Language and the Internet

The language of e-mail 119

quotation. Thus, for example, I sent the following paragraph (5)
to someone, who replied as (6), cutting one of my sentences and
pasting it into the new message:

(5)

There are still several looseends for the Tuesday. We’ve had a lot of

people wanting to contribute, and our original proposals for

timing seem to be out. Do you think it would work having two

sessions in the afternoon? It would mean cuttingdown on the

tea-break, and maybe even timing dinner a half-hour later than

usual. That in turn would push the evening session on a bit,

but I don’t see any problem there, as everyone is staying the

night.

(6)

>Do you think it would work having two sessions in the

>afternoon?

Good idea

The longer a sender’s paragraphs, the more likely the recipient is
to respond in this way. The result has been described asframing,
because of the way in which the quoted text is demarcated typo-
graphically, either through an angle-bracket or a vertical line.^26
Framing is a consequence of the ease with which people can cut
and paste from an original message. It is also a feature of chatgroup
interactions (p. 141), where an extended discussion may make
use of extensive quotation from several participants, providing the
context for a reaction.
Framing has both strengths and weaknesses. It is a convenience,
in that a series of points can be responded to rapidly and succinctly,
either in the order in which they were made or in some fresh order –
much as we can strategically recapitulate a series of points made
by an interlocutor in a face-to-face discussion. Time and memory
are saved, as it is no longer necessary to trawl back through an

(^26) This is an extension of the notion of perceptual framing found in psychology and semi-
otics: see Bateson (1972), Mabry (1997), Wallace (1999: 127). It should not be confused
with the use of the termframe(in several senses) in grammar (sentence frame), conver-
sation analysis (discourse frame), and elsewhere.