Paper that appeared in Electronic Journal of Communication, summer 1995. Author's address is now arnicas@gmail.com. Site: http://www.ghostweather.com/papers/. THE MODAL COMPLEXITY OF SPEECH EVENTS IN A SOCIAL MUD Lynn Cherny Stanford University Abstract. The availability of the emote modality, combined with social responses to object and room-persistence in MUDs, creates a more structured and flexible communication environment than is found in other single modality chat programs. The emote command is used for ritual greetings and goodbyes, for back channels during conversations, for play interactions, for reports of activity in "real life" which might distract a user from the conversation, and for presentation of background information during conversations. I discuss the status of emoted actions as speech acts, and how their interpretation depends on frame of reference within the virtual world and the real world. 1. The Site There is a growing literature about social phenomena in text-based virtual realities, or MUDs ("multi-user dimensions"); for instance, Curtis (1992), Reid (1994), Bruckman (1992), Dibbell (1993), Cherny (1994a, 1994b), Kendall (1995), McRae (1995). This literature has explored how users gender-swap, role play, build communities and support groups, punish violators of emergent social norms, indulge sexual fantasies where bodies are discursive constructions, and often reinforce gender norms in subtle ways interactionally. This paper takes this literature as background, and examines in detail how a community functions in text. In particular, I investigate the categories of "action" that have evolved to delimit and communicate availability, interest, and attention in conversation, provide opportunity for collaborative play, and open up multiple frames of reference in the MUD and "in real life." My discussion is based on discourses gathered as a participant-observer on a MOO (object-oriented MUD) over 11 months. Some of my comments or conclusions may apply to conversation in other social MUDs, but for the most part, my observations will be specific to a group of well-practiced users in a particular speech community (Gumperz, 1972). The names of the MUD and its participants have been changed in this paper to protect their privacy. My data were collected during ethnographic observation of a community called ElseMOO.[1] The virtual geography is modelled after a real house and the surrounding town in Minnesota. This community has a population of about 30 to 40 fairly regular users, with a core population of about 20. The median age is 22.5; the gender ratio is about a third female to two-thirds male. "In real life" the users are mostly students, many in computer science, and others are computer professionals or in network related fields like information technology. The regulars are geographically scattered around North America, with a few in the U.K. and Australia; there are concentrations of regulars in Seattle and Boston. The original founders and many of their MOOing friends started in Minnesota, but most have since moved to Boston for school or work, joining other regulars there. Since most mudders are regulars on more than one MUD, it helps to understand the relationship between the population on EM and those on a few other MUDs. The EM population is historically related to the populations of LambdaMOO (Dibbell, 1993; Curtis, 1993), DeepSeasMUSH, and InfoPark. The majority of the users of EM also have characters on LambdaMOO, and often multi-MUD (splitting their connection window between the two MOOs) in order to talk about politics on LM with friends on EM. Several of the wizards from LM are regulars on EM. There are also several core regulars who frequent DSM, a historically significant MUD with a community that dates back to the original MUDs in the U.S. in the late eighties. Most of the regulars on EM have been mudding for at least a year, and in many cases, as long as four years, hence their overlap with the DSM crowd. InfoPark (Evard, 1993) is a MUD for system administrators at Northeastern University, which several members of EM work on. The administrator of IP believes that there has been significant flow of communicative conventions and culture between IP and EM. The same is certainly true between EM and LambdaMOO and DSM. Membership in multiple communities renders the conventions in one MUD community more likely to hold for other, related, MUD communities as well. For a researcher interested in conversation and community formation in MUDs, there are several attractive qualities to the EM community. The users are well-practiced at MUD conversation, spending several hours every day online, often while working. The community views the MUD as an extension of real life, rather than an escape from it: they make efforts to meet one another in real life, they talk on the phone, and many make available their real names and email addresses in their character information. They do not gender switch or role play in their MUD personas. Finally, the community was formed as a place for hacking on networking and virtual reality, as well as socializing; the users have a heavy investment in the technology and many hope to put it to use in their professional lives. Although the MUD exists external to their work contexts, professional work is accomplished on it; many users report that it is a great place to find answers to technical problems or to come for design discussions. EM is therefore interesting as a proto computer-supported cooperative work environment, as well. 2. Communication Commands There are two main modes of communication in MUDs, the "say" and the "emote," plus various programmatic ways of producing communicative output that resembles them. A user (me, with character lynn, in this case) can "say" something by typing at her prompt: >"hi there. and the output in the virtual room she occupies will be: lynn says, "hi there." She may also direct her "say" to another character, to make it unambiguous who she is responding to in a multi-threaded conversation in a crowded room. >`Tom how are you? lynn [to Tom]: how are you? The other main mode of communication is the "emote," which allows body language or other forms of narration. For instance, using the emote command or its shorter abbreviation ":", I can perform an action: >:scratches her head. lynn scratches her head. Emotes may also be used in other ways: for example, to reflect states of mind or belief, as an alternative to a "say." >:wonders where that book went that she loaned paul. lynn wonders where that book went that she loaned paul. Conversation can also take place "long-distance" between characters who are not in the same room. Analogs of the "say" and emote commands are available for long-distance communication. If paul is in another room, I can page him (line 1) or "remote-emote" (line 4). 1 >page paul how's it going? 2 Your message has been sent to paul. 3 paul pages, "not bad, you?" 4 >+paul grins. 5 (to paul) lynn grins. 6 (from the sunroom) paul grins too. No one but me sees his answering page in line 3. Likewise with his remote-emote response to me (showing which room he occupies) in line 6. To simplify examples in this paper, I have removed my prompt line from the logs unless the command I typed was a page. A table of command types is shown in Table 1. ========================================================== Table 1. Summary of Communication Command Types Command Example Public? ---------------------------------------------------------- Say lynn says, "hi" Yes Emote lynn waves. Yes Page >page paul hi No paul pages, "hi" Remote-emote (from the sunroom) paul grins. No (to Tom) lynn hugs. ========================================================== Sometimes communication also involves programmed functions that can be called by users. The programs are commands (known as "verbs") which are either globally available anywhere or reside on objects in the MOO, like a chair or a dictionary. The "Antisocial Commands" are examples of global commands accessible to anyone anywhere in EM. These commands are records of in-jokes in the community, or useful ritual phrases that communicate affect responses in conversation. For instance, if I want to communicate that I think someone is behaving oddly, I may "eye" them "warily" using an Antisocial verb: 1 >eye tom 2 lynn eyes Tom warily. As shown in line 1, I type the Antisocial verb, followed by the name of the person I want to "aim" it at, and the message shown in line 2 is seen by the occupants of the room I am in. I could also type line 2 as an emote, clearly, but the verb provides a shorthand input form. Objects frequently have commands on them that output some information to the room they occupy when someone interacts with them. For instance, if I want to sit on a chair: >sit on chair lynn sits on the folding chair. Objects may only be interacted with by a user in the same room as the object. The Antisocial Commands, and the Carpal Tunnel Syndrome commands I will discuss below, are available anywhere. The output from interactions with both objects and the command set verbs most often appears as if it were an emoted action. The flexibility of the emote, which is not available in many other chat programs, makes the form of communication in social MUDs particularly complex. A variation on the emote is in fact available in Internet Relay Chat (apparently added since Reid, 1991), but IRC does not have perseverative objects and geography (Danet, Ruedenberg, & Rosenbaum-Tamari, 1994; Holmes & Dishman, 1994). The emote command in IRC also differs from the emote in MUDs in that it is not parallel to the "say" utterance in IRC; it requires extra typing to label an utterance as an action, while in MUDs the two require the same effort. The emote, combined with the social responses to objects and geography, allows for a complex user culture on MUDs. In an indirect argument to support this claim, I will suggest in section 4 that page conversations, which do not observe room boundaries, are different from conversations respecting room boundaries (the virtual version of face-to-face) because of this emergent user culture. Various uses of emotes in conversation play the major role in this account. 