Name : TONG Lina
Student no : 50357132
Email : tong_lina@hotmail.com

Interactional Sociolinguistics : Reading Critique 2 (Week 10)

Hugh Miller, 'The Presentation of Self in Electronic Life: Goffman on the Internet'

(A Paper presented at Embodied Knowledge and Virtual Space Conference, Goldsmiths' College, University of London, June 1995).

Summary :

      Electronic Communication (EC) represents email and the World Wide Web. The presentation of self in personal homepages on the Web is the key point. What is essential in EC are: firstly, some people use false identities on the Web. They can be a person who is not what or she or he pretends to be, they can tell lies and play unreal personalities as they are interacting in a virtual life, the screen separates them from you, so you can’t see, feel and smell them. Secondly, you’re free to put whatever you want on your own homepage and in this sense you are interacting with the world. You wouldn’t care about people’s negative judgments towards you or your homepage. When someone offends you in a face to face interaction,; you’ll feel embarrassed but not as much as when people offend you on the Internet. Thirdly, Web pages are created to let people surf and give opinions on it. You can contact and interact with the designer through his email address included on his Web page. Finally, as technology developments improve progressively, EC has rich and vivid information and resources. Therefore EC will become fundamental within human communication.

Critique :

        My personal homepage is specially created for people to get to know me better. I did a full and detailed presentation of myself. I’ve put my profile (name, D.O.B, sex, nationality…), pictures; I described my personality and talked about my hobbies, school and love life…etc. There’s actually an interactive system because I’m contacting with people or vice versa as I left my email address and ICQ number. They’re free to evaluate my homepage by signing up my guestbook. This interaction is invisible physically but visible mentally. Visitors can also “travel” on my friends’ homepages because I’ve put their links on my webpage. What Hugh Miller mentioned about individual homepage is exactly what I have on mine. I’m really “putting myself up for interaction”. “EC is instantaneous but asynchronous”, is applicable in my case because I can talk one to one, one to anyone…etc. through EC but the place and the distance aren’t shown. It’s easy to deal with embarrassment on the Web, when I receive comments like “ur page is kinda childish, mine’s betta” or “u got a nice page, keep da good work on it”. I won’t reply those who judge negatively. Instead I just delete them from my guestbook. For those who leave nice comments, I reply and thank them.

(Summary + Critique : 413 words)