Let us now consider an analytical model which will allow us to make ethnographies of conversations in distributed virtual enviroments. There are obviously many differences between these kinds of conversations and face-to-face conversations which will have to be taken account of in such a model. At the same time, there are also a considerable number of similarities between these two types of conversational situation, so what we need is to develop some kind of functional, and preferably reasonably concise, taxonomy which will allow us to characterize and describe any kind of conversation in a general way but which also will allow us to highlight some of the most relevant differences and similarities between virtual and face-to-face conversations. To this end we might consider adopting Sachs and Schegloff's simple systemics of adjacency pairs as the basic structure underlying all and any form of conversational exchange. For our present purposes, however, I believe that the following observation by Erving Goffman from his introduction to his book Forms of Talk seems even more useful. Here he writes[35]:
"Everyone knows that when individuals in the presence of others respond to events, their glances, looks and postural shifts carry all kinds of implication and meaning. When in these settings words are spoken, the tone of voice, manner of uptake, restarts and the variously positioned pauses similarly qualify. As does manner of listening. Every adult is wonderfully accomplished in producing all of these effects, and wonderfully perceptive in catching their significance when performed by accessible others. Everywhere and constantly this gestural resource is employed, yet rarely itself is systematically examined."
My main reason for seizing on this particular citation here is that Goffman does not, as many linguists and discourse analysts before and after him have unfortunately tended to, overstate the importance of spoken language in human communication. Rather, he takes care to position the vital semiotic resource of language within a much broader framework which incorporates other semiotic resources like facial expression, gaze, intonation, prosody, pauses, verbal style, body language and other forms of non-verbal behaviour, all of which he refers to collectively as `this gestural resource'. These resources are all seen to work in tandem with the central language resource, but it is quite clear that this whole constellation of quite different semiotic resources so much functions together as a whole as to make each individual component inseparable from the rest of this greater whole in order for communication to function optimally.
A second reason why Goffman's approach represents a useful point of departure is that he explicitly concerns himself with the interplay between three fundamental aspects of the context for communication, which he terms `ritualization', `participation framework' and `embedding', and which correspond roughly speaking (in this same order) to codification and understandings of:
a) the generalized `gestural resouce' mentioned above
b) the participant status and conduct of participants
c) the relationship between what is being said, and who or what is actually being represented by what is being said.
These three aspects of communication interact intimately with one another to create what Goffman elsewhere goes on to refer to as `the fundamental requirements of theatricality' which is inherent in all forms of social action, and more specifically, talk.
As he puts it:
"I make no literary claim that social life is but a stage, only a small technical one: that deeply incorporated into the nature of talk are the fundamental requirements of theatricality"[36].
Incorporating an understanding of this basic `theatricality' of social life and communication seems to me vital in developing any form of ethnographic description, and especially of those sociocultural situations where conversation or talk represents just one specific part of an on-going flow of socially defined and other interrelated events. In fact, when we come to think about it, it is quite obvious that all conversational situations are actually like this.
People do not really just talk, they are constantly doing other things while they are talking, either on their own account, such as scratching their noses or preening their hair or clothes, or in more directed ways like using body movement and other non-verbal cues to manage socially acceptable levels of physical proximity, or looking at and handling some object together while at the same time talking about it. People come and go, they move around the situation they are in while they are conversing, they adopt and continually negotiate various social and interpersonal roles relative to one another at different times in the course of the conversation, and relative to any other on-going activities in the situation they are taking part in. Sometimes they are just watching, at other times they are both watching and commenting on what others are doing, at other times again they are initiating activities on their own or recruiting other participants in order to do things together with them.
Goffman was one of the first to address this basic issue of the complexity and interrelatedness of the communication events comprising everyday interactions systematically in more general terms. First sketched out in Frame Analysis[37] his basic ideas are developed in more detail in Forms of Talk[38]. More recently people in anthropological linguists[39] have been developing specialised fieldwork tools and methodologies for conversational analysis which attempt to include various features of doings in analytical descriptions of situated talk.
If we return to our considerations of conversations and interactions in object-oriented distributed virtual environments we can see that many of the same kinds of comings and goings, movings and doings of other kinds as mentioned above for face-to-face situations will also be possible for participants to simulate, and in fact most of these moves and happenings will be noticeable for others, albeit in restricted and disembodied ways due to the technologically mediated nature of the virtual environments in which they occur.