3. Types of Emotes I divide emote types into five broad categories which are substantive in terms of their role in determining content and structure of conversations. I provide a summary table for the five here: =========================================================== Table 2. Summary of Emote Types Emote Type Section Tense Example ----------------------------------------------------------- Conventional Action 3.1 present lynn waves. Back Channels 3.2 present lynn nods. Byplay 3.3 present Mike pastes Tom's lips... Narration 3.4 present ls packs for his trip. Exposition 3.5 any lynn hated the film. =========================================================== The first type consists of conventionalized "actions" like waving when entering a room, poking someone to get their attention, blinking to announce that one is "awake" in the room again after a period of idleness. The second type are reactions during conversation that communicate continued attention or understanding, similar to "back channels" in face-to-face speech, like "lynn nods" or "lynn grins." The third type comprises the joking by-play during conversation, usually meta-discourse commentary, like "Shelley hands some prepositions to Jon." The fourth type includes emotes describing actions occurring in real life, as a kind of narrative commentary; these often explain periods of idleness. Unlike the first four types described, which all occur in simple present tense, the fifth type are emotes of internal or factual background, in which the tense may shift from the simple present to another tense. These may represent states of mind, for instance: "lynn hated the film." There are two other sorts of emote, which are closer to the "says" than the other emote types described above. I will mention these here and then not return to them, because they are more indicative of play with modality than content. In the first of these, a verb is formed out of potential quoted material: e.g., instead of "Tom says, `cool'" Tom expresses it as "Tom cools." These verb-creations are usually derived from short, frequently produced utterances, like "uh oh," or "oh"; but there are occasional examples of longer utterances (this was collected for me by a user who found it odd herself): Pete actuallies, calls NES once he gets contact info from johnf The "say" gloss of this one might be something like: "Pete says, `actually, i'll call NES once i get contact info from johnf.'" (Note the use of the simple present tense "calls" for future intention. I will return to this phenomenon in section 5.) In another type of modality play, an exclamatory utterance surfaces as an emote, but untensed, e.g., "Karen eep." This is probably intended to suggest urgency or fast emotional response. Tom incidentally has probably broken `home' for people who live underground. Karen eep ******* Tom aieee as he discovers how the secret tunnels connect to ken's tree Tom's "aieee" above simulates a wailing or screaming sound of distress. (Interestingly, I have only one case of "aieee" appearing with the tense morpheme on it versus dozens of untensed examples, which I would suggest is because the exclamatory force is weakened by tensing it; however, addition of complex modifiers apparently doesn't have that effect, as indicated by the above example. I do find occasional examples of it as a say: "Mike says, `aieee.'") These two types of emote represent variation in the choice of modality, which appears to be systematically meaningful for the community. I will now discuss the other five types in more detail. 3.1 Conventionalized Action The first sort of emote I will consider is the class of what I call "conventionalized" or "ritual" actions. As will become clear, they are actions that are classifiable loosely as conversation openers or closings (Schegloff, 1982). This category includes ritual greetings, like "hugging" or "waving" to someone when they enter the room or leave, "poking" someone to get their attention, "idling" when one is leaving one's terminal and not able to participate in conversation, "blinking" or "waking" when one returns to the MUD window and becomes active again. I will focus mainly on the greeting and goodbye uses in detail, since they are used most systematically. I will also expand my discussion to synonymous "say" greetings for completeness' sake. Examples of greeting waves follow. Bonny wanders in from the eastern path through the parsley trees. lynn waves bonny Bonny waves. Tom says, "this maroon shirt frightens me" Karen waves. Satire is one of the best ways of finding out what a community recognizes as conventional behaviors or categories. George, one of the characters on EM, wrote satiric regulations about proper etiquette in certain situations. These regulations are considered satiric because they are exaggerated prescriptions of behavior that has evolved over time. No user is expected to follow the regulations as stated. Below is a script of me reading a note containing his parody of departure and arrival rituals (note that although reasons for departures are polite if you are active in the conversation, they are not always given; and there is no even close approximation to the points under Leaving:2): >read 2131.g There appears to be some writing on the note ... Leaving: 1) Say goodbye and/or wave. A reason why is optional. 2) Wait for at least 2 members of the social setting to acknoledge that you are leaving or 5 mins. 3) Leave. Entering: 1) Wave 2) Say hello or hi (optional) See Regulation 2131.GO for information about saying goodbye or greeting people entering the social setting. (You finish reading.) (The "read" command typed at the ">" in the example above is the command that prints the text on the note called "2131.g" to my screen. No other user sees the text when I "read" the note. The parenthesized "You finish reading." alerts me that the output has stopped from the note object.) 3.1.1 Contexts for Conversation. The importance of such conventional actions for the community should not be underestimated. They help define and structure interactions, particularly at the limits. They serve as signallers of contexts for potential conversations. Examination of greeting waves or other forms of greeting reveals complex attitudes towards the "geography" and idle behaviors. The majority of entrances to rooms on EM are accompanied by a wave or some greeting from the enterer to the room's occupants, and then usually by some reciprocal greeting to the enterer from the active occupants. Although statistics are of only limited use when behavior is complex and situated in a natural context rather than a controlled laboratory setting, I present a few numbers to illustrate the point. In two days (16 hours) of logs, out of 71 cases of characters entering a room I was in, in 54 of the cases (76%) the entering character issued a greeting, while in 17 cases she/he issued no greeting upon entry. (I only considered cases of regular community members who know the conventions in this investigation.) Cases in which no wave or hello is issued upon arrival can either be dismissed as simply "rude" or examined to find a deeper organizing principle behind the use of greetings (see Schegloff, 1968, for an example of this strategy, examining cases of unusual speaker order in phone greeting sequences). I will attempt the latter, situating the actions in their contexts. In a large sense, connecting to the MOO means entering a potential conversational context. Since many people use login watchers, which alert them to connections and disconnections, the possibility exists for greetings upon connection rather than just upon entry to a room. (The login watcher is perhaps parallel with a ringing phone in Schegloff, 1968, although the login watcher amounts to just an announcement of presence; generally, though, greetings in MOO differ from phone greetings in that no identification of the person "calling" is necessary, since the name is trivially available. This situation parallels some examples mentioned in Tang et. al., 1994, where caller id was available, and greetings reduced to "Hi, Ellen" from "Hi, this is Bob," for instance). Greetings that do occur immediately upon connection happen in long-distance pages (since few people gather in the room that serves as connection point). The possibility of long-distance communication expands the notion of conversational context beyond the room one is in; as a result, the borders of conversations are more flexible, and this fact may explain deviation from the standard greeting upon entry to a room. An example of greeting immediately on connection follows. The first line was printed by the login watcher. After seeing the connection information, I paged hello at the > prompt and received a hello in response. Penfold then joined the party, but did not repeat a greeting. < connected: Penfold (#83) on Mon at 20:37. On-line: 27. > Tom dunno yet, is looking. >page penfold hi. Your message has been sent to Penfold. [at 8:38 p.m.]: Tom says, "his ongoing problem, he's now blaming Delta for it?" lynn says, "what prob?" Tom says, "he had a dispute with maryanne" Tom says, "the fish was selected to mediate" lynn says, "oh that, yeah." Tom Traceback says, "he was also mloses" [at 8:39 p.m.]: Penfold pages, "hi." Tom doesn't think he likes facial hair. Penfold arrives from the eastern end of the patio. Tom says, "except penfold's" Tom eyes himself warily. In fact, in several cases, joiners who didn't greet seemed to be involved in paged conversations with subsets of the group before joining them. The general greeting on entry to the room would have been somewhat redundant. Other cases of non-greeters appeared to be people who were not intending to participate, just intending to idle in the midst of a group. A few others were cases of people who had joined other groups before, and greeted people there; perhaps they felt that an initial greeting to people upon arriving at the MOO was enough for the day. Overlap in the participants between the different groups probably was a factor as well. (Note that in ``real life'' it also becomes awkward to repeat hellos to people one has already greeted, in subsequent meetings.) 