Face Off: Identity in French On
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1. an era of increasingly sophisticated surveillance On the other hand it is condemned as an invitation to anarchy providing cover for criminals from tax evaders to terrorists The very purpose of anonymity said Supreme Court Justice Scalia is to facilitate wrong by eliminating accountability quoted in Froomkin 1995 11 The Nouvel Observateur site accommodates the production of a name for every forum participants in the debate on Microsoft therefore include Bill Portes and Bill Guette Such made to measure names were at one point possible on the Le Monde site where habitu s also rang playful changes on recognizable pseudonyms If the same person has multiple names which cannot be traced back to the same address on line and off line worlds might seem to diverge but we must remind ourselves that other written genres equally allow multiple pseudonyms and it is entirely possible to ring talk back radio or just to talk to strangers on buses under different guises Although increasing policing of the Le Monde site saw between 2000 and 2002 an enforcement of the principle of unitary identity one address one pseudonym a further development in 2003 disturbed it This was the introduction of a user pays system forum participation is now only open to subscribers to the on line edition of Le Monde According to discussion on Coin d tente the section where small talk and chitchat are allowed this has brought about the formatio2. argument So where is that the staple of the classroom Je m appelle Barbara je suis australienne je suis professeur j ai deux chats j habite une maison The Grange et j aime la musique baroque la science fiction et faire les brocantes etc Does this have its place on Internet fora Well yes there is one comparable media website where this use of identity works on line the English language learning discussion board on the BBC site As the discussions whirl on around them the learners continue to trade personal details talking the talk of language learners Queensland University of Technology 35 British Broadcasting Corporation BBC Messageboards http www bbc co uk messageboards
3. 12260013 faute qui a t commise c est que trop de temps ce soit pass jusqu l application de la double peine Kurupt responds as follows Toi etrangere vivant en France laisee moi rire tu n es qu une menteuse la facon de t exprimer avoue intrinsequement que tu es francaise Tu utilise ce subterfuge pour donner plus de poids a tes idees mais je ne suis pas dupe ae Karniella writes too well to be foreign Richmanporter who is belligerently anti French and claims to speak for the oppressed foreign worker writes both too well and too badly according to William Richmanporter je te soup onne de faire de la provocation en faisant l idiot Tu sais crire des mots difficiles et tu ajoutes des idioties Si tes messages ne passent pas c est peut tre que quelqu un s en est aper u Arr te de faire l idiot et dis moi si je me trompe Fake good foreigner fake bad foreigner both Karniella and Richmanporter serve the cause of the double peine Karniella by supporting it Richmanporter by presenting the undesirable foreign element If their accusers are correct both on line personas actually mask anti foreign agitators anti foreign agitators who presumably do not fantasize about being foreign and who represent an inverted model of passing in that they are trying to pass as members of the marginalized group in order to marginalize that group further If the accusers are right these are failed exerci
4. Face Off Identity in French On line Debate BARBARA E HANNA For many commentators the defining characteristic of Internet discussion is its facelessness In the current state of technological play it is rare to see our on line interlocutors or to be seen by them the self is quite precisely said This paper brings together two lines of thought proceeding from this simple observation in order to consider the use of Internet discussion in teaching French and specifically the issue of on line identity asserted by language learners Reduced channels of communication Firstly we note that much talk about pedagogical uses of the Internet underlines the reduced channels of on line communication There is no face nor tone of voice nor gesture In the eyes of many educationalists this reduction produces simplification on line communication is not different in kind but lacking it is the skim milk to the full cream richness of face to face communication In holding this view they choose to ignore issues of generic specificity and the possibility that the nature of computer mediated communication might influence communicative and cultural conventions My thanks go to Juliana de Nooy collaborator on a larger project on on line communication for her input into this paper I also record my gratitude to those who worked as research assistants on the Internet fora quoted Lara Cain Peter Cowley and Wendy Ward The power of th
