ABSTRACT
In this chapter I examine the gendered, emotional talk, the ‘narratives of self’ that are posted in an Internet news-discussion group called ‘alt.recovery. codependency’ (a.r.c.). Alt.recovery.codependency is an on-line newsgroup which draws on the tenets of the Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOA) and the Co-Dependency (CODA) movements.1 Alt.recovery.codependency is one of ‘more than 5,000 discussion groups, or newsgroups, housed on the Internet’ (Hahn and Stout 1994; Walstrom 1996). These newsgroups form ‘what is commonly called the Usenet’ (Parks and Floyd 1996:80). The Internet users who participate in these discussion groups post messages which are disseminated ‘to all Internet sites carrying the newsgroup. Others may respond to a particular message, thereby creating a “thread” or connected series of messages, or they may read without responding (called “lurking”)’ (Parks and Floyd 1996:80; also quoted in Walstrom 1996:1).