3.1.2 Departures as Closure. A close look at departures supports some of the basic conclusions above about conversational contexts. I showed above that some people view connection as an opportunity for greeting, even across room boundaries, which ordinarily define the contexts for conversations. Disconnection in a room counts as a departure from conversation, and hence may require a goodbye, as the following departure from Shawn shows: Karen eeep a spider Tom eek a mouse Shawn [to Karen]: mmm nice juicy spiders lynn [to Karen]: keep it away from me.... Tom says, "why are wohwait" Shawn bye [at 9:41 p.m.] Shawn has disconnected. However, not all disconnections are preceded by goodbyes or waves; long idle folks may just disconnect suddenly, may be kicked off by their machines logging them out after a certain idle period, or bounced off by call-waiting seizing their phone line. When active people leave a room with no wave or bye or statement of intent to go, it is generally seen as odd (often on EM, the departing character will be "eyed warily," signaling unease); but if someone relatively idle walks out or disconnects without any warning, it is not so unusual. The reaction to the departure is dependent on the conversational involvement of the person. =========================================================== Table 3. Departure Events in 16 Hours Departures with goodbye from the departing 23 Departures with no goodbye from the departing 16 ------------------------------------------------ Total departure events 39 =========================================================== Note that nearly half (16 out of 39) the leaving events (of which 9 were disconnections) are not preceded by a goodbye from the person leaving. This contrasts with the situation for arrivals, where 76% greeted on entry; idling habits or connection problems appear to be the reason for the disparity. Of the 16 who left with no goodbye, 10 were idle for at least 5 minutes before their departure. One or two others appeared to be having connection problems. Three cases of departure from the room when less than a minute idle appear to be instances of people trying to avoid "spammy" (noisy) crowds; in two of those cases, paged conversation continued with them after they left, indicating that the conversation they were involved in was not concluded by their departure. Another one left quickly to get something from an adjacent room and returned immediately--with no goodbye or hello at each juncture, probably because his participation was merely suspended momentarily. Out of the idlers, one entered without a greeting and idled the entire time he was present in the room, then left the room with no goodbye; his lack of entrance hello may have been an indication of his intent to just idle in the room. Leaving or joining a group normally requires an active (non-idle) human agency which is expected to conform to social norms when entering a conversational context. Social norms usually involve greetings and closures. On the MUD, events are flexible, however. Disregarding those norms, by entering or leaving without appropriate greetings or goodbyes, may signal a lack of interest in participating in the conversation (and hence an interest in idling). The option of long-distance paged greetings expands the conversational context from the room to the entire MUD, and makes the lack of greetings upon entry to a room also a viable social option. Technical concerns like connection problems may also excuse or explain flouting of the norms. In her discussion of computer messaging, Murray (1989) suggests that closings don't occur in her data because other media take precendence over the computer conversation, neither party has anything new to contribute to the topic, or the initial reason for opening conversation has been resolved. Phone interruptions or someone entering an office can cause silence, and lack of proper closings. While silence does result from interruptions in MUD conversations, it's not appropriate to say that the other media take precedence, precisely; generally someone interrupted ``in real life'' returns to the MUD conversation afterwards. Lack of new information as a reason for concluding conversation presupposes a very different, purely task-oriented use of the medium, which is not true for the community on the MOO I observe. People in EM are in a social context, occasionally having technical, task-oriented conversations there; the social framework is not forgotten when the task is concluded, however. Clearly, the motivation for use of a communications medium has a large role to play in the way it is used, and the results in Murray (1989) do not carry across to MUD interactions. 3.2 Back Channel Reactions During Conversation The second class of emoted utterances consists of simulated "back channels" during conversation, like "lynn nods," "lynn giggles." Again, I will also consider synonymous say utterances in this discussion. Gumperz (1982) claims that back channels represent "one common way in which conversational cooperation is communicated and monitored," and may include nods or other body movements, or interjections like "ok," "aha," "right." Back channels, which include the class of "confirmation feedback" discussed in Oviatt and Cohen (1988), are important for determining the attention state of an interlocutor, and establishing whether speaker intentions have been understood. In a text-based medium where no physical cues are available, and interlocutors may be called away from their desk or terminal at any moment, these are particularly important; back channel emotes therefore play a large role in establishing achievement of mutual understanding and facilitating a sense of co-presence. Note that their existence contradicts assumptions by early computer-mediated communication researchers that the limited channel resulted in reduced sense of social presence (Short, Williams, and Christie, 1976) or in less feedback (Daft & Lengel, 1984, 1986). Users adapt to the medium or adapt the medium to their use, as suggested by other CMC researchers (Hiltz & Turoff, 1981; Walther, 1992). Examples of back channel use in a conversation occur in lines 3, 9, and 13 below. (Conventional expressions of puzzlement, which are actually examples of repair, as in line 9, provide information about the status of mutual understanding, so I include them in the class under consideration here.) 1 Tom says, "only in look self" 2 Karen says, "cool" 3 Karen nods. 4 Karen thot so, but 5 Karen says, "oh" 6 Karen says, "there was another reason" 7 Karen sigsh 8 Karen wanted name j---- jdesc 9 Tom says, "huh" 10 Karen 11 ----- --Karen 12 Karen's description 13 Tom nods. 14 Karen says, "now i can't" In this example, Karen is trying to describe how she wants some text to be laid out: lines 10-12 are her attempt to graphically represent the fields she wants, which consist of a name, a line of hyphens, and a description underneath it. Evidence for the importance of these utterances can be found in the fact that many of them have been translated into "verbs," which can be typed at the prompt, for ease of production. For instance, the "Carpal Tunnel Syndrome" set of commands includes "gg" which outputs "lynn giggles" (if typed by me), "nd" for "lynn nods," "h" for "lynn hehs" (a simulation of laughter), "gr" for "lynn grins," "si" for "lynn sighs," "sm" for "lynn smiles," "/" for "lynn says, `?'" (which approximates a questioning look, according to users' interpretations). (Other commands in the CTS set include "waves" and "whuggles" which fit into the first category of emotes discussed. See Cherny, 1994a, for a discussion of whuggling.)