James P. Zappen, Laura J. Gurak, and Stephen Doheny-Farina
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
University of Minnesota
Clarkson University
Rhetoric, Community, and Cyberspace* Traditional notions of the rhetorical community as the locus of shared beliefs and values have been challenged increasingly and from several directions--from radical and post-liberal democratic political theory (Miller; Mouffe), from cultural studies and cultural criticism (Brantlinger 1-3, 54-59; Harris), and, most recently, from the perspective of the ill-defined and elusive "place" called cyberspace (Selfe and Selfe, "Politics"; Selfe and Selfe, "Writing"; Stone 110-11).1 At the heart of these challenges is the problem of the relationship of the community to those outside it or on its margins, an uneasy relationship that is variously characterized as a tension between communitarianism and liberalism (Mouffe 71-73), between ourselves and Others (Brantlinger 2-3), between a culture and its marginalized individuals (Selfe and Selfe, "Politics" 482-84), and as a complex relationship between the One and the Many (Miller 79-80). Contemporary notions of the rhetorical community characterize this community less as the locus of shared beliefs and values than as a public space or forum within which diverse and sometimes conflicting beliefs and values can be articulated and negotiated (Farrell 282-83; Harris 19-21; Lyon 284-86; Miller 90-91). We believe that new computer-mediated communication environments have the potential to become contemporary rhetorical communities--public spaces or forums--within which limited or local communities and individuals can develop mutual respect and understanding via dialogue and discussion. We recently tested our belief in a colloquium at Diversity University MOO, an electronic "place" or cyberspace where individuals can "meet" and "chat" in real time.2 Our colloquium revealed to us a kind of rhetoric and a kind of community that seems quite unlike anything that we have seen before--seventeen "voices" from different places all "speaking" at once in the same "place" and "speaking" in fragments rather than complete discourses.
Such a rhetoric and such a community seem to us to be quite unlike the traditional notion of the single rhetor seeking purposefully and intentionally to persuade an audience within a single community of shared beliefs and values, even when we take into account more recent interpretations of the traditional rhetorical community that acknowledge the complex relationship between the community and the individual and the likelihood of a lack of consensus within any given community (Farrell 277-88; Miller and Halloran 121). Such a rhetoric and such a community have affinities rather with theories and practices of language on the margins of the tradition--with the multiple perspectives characteristic of the sophists and of Kenneth Burke's dramatism; with the multiple languages and the lack of closure characteristic of Socratic and Bakhtinian dialogue; and, given these many perspectives and languages, with the sophists' recognition of the challenge of finding the opportune moment to enter into a rhetorical community and attempt to shape its discourse. In this paper, we sketch some characteristics of contemporary rhetorical communities and briefly explain MOOs in general and our colloquium at Diversity University MOO in particular. We then show how a contemporary rhetorical community developed as the participants in our colloquium, in their roles as members of local communities and as individuals, challenged traditional forms of structure and control and made the MOO their own.
Contemporary Rhetorical Communities
Recent scholarship has recognized that contemporary rhetorical communities are not a single unified whole but a mix of numerous limited or local communities and of individuals who typically participate in not one but several of these communities (Harris 19-21; Lyon 284-86; Miller 90-91). Thus a contemporary rhetorical community is less a collection of people joined by shared beliefs and values than a public space or forum that permits these people to engage each other and form limited or local communities of belief. The multiplicity of individual and communal perspectives that make up any rhetorical community has been recognized at least since the time of the ancient Greek sophists, who also recognized the challenge to the rhetor to find the opportune moment to enter into these communities and engage individuals within them. Contemporary scholars, most notably Bakhtin, have also recognized the mix and clash of individual and communal languages and perspectives--the professional, the social, the commonplace or everyday--within any given rhetorical community, one consequence of which is the increased democratization of such a community, another the likelihood of differences and disagreements between and among the local communities and individuals within it.
Some of the sophists, including Protagoras and the author of the "Dissoi Logoi," recognized the multiple perspectives of individuals and communities and the challenge of finding the opportune moment to enter into these communities (Protagoras 18-19; "Dissoi Logoi" 279-89; Schiappa 117-33). Protagoras recognizes the multiplicity of perspectives of individuals when he asserts that "Of all things the measure is man, of things that are that they are, and of things that are not that they are not" (18). Protagoras means that for individuals in particular and for humanity in general things are what they appear to be relative to our perspective or frame of reference (Schiappa 126). The "Dissoi Logoi" shows the multiplicity of perspectives within human communities, for the same thing can seem good or bad, seemly or disgraceful, just or unjust, true or false depending upon the community of belief within which it appears (279 ff.). The "Dissoi Logoi" also shows that the challenge of finding the opportune moment is radically contextual, dependent upon the beliefs and values that hold within any given community at any given time: "nothing is always seemly or always disgraceful, but the right occasion takes the same things and makes them disgraceful and then alters them and makes them seemly" (283).
