, Brunner & Whittemore 1991; Murray

1990)?

These early efforts at classification tended to overgeneralize about computer-mediated

language, as if CMD were a single, homogeneous genre or communication type. Even in recent

years, “Netspeak” has been posited as an emergent, global variety of online language

characterized by abbreviations, emoticons, and nonstandard spellings (Crystal 2001).

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 A FACETED CLASSIFICATION SCHEME FOR COMPUTER-MEDIATED DISCOURSE 3

However, as awareness of CMC spread with the popularization of the Internet, it soon

became apparent that computer-mediated discourse was sensitive to a variety of technical and

situational factors, making it complex and variable (Baym 1995; Cherny 1999; Herring 1996).

Simultaneously, the focus of much CMD research shifted to describing the linguistic features of

individual genres of CMD, e.g., email discussion lists, Usenet newsgroups, Internet Relay Chat

(IRC), and MUDs.1 Elsewhere, I have termed these “socio-technical modes” (Herring 2002) –

following Murray’s (1988) use of the term “mode” to refer to technologically-defined CMC

subtypes – to reflect the fact that labels such as “IRC”, “Usenet”, “email”, and so forth are

commonly understood to refer not just to CMC systems, but also to the social and cultural

practices that have arisen around their use.

The genre and mode approaches, however, while preferable to lumping all CMC into a

single type, are also limited as a basis for classification of CMD. First, the concept of genre can

potentially be applied to communication at different levels of specificity (Maingeneau 1998), and

is thus imprecise. For example, is the appropriate level of genre classification “email discussion

lists”, “academic discussion lists” (cf. Grüber 2000) or “academic discussion lists on

masculine/feminine topics” (cf. Herring 1996) – each of which is associated with characteristic

linguistic practices? The mode approach partially addresses this problem, in that it refers primarily

to technologically-defined CMD types,2 but it neglects social distinctions of the sort identified by

Grüber (2000) and Herring (1996).

Another limitation of both the genre and mode approaches is that they are most easily

applied to classify discourse that takes place using established, named technologies (cf. Swales

1990), such as those that are popular on the Internet. It is less clear how either approach could be

1
See, for example, Werry (1996) for IRC, Baron (1998) for email, Cherny (1999) for social MUDs, and Grüber
(2000) for academic discussion lists.
2
In the case of the example of email-based discussion, “listservs” are a mode, as distinct from “newsgroups” and
“Bulletin Board Systems (BBS)”, based first and foremost on their different technical configurations (e.g., push vs.
pull delivery; subscription/registration requirements).
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used to classify new and emergent forms of CMD, or discourse that takes place via customized

systems that operate within restricted (e.g., educational, governmental, organizational) domains.

For these, a more flexible classification system is needed.

The approach to the classification of computer-mediated discourse proposed in this article

is based on multiple categories or “facets”. These categories cut across the boundaries of socio-

technical modes, and combine to allow for the identification of a more nuanced set of computer-

mediated discourse types, while avoiding the imprecision associated with the concept of genre.

Since the classification scheme does not rely on pre-existing modes, it can also be applied to

discourse mediated by emergent and experimental CMC systems. The scheme is intended

primarily as a faceted lens through which to view CMD data in order to facilitate linguistic

analysis, especially research conducted in the discourse analysis, conversation analysis,

pragmatics, and sociolinguistics traditions.3 It is intended to complement genre or mode-based

analyses, which can provide a convenient shorthand for categorizing CMD types, but are less

precise and flexible.

2. Background

2.1 Conceptual foundations

The CMD classification scheme is a core component of the computer-mediated discourse analysis

(CMDA) approach developed by Herring (2001, 2004a);4 the scheme is presented here in detail

for the first time. CMDA adapts methods from the study of spoken and written discourse to

computer-mediated communication data. Similarly, the central role of classification in CMDA can

be traced back to traditional discourse analytic concerns.

Discourse analysts have traditionally classified discourse into types according to various

criteria. These include modality, number of discourse participants, text type or discourse type, and

3
For a recent overview of research in the sociolinguistics tradition, see Androutsopoulous (2006).
4
The other core components of CMDA are levels of analysis and operationalization of concepts; see Herring (2004a).

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 A FACETED CLASSIFICATION SCHEME FOR COMPUTER-MEDIATED DISCOURSE 5

genre or register (table 1). While the definitions and boundaries of these distinctions have been

much debated, they can be understood as being in a generally non-exclusive and hierarchical

relationship to one another (e.g., casual chat is a type of conversation, typically a dialogue and

typically produced via speech). As noted above, however, genre can be analyzed on multiple

levels of generality, and thus all of the types in table 1 have also been characterized as “genres”.5

Further, Biber (1988) has challenged the validity of the spoken/written language distinction,

proposing that discourse types be situated instead along multiple continua.

Classification criteria Types Invoked by

Modality (means of speech, writing Chafe and Danielewicz
production/reception) (1987)
Number of discourse monologue, dialogue, Dooley and Levinsohn
participants polylogue (2001)
Text/Discourse type conversation, narrative, Longacre (1996); Virtanen
exhortation, exposition, (1992)
etc.
Genre/Register6 casual chat, interview, Biber (1988); Swales
public lecture, personal (1990)
letter, short story, scientific
research article, etc.