[2] The definition of a "back channel" in the literature is vague; Duncan (1973) suggests that the difference between turn and back channel becomes uncertain when restatements of speaker position or requests for clarification are considered. I therefore focus on a closed class of short utterances and "actions" which seem to fulfil the definition in Gumperz (1982), plus allowing in conventional expressions of hearer confusion. Rather than arbitrarily exclude says that apparently function the way these emoted responses do, I expand my focus to include some say responses like "yeah" or "yes" or "ok." I did pattern matching in two-person conversations for the back channels "nods," "hsm," "hmm," "hrm," "ok," "oh," "yeah," "yes," "?," "giggles," "laughs," "grins," "smiles," and "hehs," which are conventional responses of either puzzlement, understanding, or appreciation for an interlocutor's remarks. =========================================================== Table 4. Back Channels Against Utterance Rate Tom: time point utts words/utts lynn's back channels -------------------------------------------------------- 10 35 6.8 5 20 74 7.4 4 31 52 7.5 0 43 28 4.8 4 53 33 8.1 5 64 39 6.3 1 78 22 7.1 6 88 29 6.2 2 98 44 6.0 1 lynn: time point utts words/utts Tom's back channels -------------------------------------------------------- 10 37 11.4 12 20 49 10.1 5 31 28 5.4 5 43 17 7.8 4 53 24 5.0 5 64 26 6.3 1 78 20 6.2 7 88 32 7.2 5 98 24 6.6 0 ============================================================ Table 4 illustrates two halves of the course of one long conversation within a single room on June 20, 1994. The left column corresponds to time points within the conversation. The "utts" column shows the number of utterances in each time period by speaker, since the last time period. The third column, "words/utts," gives a measure of the rate of speech, the number of words in the time period divided by the number of utterances in the time period. The numbers in the last column correspond to the number of back channels received in each time period from the interlocutor. (I.e., the table of Tom's utterances has lynn's back channels in it.) Periods with low utterance counts for both conversants (43 minutes, 78 minutes) nevertheless show the presence of several back channels. If back channels were only functioning as an indicator of comprehension of a speaker's plans (as, for example, the treatment of some clue words in Grosz & Sidner, 1986, implies) or of completion of a discourse structure (Schegloff, 1982), there should be fewer back channels during periods with little interaction. The appearance of these signals in such periods probably indicates that a potential interlocutor is attending and may be available for more extended conversation. The conversants are in a "continual state of incipient conversation" (Schegloff & Sacks, 1972), analogous to that achieved by the two-party situations Goffman (1963) describes: "communication arrangements that seem to lie halfway between mere copresence and full-scale co-participation." In the following excerpt from the period around 43 minutes, the conversation has trickled off the previous topic which was a somewhat tense one, and the interlocutors are registering their continued alertness, even while they document their actions in real life. In lines 1-2, I illustrate that I am reading email in another window, and paste a section from one message. After a desultory exchange on that topic, Tom begins playing with names in thought bubbles (lines 7-9) and then reports singing, a common practice while listening to music and mudding at the same time. I respond with back channel responses in lines 12 and 14, indicating I am still alert, before making another desultory conversation attempt in line 15. 1 lynn sees OJ all over the popcult list, of course. 2 --------------------------------lynn----------- In any case, thanks to OJ, Al, and the LA chopper teams and reporters for providing all of us cult studs folx with yet another a perfect Baudrillardian moment... --------------------------- lynn stops pasting -- Done @pasting. 3 Tom says, "al?" 4 lynn dunno. 5 lynn says, "media coverage somehow." 6 Tom says, "ah" 7 Tom . o O ( oj et al ) 8 Tom . o O ( woj simpson ) 9 Tom . o O ( homer j simpson ) 10 Tom [sings]: who throwed lye on my dog? 11 Tom wonders if he could fall asleep. 12 lynn says, "hmm. go home and sleep." 13 Tom is home. 14 lynn says, "oh." 15 lynn says, "I wonder why I keep dreaming about food." The context-sensitive nature of back channel interpretation (which I can hardly do justice to here; see, e.g., Heritage, 1984; Cherny, 1995) is supported by the distribution of back channels during periods of rapid conversation: the number of back channels given by speaker A to an interlocutor B increases when B's number of utterances increases, but stays low if A's utterance rate increases in parallel (see times 21 minutes and 63 minutes on Table 4). The parallel rates of increase suggest that the back channels' confirmatory function (or indication of attention) is being fulfilled by other utterances which more complexly express comprehension and attention. 3.3 Emoted Byplay These emotes of action usually occur in a multi-party, joking context. They serve a similar function to the back channels described above, in that they signal attention to conversation, but they may involve other characters in a more phatic, often teasing manner. Sometimes the imagery is quite violent, or unrealistic (e.g., "Karen detonates a low yield nuclear device over Penfold"), but it is understood to be just play, given the conversational context in which it occurs (see Cherny, 1994a). The overall impression these actions give is of a cartoonish unreality, a rubberness of boundaries.[3] An example occurs in line 3 below: 1 Tom says, "....can you speak, Mikey, without paste?" 2 Kit [to Tom]: EAT MY PASTE 3 Mike pastes Tom's lips together. Play in the MOO is a highly cooperative behavior, usually happening during multi-party conversation and often triggered by or directed at objects in the environment. Objects and their modes for interaction form a partial conversational context, which distinguishes MUDs from IRC or other chat environments (Holmes & Dishman, 1994; Danet et al., 1994; Evard, 1993). Interactions with objects in conversation may consist of interactions with "verbs" (MOO code) on objects in the room, references to objects in the MUD room without use of coded verbs on the objects, or references to imaginary objects conjured during the discourse (including bodies). The real world may also be referred to in a joking manner during conversation. I discuss examples of each type in the sections below. 3.3.1 Interactions with Coded Objects. Objects serve as a record or embodiment of history, giving a permanence to some events. Stories are associated with some objects: their reason for creation, their origin on other MUDs, their original author. The high5ing glove on EM is a copy of an object made by the character lew on a historically significant MUD (DreamScape). The glove is used in a congratulatory fashion. Here, Mike uses it in lines 4-7 because Henry comes up with a clever name transformation to apply to Mike (the copyright notices were attached when it was copied by a character on EM, with lew's permission): 1 Mike takes a AI from his chest and turns Henry into a hairy! 2 Henry takes a FA from his chest and turns Mike into a fake! 3 Delak takes a GA from his chest and turns Finder into a gander! 4 Mike picks up the the special high-fiving glove and slips it onto his hand. (c) 1992 lew industries. 5 Mike leaps up into the air and high5s Henry with a resounding >THWACK<. 6 The high-fiving glove on Mike's hand glows gently for a moment, then returns to normal. (c) 1992, lew industries. 7 Mike suddenly flings a large glove to the ground and shouts, "I CHALLENGE YOU, BENJAMIN J. TOAD!" You nod your head in solemn approval. (c) 1992, lew industries. The entire interaction, from picking up the glove to flinging it down, is a coded script on the object, which is output to the room by typing a short command ("high5 with glove"). The vase in the EM living room dates back to another historic joke from ChaosMUD, in which a vase object transmitted everything said in the main party spot into another room. Apparently the original joking line for the vase worked like this: thelfar speaks into the vase. "lew suspects." It evolved into a message referring to agents, possibly because of a later joke on DreamScape (a MUD frequented by the same crowd that hangs out on DeepSeasMUSH now). Now, on EM, discussion of agents in the living room is likely to cause someone to type the command "identify to vase," resulting in the output message visible to all in line 8 below: 1 Mike says, "which one?" 2 lynn highly recommends it for a giggle. 3 lynn [to Mike]: "What's An Agent, Anyway?" 4 Kit walks in from the sunroom. 5 Shelley waveys Kit 6 Ted | lynn [to Mike]: "What's An Agent, Anyway?" 7 Ted | Kit walks in from the sunroom. 8 Ted whispers into the vase, "I think Kit is an agent." (In lines 6 and 7, the vertical bar represents a "paste," indicating that Ted is quoting the previous lines 3 and 4. He does this to motivate his action in line 8.) 3.3.2 Interactions with Uncoded Objects. The dual identify of character as user and character as object to be played with is source of many joking exchanges (see Cherny, 1994b). Several commands on EM produce a random list of characters and other objects in their output; for instance, if I typed the right command, people in the room with me might see a (nonsense) output utterance like the following: lynn thinks we should have some kind of INTELLIGENCE TEST to get in here so people like Tom, the Library Browser, the Last Exit For The Lost, and the Generic Combination Lock can't BLUNDER ALONG and BOTHER ALL OF US AGAIN. ("The Library Browser," "the Last Exit for The Lost," and "the Generic Combination Lock" are objects in the MOO, randomly picked to parallel the name I gave to the command I typed.) Objects in the environment which cannot be interacted with via code on them can nevertheless feature in group play. Often they are targeted with the Antisocial commands, which record community in-jokes with amusing (often graphic) utterances. One day's humor revolved around vilifying the trees someone had put in the park. Most of the actions or quotes directed to the trees originated from the Antisocial commands (some of which were invoked by me at the prompt, e.g., "shake" in line 12). 