192 LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET
surveysofrecentdecades;everymajorcorpusnowcontainsasignif-
icant amount of conversational data, and appropriate measures to
protect anonymity are these days routine.^29 The study of Netspeak
conversations, however, is a long way from this stage, with par-
ticipants sensitive about the ‘ownership’ of their utterances, and
researchers anguishing over whether such sensitivities should be
respected or not. Cherny, who has anguished more than most,
points out that the players themselves are uncertain about the sta-
tus of their situation:^30
Fully understanding MUD culture requires understanding the
ambivalence of MUDders toward their texts, which remain poised
between the transience of speech and the persistence of
documents.The core of the matter seems to be whether such texts are public
data or not. On the one hand, it can be argued that, simply by
putting your words on a screen which can be accessed by an in-
definite number of people you do not know, you have effectively
made a public statement, which can be used, with appropriate ac-
knowledgement, in the same way as other public statements (such
as newspaper articles) are used. On this view, within the usual
conventions of ‘fair quotation’, I may use extracts from these con-
versations without first requesting permission. On the other hand,
because MUD players see themselves as belonging to virtual com-
munities,interactingwithplayers(or,atleast,theircharacters)who
they sometimes do get to know well, and dealing with topics which
are at times intimate in nature, there is a widespread feeling that
their utterances are private, and should be respected. On this view,
I should ask permission of all participants before quoting.
Surveys of linguistic usage have long used both procedures. Be-
cause some circumstances are so public, and involve so many peo-
ple, it is impossible to control a permissions process focused on
individuals, and an institutional permission must suffice. I recall,
backinthe1960s,adiscussionontheSurveyofEnglishUsageabout
(^29) The state of the art in corpus linguistics is well illustrated in Aijmer and Altenberg (1991).
(^30) Cherny (1999: 293).