Table 1. Traditional approaches to discourse classification

Despite their disagreements, discourse analysts implicitly agree that classification

facilitates analysis. This is because exemplars of the same type of discourse tend to share features

5
It is also possible to identify sub-genres of the genres in table 1, for example, a job interview as compared to an
interview on a radio or television talk show, a personal Christmas letter as compared to a personal letter breaking off
relations with one’s paramour (i.e., a Dear John letter).
6
In the sense of Biber (1988). “Register” has another usage in linguistics (as a shorthand for formal/informal style)
that is not intended here.
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that distinguish them collectively from other discourse types; classification makes this explicit,

thereby facilitating comparison across types.

Classification may also serve to remind the analyst to attend to important properties of the

data under consideration, even when no overt comparison is involved. For example, spoken

discourse typically has shorter sentences and words, more sentence fragments, and more markers

of interpersonal relations than discourse produced in writing (Chafe & Danielewicz 1987). A

researcher interested in studying sentence complexity might analyze both spoken and written texts,

but to do so without taking modality into account could result in overlooking systematic,

conditioned patterns in the data. Moreover, certain linguistic and rhetorical phenomena occur

regularly only in certain discourse or text types. Examples include turn taking in spoken dialogue,

plot development in narrative, and argumentation in expository discourse (Longacre 1996;

Virtanen 1992). A researcher interested in turn taking, for example, must identify text type as a

precursor to further linguistic analysis.

A different approach sometimes adopted in spoken discourse classification is the

ethnography of communication model of Dell Hymes (1974), reproduced in figure 1.

The setting refers to the time and place, while scene describes
Setting/Scene
the “psychological setting” or “cultural definition” of a scene.
Participants Speaker and audience.
Ends Purposes, goals, and outcomes.
Act sequence Form and order of events.
Key The “tone, manner, or spirit” of the speech.
Instrumentalities Channels, forms, and styles of speech.
Social rules governing the event and the participants’ actions
Norms
and reaction.
Genres The type of speech or event.

Figure 1. The SPEAKING model (Hymes 1974)

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 A FACETED CLASSIFICATION SCHEME FOR COMPUTER-MEDIATED DISCOURSE 7

Hymes’ taxonomy comprises the categories Setting/Scene, Participants, Ends, Act

sequence, Key, Instrumentalities, Norms, and Genres, which together form the acronym

SPEAKING. This model has been widely applied to characterize novel or exotic speech

communities (e.g., Nevins 2004), serving as what Hymes calls an “etic grid”, or preliminary

descriptive framework, that draws the researcher’s attention to aspects of the speech situation that

may assist in interpreting linguistic phenomena of interest.

Analysts of computer-mediated discourse have many of the same needs for classification as

traditional spoken and written discourse analysts: Properties of the medium that predict language

variation must be identified; CMD modes must be characterized, and novel CMD situations call

for etic description. These needs are compounded by the rapid pace with which new computer-

mediated communication technologies, such as SMS (text messaging through mobile phones),

instant messaging, and blogs, have emerged into popular use over the past decade (Herring

2004b). Other technologies will inevitably follow, placing a continuing demand on linguists to

provide systematic, meaningful characterizations of discourse in emergent mediated environments.

2.2 Previous classification of CMD

Three approaches can be distinguished in efforts to classify computer-mediated discourse to date.

As noted at the outset, a number of early researchers sought to characterize computer-mediated

discourse as a whole, often based on limited data.7 Ferrara et al. (1991), for example, described

CMD as an “emergent register” based on their study of one type of experimental, synchronous

CMD. Crystal’s (2001) characterization of the language of the Internet as “Netspeak” is a more

recent example of this globalizing approach. Relatedly, early attempts to classify CMD in relation

to speaking and writing tended to consider only one form of CMD (Werry 1996; Yates 1996),

although some researchers have suggested a continuum along which asynchronous CMD occupies

7
Notable exceptions are Murray (1988) and Severinson-Eklundh (1986).
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a position closer to writing, and synchronous CMD occupies a position closer to speaking (e.g.,

Herring 2001).

Later researchers narrowed their focus of attention to individual modes of CMD,

describing the characteristics of communication in each.8 An example of this approach from a

linguistic perspective is Cherny’s (1999) extended ethnographic study of a social MUD. Cherny

(1999) emphasized that the norms for discourse in a social MUD are not the same as those for

Internet Relay Chat, despite the fact that both are synchronous chat environments. Linguistic

variation can be observed between one social MUD and another, based on the histories, norms,

and user demographics of each group, leading Cherny to characterize individual MUDs as “speech

communities”.

The third approach, which most closely resembles that taken in the present article, involves

classifying CMD data according to a pre-defined set of categories. As early as 1988, Murray

applied a Hymesian grid to characterize different forms of CMD in use among workers in a large

U.S. technology organization. Collot and Belmore (1996) also adopted Hymes’ taxonomy to

describe asynchronous BBS data, as a preliminary to quantitative analysis. Although their focus

was not on language, Rice and Gattiker (2000) developed an extensive classification grid in which

they situated CMC in relation to other forms of mediated communication. However, they did not

justify the construction of the grid, nor apply it to data analysis.

In her analysis of television soap opera fan newsgroups, Baym (1995: 141) drew on

previous research to identify five factors that condition variation in CMD: the external contexts –

physical, cultural, and subcultural – in which CMC use is situated; the temporal structure of the

group; the computer system infrastructure; the purpose of communication; and the characteristics

of the group and its members. Baym’s approach has a number of advantages: It is grounded in

empirical observations; it is tailored to CMD data and takes the contributions of the computer

8
For an overview of this research, see Herring (2002).

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 A FACETED CLASSIFICATION SCHEME FOR COMPUTER-MEDIATED DISCOURSE 9

system into account; and its utility has been demonstrated through application to data. A

disadvantage is that it is limited to only five factors; it does not include, for instance, the

languages of the participants or the fonts available to express them (cf. Danet & Herring 2007).