5. Fight for Civil Rights carries the breaking story of razzmatazz0 s day Razzmatazz0 self identified as heterosexual has announced his intention to ask a co worker if he is gay But not all participants in discussion are convinced of razzmatazz0 s sincerity Is the story fact or fiction If you are even telling the truth at all you need to be very careful You are prying into matters that are none of your business Your posts have some traits to them that make me wonder if you are being truthful here about all this His claim of questioning the coworker doesn t ring true anyway hon Is razzmatazzO a straight Christian office worker with an overwhelming and for him inoffensive urge to know his colleague s sexual orientation Is he truly someone who needs to know won t approve but won t let it interfere with work Are the accusations of dishonesty well founded Without access to non verbal clues no one can see razzmatazz0 s shifty eyes or offended sincerity Nor indeed whether he is a violent homophobe an anti Christian propagandist or a researcher of discrimination in the workplace The on line world does indeed seem beset by uncertainties http forums nytimes com Messages are periodically wiped from the site 7 Bob_maddox 1 47 pm New York Times Gay Pride The fight for civil rights 15 October 2002 Bob_maddox 1 54 pm New York Times Gay Pride The fight for civil rights 15 Octobe
6. ably indicate age gender or nationality They do however if prohibitions on usurpation of names are respected indicate the same user identifiable from one posting to another on the same site or at least within the same K zako Le Monde Autres sujets 4 January 2000 Unless otherwise stated italics in this and other cited messages indicate my emphases Spelling and grammar are as in the original postings The current version of the Le Monde fora is at Forums Le Monde http forumselections lemonde fr perl wwwthreads pl debate the option of complete anonymity in which there are no clues as to the authorship of each message is not compatible with the functioning of the sites Often the pseudonyms are so clearly not real names that describing them as deceitful is as illogical as decrying masks at a masked ball Facelessness at the masked ball can be fun as scores of witty pseudonyms remind us Unlike the masked ball however there is no expectation that the masks will be removed at the end of the evening Pas de sp culations ou r v lations a propos de lidentit de tel ou tel participant facelessness is not a danger but a right In the examples above we see evidence of the debate on on line anonymity described by Donath Anonymity including pseudonymity is very controversial in the on line world On one side anonymity is touted as the savior of personal freedom necessary to ensure liberty in
7. ate my emphases 3 europeaneo Le Monde International L Europe La Pologne veut elle nous foutre dans la M 5 May 2003 kurukuru Le Monde International L Europe La Pologne veut elle nous foutre dans la M 5 May 2003 de changer les Europ ens Mais vous ne m etonnez pas le masque europ en est trop pratique pour cacher des pulsions inavouables d ailleurs pourriez vous nous dire qui etes vous Sud americain indiens oriental car de toute evidence vous n etes pas occidental et ce que vous revez au plus profond de vous c est justement de vider l Europe de toute sa personnalit et de tout son g nie J A further exchange as the debate degenerates europeaneo encore d sol e quoique indien je me sens tout aussi indien du Chappas dans sa for t vierge l abris des pollutions et des conomies de march am ricain Si c est cela votre bonheur vous pouvez vous le garder kurukuru Vous etes europ en indien du Chiappas schtroumf escargot enfin tout sauf occidental et surtout am ricain pour resumer vous etes le prototype de l antiamericain primaire et exotique que seriez vous sans les USA Clearly kurukuru s intense interest in europeaneo s identity is no product of concern for a convivial sharing of the personal Rather the rhetorical value of these attacks has been to disable europeaneo s argument europeaneo is the cuckoo in the nest the pseudoeurop