The mix and clash of languages and perspectives within contemporary rhetorical communities is captured and elaborated in Bakhtin's concepts of "dialogism," "heteroglossia," and "the carnivalesque" (Hirschkop; Holquist 14-106; Kristeva). Bakhtin seeks to create a democratized language that would be "dialogic" and "heteroglot" in the sense that it would acknowledge within any given utterance a simultaneous exchange among multiple languages, intentions, and contexts and would recognize the numerous contexts--limited or local communities of belief and value--that make up the larger community or public sphere the existence of which is presupposed by such a view of language (Hirschkop 14-17). Dialogism reflects Bakhtin's belief that language is not unitary but complex and multiple (Hirschkop 6-12; Holquist 14-17, 40-42; Kristeva 67-72): "The living utterance, having taken meaning and shape at a particular historical moment in a socially specific environment, cannot fail to brush up against thousands of living dialogic threads, woven by socio-ideological consciousness around the given object of an utterance; it cannot fail to become an active participant in social dialogue" (Bakhtin, "Discourse" 276). Heteroglossia is the base condition for dialogism, the mix and clash of languages and perspectives--professional, generic, social--upon which such a view of language depends (Hirschkop 17-21; Holquist 69-70). In Bakhtin's "concrete heteroglot conception of the world," language has been "completely taken over, shot through with intentions and accents" (Bakhtin, "Discourse" 293). As a result, "All words have the 'taste' of a profession, a genre, a tendency, a party, a particular work, a particular person, a generation, an age group, the day and hour" (293). Heteroglossia ensures the dynamism inherent in all language, the tension between the centripetal forces that tend toward unity and the centrifugal forces that tend toward disunity: "Alongside the centripetal forces, the centrifugal forces of language carry on their uninterrupted work; alongside verbal-ideological centralization and unification, the uninterrupted processes of decentralization and disunification go forward" (272).
Bakhtin's democratized language--dialogical, heteroglottic--becomes, at its best, carnivalesque, for the mix and clash of individual and communal languages and perspectives includes also the commonplace language of everyday life (Hirschkop 33-35; Holquist 89-90; Kristeva 78-80). The carnival is the scene of laughter, of sensuous revelry, of bodily life--"copulation, birth, growth, eating, drinking, defecation" (Bakhtin, Rabelais 88)--but, most of all, it is a rejection of the "official" worlds of Church and State in favor of lived democracy: "Carnival is not a spectacle seen by the people; they live in it, and everyone participates because its very idea embraces all the people. While carnival lasts, there is no other life outside it" (7). While such a complex mix of individual and communal languages and perspectives is potentially democratizing, it also exacerbates the difficulty of finding the opportune moment to enter into a community and engage individuals within it and ensures that differences and disagreements will be an ordinary feature of discussions within such a community.
MOOs and Diversity University
A MOO (a densely packed acronym for Multi-User Dimension, Object-Oriented) is a novel computer-mediated communication environment that combines some elements of both oral and written communication in a way that intensifies the mix and clash of individual and communal perspectives that we suggest is characteristic of contemporary rhetorical communities (Shefski 1-2, 132-34; Turkle 180-82). It thus enhances the democratic potential of these communities but also compounds their potential problems and difficulties. A MOO simulates a physical space in which users from potentially global distances, employing a standard Internet connection via telnet and front-end software known as a client, can meet, move from place to place, manipulate objects, and communicate with each other in real time (Shefski 50-51, 61-62, 134-44; Turkle 182-86). A MOO resembles oral communication in its ability to engage participants synchronously in "real time" and immediately or "face to face," and it resembles written communication in its ability to "reach" a multiplicity of individuals quickly across time, space, and cultural differences.3 Because it permits a multiplicity of individuals to meet synchronously and immediately, it intensifies the mix and clash of temporal, spatial, and cultural differences and thus serves less as a means of transferring knowledge and information than as a contemporary rhetorical community--a public space or forum where individuals can express and explore languages and perspectives that differ both cognitively and affectively and, sometimes and momentarily, can build limited or local communities of shared attitudes, beliefs, and values through dialogue and discussion.
