VIRTUAL FORA, LINGUISTIC ETHICS AND LEGAL ASPECTS

Abstract

This article introduces the Internet ­related communicative situations: e-mail, Web pages, net­worked games and group discussions. Each of these is distinguished by some specific characteristics stemming from the interaction of technology and the discursive genres of conversation and interview. Group discussions offer the formats of chat rooms or conversation channels, for instantaneous or synchro­nous communications, and discussion forums or distribution lists, for asyn­chronous communication.. Later, it analyzes the style and discursive characteristics of group discussion formats. Chat rooms pro­duce typed-in, oral language, which manifests childlike, creative, ground­breaking characteristics, while discus­sion forums adopt a hybrid standard­-informal register. Consideration is also given to the mediating or moderating aspects of the virtual forums. Forum par­ticipants are subject to specific regula­tion -discussed briefly- in their capacity as users of e-mail, which is their individual means of connection with the forum. In the practical part of the article, various samples of messages from a city-wide, social forum, the Fòrum Sant Cugat «forum@stcugat.net» are re­produced and discussed. These mes­sages deal with good manners or neti­quette and the controversies that arise in that regard.