In none of the studies mentioned above was classification the primary objective. Rather,

CMD researchers have characterized their data in pursuit of other goals, to distinguish them from

other kinds of data, and to invoke factors that explain their characteristics. The goal of the present

article is to systematize and extend these efforts in a classification scheme intended to highlight

those features of CMC that most directly affect users’ linguistic choices.

3. Faceted classification
Faceted classification is an approach to the organization of information with origins in the field of

library and information science. First systematized as a science by Ranganathan (1933) to classify

books in libraries, it was later developed by the U.K. Research on Classification Group (Vickery

1960) for the organization of document collections in scientific fields, where it proved effective in

the storage and retrieval of compound and complex subjects. More recently, faceted classification

has been implemented to assist automated search and retrieval of information (Prieto-Diaz 1991),

including on the Web (Broughton & Lane 2000), and has been extended to other fields and

knowledge domains (e.g., art and architecture; Tudhope et al. 2002).

Facets are categories or concepts of the same inherent type. A faceted scheme has several

facets and each facet may have several terms, or possible values, e.g., a faceted classification

scheme for wine might include the facets (and terms) “grape varietal” (riesling, cabernet

sauvignon, etc.), “region” (Napa Valley, Rhine, Bordeaux, etc.), and “year” (2001, 2002, etc.).

Ranganathan (1933) described the faceted classification method as analytico-synthetic: A subject

domain is first analyzed into component facets, and relevant facets are then synthesized into

combinations to characterize items of interest. Thus many facets may be applied to the description

of wine, but only a subset of them – such as varietal and region – may be relevant to classifying

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wines for the purpose of marketing them to casual consumers. The flexibility of faceted

classification lies in its ability to describe a large number of items within the subject domain,

including novel items, on the basis of a relatively economical, pre-defined set of facets and terms.

The facets need not be ordered, nor be of the same type, although they should be clearly defined

and mutually exclusive.

The present model involves faceted classification in the general sense described above,

although it does not adhere to the specific criteria laid out by Ranganathan (1933) and others

regarding selection of facets for a given subject area. This is in part because the CMD scheme was

not designed from the top down as a faceted classification scheme, but rather evolved from the

bottom up, as in the case of Baym’s (1995) five factors that condition variation in CMC.

Moreover, as noted at the outset, its purpose is not to facilitate information storage and retrieval,

but rather to facilitate data selection and analysis in CMD research. These differences aside, the

CMD scheme functions in many ways like a traditional faceted classification scheme, and has

similar advantages and limitations.

4. The faceted classification

classification scheme for CMD

4.1 Overview of the faceted classification scheme

The classification approach to CMD presented here is organized at the highest level by the

assumption that computer-mediated discourse is subject to two basic types of influence: medium

(technological) and situation (social). These are presented in an unordered, non-hierarchical

relationship, on the further assumption that one cannot be assigned theoretical precedence over the

other for CMD as a whole; rather, the relative strength of social and technical influences must be

discovered for different contexts of CMD through empirical analysis.

Under each influence type, a number of categories (facets) are posited, along with several

possible realizations (terms) for each. The categories were arrived at in an inductive manner on

the basis of empirical evidence from the CMD research literature in answer to the question: What

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 A FACETED CLASSIFICATION SCHEME FOR COMPUTER-MEDIATED DISCOURSE 11

factors condition variation in computer-mediated language use? The proposed scheme is a

preliminary attempt to aggregate and classify this body of knowledge.

The first set of categories describes technological features of computer-mediated

communication systems. These are determined by messaging protocols, servers and clients, as

well as the associated hardware, software, and interfaces of users’ computers, in as much as it is

possible for the researcher to obtain such information. The inclusion of a set of technological

factors in the approach does not assume that the computer medium exercises a determining

influence on communication in all cases (a position known as technological determinism, cf.

Markus 1994), although each factor has been observed to affect communication in at least some

instances. One reason for including medium factors as a separate set is, precisely, to attempt to

discover under what circumstances specific system features affect communication, and in what

ways.

The second set consists of social factors associated with the situation or context of

communication. These include information about the participants, their relationships to one

another, their purposes for communicating, what they are communicating about, and the kind of

language they use to communicate (cf. Baym 1995; Hymes 1974). The inclusion of a set of

situation factors assumes that context can shape communication in significant ways, although it

does not assume that any given factor is always influential. The particular factors included in the

model described below have all been observed to condition variation in at least some CMD

contexts.

As in traditional faceted classification, these two sets of categories are open ended;

additional factors can be added as justified by evidence that they affect online discourse. Also,

within each set, the categories are unordered and not assumed a priori to be in any particular

relationship to one another. Categories may (or may not) interact, just as there may (or may not)

be patterned correspondences between medium and situation factors, in principle. In fact, modes

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of CMD such as “listserv lists” and “Internet Relay Chat” exhibit characteristic combinations of

facets, as discussed further below.

The categories themselves are each realized by more than one possible value. As in

traditional faceted classification, the categories may be heterogeneous, with values that are binary

(e.g., message transmission=1-way or 2-way), scalar (e.g., degree of persistence of

text=low→high), or a list of discrete items (e.g., topic=Chinese restaurants in Paris; last

presidential elections; marsupials; etc.); the latter type may be open ended.

