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.

In this study, Fahy analyzed written texts from on online conference of graduate students in a distance learning exercise.  He and his team hypothesized that the women's speech would be more "epistolary" in participation style as previously described by other researchers, and would most likely contain more hedges, qualifiers, first and second person pronouns, and parenthetical constructions with the intent of reducing any potential conflict and sustaining ongoing dialog.  He likewise hypothesized that the men's speech would be more "expository", using less of the aforementioned forms as well as being more declarative.  They also predicted that the men would use a greater number of linguistic intensifiers and would be more prone to flaming and/or rudeness.  While their results were not overwhelmingly strong, the numbers did support the base hypotheses of inherent differences in men's and women's discourse.  Fahy goes on to discuss what the potential effect upon distance learning may be if professors do not take into account the differences between epistolary and expository styles regardless of the participants' gender.