Call for Papers

THE PRAGMATICS OF COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION

Editors:

Susan Herring (Indiana University, USA)

Dieter Stein (Heinrich Heine University, Germany)

Tuija Virtanen (Abo Akademi University, Finland)

Although many aspects of computer-mediated communication (CMC) have already been addressed by scholars from a number of disciplines, the pragmatic dimensions of CMC have yet to be fully accounted for. By "pragmatic" we intend a range of phenomena from the narrower sense of presupposition and speech act conditions, to sociopragmatic aspects such as politeness and genre, all of which are concerned in some way with language use and (social) meaning. Pragmatic effects are found in CMC modes that include instant messaging, SMS, weblogs, email, web forums, and experimental and graphical virtual worlds. They are produced by adults and adolescents (and sometimes children) at an increasing rate in a rapidly growing number of languages around the world.

We invite submissions for an edited book on the Pragmatics of Computer-Mediated Communication, to be published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. Suggested topics include:

- Gricean maxims and implicatures

- Presuppositions and indirectness

- The use of greetings, openings and closings

- Speech acts and performativity

- Naming and referring conventions

- Cohesion and coherence

- Applications of politeness theory to CMC

- Analysis of new genres or genre-related features

- Culture-specific effects

- etc.

Scholars working within diverse theoretical paradigms are encouraged to submit current research that addresses computer-mediated communication from pragmatic perspectives. The overarching goal of the book is to forge ties with existing pragmatic theory as regards language use phenomena in CMC, as well as to advance theoretical understanding of pragmatics through integrating technological mediation as an explanatory variable for language use.

Submission Guidelines:

Potential contributors should email a 500-700 word proposal OR a complete manuscript draft if one is available (no partial drafts, please), including a title, and describing the topic, CMC data, analytical methods, and (preliminary) findings or observations, to all three editors by November 1, 2005. Complete, polished versions of accepted proposals or drafts (approximately 7000-10000 words) will be due March 30, 2006. Publication of the book is anticipated by late 2007.

Submitters are kindly asked to follow the style in the Pragmatics & Beyond New Series (John Benjamins). In addition to referencing the pragmatics literature, potential contributors should make efforts to cite existing literature on CMC and language.

Please direct inquiries and preliminary proposal ideas to the editors:

Susan Herring (herring@indiana.edu), Dieter Stein (stein@phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de), or Tuija Virtanen (tuvirtan@abo.fi).