When you open your email folder in the morning, you briefly skim the senders, delete half of the messages since they are spam, postpone reading some to later, and others you need to read straight away. The same may hold for answering those emails. Some may not deserve an answer, others can wait. Some you may want to answer straight away.
The amenity of emails is their asynchronous nature. You have the choice of whether, whom and when to answer, all at your own pace. What a luxury! Whether you’re lazy, short of time or just need some moments to think about what to write, emails give you the chance to take your time. They give you freedom of choice.
Messengers offer the possibility to have a quick chat in between all the academic stuff that’s waiting there to be done, to check up on your friends, discuss the latest news and keep you up-to-date with what is and what is not academic, the profane. The obvious advantage of this type of text-based communication compared to emails is synchronicity; usually you’ll send and receive messages at the same time. Thus, you can have something comparable to a talk with somebody, a chat, really.
Compared to speech, using chats will still offer the possibility to think about what you’re writing while typing. You won’t necessarily have the time for this while you speak. You can phrase the words in a particular way and think about the impression you’re creating with what you’re writing. And that’s exactly where the discontent comes from: Your intention does not necessarily have to match the receiver’s impression of what you put down. If it wasn’t for all sorts of possible emoticons, a little joke on your behalf may appear as some kind of an offence to the reader. The receiver, particularly when he’s not aware of your writing style, your humor, your personality, won’t have to understand the meaning you try to convey in your words. Likewise, he won’t necessarily interpret chat pauses the way they occur. Maybe you just go and grab a coffee and that’s why it takes a couple of minutes longer to answer for you. This may be interpreted as not wanting to talk to that person, as disrespectful. But you may have never wanted to convey this message. Thus, this indirect communication, communication between the lines, entails different meanings for both sender and receiver. It’s this particular form of communication, text-based, which may cause discontent.
Even though chat is supposedly synchronous, there’s a time gap in between reading, understanding, thinking about an answer and actually typing and sending your response. This, particularly for the fast typers among us, causes a delay in communication, in such a way that you’re responding to an earlier message while several others have followed and the sender won’t really know whether this response concerns his initial statement or a later one. This may lead to confusion and you may have to clarify your point. In ordinary speech, this won’t happen. While others talk, you won’t just simply talk at the same time. In text-based communication, you read and write at the same time with your communication partner.
Delays, miscommunication and misinterpretation are what make text-based, even synchronous text-based communication tricky. On the one hand, this new type of exchange is profitable and advantageous because it offers an easy way to get in touch. You can have a chat window open and at the same time check the news, skim an academic article and look at tomorrow’s weather forecast. On the other hand, you need to be aware of the pitfalls of this communication. Particularly when it’s “serious” matter you try to communicate, text-based communication is not necessarily the optimal mode to be chosen. Instead, good old fashioned emails appear more adequate for they offer the possibility to think a thought through and formulate it before the next text appears which the sender awaits response to. Furthermore, emoticons are limited. Even though you may choose between s, s, ^^s and the like, a text won’t convey your facial expression, your gestures, what’s really personal about communication. On the other end, particular emails can become even more than that, namely hyperpersonal communication. Following Walther, the hyperpersonal indicates that the sender presents himself as a social person aware of the fact that his message may be read in a certain way and thus he tries to omit anything that may appear ambivalent and thus compromise his initial intentions. Secondly, he will present himself favorably, so that the social nature of this interaction is furthermore manifested. In direct speech, the absolute synchronicity of communication does not allow for hyperpersonal interaction; it’s merely personal.
So what can one do in order to resolve this dilemma? Stick with emails and forget about any other type of communication? This is an intriguing idea. But no, sometimes you do need to see your conversation partner’s face, how they smirk when you delve in shared memories, how they wrinkle their nose when you tell them about the British food you had last night or how they open their mouth in astonishment about the rude behavior of your neighbor’s child.
But sometimes you need the semi-distance a written word creates. It not only distances you from your conversation partner, but it may distance you from your emotions at that particular moment and gives you the option to have a meta-view on your conversation and what you intend to convey and what’s better left unspoken, or unwritten, for that matter.
Conclusively, text-based communication is both boon and bane of interpersonal interaction. Only when we’re aware of its pitfalls can we use it most efficiently. You may wonder why I’m bothering in the first place, since everyone uses it anyways. Well, at some point in time everybody will be confronted with text-based communication’s discontents and thus it’s necessary to bear in mind that the intended message does not equal the received message. In the end, the medium is the message. Make of it what you deem best.
Meanwhile I’ll make sure to come up with some more emoticons to satisfy my need for meta-textual synchronous communication.
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