Communication, CMC and E-mail: A Brief Survey
Abstract
This chapter introduces the notion of communication and provides the main concepts and theories of communication. It presents some current research into language in use: the pragmatics of interactions, ethnography of communication and interaction analysis. The chapter also presents pragmatics and speech acts theory. Finally, it presents the computer‐mediated communication (CMC) studies and illustrates this presentation by reporting on some main empirical works dealing with CMC and interaction, CMC and culture, CMC and workplace communication and CMC and knowledge management. CMC communication includes asynchronous communication via e‐mail or through use of an electronic bulletin board and synchronous communication such as chatting or through the use of group software. Knowledge sharing can be conceived as a typical example of collective behavior, all members of the collective need to contribute for a collective good to come into existence.