8. ation for the lack of attention to europeaneo s floating gender identification accusations of fakery are placed in order to disable one s opponent and equally identity may be used in order to add weight to arguments Student identity on line Now if identity in Internet fora is about making or faking the point this allows us to revisit that question of the identity students assert and makes us reflect upon the range of On this point see Barbara E Hanna and Juliana de Nooy A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum Electronic Discussion And Foreign Language Learning Language Learning and Technology 7 1 2003 71 85 http Ilt msu edu See also Barbara E Hanna and Juliana de Nooy Negotiating cross cultural difference in electronic discussion Multilingua 23 3 2004 257 281 Our initial investigations into the issue of cross cultural difference in on line debate suggest that the focus of discussion on US sites is also about making a case but that this tends to be through the presentation of conflicting personal views and experiences rather than through engagement with the arguments of others This tendency is consistent with Donath s observation p 50 that the most usual kind of identity options with which teachers equip them The familiar itinerary is name age nationality and profession and au choix address family members domestic animals hobbies likes and dislikes These are our first steps in th
9. e face in guaranteeing authentic identity For a second group including sociologists ethnologists psychologists and writers of various television series the interest of this facelessness is that it has spawned a hitherto unknown mode of communication where onscreen unseen interlocutors are fictional creations of human demiurges After all the English faceless denotes lack of identity While there is no French cognate for faceless there is nonetheless a cluster of everyday metaphors about arriving at the truth via the revelation of the face we may note the words d masquer d voiler Face is the guarantor of identity without access to it we apparently enter the domain of uncertainty indeed deceit Thus Jaur guiberry proclaims Ce relatif d collement des internautes en regard des lieux corps et statuts va permettre l apparition d un type d action totalement in dit celui de la manipulation identitaire laquelle un individu va pouvoir se livrer en superposant une identit virtuelle son identit r elle une identit fantasm e son identit sociale 3 Of identity in the Internet discussion forum he says L individu manipule sa propre identit afin d tre r ellement pris par ses interlocuteurs pour celui qu il fantasme d tre Forget Polonius Saying the Self in a Foreign Language When a colleague introduced Internet fora into the teaching of argumentation to students of French it wa
10. e foreign language and our first words in producing our identity It is an identity that closely resembles that of the small child and can only take us so far in performing in French cultural practices Let us return then to the student who can see no role to play but that of fake French person or always already marginalized Anglophone Hispanophone etc The issues of the manipulation of identity on line and the use of identity as it is bound up in generic stakes suggest a way through this dilemma Identity becomes something you can use as opposed to something you just are You might use your identity to be socially pleasant or you might use your identity to make a point Identity is not something that is unmalleable with the only alternative being a false identity Readers will remember my own initial enthusiasm for fora as a means of refusing the role of la petite trang re Understanding identity as situational as strategic allows you to live your status as outsider as something potentially empowering rather than restrictive something that you might be able to use and something that you might not I wish to conclude with some examples of students using identity successfully The examples come from on line interactions in which second year French students participated as part of a unit on argumentation Although our examination of on line identity was not systematic steps had been taken to avoid students approaching the fora in the sp
11. ean who seeks to destroy from within the pseudoscientist diffusing false facts That is these questions have much to do with winning the debate and little with discovering the true europeaneo After all if that were the issue at hand wouldn t there be some other questions Amongst the multiple non standard usages in these texts is what one might have expected to be a puzzling movement between masculine and feminine forms Europeaneo writes variously Moi citoyen europ en je ne comprends pas ces pays je me suis assez battu pour la cause italienne and also je suis fran aise and d sol e Europeaneo is the Orlando of the Polish debate and no one 35 kurukuru Le Monde International L Europe La Pologne veut elle nous foutre dans la M 5 May 2003 europeaneo Le Monde International L Europe La Pologne veut elle nous foutre dans la M 5 May 2003 seems perturbed Unlike national identity and professional standing his her gender identification is irrelevant to the argument The accusation levelled against europeaneo is the most common kind of identity related challenge on the sites someone is accused of mis stating her his true allegiances So few right wing extremists for example think it politic to declare themselves such We are forced then to expand our list of reasons why one might fake one s identity Jaur guiberry s explanation see above seems remarkably narrow Surely the c