Because many users are able to "speak" at the same time, communicating in a MOO can be a very intense, carnivalesque experience with potential for very positive and very negative encounters, as languages representing different professional, social, geographic, and other perspectives meet and mix, sometimes in harmonious though momentary communities, sometimes in tense confrontations, called "flaming" in the literature on computer-mediated communication (Lea and others 89, 92-94). Some scholars who have explored the uses of computer-based communication technologies affirm the democratizing and community-building potential of these technologies (Faigley 163-99; Gurak; Rheingold 145-75; Selfe and Selfe, "Politics"). Faigley, for example, claims that his traditional hierarchical classroom became more broadly participatory when he used a real-time chat program (180-82, 184-85), and Rheingold affirms the community-building potential of MUDs and MOOs as vehicles for communication among professionals within specific areas of interest, such as the sciences (173). But Doheny-Farina raises doubts about the community-building potential of MUDs and MOOs, his skepticism stimulating our discussion of the role of physical place in the creation and maintenance of community in the tenth week of our colloquium.4
The Diversity University MOO (DU), where we conducted the colloquium, was developed with support from the Internet Multicasting Service, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and the Annenberg/CPB Project. DU, one of the first MOOs designed for educational and professional use rather than game playing, is designed like a traditional university campus and includes a variety of virtual campus buildings and settings, among them classrooms and offices (see Appendix: "Conversation" in the Diversity University Student Union). At DU, users from remote, potentially global distances can meet and "converse" with each other or "emote" (express attitudes or feelings or perform actions) simply by typing text at their keyboards. They can also move from room to room; direct conversation to a single other user (either aloud or as a whisper); look at or hold up objects, such as a sign; and perform other actions that are possible in real, physical space. In our colloquium at DU, we met in Steve Doheny-Farina's virtual office and conducted something that loosely resembled a traditional graduate seminar called "Rhetoric, Community, and Cyberspace." In our original call-for-students, we described our colloquium as a noncredit graduate seminar to be offered to a select group of graduate students, and we listed ourselves as "faculty" and included our institutional affiliations with our names. In doing so, we attached traditional institutional legitimacy to a decidedly nontraditional enterprise, thus creating a tension that would play itself out during the course of our colloquium. In mid Summer 1994, we sent notice of the colloquium to several major graduate programs in rhetoric and composition and selected participants on the basis of their background and interests from applicants who responded to our notice. The participants were fourteen graduate students, most of them PhD students from the Midwest and Northeast, plus ourselves.5 During Fall 1994, we read an article or section of a book each week for ten weeks and met for an hour on Thursday evenings to discuss the readings. Steve logged our discussions and sent them to all participants after each evening's discussion.
In the analysis that follows, we have retained both text and symbols as they appeared on our screens in the course of our discussions, with a few exceptions. We have reformatted text as paragraphs to improve readability. We have retained short ellipses, a convention that we adopted to indicate an incomplete statement with more to follow when we discovered that we could only type brief or incomplete statements if we hoped to remain in the flow of discussion. We have used long ellipses to indicate deletions from within the portions of our discussions that we use as illustrations. Finally, we have retained both the participants' (with their permission) and our own MOO names and the names of our institutions to illustrate our roles in the discussions.
The MOO as a Contemporary Rhetorical Community
Our colloquium at DU showed us Bakhtin's centripetal and centrifugal forces of language at work shaping an electronic space or forum for dialogue and discussion--a contemporary rhetorical community in cyberspace. We saw how these forces of language--dialogic, heteroglottic, carnivalesque--helped to destabilize and disunify traditional hierarchical structures and mechanisms of control, how they served to stabilize and unify local communities of belief and value, and how they worked in turn to destabilize and undermine the very same local communities that they helped to create. We also saw how individuals struggled to find opportune moments to enter into these local communities and to shape and influence the course of their discussions, sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully, and how they sometimes discovered these moments inadvertently. Our observations are consistent with recent studies in social psychology that find common patterns of rejection of leadership and authority in natural groups in general (Wheelan and others 154-55, 161) and more egalitarian participation and less centralized and stable leadership in computer-supported groups in particular (McGrath and Hollingshead 86-87).6