1 Jon stands up from the tree stump. 2 Jon [to the trees]: Come to Perkins! 3 Jon [to a tree]: Come to Perkins! 4 Jon giggles 5 >!The trees groan and pull their roots out of the ground; they advance on Jon threateningly. 6 The trees groan and pull their roots out of the ground; they advance on Jon threateningly... --lynn 7 >eye me 8 lynn eyes herself warily. 9 Ray giggles 10 Ray nails a tree down. 11 Jon detonates a low yield nuclear device over a tree. 12 >shake trees 13 lynn shakes the trees. 14 Ray spraypaints "WAKE UP" on a tree in dayglo orange. 15 Ray giggles 16 Jon takes off and nukes a tree from orbit. "It's the only way to be sure." (In line 5, I "spoofed" the behavior of the trees, which resulted in the line shown in 6, with my name appended as the "author" of the spoof. Spoofs allow production of utterances that don't begin with the author's character name. They are ordinarily used in playful interactions.) 3.3.3 Interactions with Imaginary Objects. Contextual suggestions may briefly evoke imaginary objects in the discourse, producing a cartoon-like atmosphere at times. The play with these unreal objects is often collaborative, like in this case, where Marie responds to the gift of imaginary flowers: Marie [to Patrick]: caller is "this" from the calling verb. You sure you want caller and not caller perms? Patrick ose! Patrick duhs. [at 2:49 P.M.]: Patrick YAYS. [at 2:50 P.M.]: Patrick pulls a handful of roses out of the air and presents them to Marie in appreciation of her help. Patrick feel st00pi, to. Patrick kicks his silly S1 keyboard. [at 2:51 P.M.]: Patrick [to Marie]: thanks. Marie stops and smells the roses. It is out of the ordinary for characters to indulge in extended, solitary interactions with imaginary objects, as occurred in this example, when a guest on the MOO enacted a biker persona fantasy at length. The Canadian guest lights smoke: Tom eyes the Canadian guest warily. lynn backs away from smoking. [at 2:10 P.M.]: Karen too! Karen is allergic The Canadian guest removes whisky bottle from pocket and takes a long hit: The Canadian guest throws smoke out window and returns bottle to pocket: Robin says, "hey how was the brunch thingy?" [at 2:11 P.M.]: Tom [to Robin]: ask carrot The Canadian guest runs hands threw greay hair: Robin [to Tom]: okay. [at 2:12 P.M.]: Karen whispers to lynn, "what a dea guest" Robin [to lynn]: gil is pretty normal... Karen whispers to lynn, "what a dear guest, that is" The Canadian guest removes biker jacket: Tom [to the Canadian guest]: out of curiosity, why are you using : to end sentences? Karen too Tom! Karen was just typing it lynn grins. The Canadian guest drops jacket on floor Robin hehs. [at 2:13 P.M.]: Tom says, "what floor?" Karen [to Canadian guest]: did you notice we're in a ditch? The Canadian guest bottle in jacket breaks Karen says, "there's no floor or window" Tom eyes the Canadian guest warily. lynn eyes the Canadian guest warily. Robin peers at the Canadian guest suspiciously. The Canadian guest says, "when you drink and smoke as much as me, you loose track of things"" [at 2:14 P.M.]: Tom feels like he's witnessing a really clumsy strip tease. Tom later told me that the annoying aspect of that guest's interaction was his lack of interest in or reaction to the other participants in the room. It also appears to be significant to the regulars that the guest does not pay attention to the characteristics of the room they are in, which is a ditch at the side of a road. This kind of imaginary play usually occurs within a larger discourse context, involves multiple parties in the creation of the fantasy, and often involves the characteristics of the room as well. 3.3.4 Real Life Imaginary Actions. In another subcategory of byplay, a character describes what she could be doing in real life. These actions don't involve the virtual environment. The most common, perhaps, is "LOL," which stands for "laughs out loud," but frequently the speaker is not in fact laughing audibly in real life. It is certainly difficult to tell to what extent reported real actions are occurring or not; but in at least one instance, Tom's typist was revealed by another mudder in the room with him in "real life" to be quite silent despite the reports of "Tom LOL" in the course of MOO conversation. Another possible case: Damon writes down "keep lights on when with inga" These emotes are often distinguishable from the next category of emotes by the fact that they are responses to the on-going MOO conversation, although affect responses like "LOL" remain ambiguous. 3.4 Narration of Real Life Actions The next major category of emotes is the Narration category. It is quite common for users to document in real time their actions in real life, while they MUD. In this example, ls packs his computers for a trip while mudding. 1 ls starts packing for his argonne trip. ... 2 ls pulls out his second duo. 3 lynn says, "you have two?" 4 paul [to ls]: show-off 5 ls says, "uh, yeah." Users of this narration category of emotes may occasionally be motivated by need to explain distraction, lack of timely response, or departure from the MUD conversation; in other cases, they could be providing conversational openers; or they could be motivated by a desire for autobiography in the text window and in the memories of the people experiencing the MUD conversation. Some users seem to connect solely to document their daily work actions, hardly noticing remarks directed to them or conversation around them. Interestingly, emotes about real life actions still occur in simple present tense, as if the actions are going on simultaneous with the typing. In some cases there is overlap, as in the case of ongoing activities in real life. For instance, evidence that the activity of talking to Brock continues beyond the typed narration in line 1 below is found in line 2, where Shelley describes how Brock sounds (present tense). 1 Shelley talks to Brock. 2 Shelley says, "he sounds, um, i dunno...disappointed or something." Perhaps oddly, simple present tense can also be used to describe events that have already occurred in real life. Marie wakes, scrolls, giggles "$code_utils:boot_player_if_needed" In this case, Marie describes waking after being idle, reading her scrollback in the MOO window, and giggling at a programming line quoted in scrollback. Her narration of the entire sequence of events occurs in one line. We interpret these as sequential actions because narrative time is understood to progress with each verb that reports an achievement or accomplishment in a sequence (Dowty, 1986).[4] (Achievements and accomplishments describe punctual events, like reaching the top of a mountain, or waking. For further discussion of aspectual classes and use of present tense in MUD discourse, see Cherny, 1995.) These emotes can also describe intentions before they become actions. In the next example, Tom leaves for a meeting. He reports his intention to "really disconnect this time" in simple present tense, before doing it. He even says goodbye before disconnecting. Tom says, "welp" Tom says, "time to go back to dealer" Tom really disconnects this time. Tom says, "bye" Tom heads for the eastern end of the patio. < disconnected: Tom (#73) on Wed at 16:51. On-line: 21. > In the analogous case below, note the similarity to the stylized use of the first person present tense in the formulaic spoken "And I quote:" --which indicates immediately upcoming quoted material. Tom quotes the rest of the paragraph about Robin (whose name rings a bell, but he doesn't think he knew her): Tom | Robin Weiland continues to work on her writing in Minneapolis. In the midst of a financial scandal, half of the Paydirt staff was laid off, giving her time for writing and career planning. The oddity of the utterance "Pete actuallies, calls NES once he gets contact info from johnf" is that the event intended (the calling) is nowhere near about to happen; but I suggest that it is in simple present tense to communicate Pete's strength of intention. He indicates that he really will do it, so it can almost be considered an accomplished fact already. This is similar to some uses of the present to denote future in non-MUD speech, like "I leave for Utah on Monday." 3.5 Emotes of Background or Exposition Emotes in this category differ from the other types in that these need not be in the simple present tense; they are usually statements about the attitudes, beliefs, or relevant background of a user in a conversational context.[5] These emotes seamlessly fit into conversation as if they were uttered as says: they can be responded to as if they were "spoken" as says, and they can occur in response to says. Often they show first person speech-like properties, like being directed to another speaker, containing second person pronouns, and even showing dysfluencies similar to those frequently (intentionally) introduced in says. E.g., line 5 below: 1 lynn [to Damon]: so Kit thinks you and I would be a cute couple. 