Conversations in cyber space. Scope and limits of the contractual hypothesis

Abstract

Addressing contemporary cyber culture, in itself diverse and complex, from the “science of language” field, poses considerable challenges to researchers in terms of theory and methodology. Conceptual paradigms and analysis tools of this vast field of knowledge – including linguistics, semiotics, pragmatics, discourse theories, rhetoric, etc.– are put to the test and need to be reviewed, reformulated and even discarded, in an extreme case, in order to appropriately respond to questions posed by the new phenomena of the virtual community. In our research on the “conversational writing” in virtual communities (Tabachnik, 2012), the issue of “contract” revealed to be one of the unavoidable problems when trying to grasp certain modalities specific to “regulation” that are generally implicit in the development of in absentia conversations in the Web and that affect the consolidation or on the contrary, the deterioration and even the breaking of the fragile community link. In this work we retake these questions as a review of some aspects of the contractual theory formulated –from the field of discourse analysis– by Patrick Charaudeau; and after discussing the scope and limitations of this notion in the study of conversations in the Web, we propose another possible way of addressing the contract problem, based on the recognition of three characters “native” of the Web –the moderator, the lurker and the troll– whose identity in virtual communities is determined, amongst other factors, by the special relationship they establish with the contractual body: the validation of the contract; its omission; or in an extreme case, its transgression.