The most straightforward procedure for applying the scheme is as follows. Once a sample

or corpus of CMD has been identified, the researcher goes through the categories for each set,

assigning the appropriate value for each category based on the information available to him or her

from the data, additional contextual knowledge he or she may possess, or general knowledge of

CMC. One or more categories may not be applicable to a particular CMD sample, in which case

no value is assigned for them.

This process should produce a list of all applicable values for the categories in each set.

The researcher may then select from the list of values those that are relevant to his or her

analytical purposes. In this sense, the scheme is analytico-synthetic (cf. Ranganathan 1933). As in

traditional faceted classification, it is also possible to apply the scheme selectively, by assigning

values only to those categories or facets that are relevant to the analysis.

The scheme may be applied to data samples of almost any size, although not all categories

are relevant for very small samples. For example, a sample of a single message does not readily

allow for generalizations about the “group” of which it is a part. Conversely, very large samples

may contain so much internal variation that it is meaningless to assign a single value for each

feature. In such cases, multiple values may be assigned to a feature for purposes of overall

characterization. The researcher may also decide to apply the scheme at the level of contrasting

sub-samples in order to better characterize their distinguishing properties.

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 A FACETED CLASSIFICATION SCHEME FOR COMPUTER-MEDIATED DISCOURSE 13

4.2 Medium factors

This section and the following section enumerate and define the categories of the CMD

classification scheme and cite empirical studies to justify their inclusion. The citations are meant

to be indicative only; many other studies could be cited that contribute relevant evidence.

Table 2 lists some of the most important medium factors that have been observed to

condition computer-mediated discourse, and that are therefore posited as categories in the

classification scheme. Although they are not in any necessary order, they are numbered in table 2

for ease of reference.

M1 Synchronicity

M2 Message transmission (1-way vs. 2-way)

M3 Persistence of transcript

M4 Size of message buffer

,M5 Channels of communication

M6 Anonymous messaging

M7 Private messaging

M8 Filtering

M9 Quoting

M10 Message format

Table 2. Medium factors

The first medium factor relates to synchronicity of participation (Kiesler, Siegel &

McGuire 1984). Asynchronous systems do not require that users be logged on at the same time in

order to send and receive messages; rather, messages are stored at the addressee’s site until they

can be read. Email is an example of this type. In synchronous systems, in contrast, sender and

addressee(s) must be logged on simultaneously; various modes of “real-time” chat are the most

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common forms of synchronous CMC.9 Most traditional forms of writing are asynchronous, and

spoken conversation is typically synchronous, making synchronicity a useful dimension for

comparing different types of CMC with spoken and written discourse (Condon & Cech 1996; Ko

1996; Yates 1996). Synchronicity is also a robust predictor of structural complexity, as well as

many pragmatic and interactional behaviors, in computer-mediated discourse (Herring 2004a; Ko

1996).

A cross-cutting technological dimension has to do with the granularity of the units that are

transmitted by the CMC system, that is, whether the transmission is message-by-message, or

character-by-character (a third possibility is line-by-line transmission). This has implications for

whether or not simultaneous feedback is available during message exchange. With message-by-

message transmission, the receiver does not typically have any indication that the sender is

composing a message until it is sent and received;10 thus, it is impossible for the receiver to

interrupt or otherwise engage simultaneously with the sender’s message. Cherny (1999) terms this

transmission “one-way”; most CMC systems in current use make use of one-way transmission.

In contrast, character-by-character transmission is “two-way”, in that both the sender and

the receiver are able to see the message as it is produced, making it possible for the receiver to

give simultaneous feedback. In two-way CMC systems, participants’ screens split into two

(sometimes more) parts, and the words of each participant appear keystroke-by-keystroke in their

respective parts as they are typed. Examples of two-way synchronous CMC include the VAX

“phone” protocol studied by Anderson, Beard and Walther (forthcoming), UNIX “talk”, and the

split-screen mode of ICQ (Herring 2002). Anderson, Beard, and Walther (forthcoming) have

observed that two-way transmission can profoundly alter the structure of turn taking.

9
CMC systems of intermediate synchronicity also exist; for example, Babble (Erickson et al. 1999), an experimental
chat-like system with a scroll-back log that persists for days, allows users who missed real-time messages to read
them later. Instant messaging clients similarly blur the boundary by allowing users to read messages sent while they
were away from their computer upon their return, as long as their IM client remains open.
10
An exception is instant messaging systems that indicate that a participant is typing a message, without yet
displaying what is being typed.

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 A FACETED CLASSIFICATION SCHEME FOR COMPUTER-MEDIATED DISCOURSE 15

“Persistence of transcript” refers to how long, relatively speaking, messages remain on the

system after they are received. Email is persistent by default, remaining in users’ mail queues or

files until deleted by the users. Moreover, many listservs archive email messages sent to

discussion lists, and messages posted to Usenet newsgroups have been archived since 1995 (first

by dejanews.com, and since 2000, by Google). In contrast, most chat systems retain only a few

screens of messages in their scrollback buffer, with old messages eventually disappearing as they

are replaced by new ones. Even the messages in the buffer disappear when the user ends a chat

session, unless he or she has chosen to log the interaction. Thus, chat is relatively ephemeral

compared to email, but it is more persistent than spoken conversation, in that one’s typed words

linger before they scroll out of sight. The overall greater persistence of CMD heightens meta-

linguistic awareness: It allows users to reflect on their communication – and play with language –

in ways that would be difficult in speech. It also allows them to keep track of, and participate in,

multiple conversational threads (Herring 1999).

