Shade's research, although not linguistic in nature, is useful to provide a background into women's roles in constructing the Internet.  She begins by reviewing research on gendered uses of various communications technologies, including the telephone, radio, and television. She discusses cyberactivism and feminism, as well as public policy determining women's access to the internet.  She cites a case study of women in China and internet access implementation and concludes with a discussion of whether women are merely consumers targeted by merchants or active citizens in an online sisterhood (discussions that we have held in class as well).

Penntext/PDF available

In this essay, Frederick examines the question of whether computer-mediated communication is truly a democratic utopia where feminist values can flourish.  By studying data from 2 newsgroups, alt.feminism and soc.feminism, she demonstrates that discrimination and exclusion/hostility can continue to occur, even in a supposedly inclusive and politically feminist context.  She concentrates on the ethos of the newsgroups as the basis for constructing either a welcoming or distancing communication arena.  My interest in this article stems from this notion of ethos because I think that it a highly influencing factor which combines with inherent linguistic features of women's speech to produce a speech community.  I believe that any future discussions of the social structure of online communication must address ethos as well as linguistic differences in order to prevent factionalization or balkanization of men and women online, much as one might approach a dialog about multiculturalism and the internet.

In this text, Herring brings together a variety of sociological and linguistic essays on computer-mediated communications.  In the first section, "Linguistics Perspectives", the authors seek to define the oral and written linguistics aspects of email, IRC chat, and computer conferencing while contrasting them with face-to-face interactions.  In the second section, "Social and Ethical Perspectives", the authors deal with social issues of interaction such as cooperation versus conflict and the role of radical feminism for internet discourse ("Cyberfeminism" by Kira Hall).  The third portion deals with "Cross Cultural Perspectives" in which CMC is analysed between North American, East Asian, and Mexican students and theories of classroom diversity are presented.  Finally, the last grouping "CMS and Group Interaction" explores how CMC can change people's lives - exploring the group dynamics of online forums (Korenman and Wyatt, "Group Dynamics in an Email Forum"), how e-mail has changed the work environment, and how groups conduct internet-based protests.

This journal (2004) is a very cool read for feminist scholars and anyone interested in body politic.  Although I am not sure that any of the essays will apply to my work, I was quite interested in Schleiner's essay "Female-Bobs Arrive at Dusk", which talks about the phenomenon of fan-created female heroine patches for video games in the late 1990's (part of our discussion with Nick Monfort).  I was hoping to be able to use the essay by Aristarkhova "Femininity, Community, Hospitality: Towards a Cyberethics" in order to discuss issues of hospitality and community for women online, but she spends the entire time theorizing on the ideas of Derrida and community without talking about language and speech.

This text contains 22 essays, any number of which would be relevant to our class.  For my purposes, Chapter 19 on "Charting the Codes of Cyberspace: the Rhetoric of Electronic Mail" by Judith Yaross Lee  is important because it seeks to codify email as a hybrid of oral speech and traditional writing. Philip Thompsen continues to discuss online communication strategies in Chapter 20: "What's Fueling the Flames in Cyberspace: A Social Influence Model".  Thompsen attempts to redefine flaming on the internet and propose a social-influence model which incorporates the flaming behavior and the negotiation of what that behavior means to the community. While he does not address gender per se, he does seek to define flaming behavior and explain its consequences to group members over long term online experience.