12. een as the catalyst for deceit anonymity in the expression of opinion has often been understood as positive Anonymat et d mocratie sur le forum du Monde Francois menti 04 01 2000 Plusieurs messages ayant d nonc ma fausse adresse electronique je me vois dans l obligation de barber tout le monde avec mon cas personnel Ah le pleutre le couard Il s avance masqu par honte de ses opinions Voli ce que pourraient sous entendre ces remarques La v rit est beaucoup plus simple Je n en ai pas Je squatte le PC d un coll gue qui a l amabilit de ne pas s offusquer de mes id es politiquement tr s incorrectes Je pourrais bien s r laisser mon no de tel voire directement mon adresse personnelle pour viter mes contradicteurs d utiliser le 36 17 code ANNU La d mocratie passe aussi par l anonymat Le vote bulletin secret est un grand progr s d mocratique En quoi mon absence d adresse g ne t elle si je cite poliment des faits pr cis pour tayer mes arguments 1 D mocranymat as K zako calls it is a right that should be respected in this new mode of communication Forum managers agree as can be seen in the organisation of the sites Step Two Add One Username At the time of writing the discussion sites typically do not display email addresses with messages and participants are usually identified only by name On most sites these are usernames or pseudonyms that do not reli
13. en that the opposition between certainty and uncertainty does not neatly align itself with off and on line interaction As Burkhalter says of racial identity Offline of course people do not present themselves with their lineage Reverendbeth New York Times Gay Pride The fight for civil rights 15 October 2002 1 Linguist 2 02 pm New York Times Gay Pride The fight for civil rights 15 October 2002 1 razzmattaz0 New York Times Gay Pride The fight for civil rights 15 October 2002 Linguist 2 10 pm New York Times Gay Pride The fight for civil rights 15 October 2002 documentation or DNA analysis attached Certainty of racial identity offline or online is always contingent absolute proof is not available and rarely necessary Why do we not display our DNA analyses or indeed why did razzmattaz0 s co worker not tell all on day one at the office Postings to the Gay Pride board tell razzmattaz0 that it is none of his business More critical messages portray his colleague fearing the consequences of his outing and its effects on his professional future Thus the episode reminds us also of the phenomenon of passing in which members of marginalized groups strive to pass as members of the dominant group as a means of sharing in power Is it entirely unreasonable to extend the notion of passing to include the situation of the non native speaker who fears being disqualified from debate The speci
14. et vous ecrivez cela et que l on bombarde honteusement un pays couts de 6000 mini bombes nucl aires Je prefere rire de vos propos et douter de la r alit de ce que vous pretendez etre En plus vous etes sourd aveugle et de mauvaise foi En effet vous ecrivez Tout le monde nous disait vous verrez les am ricains sont honn tes il ne font vraiment pas cela pour le p trole alors qu en France on a cess de nous repeter le contraire meme de nous le matraquer Vous m avez l air d etre un quelqu un de bien bizarre et de bien improbable facon bien lev e de dire autre chose Kurukuru presses home the attack in a later reply which affirms the myth of the face as reliable indicator of the truth The posting starts with a quotation from one of europeaneo s messages Mais les europ ens ne veulent pas leur ressembler nous nous sentons plus proches des peuples ayant une certaine sensibilit au monde qui nous entoure plus proches des sud am ricains des indiens orientaux asiatique ou africains Vous commencez a vous devoiler Mais vous avez tort les europ ens sont des occidentaux comme les nords am ricains que a vous plaisent ou non C est un etat de fait mais je sais que votre desir c est 7 kurukuru Le Monde International L Europe La Pologne veut elle nous foutre dans la M 5 May 2003 Here as elsewhere quotations appear as originally posted although italics indic
15. fics of the razzmattazzO story are particular to a certain contemporary US office culture and I do not want to push the reading of the story as metaphor too far nor to suggest that the penalties for being revealed as not heterosexual not at least nominally Christian have not been infinitely more serious than those of being revealed as a cultural outsider on an Internet forum Nor do I assert that razzmattazO s colleague was necessarily faking being straight The lessons from reading the story as parable are twofold firstly the ways in which we present ourselves may relate to power play and secondly there are many situations in which getting on with the job means not needing to know If certainty is contingent so are the identifying traits by which we are known Here we turn again to Burkhalter discussing racial identity in African American Usenet interaction he takes up Okamura s proposal of situational ethnicity which pertains to the actor s subjective 3 Byron Burkhalter Reading race online in Marc A Smith and Peter Kollock eds Communities in Cyberspace London Routledge 1999 pp 60 75 p 62 perception of the situation in which he finds himself and to the salience he attributes to ethnicity as a relevant factor in that situation Internet discussion fora Let us examine further then the specific situation of Internet discussion fora on media websites The widely spread characterization of on line inte