We attempted to give our colloquium a structure that would minimize our position and authority as faculty and maximize the role of the graduate students who participated with us in our MOO discussions. But we also imposed some structure on the discussions because we were concerned about the potential for chaos induced by the MOO environment. What could we do to ensure coherence and order in a graduate seminar in which all seventeen participants communicated continuously and simultaneously for a full hour? In an attempt to ensure that the discussions would not disintegrate and undermine our entire enterprise, we assigned "presenter" and "respondent" roles to all participants, ourselves included; asked a presenter to send a commentary on each week's reading to all participants via electronic mail prior to the Thursday evening discussion; and limited the first fifteen minutes of the discussion to an exchange between the presenter and two respondents. We discovered very quickly, however, that neither this traditional classroom structure nor other mechanisms of control could withstand the mix and clash of languages--professional, gendered, disciplinary and political, each intermingled with elements of the carnivalesque--in the rhetorical community of the MOO. Early in our colloquium, our discussions resembled traditional classroom discussions, with "faculty" directing and dominating the discussion and "students" raising hands, responding each in turn, and addressing both us and each other courteously, even deferentially. The following portion of one of our discussions is characteristic of this early period:
_______________________________________ | | SteveDF holds up a BIG sign: | Laura? want to join the conversation? | |_______________________________________| Laura_Gurak] nods yes. Laura_Gurak] says, "I would like to pursue Lisa's skepticism." Chris-B says, "I wanted to get one of my questions in before things go to chaos..." Laura_Gurak] says, "The question she seems to be raising (waits for Chris's question...)" Chris-B says, "I'll wait for Laura's answer." . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Geoffrey raises his hand. "May I ask a question, or is this for the panel only?" Laura_Gurak] says, "Now the ? becomes, are these elctronic commuities good or bad..." Chris-B says, "I get my question next." Laura_Gurak] says, "for democracy?" Geoffrey nods. "Sorry." SteveDF says, "hold off for a sec, geoff" Laura_Gurak] nods at Chris-B (Week 2 Log)At this point, early in our colloquium, Steve directs the flow of the discussion, using a special MOO command to create a big sign to invite Laura to speak, and letting graduate students know when they may and may not ask questions. Since at this point only Steve knows the command to create a big sign, his use of the sign becomes symbolic of his role and authority as leader of the discussion. Laura, this week's presenter, dominates the discussion, and other participants raise their hands, ask permission to speak, and wait to be recognized before they speak.
By the end of our colloquium, this traditional classroom structure has broken down almost completely. We believe, however, that this breakdown in structure did not produce chaos but, quite the contrary, orderly and serious, egalitarian, and often carnivalesque exchanges of views on substantive issues. The following portions of a discussion on the role of physical place in the creation and maintenance of community are characteristic of this later period:
KarlaK says, "well, the first word I want to utter is this: who agrees with Berry that physical presence is a prereq to community's existence?" SteveDF raises his hand KevinDH says, "Well, I for one do." ______________ | | AheaP holds up a BIG sign: | not me NOPE! | |______________| KarlaK [to KevinDH]: can you say why? MarilynU says, "Not me, Karla." mlbartos makes a raspberry Logie says, "Let's kick Kevin and Steve out!" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . AheaP wipes off his arm and stands away from mlbartos (Week 10 Log)In this portion of the discussion, "faculty" and "students" appear to exchange roles, and participants freely mix serious talk with carnivalesque behavior. In response to a question by Karla, Steve, no longer needing his big sign to monitor the discussion, courteously raises his hand, and Allan (AheaP), a graduate student, holds up a big sign to register his opposition to the notion that community depends upon physical space. John (Logie) and Mary (mlbartos) playfully indicate their opposition to Kevin and Steve, John by suggesting that we kick them out, Mary by making a raspberry, which Allan wipes off his arm. In another portion of the same discussion, several participants, some serious, some playful, share their views in a balanced and equal exchange:
AheaP sings a few bars of "Rock of Ages" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SteveDF [to MarilynU]: "Yes, I agree that there is a scary element to all of this. It is the old tyrrany of the majority idea. We all fear oppressive communities. Communities are difficult, problematic things. Chris-B grabs Aheap's arm and starts to dance. KarlaK says, "interdependence is required for community, according to berry" Jim_Z says, "I think that Steve's view of community is nostalgic, warm and fuzzy." Logie [to Kim_W]: "Before class, some of us were discussing extending the class, which brings us closere to permanence and commitment. AheaP twirls dizzily under CHris-B's grip. SteveDF [to Laura_Gurak]]: and Jim: "The problem is that we too easily are seduce away from the hard work of sustaining physical, local communities and that is dangerous for all of us KevinDH [to SteveDF]: "I guess that's what I'm struggling to say... KarlaK says, "i don't think we're dependent upon each other" AheaP feels communal now. Chris-B says, "My how those Ages Rock!" Laura_Gurak] [to SteveDF]: "So what do we do with the notion of intellectual or discourse community? Just ditch it? (Week 10 Log)Steve, Laura, and Jim all participate in this portion of the discussion, but they have no more (or less) important a role in the discussion than any of the other participants. At the same time, Allan (AheaP) and Chris dance playfully, illustrating, as Allan suggests, the sense of physical community that they experience in this very unphysical space, thus implicitly commenting on the discussion. Though Steve is this week's presenter, he does not dominate the discussion as Laura did early in the colloquium.
We do not feel that we ourselves are responsible for this change in the character of our discussions--a change that we regard as a significant improvement in the quality of those discussions. Nor do we believe that the technology of the MOO itself is responsible for this change. Rather, we believe that the participants--especially the graduate students--effected this change by a candid exchange of their beliefs and values expressed in many languages--professional, gendered, disciplinary and political--and by individual interventions at opportune moments in our discussions.