2 Damon says, "um" 3 Damon says, "how nice" 4 lynn laughs. 5 Damon hasn't, well, met you, lynn The choice of emote modality over say modality for an utterance is no doubt significant, but a complete analysis of the meaning difference will be deferred for now. I suggest that it has something to do with tone, via manipulation of perspective. The omniscient narrator's voice suggested by third person is more distanced, and perhaps feels more authoritative. However, for some users, the emote modality is used for long stretches of conversation. Marie wants chocolate and M&M's make her teeth hurt. Marie's house mate is allegedly buying instant chocolate pudding at the store. lynn says, "switch to fudge." Marie nods. Marie has been eating hot fudge topping straight out of the jar :-) lynn says, "aieee, wow." Marie might be out of it now tho. Marie is like hardcore. To give a general feel for the regularity of this sort of emote in conversation, I include breakdowns of 3 two-party conversations showing the ratio of says to emotes in Table 5. The emotes are broken down into emoted back channels, which include utterances like "lynn hsm" (indication of thought) and "Shelley nods," and the remainder of the emotes. Interestingly, in each case, the emoted back channels amount to almost half of the total emotes. Playful action emotes (section 3.3) are most common in multi-person parties, rather than the more sedate conversation that occurs between two people alone, and emotes narrating real life actions are most common in semi-idle cases, so it is likely that the remaining non-back channel emotes are of this expository background category. ============================================================ Table 5. Emoted Back Channels, Other Emotes, and Says in Two-Party Conversations back channel emotes: 3 3 other emotes: 5 8 says: 25 17 ---- ------- lynn Shelley (Nov 30, 14 mins.) back channel emotes: 30 23 other emotes: 29 69 says: 102 261 ---- --- lynn Tom (July 13, 109 mins.) back channel emotes: 17 33 other emotes: 17 52 says: 142 192 ---- ----- lynn Karen (Nov 28, 55 mins.) ========================================================== 4. Page Conversations and Virtual Geography The term "page conversation" generally refers to a private conversation with both pages and remote-emotes occurring in it. Page conversations often occur when a user has a quick topic to discuss with someone in another room and neither wants to leave their current party to join the other. Since page conversations are private, and not detectable by other users, they may be used for private topics of discussion as well; even the fact of an interaction between two characters may be hidden if the page modality is used, since the two characters never need be in the same room together to converse. (Private conversations can obviously occur between two characters in a room alone together, but their activity may be noted and provide a source for comment or speculation. Two characters alone in a room are generally assumed to be a private party for two, in fact; it is common for a third person to page and ask one or both if the party is private before attempting to join.) Page conversations are interesting because they do not observe the room/geography boundaries that normally determine contexts for conversations. In effect, they become dyadic "channels," like found in IRC or other chat programs. Some discussion of how page conversation is used may throw some light on how the geography affects users' experience of MUDding. The following comments are based on my own page conversations and informal questions to other users about their page conversations. With respect to greetings, paged greetings do occur, but not commonly in my experience. Usually the paged greeting occurs when someone is particularly looking for another user, either because of close friendship or a need to discuss some topic. Closures in page conversations generally occur when one person is explicity withdrawing from the MUD, to idle, or to disconnect. Otherwise, page conversations tend to dangle without closings. This contrasts with the use of closures when people leave rooms, but do not become idle or disconnect. A statistical comparison of the ratio of back channels to other utterances in several (7 page, 10 non-page) conversations between myself and four other people revealed that back channels are significantly absent from long-distance page conversations (T-test, p < .05).[6] This finding is non-intuitive at first glance, because emoted commands are available in long-distance conversation mode via the "remote-emote" command. However, a closer look at conversation within the same room reveals that the duration of the conversation is usually longer compared to that of page conversations,[7] whereas page conversations usually cover only one or two topics (one user reports preferring to keep page conversations to short question-answer sequences, rather than prolonged exchanges). Often a pager joins her interlocutor and the conversation then continues within the same room. One conversational partner in my logs claims to feel more co-presence in non-paged conversation. The tendency to use back channels probably creates this feeling. Since page conversations don't allow interactions with objects or room characteristics, and dyadic conversation is much less prone to collaborative play, there appear to be fewer byplay emotes in page conversation. A possible exception to this may occur in "netsex" (McRae, 1995) conducted in pages; because a page conversation is private and dyadic, other users cannot "walk in on" netsex encounters conducted in pages and remote-emotes. (One user on EM used the page modality for netsex, reportedly.) Likewise there appear to be fewer narrative emotes of the type in section 3.4 during page conversations. Narrative emotes often occur between periods of idleness, as a way of reinitiating conversation; people in page conversations do not "idle together," apparently: they lose contact when one or both becomes idle. Expository emotes, however, are quite common in page conversations. These emotes, and back channel responses, are the main uses of the emote in page conversation, I believe. When asked about their feelings towards page conversation vis a vis the virtual geography metaphor that normally governs conversations in MUDs, users reported that they generally preferred room conversation, for a variety of reasons. Having a page conversation with someone while also conducting public room conversation can be confusing, and may lead to mistakes in modality (saying something "out loud" that was intended for the page conversation, for instance; particularly worrying during netsex). Room conversations give users access to objects, like furniture to "sit" on, or toy objects to play with. The geography also gives a sense of "connected" or "local" space... users often idle in rooms that are adjacent to party spots, for instance. The virtual reality (and geography) metaphor matters more to some users than others. Bothered by the violation of metaphor that pages cause, one user (George) created a radio object that "transmits" pages to another user who has a radio. The resulting page message looks like this: On your radio, Mike hails, "hey, your boss is here" Not all users have radios or even know how to work them, though. Some users claim they are quite comfortable paging people when they are in a room alone, on the other hand, and not likely to be distracted by public conversation; this is common on LambdaMOO, for instance, where many people avoid public rooms because of the noise level ("spam"). In conclusion, as Holmes and Dishman (1994) report, MUDs provide "an explicit spatial context" for conversation which chat programs do not have; similarly, in MUDs there is richer narrative play within the spatial context than found in most chat programs, and I would argue, a broader range of conventionalized action types and more flexible self-presentation in conversation.[8] User preferences for room interactions over page conversations and differences in the types of emotes that occur in the two sorts of conversation support this claim, although a fuller investigation of actions in IRC and page conversations other than my own are surely called for. 5. Verb Tenses and Speech Acts To summarize so far: I have illustrated the five main categories of emotes, and how they play a role in conversation and in structuring interactions. Emotes, combined with social responses to persistent geography and objects, can be used to signal alertness and willingness to participate in conversation, supply feedback of the sort normally found in back channels, to play, to narrate real life activity which might cause distraction from the MUD, to provide background exposition in place of says. The many uses of emotes appear to reflect a rich culture of practice and use on MUDs, but there remain a few unanswered questions raised in the preceding sections. Why are almost all emotes in simple present tense? How can a user describe events in any complexity given only one tense? One possible explanation for the prevalence of present tense is that the convention is inspired or otherwise historically based on the fact that MUD system responses to user commands (such as a navigation command, like go north) are messages in present tense. The following examples are output presented when users type commands to interact with the virtual geography or objects: Guest steps off the catwalk. ********* Guest goes