The language of virtual worlds 193
who would have to be approached, if it were found necessary to ob-
tain permission from the ‘participants’ to use a piece of broadcast
cricket commentary. It transpired that, not only would one have to
ask permission of the commentators, but also of the programme
producer, the head of department to which the producer belonged,
every individual cricketer named in the commentary, plus anyone
else incidentally alluded to, including the estate of any deceased
person mentioned! A simple agreement with the BBC, taking into
account the limited purposes of the linguisticdescription, was the
sensible outcome. On the other hand, privately recorded conver-
sations between three or four people, such as those Derek Davy
and I recorded forAdvanced conversational English,^31 did require
personal permission, along with appropriate measures to safeguard
anonymity (such as replacing all proper names by phonologically
equivalent forms).
The MUD situation sits uneasily between these two procedures.
This is not because of the uncertain status of the texts as speech or
writing – for exactly the same considerations apply in the written
medium (e.g. in relation to using a transcript of informal letter-
writing). Nor is it anything to do with the intimacy of the subject-
matter: a distinction must be drawn between personal and private
data. Private data may be impersonal, and personal data may be
totally public (as in tombstone inscriptions).^32 Rather it is to do
with the typist/player/character distinction, and whether what we
are dealing with here is fact or fiction, given the anonymity and
virtuality of the whole situation. I remember Anthony Burgess once
being questioned after a lecture, when someone attacked him for
something ‘he had said’ in one of his novels: Burgess replied, ‘I
didn’t say that; my character said that.’ It is the same here: if I David
Crystal join a MUD as elfonaut ‘Davidia’, am I responsible for the
utterances of my character, and have I any grounds for objecting
if someone quotes those utterances without my permission? If a
linguist were to approach Davidia later, either on the MUD (as
(^31) Crystal and Davy (1976).
(^32) The point is made by Paccagnella (1997: 7) in his discussion of studies, such as ProjectH,
which have analysed cybertexts without permission (though shielding identities).