Local Communities in the MOO
The forces of language--Bakhtin's "heteroglossia"--that destabilized and undermined the traditional classroom structure that we tried to impose included professional languages, gendered languages, disciplinary and political languages, each intermingled with elements of the carnivalesque. These forces of language were both centripetal (stabilizing) and centrifugal (destabilizing) and thus served alternately to challenge and undermine traditional hierarchical structures and controls, to support the formation of local communities of belief and value, and in turn to challenge and threaten to destabilize and disunify these same local communities.
The different professional languages and perspectives of the participants in our colloquium were evident when we addressed directly the issue of the potential of the MOO to flatten traditional hierarchical structures. Participants split on this issue consistent with their professional roles (or perhaps more precisely their class or status within their profession), "faculty," for the most part, on one side, "students" on the other. The following portion of one of our discussions illustrates this split:
Jim_Z says, "The MOO flattens out traditional hierarchies. DonL started the introductions. He didn't raise his hand and ask permission. He just did it." . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chris-B says, "I used a chat space with my writing class that ran off on its own, into sexist, racist, and homophobic territory." SteveDF nods vigorously at Jim powley says, "Chris, have you done this? Do you want it try it next semester? Would Merrill like it?7 I think he might." mlbartos says, "and we don't always follow the big signs" Chris_B [to Jim_Z]: we can all blurt things out in a classroom. Laura_Gurak] thinks that not all MOOs flatten hierarchy. It depends on how the system is designed and used. mlbartos says, "without raising hands" Geoffrey agrees with Laura. SteveDF says, "Yes, Jim is right about flattening hierarchies. If someone looked at this log could they tell the grad students from the tenure-track faculty? No way." Chris-B [to powley]: I'm going to be doing it in WriteMush this semester. KarlaK says, "I don't think hierarchies always need to be flattened. " Logie says, "Don't be to sure, big-sign Steve." . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DonL rolls in the floor laughing at logie. Chris-B [to powley]: And I'm not asking anyone, really. SteveDF says, "Ok, laura, but why is the hierarchy flattened here? now?" Logie says, "But I might not have said THAT in class." (Week 3 Log)In this part of our discussion, several graduate students challenge Jim and Steve's belief that the MOO flattens traditional hierarchies, and Laura questions the technological determinism implicit in this view. Some graduate students then mock the traditional classroom structure in a language that they acknowledge would be inappropriate in such a setting--John (Logie), recalling Steve's use of the big sign to guide the discussion, playfully calls him "big-sign Steve" but adds that "I might not have said THAT in class--and they support each other with carnivalesque behavior, such as Don's rolling on the floor and laughing.
While they are thus challenging the traditional classroom structure that we tried to impose, these graduate students are also forming their own professional community of shared belief, a community bound together by their common resistence to structure and control in electronic spaces, including the MOO, and by their mocking, sometimes carnivalesque, language of resistence. Although we shared their belief, neither Jim nor Steve recognized at this point in our colloquium the extent of the control that we sought to impose (we thought that we were merely trying to keep order), nor did Laura join the graduate students in their resistance to this control though she did recognize Steve as the agent of structure. We did not recognize until later the extent of the difference between our own and the graduate students' perception of this structure. Nonetheless, this professional community of graduate students, stabilized by a common resistence and a common language, also contained within itself the forces of language that threatened to destabilize and disunify it. In the course of the discussion about flattening traditional hierarchies, two Rensselaer graduate students, Chris and Will (powley), engage in a semi-private discussion about the use of chat software in their classes, using local shoptalk such as the name of their department chair and the name of the software. Later, one of the Minnesota graduate students suggests that such local shoptalk is troublesome because it leaves out participants who do not know each other outside the MOO:
We could also discuss how personal connections prior to the MOO affects how people participate. There seems to be clicks that have formed because of location. RPI people chat with RPI people and U of MN people chat with U of MN people. To me, this has been more troublesome than the status issue because I am essentially left out of part of the conversation because I do not personally know all the participants. (Response to Week 7 Log)The professional community of graduate students that promises to destabilize the traditional classroom structure thus contains within itself a smaller, even more limited or local community that threatens to disunify it.
