Graham M. Jones

Authentic impersonations: Reported speech and thought in computer-mediated talk

Critics commonly assert that Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) is somehow less authentic than face-to-face interaction. Considering the enactment of type-written message exchanges as authentic talk among members of one speech community, this paper shows evidence of competing media ideologies. Focusing on the animation of self- and other-authored speech in Instant Messenger (IM) conversations between young speakers of American English, it is argued that constructed dialogues function indexically as attributes of style, genre, and register that contextualize interaction as talk. Reported speech raises other questions about authenticity, as representing speech or thought in the form of a direct quotation entails claims of both accuracy and authority. What authenticates these impersonations? Conversational data indicates that, within this speech community, indexical features of citational format and quotative form differentially cue social and denotational meanings. Does the recontextualization of an oral genre of constructed dialogue in a written format affect criteria for authenticity associated with reporting speech and thought? And can attention to this micro-practice inform broader considerations of authenticity in the intertextual and multimodal circulation of entextualizations in CMC?