Language and the Internet

180 LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET

are shared with chatgroups in general, but focus on those which
make it different. For example, the communicative problems as-
sociated with turn-taking are found here as well as in chatgroups;
however, in MUDs, there are additional issues arising out of the
range of discourse options that the medium provides. I shall illus-
trate the procedures in a little more detail than in previous chapters,
partly because this Internet situation is less well known, and partly
because it is difficult to get access to samples of data.
Two chief modes of communication exist:sayingandemoting.^12
Saying is illustrated by the following extract from a hypothetical
conversation between Langman, whom I operate, and the other
characters in the control room, operated by other players. To make
my character speak I might type:

>say hello

This would appear on everyone else’s screen as:

Langman says ‘hello’.

They might then reply to me.

Prof says, ‘good day’.

Doc says, ‘Where the hell have you been?’

If I wanted to single out one or other of the characters, I could have
typed a directed command, such as:

>sayprofhello

which would appear on everyone else’s screen as:

Langman [to Prof], ‘hello’.

Of course the player operating Doc might then wonder why I had
failed to greet him – the reasons doubtless bound up with an earlier
stage of the game.

(^12) There are others, such as ‘thinking’ – illustrated by the ‘thought-bubble’ convention in
Cherny (1999: 111).