16. hoice to deceive is not necessarily the outworking of a personal fantasy the wolf does not really want to be a sheep More fake foreigners So far our challengers have been reticent in justifying their diagnoses of fakery The following set of examples cites linguistic evidence The source is the Nouvel Observateur debate on la double peine the proposal that foreigners convicted of crimes in France should both serve their time and subsequently be deported Kurupt objects on grounds that this is discriminatory Karniella identifying herself as a foreigner writes in support of the policy in a closely argued posting which at over 400 words cannot be quoted in its entirety The extract below indicates the tone Je suis 100 pour la double peine Je suis en France depuis onze ans maintenant et je n ai pas demand la nationalit parce que je vis dans l espoir qu un jour je puisse retourner dans mon pays natal en Afrique qui d ici l aura peut tre change au niveau d mocratie En attendant je suis en France mes enfants ont la chance exceptionnelle de suivre une ducation scolaire et apprendre les valeurs de la libert La libert ne veut pas dire fait ce que tu veux au d penses d autres La seule 7 kurukuru Le Monde International L Europe La Pologne veut elle nous foutre dans la M 5 May 2003 Journal Permanent du Nouvel Observateur D bats http permanent nouvelobs com cgi debats aff_mess id 2001
17. irit of penpal interaction through contrast with examples from British sites manipulation seen on newsgroups is that of status enhancement to cast oneself as the authoritative speaker Debate on French sites is notably less grounded in the personal Queensland University of Technology unit HHB066 French 6 2002 BBC The Guardian where the tendency is to chattiness something of the generic and cultural particularities of French Internet fora were noted When perusing fora students were asked to collect examples of the verbal expressions used by participants to refer to themselves and these self descriptors were on the whole useful for the production of arguments En tant que m re de famille je trouve que tranger moi m me j estime que and so on rather than life stories The messages posted by students show that the fact of living in Australia allows you to claim the right to post on such obvious topics as L Australie pays raciste and terrorism in Bali But it can also be deployed in debates as diverse as smoking road safety language policy and windmills the debate where perhaps surprisingly Australianness garnered the most enthusiastic response Posting as a cultural other gives pertinence to one s arguments far from detracting from them The outsider finds a place to be heard in a French cultural practice without playing the game of the Conversation With The Foreigner The frequency of this kind of posting is indica
18. n of couples forumiques and larger groupings as forumeurs unite under the one name and the one subscription This has not however meant a complete repudiation of the notion of individual identity as members of these consortia tend to sign their contributions with individual names 18 Mode d emploi des forums du monde fr http forums lemonde fr perl faq_french pl Cat accessed 30 June 2003 Donath p 53 quoting A M Froomkin Anonymity and Its Enmities Journal of Online Law 1995 par 50 http www wm edu law publications jol 95_96 froomkin html accessed 27 September 2004 Even if we reject the determining role of visual contact in identification we must still allow that outside the content of the postings clues to identity in on line discussion are meagre unlike newsgroup discussions there are usually no email addresses unlike messages on the US fora studied French postings have no signature on the Nouvel Observateur site a prohibition on URLs means there are no links to home pages At the same time despite the paucity of clues and the potential for deceit there seems to be a generically defined sense that participants are individual relatively truthful human beings Classic assumptions are made but how much are they insisted upon The quotation from Donath above provides examples of circumstances in which truthfulness is required when the truth does apparently matter Publicity given to the subversi
