Negotiating Reduced Forms

Introduction

Recall from the Background that one particular way of determining that a community has formed is to look at norms. In the communities of practice approach in particular, the linguistic repertoire of the community is an important factor in its development. Such norms are developed locally by the community itself, although there can be outside influence on it. The situation with the Cohorts I have analysed is an interesting case study, with a community of inexperienced net-based students with native speakers of English as teachers. A fundamental question is who has the main influence regarding the choice of norms, and in particular how much influence on the community do the teachers have? Herring (2004a) noted that having a hierarchy is another characteristic of communities. I have already mentioned that the pre-seminar groups have leaders, so we can also ask what their influence is when it comes to norms?

I start by presenting the general distribution of reduced forms across the data set, including the categories and processes attested. Then, the majority of the chapter is devoted to analysing the norm-setting process evident in the data, looking at the influence of group leaders and teachers in particular.