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Re:Non verbal communication in chat
· 10/10/00 at 11:29 ET
I see part of the problem, you didn't realize that the neologism "emoticon" I was using just means the little "smileys" themselves. You replaced my "emoticon" with "emotes" in your reply. That's why we thought we were disagreeing over something we obviously agreed about. We were both saying that there is much more to "REpersonalizing" electronic communication than the smileys. I thought you were saying that the smileys were the electronic replacement for face to face nonverbal communication. I think we both agreed with Sara, although honestly it seems like an almost trival observation. Of course electronic communication is depersonalizing when it is used to communicate impersonal messages (?). Let's ask instead what people expect to get out of "chats" that is different from what they expect to get out of small talk with friends ! Electronic communication also becomes intensely intimate very quickly with the right context and assumptions on both sides. It seems to be the lack of information normally present, and how we fill in the interpretive gaps from our own interpretations that is at issue, rather than any inherently depersonalizing qualities of the medium. It can also be "highly personalizing," as when people who have never met and might never have noticed each other face to face sometimes fall in love over email exchanges, turning our usual sensory cues for attraction upside down, replacing them entirely with fantasy images. Hardly what we would expect from an intrinsically depersonalizing medium, rather what we would expect from a medium that encourages us to fill in the gaps from our own desires and expectations.
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