“Size of message buffer” refers to the number of characters the system allows in a single

message. In most email-based systems, the buffer is effectively limitless – or at least, it is larger

than practical limits on how long most people are willing to type and others are willing to read.

Many chat systems, however, impose limits on message size, and text messaging systems on

mobile telephones limit users to 160 characters per message. Condon and Cech (2001) found that

smaller buffers often mean shorter messages and different discourse organizational strategies (see

also Baron forthcoming); small buffers also increase the likelihood that language will be

structurally abbreviated (Anis 2007).

With multimedia increasingly augmenting textual online interaction, it is important to take

into account how many and what kinds of “channels of communication” a CMC system makes

available. Visual channels in addition to text include graphics (static or animated) and video;

videoconferencing systems (such as CUseeMe and audiochat; Chou 1999) provide an audio

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channel as well. Herring, Martinson, and Scheckler (2002) found that the presence and content of

video images affected the amount and gender distribution of discourse on an educational website.

Communication involving Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies such as Skype also

makes use of audio (and sometimes video) channels and could be classified as CMD using the

proposed scheme.

“Anonymous messaging”, “private messaging”, “filtering”, and “quoting” all refer here to

technological affordances of CMC systems. It is possible for users to engage in these behaviors

without any special technical means, but when such means are available, they facilitate the

behaviors, presumably making them more likely to occur. Thus, many chat systems require a user

to select a nickname that is different from his or her email address, encouraging the use of

pseudonyms and anonymous interaction (Danet 1998). Some Web-based discussion forums have

registration procedures that do not verify users’ email addresses, encouraging users to make them

up. Anonymity has been found to have important effects in online discourse, including increased

self-disclosure (Kiesler et al. 1984), antisocial behavior (Donath 1999), and play with identity

(Danet 1998).

Similarly, some chat systems (such as IRC and MUDs) have commands that enable users

to carry on private as well as public conversations, while with other systems (such as some forms

of Web chat), it is necessary to open a separate program (such as an instant messaging client) to

converse privately. Along the same lines, a user can always choose to ignore messages from

another user, but a number of CMC systems make this easier by providing technical mechanisms

to filter out such messages (known variously as “kill files”, “gag” commands, etc.). CMC systems

also differ in the extent to which they provide mechanisms to facilitate the quoting of a portion of

a previous message in a response. Some email clients provide the text of the message being

replied to in the new message, as a default. In others, one must copy and paste in the quoted

portions manually. Severinson-Eklundh (Severinson-Eklundh & Macdonald 1994; Severinson-

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Eklundh forthcoming) has observed that this can affect the extent and manner in which quoting is

used.

Finally, “message format” determines the order in which messages appear, what

information is appended automatically to each and how it is visually presented, and what happens

when the viewing window becomes filled with messages. Most CMC systems add new messages

to the bottom of a list in the order received by the system, although this is not true of blogs (which

add the newest message on the top), wikis (which allow users to choose where their content will

be inserted), or some experimental systems. Herring (1999) has observed that systems that post

messages in the order in which they are received – which is to say most chat and discussion

forums – result in disrupted turn adjacency and interleaved exchanges. The information provided

in message headers (as in email) and leaders (as in chat systems) has been found to affect online

self-reference and addressivity practices (Herring 1996; Werry 1996). Scrolling direction

determines which messages are on the “top of the deck” and hence more likely to receive a

response.

The list of medium factors in table 1 is open-ended. It is expected that some factors will be

added, others further sub-divided, and others perhaps omitted as new systems are developed and

researchers’ understanding of the effects of technological affordances on mediated communication

deepens over time.

4.3 Situation factors

Various social and situational factors have been observed to condition variation in computer-

mediated discourse (cf. Baym 1995) as in spoken discourse (cf. Hymes 1974). The set of features

summarized in table 3 incorporates elements from Hymes’ SPEAKING mnemonic (see figure 1)

and factors identified by Baym (1995), along with additional factors found in empirical CMD

research to affect online language use. As with the medium factors, this list is not presumed to be

exhaustive.

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S1 Participation structure • One-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many

• Public/private
• Degree of anonymity/pseudonymity
• Group size; number of active participants
• Amount, rate, and balance of participation

S2 Participant • Demographics: gender, age, occupation, etc.

characteristics • Proficiency: with language/computers/CMC
• Experience: with addressee/group/topic
• Role/status: in “real life”; of online personae
• Pre-existing sociocultural knowledge and
interactional norms
• Attitudes, beliefs, ideologies, and motivations

S3 Purpose • Of group, e.g., professional, social, fantasy/role-

playing, aesthetic, experimental
• Goal of interaction, e.g., get information,
negotiate consensus, develop professional/social
relationships, impress/entertain others, have fun

S4 Topic or Theme • Of group, e.g., politics, linguistics, feminism,

soap operas, sex, science fiction, South Asian
culture, medieval times, pub
• Of exchanges, e.g., the war in Iraq, pro-drop
languages, the project budget, gay sex, vacation
plans, personal information about participants,
meta-discourse about CMC

S5 Tone • Serious/playful
• Formal/casual
• Contentious/friendly
• Cooperative/sarcastic, etc.