19. on of children s and adolescents chatrooms by paedophiles and Internet groomers contributed to Yahoo s September 2003 decision to close its chatrooms unable to function with the supposition of sincerity the genre is disabled This is another stark example of the import of the coincidence between on line and off line personas But what of our Internet discussion fora We turn now to look at moments at which it becomes problematic and where identity is challenged Identity challenged Europeaneo It is europeaneo s national identity that is first at issue in a 2003 Le Monde debate on the place of Poland in Europe Addressing europeaneo a certain kurukuru writes mais comme je sais que vous n etes pas un occidental et que vous voulez detruire europe 2 For a discussion of identity cues in newsgroups see Donath See also Donath p 30 culturelle chang de pseud 22 E E AE 0 To this europeaneo replies d sol e je suis fran aise et mon ami est italien Tout les deux scientifiques before continuing the debate This revelation of europeaneo s professional identity is further fuel for kurukuru s allegations of fakery Vous pretendez etre scientifique et vous nous sortez a aurait pu d troner Saddam Hussein du pouvoir sans que l on sacrifie 200 000 iraliens de plus c est une estimation le d compte est emp ch par les am ricains Es Vous etessuppos etre scientifique
20. r 2002 But what if this were a true story as various contributors suppose Opposing razzmattaz0 s actions Linguist asks If he were Jewish would you feel he was obligated to tell you Razzmattazz0 doesn t hesitate That is easy to tell because the Jewish people in my office often take off for certain religious holidays Linguist has the perfect comeback I don t And my last name is not at all Jewish sounding I don t particularly look Swedish but few people think I am Jewish even other Jews unless I tell them This incident illustrates a number of pertinent points Firstly the varied reactions to razzmattaz0 s postings show that participants on Internet fora are making truth valuations they have not suspended that tendency despite the impossibility of knowing who is who for certain Secondly the nature of razzmatazz0 s curiosity and the surprise of Linguist s acquaintances remind us that Internet interaction is not the only place where questions of identity arise Furthermore in both these latter instances visual contact is available without producing certainty In the case of Linguist appearance is explicitly stated not to be the clue to his her Jewish identity Judgments about identity then are generally based on a range of factors holidays taken names the ring of truth and significantly verbal language razzmatazz0 asks his colleague Linguist tells acquaintances It would seem th
21. raction as not of the real world is intensely problematic with respect to such fora Discussion for the most part engages with current affairs politics and so on denying any radical cleavage between real and virtual worlds More careful commentators recognize that the extent to which fantasy is expected in the construction of identity depends on the type of computer mediated communication and suggest that discussion fora work with an expectation of verisimilitude if not absolute honesty But what is the potential for dishonesty or identity manipulation How can you create that self or not self who participates in discussions How to Create Yourself On line Step One Take One Internet Connection One would expect the first essential ingredient to be an Internet account Our next forumeur K zako does not have one using a patently false email address This has provoked some controversy and his vigorous defence of his privacy reminds us that 14 Jonathan Y Okamura Situational Ethnicity Ethnic and Racial Studies 4 1981 452 65 p 454 quoted by Burkhalter p 65 See for example Burkhalter Judith Donath Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community in Smith and Kollock pp 29 59 Anne Revillard Les interactions sur l internet Melissa Mettre en ligne les sciences sociales aujourd hui 2002 http www melissa ens cachan fr article php3 id_article 36 accessed 4 June 2003 rather than being s
22. s the potential for disguise that appealed to me Communication on line seemed to offer a means of emancipation from the role of language learner that role in Rice for example refers to the Internet s restricted channels of communication Craig D Rice Bring intercultural encounters into classrooms IECC electronic mailing lists Technical Horizons in Education 23 6 1996 60 63 3 Francis Jaur guiberry Le moi le soi et Internet Sociologie et Soci t s 32 2 2000 136 152 p 136 Jaur guiberry p 137 B atrice Atherton whom I gratefully acknowledge as the person to bring the use of Internet fora in teaching to my attention which one is type cast by interlocutors who hearing a non standard accent seeing nonverbal signs of unease apportion one the limited conversational share of the outsider who is only able to answer questions about himself herself home and just possibly the trip so far Furthermore as a teacher I had seen too many students who put themselves in that role who would only ever imagine speaking French not badly for an Australian Swede Singaporean and who were reluctant to engage with genres that would stretch their competence and require them to adopt speaking positions where being the pet foreigner would not work If it is possible to re create the self on line and if the channels of communication are reduced computer mediated communication could be an ideal opport
