ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on 'student-tutor' and 'student-student' discourse. Participants in intercultural online exchanges have the illusion of sharing a common communicative space, even though in reality they are responding to one another's utterances from different spatial-temporal contexts. Addressivity is influenced by people's mental representations of one another—their gender, age, social role, personal traits, beliefs, attitudes. Addressivity is also influenced by situational factors, such as the time, place, medium, and circumstances of interaction. Meei-Ling Liaw and English analyzed English exchanges between Taiwanese and French university students in terms of addressivity to understand how the students presented themselves, constructed identities, and established co-presence. Addressivity operated on multiple planes as participants shifted roles. The tone of the chat sessions was decidedly informal and friendly, and addressivity played an important role. The visual dimension of addressivity is complicated by screen mediation in computer-mediated communication.
