Web-Enhanced Article: Being in Two Spaces at Once: Virtual Meetings and Their Representation

JLA 16.1 Web-Enhanced Article

Christina Wasson

This article examines the meetings of virtual teams in a corporate workplace. I explore how these meetings are different from the face-to-face meetings that have historically been analyzed by linguistic anthropologists. In particular, I investigate the ramifications of team membersability to participate in two interactional spaces at the same time. Goffman s writings are used to develop an analytical framework that accommodates the new possibilities and constraints afforded to participants in virtual meetings. The development of a transcription system to visually represent these encounters is also described as an integral part of the analysis process. This research contributes to an emerging focus in linguistic anthropology on technology-mediated communication.

Video Examples

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.