Language and the Internet

The language of chatgroups 153

one go. And so the conversation proceeds, in a mixture of sequence,
simultaneity, and overlap. This is not something A would have been
able to do in face-to-face conversation, where interruptions either
succeed or they are crushed, and overlapping speech is minimal.
The scenario of two people talking in parallel and at length while
retaining full mutual understanding is inconceivable. It should also
be remembered that A’s messages are in the upper half of the screen
and B’s below (or vice versa):

A sends message 1

A sends an afterthought to message 1 while B’s reply is still

coming in

AreactstoB’sreply

B starts to reply to message 1

B reacts to A’s afterthought

B makes another point

It therefore becomes extremely difficult to follow the sequence of
events involved in the interaction. Even in a case where each party
obediently waits for the other to finish before replying, the split-
screen display does not make this clear:

A sends message 1

A sends message 2

A sends message 3

B sends message 1

B sends message 2

B sends message 3

There is no way of knowing, from a log of this interaction, whether
the messages alternated neatly, or whether two of B’s three mes-
sages were sent after A’s second message, or whether some other
sequencing took place.
With multiparty interaction, the situation immediately becomes
potentially much more confusing. You enter a chatgroup at a ran-
dom point, not knowing how many other people are involved, who
theyare,orwhattheyhavebeentalkingabout.Youmightfindyour-
self in the middle of a conversation like this (the nickname of each