Information Technology Reference
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Chapter 9
Disaffiliation and Pragmatic Strategies
of Emotive Communication in a Multiparty
Online Conflict Talk
Laura Bonelli
9.1
Introduction
Conflict talk is about challenges and counter-challenges, defenses, and retreats
(Labov and Fanshel
1977
: 59). Such moves and their possible impacts on the
interactant's stances, on their communicative choices, and even on their relationship
statuses are not only, but also determined by considerations on affect (Grimshaw
1990
: 12).
The path I am walking in this chapter is an argued attempt of how emotive
communication, or the strategic and co-constructed signaling of affective infor-
mation in conversational interactions, constitutes a prerequisite of more general
forms of connection (and disconnection) among people: what Malinowski (
1923
)
referred to as a capability of aggregation of interests and attitudes or, using
metaphors of authors who are closer to psychological and linguistic researches,
what Watzlawick et al. (
1967
) called
interpersonal convergence
, what Clark (
1996
)
defines as
joint actions
, and what Caffi (
2001
) more specifically connects to the
ability of empathetic attunement among individuals. In order to achieve a state
of
interpersonal convergence
, one has to be able to relate emotionally to her
interlocutors, and, in particular, one needs to be attuned to their expressions of
affect, both linguistic and paralinguistic. When speakers fail at this, conflictive
exchanges are one possible consequence. Although conflicts lead to divergence and
disconnection, they occur as joint actions nonetheless: our experience of speakers
offers everyday confirmations of this possibility.
A phenomenon which is curious, however, and which became object of study
only recently is how computer-mediated communication (henceforth CMC) can
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