To Tell or Not to Tell? Email Stories Between On- and Offline Interactions

Abstract

The point of departure for this study are recent language-in-use (cf. discourse) approaches to computer-mediated communication that recognize the plurality of its activities and seek to explore their interrelations with their local (i.e., mediated, situational) and broader (sociocultural) contexts of occurrence (see, e.g., Baym, 1995, 2000; Cherny, 1999; Danet, 2001a; papers in Herring, 1997, forthcoming). The study introduces two relatively uncharted foci of analysis, namely the activity under scrutiny (narrative in private email messages) and the profile of the email senders and receivers (Greeks who live in England). Departing from the well-documented frequency and salience of storytelling in informal face-to-face communication amongst Greeks, the questions that this study sets out to address are as follows: a) How are stories introduced, judged to be tellable, told, and taken up (i.e., responded to, followed up) in this context? b) What kinds of subjectivity does the telling of stories in this context afford? What sorts of channels for the participants’ construction of cultural identities does it provide?

It will be shown that the kinds of stories that are introduced or told are presented as part of a trajectory of previous and future on- and offline interactions, rather than as free-standing, finished and self-contained units. Five distinct types of such “ongoing narratives” will be identified: (bids for) stories to be told, breaking news, references, updates, and projections. Their telling is elliptical and fragmented, but emphasis is placed on the evaluation of the events reported. This is not only interactionally drafted but also highlighted with the use of various means, particularly switches to English. Finally, it will be argued that the stories’ point (both as newsworthiness of reported events and as norms of what is tellable) and the use of the two languages (Greek-English) for their evaluation made the participants’ contact identities and shared cultural understandings operative and relevant.

The implications of these findings will be addressed on the interface between aspects of the mediated context and the participants’ cultural identities and intimate relationships, particularly as these are shaped vis-à-vis the competing requirements of brevity/asynchronicity and interactivity/tellability.