S6 Activity • E.g., debate, job announcement, information

exchange, phatic exchange, problem solving,
exchange of insults, joking exchange, game,
theatrical performance, flirtation, virtual sex

S7 Norms • Of organization

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• Of social appropriateness
• Of language

S8 Code • Language, language variety

• Font/writing system

Table 3. Situation factors

“Participation structure” refers to the number of participants in the online communication

situation (both actual, i.e., actively participating, and potential); the amount and rate of

participation (described impressionistically or quantitatively); whether the communication is

public, semi-private, or private; the extent to which interlocutors choose to interact

anonymously/pseudonymously as opposed to in their “real life” identities11 (Myers 1987); and the

distribution of participation across individuals – i.e., whether participation is roughly evenly

distributed, or whether some individuals or groups dominate (Herring 1993). Participation

structure has implications for, among other things, politeness: public CMD tends to be less polite

than private CMD (Herring 2002), and individuals who post anonymously tend to “flame” more

than individuals who post in their offline identities (cf. Donath 1999).

“Participant characteristics” describe participants’ backgrounds, skills, and experiences, as

well as the real life knowledge, norms, and interactional patterns they bring to bear when they

engage with others online (Baym 1995). For example, participant gender has been found to affect

behavior related to politeness and contentiousness within a social MUD (Cherny 1994) in two

otherwise similar academic discussion lists (Herring 1996) and in a mostly-female Usenet

newsgroup devoted to television soap operas as compared with norms of interaction elsewhere on

Usenet (Baym 1996). Participants’ attitudes, beliefs, ideologies, and motivations relevant to their

11
This value should be assigned independently of how easy or difficult the system makes sending anonymous
messages or using pseudonyms. Assuming that the medium does not preclude such choices, this value encodes the
extent to which users in a particular discourse sample make use of them.

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online communication may also affect what they choose to communicate and how. Participants

with ideological differences may be more likely to become involved in conflict discourse, as, for

example, in Hodsdon-Champeon’s (forthcoming) study of Usenet newsgroups on the topic of

racism.

“Purpose” is potentially relevant on two levels: “Group purpose” refers in general terms to

a computer-mediated group’s official raison d’être (professional, social, etc.), while “goals of

interaction” are what individual participants hope to accomplish through any given interaction;

these need not, of course, be the same for any two individuals in the same interaction. Even when

the same technologies are used, CMD can vary according to purpose; for example, Herring and

Nix (1997) found differences in topics discussed as well as strategies for topic development in

pedagogical and social IRC.

“Activities” (similar to Hymes’ “genres”) are discursive means of pursuing interactional

goals (e.g., “flirting” as a means of developing personal relationships; “debate” as a means of

impressing others with one's intellectual acumen); each activity has associated conventional

linguistic practices that signal when that activity is taking place (cf. “contextualization cues”,

Gumperz 1982). Many studies have noted the existence of computer-mediated contextualization

cues, ranging from emoticons to user IDs (Bechar-Israeli 1995; Danet et al. 1997; Heisler &

Crabill 2006; Herring 2001), that help to signal “what is going on” in online interaction. Flaming,

or the exchange of hostile message content, also has characteristic syntactic and semantic

structures that distinguish it from other computer-mediated activity types (Spertus 1997).

“Topic” at the group level indicates, within broad parameters, what discussion content is

appropriate in that context, according to the group’s definition. Some CMC modes not conceived

as discussion forums but rather as role-playing environments, such as adventure MUDs, may have

a geographical and/or temporal “Theme” (such as a medieval village) instead of a topic. In

contrast, topic at the exchange level is what participants are actually talking about in any given

interaction; this may or may not be on the “official” topic of the group. Distinctions of topic are

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important in analyzing topical digression, which has been claimed to be a characteristic of multi-

participant text-based CMD (Herring 1999).

“Tone” refers to the manner or spirit in which discursive acts are performed (cf. Hymes’

“key”); it can be described along a number of continuous scalar dimensions, including (but not

restricted to) degree of seriousness, formality, contentiousness, and cooperation. Contentious

debaters on Usenet (Hodsdon-Champeon forthcoming) employ direct quoting of a discourse

participant differently than do participants in friendly CMD. Emoticons similarly take on different

pragmatic meanings depending on the tone of an exchange, which they may also help to establish

(Huls 2006).

“Norms” refer to conventional practices within the computer-mediated environment and

comprise three types. “Norms of organization” refer to formal or informal administrative

protocols having to do with how a group is formed (if applicable), how new members are

admitted, whether it has a leader, moderator, or other persons whose role it is to perform official

functions, how messages are distributed and stored (if this is determined by social convention

rather than by the system software), how participants who misbehave are punished, etc. “Norms

of social appropriateness” refer to the behavioral standards that normatively apply in the

computer-mediated context (cf. Hymes’ “norms of interaction”); they may be implicit or written

and publicly available, for example in the form of “netiquette” guidelines (Shea 1994) or lists of

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). Supportiveness may be expected in a women’s health

newsgroup, but rudeness may be expected and approved of in the newsgroup alt.flame, which is

devoted to flaming. “Norms of language” refer to linguistic conventions particular to a group or

users; these may include abbreviations, acronyms, insider jokes, and special discourse genres

(Baym 1995; Cherny 1999; Rowe forthcoming).