east. ********* Ferris heads for the eastern end of the patio. ********* Plaid_Guest wanders up the street to the west. ********* Tom picks up TomTraceback's Business Card. A diachronic explanation is not enough, however, to explain how the present tense is used now in the discourse. The persistence of present tense suggests a similarity to special speech registers like sportscaster commentary, in which present tense is adhered to while describing ongoing activity (Ferguson, 1983). Oral narrative often shows regular use of the present tense, also known as conversational historical present in this context (cf. Schiffrin, 1981; Wolfson, 1982); for instance: "So I go to the store, and as I'm walking in, this guy says to me..." Supposition as to the reason for the use of present tense in narrative usually involves hypotheses about the story teller being so wrapped up in her story that she recreates it as she lived it. The historical present in narrative usually alternates with past tense, however, and the events described are past. Emoted actions in at least the first three categories discussed are not descriptions of past events, but of actions co-temporaneous with their appearance on the screen. The emoted actions in section 3.1 to 3.3 suggest the sort of speech acts that Searle (1969, 1989) and Austin (1962) discussed, called "performatives." Performative speech acts are utterances that usually occur in the first person, simple present tense, indicative, and via their utterance perform some action: e.g., "I hereby pronounce you man and wife," "I promise I won't spend that dollar." Despite being in the simple present, they do not describe habitual or generic actions; they describe an event that occurs at their time of utterance, by virtue of their utterance. Emoted actions seem to be related to this class of speech acts, albeit from third person, being conjured as "events" solely by their utterance. (I follow Searle, 1989, in not including indirect speech acts in my discussion here.) Intentionality is a major component in Searle's (1989) account. He argues that a class of verbs with intentionality as a component must be recognized; that one cannot perform a performative action without intention to do so. "Manifestation of the intention to perform the action, in an appropriate context, is sufficient for the performance of the action." (Searle, 1989, p. 551). Furthermore, the performative verbs are self-referential, in that they describe their own actions and execute them at the same time. If I say "I promise to come home at noon," I both describe the content of my promise and make it. Searle concludes that the explanation for performatives does not lie in the meaning of the verbs themselves, but in the world itself. "If God decides to fry an egg by saying `I hereby fry an egg,' or to fix the roof by saying `I hereby fix the roof,' He is not misusing English. It is just a fact about how the world works, and not part of the semantics of English verbs, that we humans are unable to perform these acts by declaration" (Searle, 1989, p. 554). It is tempting to conclude that the world of MUD conversation has the status of the imaginary world Searle proposes for performatives. Every uttered action is understood to occur at utterance, in the context of the MUD conversation. However, the participants understand that no real action has occurred, that in a sense these are just descriptions of actions, carrying social significance within the MUD discourse. There is some evidence that users view such emotes as events that "happen" (even if only as a communicative action) as soon as they are emoted, and are thus nondeniable, like performatives. One woman described to me her upset at being hugged by a guest she didn't know and then her attempt to negate the event: 1 The guest hugs Karen. 2 Karen is NOT hugged by Guest. Despite her attempt in line 2 to retract the hug, another character later referred to "the guest who hugged her," indicating that he perceived it as not deniable, or at least, nondeniable by her. In some sense, the action occurred as soon as the message showed up on people's screens. One problem Searle (1989) and Verschueren (1994) tackle is why there are no performatives for verbs like "hint," "boast," or "lie" which sound as if they ought to parallel verbs like "promise" and "order." Searle concludes that they cannot be used performatively because they imply that their actions are not performed explicity and overtly, which is required of performatives. Verscheuren expands this into a theory about distance between the description of the action and the action the utterance performs. In the utterance "I lie to you that I am done with my PhD," the action performed is the lying about a proposition, and the description is the statement that it is a lie. He claims there must be no "distance" between the two in order to be performative. To claim to "lie," for instance, is to describe an action as negatively valued and insincere; the choice of the word "lie" creates an evaluative distance between the description and the action intended, causing the performative attempt to fail. "I order you to go," on the other hand, succeeds because the action is an order, and the description is of an order as well, with no evaluative distance or insincerity implied. Interestingly, there are occasional uses of verbs like "lie" in the discourse of the EM community: Ray lies, "I'm awake, I'm awake!" In fact, this utterance probably succeeds partly because in fact it is not uttered by the user of the character Ray, it is a programmed response that is triggered when the name "Ray" is mentioned in a room Ray is idling in (an "idle twitch"). In fact, his character is lying, as the utterance states. Any negative evaluative distance in this case is confined to the third person description of action, rather than the utterance "I'm awake" itself. That description is important for communicating that the utterance is not an ordinary one typed by an active user. Note that this utterance would not succeed as a simple "say" from Ray's character: "Ray says, `I lie, I'm awake.'" The third person emote allows a distance between the description and the action which is not allowed in first person performatives, where the two must coincide. This perspectival distance allowed by emotes complicates and enriches the sorts of actions that can be undertaken in the text conversation. Verschueren (1989) discusses some speech acts which are not first person simple present tense, which he calls semi-performatives: 1. Le porteur declare etre majeur. [The holder (of this ticket) declares that he/she is over 18.] 2. You are dismissed. 3. Passengers are warned not to lean out the window. 4. I am asking that you to do this for me, Henry, I am asking for you to do it for me and Cynthia and the children. (Searle, 1989) Number (4) he dismisses as not containing the "content" of the request and therefore calls it a description of the request rather than a making of the request itself. Emotes in category 3.3 and higher suggest that a simple performative analysis for all emotes is not sufficient. The events described can be more complex than simple co-temporaneous actions. The MOO example below consists of a description of action: Ted says one thing, then the opposite, and agressively asserts that both are true. He then annoys you for a while, just before boasting of his SPARCbook like you care. Ted describes himself as "boasting," but he is in fact describing an action he is not explicitly performing (since one cannot boast solely by saying that one boasts), which puts this example in the category of semi-performatives like Verscheuren's (4) above. Emotes like this are a common occurrence, some of them more explicitly performative than others. The more performative types include "note," "observe," "ask," "tell," "wonder," which usually take as subordinate clauses a proposition, unlike the boasting case above. The proposition appears to accomplish the action, unlike the subordinating verb on its own. Sandy notes that the power elite IS NOT linked... ********* Shelley observes that she's about conferenced out and would really like to go to the espresso bar across the street and talk about something else. ********* Marie thanks lynn for signing The "boasting" example is not alone in its meta-discourse character; in the following example, Tom describes the conversation in line 9. 1 You see a car scream by on Hwy 169, you hear a SLAM, and Mike zings into the ditch and lands with a painful THUD. 2 Ray laughs 3 Tom says, "zing" 4 Ray says, "THUD" 5 lynn says, "THUD" 6 Mike says, "WHAM!" 7 lynn [to Ray]: hmmph 8 Shelley says, "THUD" 9 Tom and Ray and lynn reenact the event. 10 Ray wins by virtue of only being a few yards away from em.ccs 11 lynn [to Tom]: using Mike. 12 Tom [to Ray]: It must be a real pain for you not to be able to blame lag when you lose anymore. (em.ccs is the machine that the MOO resides on, and Tom refers to the lag of the network in line 12.) Note that Tom describes it in present tense, suggesting the reenactment is not over. Note also that Ray claims he "wins" in reference to getting his "THUD" out before mine in line 5. He has already won, but he describes the event in present tense. Present tense seems to be fine for actions that have just ended as well, as seen under 3.3. Considering the range of "action" types that are performed in third person simple present tense emotes, many of which describe either ongoing or concluded events, as well as imaginary worlds' events, it seems that a simple performative analysis of emoted actions is not going to hold up. Whatever "semi-performatives" amount to, these emotes may indeed be of that type, however. 