56 LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET
continuing to focus on the topic, albeit rudely, is flaming or not.
The point has attracted considerable discussion within chatgroups
(where flaming behaviour is common, at least by comparison with
e-mail).^47 William Millard reports a case where a discussion moved
to a different level, involving a dispute over whether a message
was a flame or not, thereby attracting the attention of the list
moderator, who attempted to control the way the interaction was
going:^48
The message below is not a flame, although the poster claims it is.
I have noticed on lists that when anyone uses the word ‘flame’ in a
post hitherto dormant netters gather for the kill fromall parts of
the known electronic universe. Don’t overreact here...Ironically, such interventions can lead to a further discussion of
what constitutes flaming, in which people take strong positions,
and end up flaming each other about the topic of flaming – what
Millard callsmetaflaming.
Flaming behaviour, arising as it does out of frustration over
the way a conversation is going, would seem more to contravene
Grice’s maxim of manner than of quantity. Its presence in Netspeak
should not be underestimated. Millard, focusing on academic lists,
identifies several factors in Internet writing which account for it. In
addition to the metacommunicative minimalism of the medium,
referred to above (p. 41), there is also:
the customary economic constraints on connection time (and
thus on personal patience), the delayed response of the audience,
or the uncertainties ensuing from the consciousnessthat Internet
communities are new enough to lack clear social protocols–as
well as the general underlying tension between conceptionsof
language as a transparent medium for serious work or a dense
material for ludic performance- all of which, he concludes, ‘implies that online academic writing
as a genre is conducive to anxiety, wrath, and vendetta’.^49 The point
(^47) Baron (2000: 239) finds a diminution in e-mail flaming, and suggests that the behaviour
48 may have been an early symptom of the novelty of the medium.
Millard (1996: 152–3).^49 Millard (1996: 147).