Ethnographies of conversations, then, whether they are being made in real or virtual environments, will in any case need to take account of a continuous flow of complimentarity phenomena[40] reflecting changing social and interpersonal role relationships negotiated in conversation, as well as the various kinds of doings and talkings related to the management of participants' perceived consequences of these changing role relationships, and which at the same time are contributing to their changing.
Below I attempt to sketch out a simple taxonomy that may be useful for making ethnographies of conversations in general and which at the same time can take account of some of the differences and simliarities between conversations face-to-face and conversations in object-oriented virtual environments. For the time being we shall leave it up to readers to examine and evaluate the model presented below, and to consider in which specific ways it might actually be applied in researching conversations ethnographically in various kinds of situations. I also suggest a few places where this basic taxonomy might be extended in order to include forms of qualifying behaviour which are normally found whenever processes of socialization, normative change and norm constitution are going on, which probably can be said to be the case at some level or other for almost every form of human interaction.
Fig. 1 Modified schematic summary of Goffman's (1981) model of footing in conversation and talk
Figure 1 is a schematic representation of alignments of speakers to hearers in talk as described in detail elsewhere by Goffmann[41]. The schema has however been extended in order to include a few sub-categories of what I have chosen to refer to as `doings', suggesting a rather coarse-grained, tripartite categorisation of possible ratified participant behaviours into `movement', `observation' and `performance'. Other categories and subdivisions than these three basic ones are of course thinkable, and it will probably be necessary to consider the introduction of other subcategories into this basic schema at some later stage. However, for the sake of simplicity we shall content ourselves for the time being with leaving the number at three. Associated participant roles for these three types of doings for ratified participants are those of `mover', `observer' and `performer'.
Into the general sub-category of `movement' will fall participant doings such as entering and leaving a situation through an entrance or exit, any other kinds of comings and goings, movement around the room, movement between various groups of participants, from point to point in the room, moving on the spot etc..
Into the category of observation will fall those forms of participation doings whereby attention is openly (or otherwise) being directed to some activity or activities performed by other ratified or non-ratified participants co-present in the situation, or to objects present in the environment.
Into the category of performance will fall such forms of participation as taking and holding the floor in order to say something, making a prepared speech, reading aloud from a piece of paper, demonstrating some particular motor skill or task, writing on a blackboard or a piece of paper, drawing a diagram etc..
At this point it is important to point out that the two other main participant roles in the taxonomy, i.e. those of `speaker' and `hearer', and indeed any subcategorizations of these categories which have been included in the matrix above, will, and indeed cannot in any way be considered mutually exclusive either with one another, or with the basic role of `doer', nor with any of the three more delicate subcategorizations of the main doer category shown in the diagram. One may for instance quite easily be speaking at the same time as one is writing or drawing a diagram on a blackboard, and someone who is speaking can quite easily be listening to general signals of audience response like coughs, shufflings and other noises in the environment while at the same time watching the body language of some key member of the audience, as well as glancing from time to time at what is happening outside the window. Obviously, someone who is actively engaged in forms of behaviour which are related to all three key participant roles at one and the same time will be forced to divide his or her attention between the execution of several quite different forms of physical, mental and emotional activity, and this will tend to lessen the amount of attention and energy that he or she is able to devote to the maintenance of behaviours specific to each of the roles in question. The general effect of this will be to slow down or otherwise interfere with carrying out of motor and attentional requirements of the various role clusters[42].
If we move on fopr a moment to look at the case of `doings' associated with non-ratified participants, so far only one kind of very general potential `doer' role has been identified within the general `doing' sub-category, namely that of `intruder', but again, a number of other more fine-grained subcategorisations of non-ratified participant doings and associated participant roles on the basis of similar `movement', `observation' and `performance' sub-categories are not only thinkable, but also very probably necessary. Especially relevant in this connection will be categorizations for out-of-frame doings on the part of those non-ratified participants who actually might desire to become ratified participants but who are still in the process of finding out how to go about doing so. It may also apply to participants who for some reason or other have lost, or been deprived of a ratified position in the social field which they have held previously, and who now wish to negotiate a new position for themselves. This general behavioural category might be referred to as `qualifying', with associated participant roles such as `novice' or `wannabe'[43]