Gendered languages and perspectives appeared more frequently and more forcefully than we had anticipated though not, as some of the literature suggests, as mere polar opposites of men's and women's languages (Herring 7-10). Like the political, the gendered languages and perspectives were both centripetal and centrifugal, working to destabilize our traditional classroom structure, to support the formation of local communities, and to challenge and threaten to disunify these same communities. A challenge to our traditional classroom structure from a gendered perspective appears in the fourth week of our colloquium:
Laura_Gurak] says, "Why are we talking only about students/classrooms????" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DonL says, "PRACTICALLY SPEAKING, WHAT ACTIONS SHOULD WE TAKE _OUTSIDE_ THE CLASSROOM TO ENACT THE DEMOCRATIC PUBLIC SPACES WE WISH TO HAVE IN CYBERSPACE." SteveDF says, "and you touched on it earlier: can this space be used to further radical democracy--but not in cyberspace--in physical politicla world?" Laura_Gurak] nods at Don's shout. DonL is sorry for yelling again, but feels the need. Chris-B says, "Big shouting Don and big sign Steve." Logie says, "We have to begin with the understanding that cyberspace has been circumscribed."" Laura_Gurak] [to Chris-B]: "BSD and BSS for short Chris-B says, "Is it a testosterone thing?" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kim_W has big sign envy Laura_Gurak] meant to 'continue' when she said 'go on' " LisaM [to Kim_W]: "Kim??!!?? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DonL [to Chris-B]: Definitely a testosterone thing. AheaP . o O ( does that make KimW green with said envy? ) Laura_Gurak] feels a bit uncomfortable at how she forcefully suggested changing the thread. (Week 4 Log)Laura asks a question, and, when no one responds, Don repeats her question using all upper-case letters, an electronic form of shouting. Several women participants then respond from a gendered perspective, forming a momentary local community of shared sentiment. Chris equates Don's shouting to Steve's big sign, Laura concurs, and then Chris, half seriously, half playfully, suggests that shouting might be "a testosterone thing." Kim notes playfully that she has "big sign envy," and Lisa expresses mock surprise and shock at Kim. This momentary community quickly dissipates, however, as Don and Allan (AheaP) respond to Chris and Kim, and Laura apologizes for trying to dominate the discussion.
Disciplinary and political languages and perspectives also served to challenge traditional hierarchical structures and mechanisms of control, to sustain local communities, and to disunify and threaten to dissolve these same communities. Disciplinary and political languages and perspectives appeared to be connected in several of our discussions since participants shared similar beliefs about the politics of cyberspace, despite their diverse disciplinary allegiances. Participants, ourselves included, were joined in a kind of local community by a common opposition to any controls on the use of electronic space, a political stance that helps to explain why Steve's big sign takes on so much symbolic significance as an image and emblem of authority and control. Early in our colloquium, several participants recounted their own experiences and expressed their opposition to controls on electronic space. One participant who had recently worked in industry recounted the difficulty that he had obtaining Internet access through his place of employment. Another described a notice on his university's computing system that warns unauthorized users that their use of the system may be monitored and recorded. The local community formed by this common political stance was supported by diverse disciplinary allegiances, ranging from Socrates and classical rhetoric to feminism to Foucault. As a result, it was always subject to disunity and threatened by dissolution. Occasionally, participants' comments on other participants' disciplinary allegiances reveal tensions that threaten to disunify and dissolve our momentary sense of political community. Allan (AheaP)'s and Don's response to Laura's allusion to Plato in the second week of our colloquium illustrates this tension:
Laura_Gurak] says, "Plato would say we should be talking face to face, not writing on the net." AheaP [to Luara]: Plato's dead. Chris-B says, "Plato would think we were the Akashic, the Metaphysical Ideal..." DonL says, "May we dance on his grave." mlbartos says, "no he'd be asking what makes you think this is a community? and then shooting your answer down... the original flamer!" DonL dances on Plato's grave. (Week 2 Log)Allan's comment that "Plato's dead" followed by Don's dancing on Plato's grave illustrates the potential of disciplinary language (and carnivalesque behavior) to disunify the local community of belief formed by our common political perspective.
Individuals in the MOO
Given such a complex mix and clash of languages and perspectives--professional, gendered, disciplinary and political, carnivalesque--individuals, not surprisingly, struggled to find opportune moments to enter into and influence the course of our discussions. The sophists recognized that the challenge of finding the opportune moment was radically contextual, dependent upon the beliefs and values that hold within a given community at any given time. Bakhtin's account of language reveals how complex and multiple--dialogic, heteroglot, carnivalesque--the language of any contemporary rhetorical community might be. Given the possibility of multiple languages and perspectives within any discussion, even within a single utterance, a possibility intensified within the dynamic rhetorical community of the MOO, individuals realize varying degrees of success as they attempt to influence the course of a discussion and sometimes, inadvertently, achieve results that they did not intend or anticipate.