23. ses in fakery But we cannot be sure if that is what they are What is however abundantly clear from the preceding examples is the rhetorical power of the identity challenge Now at a critical moment of a MUD role Karniella Gonesse Le Nouvel Observateur La double peine 11 January 2002 Kurupt Bruxelles Le Nouvel Observateur La double peine 11 January 2002 William Paris Le Nouvel Observateur La double peine 16 January 2002 play there is simply no point in expressing suspicions that one s opponent is not really a mauve goblin with telekinetic powers But in an Internet forum an identity challenge is a powerful weapon this is bound up with the stakes of the genre and these in French are about making a case If the point of the interaction is to participate in debate the only reason worth faking identity is to gain the upper hand in that debate and therefore the accusation of fakery be it justified or not works to undermine the power of the opponent s argument Identity then is as much a product of context indeed genre as of any fidelity to a pre existent notion of self On ne na t pas forumeur on le devient Our examination of interaction on French fora suggests that situational identity see discussion above in that context is the identity needed in order to make an argument The freedom to make a case freely is the argument used in favour of anonymity irrelevance to the debate is the explan
24. tive of the unsurprising strength of students identification as cultural outsiders French is a foreign language they are still allowing their foreignness to define them although they are now using it productively But there are so many other debates and other identities to be asserted and students need to be encouraged to think of different ways of introducing the self according to the arguments in which they are taking part Kanduhn Australie manages to do this presenting himself in three different ways in three Nouvel Observateur debates See Hanna and de Nooy Negotiating cross cultural difference e In La violence terroriste in response to a Kadich pour ceux de Bali he is simply an Australian grateful for the condolences offered by another forumeur but he also argues the undesirability of violent solutions e In the debate La cigarette et les moins de 16 ans he is a tobacco intolerant commuter e In Les transferts dans le football he is a soccer fan with a friend in the English third division who can therefore offer insights into rates of pay Each of these self presentations allows him to make a point pertinent to the debate But another thing to learn is that on French sites you might not even use your identity at all On the kind of general fora I am looking at here you do not have to play your identity as an entry card there is no point in presenting details that do not advance your
25. unity for students to create themselves with relative ease as speakers of another language However rather than jumping to that conclusion this paper will question some assumptions about the radical difference of identity on line and then examine the use of on line fakery before returning to the issue of student use of on line discussion The particular genre of on line interaction supplying my examples is that of Internet fora attached to the websites of French newspapers These are general interest asynchronous discussion facilities where a wide range of topics is discussed generally related to current affairs and where there is some level of commitment to a notion of quality debate The commitment to quality does not however always extend to the linguistic accuracy of contributions as will become evident in later verbatim quotations Despite widespread low expectations about sincerity on line in practice these discussion fora are not riddled with challenges to identity and honesty Yet such moments can be found and consideration of some such instances will be helpful Our first example from a newspaper discussion forum may initially seem like a detour given its American origins However it is useful to my argument in that it very powerfully destabilizes some of the claims about the brave new world of unseeable identity The Strange Case of razzmattazz0 On 15 October 2002 the New York Times messageboard Gay Pride the
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