Finally, “code” refers to the language or language variety in which computer-mediated

interactions are carried out. Although English is still the most common language on the Internet,

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and most CMC research has been carried out on English data, this situation is changing rapidly as

more non-English-speaking countries gain Internet access (Danet & Herring 2007). “Language

variety” includes the dialect, and where applicable, the register of language used. The default

dialect is the standard, educated, written variety of the language, although regional, social class or

ethnic dialects may sometimes be used (Androutsopoulos & Ziegler 2004). Register refers here to

specialized sub-languages associated with conventional social roles and contexts (such as

academic discourse, psychotherapeutic discourse, teacher talk); one may also identify an

unmarked register, ordinary conversation, associated with the role of the “everyday” self. Choice

of linguistic code in multilingual computer-mediated groups has been observed to serve different

discourse functions (Androutsopoulos & Hinnenkamp 2001; Georgakopoulou forthcoming;

Paolillo 1996, forthcoming).

Relatedy, “writing system” refers to the font used and its relationship to the writing system

of the language: Does the communication make use of a font (such as ASCII text) based on the

Roman alphabet (e.g., for languages such as English, Spanish, and French); does it transliterate a

non-roman writing system (such as those of Arabic and Greek) into Roman letters/ASCII

(Berjaoui 2001; Tseliga 2007); or are special non-ASCII fonts used (such as those available for

Japanese, Chinese, and Korean) to represent a non-Roman writing system? Since the introduction

of the Unicode character encoding standard (see Danet & Herring 2007), it has become easier to

transmit a variety of languages in their native scripts via the Internet, but transliteration into

roman letters persists in some contexts, and script choice may serve different pragmatic functions

(e.g., Tseliga 2007).

Although in principle the eight situation dimensions in table 2 are independent of one

another, in practice, they tend to combine in predictable ways. This is easiest to see when the

classification scheme is applied to familiar CMC modes. For example, discourse in Internet Relay

Chat typically is many-to-many, has a high degree of anonymity (participants use pseudonyms), is

social in function and non-serious in tone, contains a high incidence of flirting and phatic (empty,

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social) exchanges, and appears to be engaged in most often by young people between the ages of

18 and 25 (Danet et al. 1997; Reid 1991; Werry 1996). In contrast, discourse in an academic

discussion list is more likely to serve professional purposes, have a serious tone, contain debates

and job announcements, and be engaged in by older, professionally established users (Grüber

1998, 2000; Herring 1992, 1996; Hert 1997). Furthermore, medium factors may correlate with

situation factors; all other things being equal, for example, synchronous CMD is more likely to be

informal in register and playful in tone than is asynchronous CMD (Herring 2001).

However, it is important to note that there are also circumstances under which these

associations do not hold. The classification scheme presented above, because it does not presume

any necessary relationships among features of situational context or between medium and

situation, allows unpredictable and unconventional associations to emerge as easily as more

typical ones. This is illustrated in the following section.

5. Sample classification
While it is beyond the scope of this article to test the proposed classification scheme formally, a

brief illustration of its application to two samples of CMD may provide a glimpse of the utility of

the scheme. One sample is from a well-known, popular source, and the other from a closed-

access, privately-developed system; both have been analyzed by the author in separate studies,

albeit not from a classification perspective.12

Both samples are exemplars of the sociotechnical mode “weblogs” (blogs), broadly

construed. Blogs have been characterized as a genre of CMC (Herring et al. 2004; Miller &

Shepherd 2004), although subtypes such as diary and filter blog have also been identified that

manifest distinct patterns of linguistic usage (Herring & Paolillo 2006). In the comparison

12
The LiveJournal data were collected as part of the project reported in Herring et al. (2007), and a preliminary
analysis of the Quest Atlantis blog data is reported in Herring, de Siqueira, Stuckey & Kouper (in review).
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described below, however, it is not sufficient to distinguish subtypes, since one sample is

relatively novel, and a single instance cannot form a type.

The first sample is from the popular blog-hosting service LiveJournal.com, which claims to

have hosted over 11.9 million blogs since its inception in 1999. The second sample is from Quest

Atlantis, a game-like online learning environment for children 9-12 years old that was developed

in 2002 by researchers at the author’s institution (Barab et al. 2005), and that has been used by

several thousand children to date, mostly in the United States, Australia, and Singapore, under the

supervision of their classroom teachers. Quest Atlantis (QA) includes blogs as one of several types

of CMC available to its young users. Specifically, our QA sample comes from a blog maintained

by a fictional Atlantian girl, Alim (in reality, an adult female QA researcher), who posts entries on

the theme of “personal agency” for children on Earth; the children post comments in response.

In order to make our samples as comparable as possible, let us consider the LJ of a young,

English-speaking woman. Moreover, although both sources make available data extending over a

period of more than two years, let us further delimit each sample to two months of continuous

activity in spring 2006. The exact time and size of the samples are not important for the purpose

of this illustration, but a multi-message sample is necessary in order to obtain a sense for how

discourse takes place typically, over time.

Not suprisingly, since both are known by the genre label “blog”, these two samples share

many medium features. These include asynchronicity (M1); 1-way message transmission (M2);

persistence of messages in archives linked from the sidebar of the blog (M3); Web-based delivery

and a tendency for messages to be text only (M5); and the display of blog entries in reverse

chronological sequence with a “comment” option below each entry (M10). These might be

considered definitional characteristics of the blog genre (see also Herring et al. 2004).

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However, the two samples have few situation variables in common, aside from a one-to-

many participation structure and imbalanced participation13 (S1), which are characteristic of blog

discourse in general (Herring et al. 2004). Holding blog author gender (S2) and use of the English

language (S8) constant does not result in any other associated similarities between the two

samples.