Both successful and unsuccessful attempts to find the opportune moment occur frequently in our discussions, including portions of our discussions already cited. For example, in the passage in which Don uses upper-case letters, Laura has tried unsuccessfully to shift the discussion from the classroom to action in the world. Don appears to be offering her assistance--he says that he just feels the need--in getting attention and changing the course of the discussion. From a gendered perspective, and especially from a gendered perspective supported by a political perspective that opposes any controls in electronic space, Don's apparent attempt to assist Laura appears as mere shouting, a masculinist attempt to dominate and control the discussion, and even Laura feels a need to apologize for her persistence, partly because, as a member of the "faculty," she feels that she should not dominate the discussion. Don's shouting illustrates the dialogic, heteroglot character of language in the MOO--the complex mix and clash of Don's apparent intention, on the one hand, and the gendered and probably also political perspectives from which it is interpreted, on the other. It also illustrates the challenge and the difficulty of finding the opportune moment to enter into and attempt to influence the course of a discussion.
Unintentional or inadvertent successes to find the opportune moment also occur in our discussions. For example, in the following portion of one of our discussions, Lisa apparently did not intend to influence the discussion to the degree or in the direction that she did:
LisaM [to SteveDF]: "Laura, you and jim have the status here . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SteveDF [to LisaM]: "that may be perceived but I don't think any analysis of our conversations would warrant that status. in the least. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . LisaM [to SteveDF]: "I think it does--your comments are what are focused on by the repsondents--for the most part . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SteveDF [to LisaM]: "but I think the interesting ideas have been coming from everyone. I'm quite taken with the distribution of insight amongst this group. Laura_Gurak] [to LisaM]: "I'd like to see an analysis of the logs to see if this idea is true. (Week 7 Log)Lisa's comment on Laura, Steve, and Jim's perceived status leads to speculation about the justification for such a perception. Laura wonders whether an analysis of the logs would show a concentration of influence among the three of us or a more even distribution of influence among all of the participants. Subsequent to our evening's discussion, John Logie produces such an analysis and distributes it via electronic mail, and his analysis in turn provokes further discussion and speculation on this issue (the results of the discussion suggest, we think, that the three of us differ from each other and from the rest of the participants just as much as they themselves differ from us and from each other). Finally, Lisa protests:
Since much of the response to the logs focused on my ONE comment, I thought it was appropriate to reply--although focusing on my comment negates what I was saying in the first place :) My question is this: why is the status issue so important? If I think that status is a problem, isn't that my problem? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . My point is this: I think we are off on the wrong track. My ONE statement has been blown way out of proportion. (Response to Week 7 Log)Clearly, Lisa had found an opportune moment to enter into and successfully influence the course of our discussion. Clearly also, her "ONE comment," like Don's shouting, encompassed multiple intentions, her own intention apparently being quite at odds with the group's, her influence upon the course of the discussion entirely inadvertent and unintentional.
Traditional rhetoric focuses its attention upon a single rhetor (or perhaps single rhetors each in turn) seeking purposefully and intentionally to persuade an audience within a single community upon the basis of shared beliefs and values. We found in our colloquium in the MOO a kind of rhetoric and a kind of community that seem to us to be quite unlike anything that we see in the mainstream of the tradition--a rhetoric and a community characterized by a multiplicity of languages and perspectives and a consequent challenge to the rhetor to find the opportune moment to enter into and influence the course of a discussion. Though we recognize the current limits to the access and use of this technology, we nonetheless believe that the MOO has potential to become a contemporary rhetorical community--a public space or forum--within which local communities and individuals can express themselves and develop mutual respect and understanding via dialogue and discussion, and we believe that the graduate students who participated with us in our colloquium demonstrated this possibility through their own positive action in making this space their own. Given the potentially global reach of the MOO, we also believe that it has potential not only to transmit information across time, space, and cultural differences but more especially to provide a forum for dialogue and discussion among people of vastly different cultural backgrounds and beliefs, to become, if we choose to make it such, a contemporary rhetorical community in cyberspace.
Notes 1The authors are grateful to John Trimbur and Kathleen E. Welch for their thoughtful reviews and to Theresa Enos for her support and encouragement throughout the review and revision process.
2Shefski and Turkle 177-254 provide general introductions to opportunities for real-time interactions via the Internet, including MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons or Dimensions), MOOs (MUDs Object-Oriented), and IRC (Internet Relay Chat).
3Kaufer and Carley 31-35 distinguish oral from written communication and attribute to the latter qualities of asynchronicity, durability, and multiplicity or ability to reach a larger number of communication participants with increased speed.
4Doheny-Farina explains his skepticism in his new book, The Wired Neighborhood.