6. The Frame Contexts for Events The first two categories of emotes discussed (Conventional Action, Back Channels) simply appear to be describing punctual events: the action is evoked co-temporaneous with the utterance. However, the emotes in other categories accomplish more sophisticated event description. Emoted byplay sometimes contains meta-discourse description, describing the action of a conversation with respect to some imaginary world. Narration of actions in real life can either refer to activities ongoing, to events just concluded, or events about to occur. The context for an emote determines with what frame of reference it is to be interpreted, both with regard to temporal structure of the event being described, and whether it is intended to represent real action in the real world, imaginary action in the real world, action with objects in the MOO, or imaginary actions in the MOO (cf. Chayko, 1993; Goffman, 1974). The way conversants determine the boundaries of events is partly pragmatic, based on contextual clues. We know that a description of an event that is punctual (like an accomplishment or achievement) cannot be co-temporaneous with typing, so we interpret it according to the most plausible interpretation in context. If Tom announces "Tom gets off the phone" we can guess he has just done it in real life, because the event is punctual, there are no phones in the MOO, and he was probably idle just before the utterance. On the other hand, punctual play utterances are seen as accomplished with their transmission, even if events that might take a long time in the real world are described: "Robin takes off and nukes Davey from orbit." The expression "lynn waves" is also interpreted according to the context it occurs in: if it occurs upon entry to a MOO room, it must be intended to be interpreted as a greeting action within the context of the MUD, rather than a description of an action external to the MUD. The utterance "lynn waves at Terry Winograd" however, would be interpreted as a real life action being reported, since Terry Winograd is not a character on the MUD. Similarly, in line 7 below, Tom is not interpreted as waving to MOO compatriots on entry to a room, because he has not just entered the room, and he is not using the formulaic short form of the utterance. 1 lynn [to Tom]: we could make sure we are home on sunday to watch TV. 2 lynn says, "B5, specifically." 3 Tom says, "ok" 4 Tom says, "are we supposed to be somewhere on sunday?" 5 Tom and lynn make public appearances at fund-raisers throughout the state. 6 lynn says, "no. I need to work, but." 7 Tom smiles and waves to the crowd. 8 lynn eyes Tom warily. Tom's flight of fancy in line 5 is interpretable in light of his question about being somewhere on Sunday. If he had said "Tom and lynn made public appearances at fund-raisers throughout the state" we would expect that this had really occurred in real life, given the past tense. This informal discussion of how emotes are interpretable in context should not imply that people are never confused about frame reference; it's not uncommon for people to be confused about whether events are happening in real life ("irl") or on-line: Kelly talks for awhile with soime guy who talks baout sex with no introduction. Or rather, safe sex. Eva peers at Kelly suspiciously. lynn eyes Kelly askance. Kelly [to Eva]: At MIT. I don't even know his name. lynn [to Kelly]: irl? Tom actually should probably just leave her out of the "people" section; she doesn't seem to mud anymore since the breakup. lynn says, "breakup?" Tom says, "with Willem" [at 2:40 p.m.] lynn says, "oh." Karen tries to remember waht the relationship was Tom [to Karen]: capital r Tom eyes himself warily. Karen says, "irl?" Tom nods. Most requests for clarification about whether something happened in real life or in a MUD ("in vr") usually happen in context of discussion about conversations or relationships... either of which could be occurring on-line or in real life. As Goffman (1974) points out (and Danet et al., 1994, describe for IRC), in fanciful activities like games, the frame of the play activity contains by necessity some reference anchoring it to the real world. The understanding that players and nonplayers have of where the claims of the ongoing world leave off and and where the claims of play take over is part of what the players bring to their playing from the outside world, and yet is a necessary constituent of play. The very points at which the internal activity leaves off and the external activity takes over---the rim of the frame itself---become generalized by the individual and taken into his frame of interpretation, thus becoming, recursively, an additional part of the frame. In general, then, the assumptions that cut an activity off from the external surround also mark the ways in which this activity is inevitably bound to the surrounding world" (Goffman, 1974, p. 249). Just so are the worlds created by the MOO conversation a part of the real world, and vice versa, facts which the members of the community fully appreciate and plan for in their conversation. 6. Conclusion The different types of emotes discussed are summarized again in the table below: ============================================================ Table 6. Summary of Emote Types Emote Type Section Tense Example ----------------------------------------------------------- Conventional Action 3.1 present lynn waves. Back Channels 3.2 present lynn nods. Byplay 3.3 present Mike pastes Tom's lips... Narration 3.4 present ls packs for his trip. Exposition 3.5 any lynn hated the film. ============================================================ The use of the emote command creates a structured and complex communicative environment, in which many different sorts of actions are possible. Emotes help define contexts for conversations, establish responsiveness and attentiveness, communicate understanding, initiate play, describe actions in real life that may affect the involvement in the MUD conversation. Page conversations provide an interesting contrast to room conversations, given that the emote command is available in page conversations as well. However, users do not provide as many back channel responses in page conversations, and page conversation tends to be shorter and more focused. Differences between page and room conversations suggest that social responses to the geography and to idling behavior within the geography help in making room conversations different. The persistent room metaphor is meaningful in practice, differentiating MUDs as communication environments from other chat programs without persistent geography or emotes. Emoted actions appear similar to performative speech acts, which are executed upon utterance. However, existence of complex emote types (meta-conversational description, imaginary world actions, narration of real life events) makes the parallel with performatives difficult to sustain; they are probably semi-performative at best. The third person distance from the event provided by the emote creates interesting options for utterances that cannot be said in the first person. Finally, context is important for determining frame of interpretation for the myriad simple present tense emotes. Emotes describing actions in the MOO and in the real world depend a lot on conversational context for their correct interpretation. Frames for communication interpenetrate, allowing users to refer to real life events in the MUD and make them a part of their regular discourse. Notes [1] "ElseMOO" is a locative expression among MOOers meaning roughly "on another MOO." In other papers I used various other names for the MOO, but the site is the same. [2] Interestingly, the CTS command set was constructed by two users on EM, but is used by a little more than a third of the regular users of EM now. This is a good example of how MUDs evolve over time. [3] Sexual interactions, which usually take place between two characters alone or in pages, do not occur with frequency on the MOO I observe (as far as I am aware). Emoted sexual or otherwise physical exchanges may count as "play" as well (McRae, 1995), but this may be a problematic categorization. [4] The giggle here is probably an achievement since she giggled at something in particular. [5] Note that the emote command makes the character's name the subject of every utterance. [6] As a participant-observer in the MUD community, I have no access to private page conversations aside from my own, so my inclusion in the logs was inevitable at this point. [7] This is difficult to establish statistically, since a minimal conversation in either case might consist of one utterance exchanged; and it's unclear how to take pauses or changes in topic into account. [8] IRC may be evolving somewhat in parallel with MUDs, however; Reid (1991) did not mention the emote command at all, which seems to have been added since. Reports on how often it is used in IRC vary a lot, however. References Austin, J. (1962). How to do things with words. Cowford: Cowford University Press. Bruckman, A. (1992). Identity workshop: Emergent social and psychological phenomena in text-based virtual reality. Electronic manuscript, M.I.T., Media Lab, Boston. Chayko, M. (1993). 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