In contrast, differences can be observed along both the medium and the situation

dimensions. Whereas LJ allows anyone to create a blog from a made-up name (as our sample LJ

blogger has done), anonymity is impossible in the QA blogs, since all users must register through

their classroom teachers (M6). LJs are publicly available on the Web unless designated as “friends

only” (our sample is not so designated), whereas QA activity is closed to the public (M7). There

are also differences in message format (M10) – the LJ interface is more sophisticated, providing

users with more options (such as “friends” links and a “search” feature) and greater social

translucence (Erickson et al. 1999), such as an indication of the number of comments that have

been posted after each blog entry.

The number of differences in situation between the two samples is also great. Group size,

construed as the potential audience of each blog, varies widely as a consequence of the

public/private nature of each blog; rate of participation is also slower on the QA blog, and posting

rights are asymmetrical (S1) – only “Alim” can post entries. In the LJ, only the blog owner can

post in her own blog, but commenters all have their own blogs, so everyone has a chance to both

post and comment. Age, roles, previous experience, and the relationships among participants also

differ between the two samples (S2), as does the purpose of each blog (S3), its topic/theme (S5),

the tone of messages and comments (S6), and the norms of interaction and norms of language use

in LJ versus QA (S7).

13
Blog owners post more and longer messages than do visitors to the blog, who typically may only post comments on
the owner's entries.
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The LJ blogger is an experienced, adult Internet user who posts messages about her day-to-

day life to friends and strangers in a tone that aims for cleverness and sophistication, and where

the norms of interaction include profanity and sexual references. In these respects, the LJ sample

is typical of many LJ blogs (cf. Kendall 2005). The considerable contrast between these two

samples reflects QA’s young, inexperienced target audience and its educational context, which is

closely moderated by adults, and which assigns asymmetrical posting rights to adults and children.

These are not prototypical blog features, although the QA blogs recall other uses of CMC in

primary education (Robertson, Good & Pain 1998).

Clearly, simply classifying these samples as being of the blog mode or genre, while it

would capture more-or-less predictable associations for LiveJournal, would miss much about the

QA data that is interesting and important. Moreover, the LJ data also exhibit characteristic

properties that differentiate them from the blog prototype (cf. Herring et al. 2004), such as the

“'friends only” audience designation feature and “mood” indicators for entries. A faceted

classification approach is thus revealing for LJ blogs as well, and more generally, is essential (in

some form) for characterizing different blog subtypes.

6. Conclusions
As the Internet expands, it continues to spawn new varieties of discourse that call out for analysis

and classification. This article has proposed, argued for, and briefly illustrated the utility of a

faceted classification scheme for computer-mediated discourse. This scheme classifies discourse

samples in terms of clusters of variable dimensions, thereby preserving their complexity

(including overlap across samples) and allowing for focused comparisons within and across

samples.

The faceted scheme is intended to complement exisiting mode-based classification of

CMD. Mode classification is especially useful for identifying and invoking prototypical

associations of CMD data of a type that is generally known, such as email, discussion lists, and

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IRC; it also captures cultural information that cannot be predicted solely from the component

dimensions of the scheme. However, mode classification is less useful for proprietary or novel

examples of online discourse, such as the Quest Atlantis blogs or the quasi-synchronous “Babble”

chat system developed by Erickson et al. (1999), which do not evoke prototypical associations

except in the minds of users who happen to know the systems. Faceted classification is more

useful for characterizing CMD in such cases.

At the same time, the classification scheme presented here has several limitations. First, it

can seem verbose (a “list” of terms) and difficult to condense due to its relatively non-hierarchical

(“flat”) structure. Selective classification, following the analytico-synthetic principle of

Ranganathan (1933), in which only the most important features of a data set (as determined by the

goals of the research) are selected for characterization, is recommended to help address this

problem.

A second limitation is that the scheme is based primarily on research findings for textual

CMC. It is important, but ultimately not sufficient, to note that multimedia CMC makes use of

multiple channels of communication. Mobile and voice-over-IP communication raise additional

classificatory challenges. What are the criteria for identifying types of multiplayer online game

discourse, for example? What are the relevant dimensions that condition variation in video- and

audio-mediated communication? What about in CMD where participants can speak, text chat, and

manipulate a common interface (such as a whiteboard) at the same time? It will be essential to

address these challenges in future CMC classification research.

A more general limitation is that the scheme is not in itself a contribution to a theory of

genre, but is rather a preliminary aggregation of factors that will have to find a place in a theory

of CMD genres. Theoretical questions remain to be addressed concerning the organization and

relationships among the features of the scheme. Conversely, it is conceivable that empirical

investigation of feature co-occurrence patterns based on this descriptive scheme could lead to the

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identification of a smaller set of CMC prototypes. If so, these could be compared with genres

already posited for Internet communication (cf. Giltrow & Stein in preparation), lending them an

empirical underpinning. Investigation of this possibility and theoretical development of the scheme

itself are desiderata for future research.

Finally, Hymes cautions that “an ‘etic’ account, however useful as a preliminary grid and

input to an emic (structural) account, or as a framework for comparing different emic accounts,

lacks the emic account’s validity” (1974: 11). Simple descriptive classification should be

supplemented by ethnographic observation of online discourse communities over time, and should

ideally be validated by members of those communities, in order to provide the richest possible

context for the analysis of computer-mediated discourse.

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