5Participants connected to DU through their institutional computing systems or, in one instance, a commercial service, but they were not officially sponsored or sanctioned by any one institution. In addition to ourselves, participants and their institutional affiliations (for identification only) were Chris Barrett (Chris_B, North Carolina State University), Mary L. Bartosenski (University of Maine), Christine Boese (Chris-B, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), Allan Heaps (Michigan Technological University), Kevin Hunt (Rensselaer), Patricia Jackson (Rensselaer), Karla Saari Kitalong (Michigan Tech), Don Langham (Rensselaer), John Logie (The Pennsylvania State University), Lisa D. Mason (University of Minnesota), William H. Powley (Rensselaer), Geoffrey F. K. Sauer (Carnegie Mellon University), Marilyn Vogler Urion (Michigan Tech), and Kim Tresselt Wharton (Minnesota). We gratefully acknowledge their generous contributions to our colloquium.
6We are grateful to Lee Honeycutt for assistance with the literature on social psychology.
7Will Powley is referring to Merrill D. Whitburn, then Chair, Department of Language, Literature, and Communication, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
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Appendix: "Conversation" in the Diversity University Student Union
Web Gateway: http://moo.du.org:8888/ Diversity University MOO campuses are Internet locations for serious experimentation in network-based, interactive teaching, learning and social services. Those wishing to further this community development are welcome! Free MOO Basics lessons: contact CindyT or MattWright online, or du@du.org The DU administration would like to thank the many volunteers contributing time and effort to further this vision. We would also like to thank the Internet Multicasting Service, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU), and the Annenberg/CPB Project for their support in this venture. Supporters of this project are not responsible for the content of any material which may be found on this system. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Student Union Lounge This is a busy place, frequented mostly by students who're looking for colleagues to talk to and ways to kill time. There is an old red couch in the corner, usually occupied by sleeping students. Several hallways branch off this center, and large glass doors on the southern wall lead to the foyer. Exits include: [northwest] to Universities Room [east] to Underground corridor (SU <-> [west] to Help Desk [north] to Entertainment Hall [southeast] to Teaching Robot room *** More *** 11 lines left. Do @more [rest|flush] for more. [northeast] to Student Union Elevator [south] to Student Union Foyer Sunstone_Guest, StuartR (Okay then), and HeatherDM (happy and smiling) are sitting on the old red couch. Christian, Bill_Dee, Gandalf, and you are standing here. You see Test Survey, DU Directory, EVENTS (10 notes), Yellow Pages!, Aquarium, Diversity Survey, Help Desk Sign (hd), MOOList, DU Places of Interest (POI), and *DU AIDS Memorial Quilt Poster* here. HeatherDM . o O ( everyone is ignoring me.. ) Gandalf bows gracefully to Sunstone_Guest, Christian, Bill_Dee, HeatherDM, *** More *** 3 lines left. Do @more [rest|flush] for more. StuartR, and you. Bill_Dee says, "Of course I'm a cynic" Christian [to Sunstone_Guest]: ever hear of Avail? Warning: Anything said in this room is subject to being logged for research purposes. Research is vital to the continued survival of DU so we hope you will understand. Gandalf [to Sunstone_Guest]: Hola Sunstone_Guest says, "nope"" Christian says, "just wondering" StuartR <- clever Sunstone_Guest asks, "they good?" The Palantir (Gandalf's emissary) materializes out of thin air Bill_Dee says, "Avail makes me wish for Advil" *** More *** 1 lines left. Do @more [rest|flush] for more. Sunstone_Guest says, "boo hiss " BillyO grapples HeatherDM to the ground in a *SUPERHUG* (__) (oo) /|-------\/ Bill_Dee holds up a BIG cow: * | moo! || ||------|| ~~ ~~ Christian [to Sunstone_Guest]: they are amazing....tough to find...what about jawbreaker *** More *** 1 lines left. Do @more [rest|flush] for more. Sunstone_Guest exclaims, "sid is not dead!" HeatherDM [to Billy]: HI Christian [to Bill_Dee]: oh that was clever StuartR winks to HeatherDM. Bill_Dee says, "Sid's not dead, he's too vicious" StuartR takes a moment to ponder. Sunstone_Guest says, "repeat yo self please" Gandalf asks, "Who's sid?" HeatherDM . o O ( am I invisible here?? ) Christian [to sunstone_please]: avail is great...ever hear of jawbreaker *** More *** 1 lines left. Do @more [rest|flush] for more. Darren has connected. Darren smiles at Sunstone_Guest, Christian, Bill_Dee, HeatherDM, StuartR, Gandalf, and you. HeatherDM [to Bill_Dee]: thanks Sunstone_Guest show nuff HeatherDM [to StuartR]: thanks Bill_Dee says, "I've broken a few jaws in my time" (__) (oo) /|--------------------------------\/ StuartR holds up a BIG cow: * | Don't ignore HeatherDM folks! || ||-------------------------------|| ~~ ~~ Sunstone_Guest [to Christian]: Cool stuff
*Published in Rhetoric Review 15 (1997): 400-19.