Electronic discourse, or e-disc, is a relatively new term coined by scholars to describe the unique form of communication that exists via electronic networks. E-disc is unique in that it is a form of discourse that exists on a continuum between the context-dependent interaction of oral conversation and the contextually abstracted composition of written texts (Foertsch, 1998). When two people speak to one another, there is always more going on than just the utterance of the words. There is voice inflection. There is body language. There is gesture. Furthermore, these physical utterances are shaped by a number of social factors that define the relationship between the participants (Bakhtin, 1986). These factors include the history of the relationships, social setting, status/relationship/social roles, conversation purpose and topic. For scholars, these factors often weigh heavily on their decision or indecision to collaborate.

In comparison, written text includes many of the afore-mentioned attributes, most notably, the understanding that composition is not an independent activity, but a social one (Rosenblatt, 1978; Shaughnessy, 1977). A writer's experiences, purpose, and sociocultural history color composition. For scholars, individual authorship is also a key concern in collaboration. Obviously, this mixture of utterances, contexts, physicality and social factors create an infinitesimal number of ways to construct meaning within the discourse setting.

As we speak, several things are happening. We are anticipating the reply. We are hoping we are understood. We are thinking of our next sentence. We measure these actions by the audience's tone of voice, by facial expressions and through eye contact. When we write, again, several things are happening. As academics, we incorporate all relevant material we've read into the text we are composing. We re-read for clarity, in an attempt to insure our message is communicated. We revise, again in an attempt to make our message more easily understood by an audience we may never meet. In essence, we are applying the same principles of oral discourse to our composition. We just want to be understood!

This interrelationship between oral discourse and written text has been studied by many composition theorists in an effort to explore the various ways each task influences the other (Ackerman, 1991; Flower, ET al., 1990; Greene, 1993; Tierney and Shanahan, 1991). However, few studies have used electronic discourse as a model for this intertasking. Does e-disc facilitate meaning making or hinder it? What impact does the loss of physical utterance have upon communication and how may we compensate for its loss? How could e-disc impact scholarly collaboration? This literature review will attempt to interpret recent studies and incorporate interdisciplinary theories into a semblance of practical answers to these questions.

Late in the Spring Semester of 1998, I was asked to participate as the project rhetorician with a team of interdisciplinary scholars from Texas Woman's University in their proposal to the National Science Foundation's Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence grant offering. The study is tentatively entitled, "Why do Scholar's Collaborate Online?" This study will include why people collaborate, how collaboratories are formed, an investigation of the evolution and lifestages of collaboration and most importantly, an analysis of the human-to-human relationships made via the computer. The proposal is for an interdisciplinary study, composed of TWU scholars, of the ecology of the collaboratories. Currently, the interdisciplinary team is composed of Professors and doctoral students from several different fields. These fields include Computer Science; Nursing (with expertise in Chaos theory); Library Science; Management and Information Studies (with a background in Journalism); Reading and Bilingual Education (with a background in Rhetoric); and Family Sciences. This team was formed to investigate the pitfalls and successes of online collaboration in order to better understand and utilize modern technology in the academic arena. The National Science Foundation's Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence vision is to, "achieve, across the scientific community, the next generation of human capability to create, share and use information and knowledge" (NSF, 1998). Recently, scholars from various fields have been urging scholars to research electronic discourse to understand the impact it has upon theory, practice and communication. "Because electronic discourse will be a major form of communication in the future, those who study human communication and comprehension should invest more time and resources in studying it (Gardner, 1992; Landauer, 1993; Wright, 1987). It is my task to find how the TWU collaboratory will share (communicate) information and knowledge. With this goal in mind and keeping with the interdisciplinary scope of our work, I started my review by analyzing articles relating to collaboratories, discourse analysis, technical communication, and reading and rhetorical theories, concentrating on texts that were framed in sociocultural theory. Much emphasis was placed on technological communication and the similarities and differences it poses to conventional forms of communication. My key focus throughout was on the interplay between text and comprehension and the social nature of this form of literacy. The literature I reviewed focused on the necessity to understand that cognition within discourse settings depends on a concrete social springboard from which understanding grows. Key elements of electronic discourse are intertasking between reading, writing and speaking and how the author and reader utilize that intertasking. Due to the interactive relationship that exists between author and reader, I am convinced that Bakhtin's theory of the dialogic nature of text (Bakhtin 1931/1986) is best demonstrated through electronic discourse.

Recent studies in computer-mediated communication (CMC), discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, rhetorical theory and late technological advances have prompted scholars to analyze the way humans make meaning through online discourse. Research that is both interdisciplinary and intertask is especially important now that electronic networks are changing the way we read, write and communicate with our peers (Foertsch, 1998). Consider the way electronic networks affect this change. As we type into the computer, our message is sent immediately, in real time (much like oral discourse) if we are using instant messages (chat) or electronic conferencing. This makes it difficult to separate reading from writing or even from talking. We ARE talking when we use this type of electronic discourse, though there are no physical clues available to decode information as we do in face-to-face interaction. E-mail differs in that the luxury of editing is afforded before the "send" button is clicked. This form of e-disc is more compositional and textlike, whereas e-chat is more spontaneous and akin to speech. For scholars who want to debate recent findings in their fields or discuss hot topics, electronic formats like e-mail, bulletin boards and e-conferencing are the most topical and speechlike. Belonging to one of these "talk" networks facilitates interactive and refreshing dialogues with peers, which can be extremely helpful in the preliminary stages of research, due to its sociocultural structure (Foertsch, 1998). Feedback is the most helpful and most influential when a scholar is still formulating a research agenda, drafting a text or devising a new theory. E-discourse affords this luxury in real-time.

The potential for e-disc is exciting to contemporary researchers. A number of scholars have written about the impact it has on their fields and have forecasted about its continued usage for the future (Harnod, 1990; Landow. 1992; Selfe & Selfe, 1994; Turkle & Papert, 1990). Because if e-disc's speed and its potential on a global scale, scholars who want to survive must master this new form of communication. The very definition of literacy might have to be changed to separate those who can manage electronic discourse from those who cannot (Foertsch, 1998; Compaine, 1988; Duncan, 1993; Selfe, 1989).

An interdisciplinary research effort is needed to study the elements of e-disc and its ramifications on literacy. The TWU scholarly collaboratory is fertile ground for this type of study. Such research is complicated in that e-disc contains elements of reading, writing and oral theory, thereby creating a categorical blank for its inclusion (Foertsch, 1998; Hawisher & Moran, 1993; Shapiro & Anderson, 1985). It occupies the middle ground between oral and written discourse. E-disc can involve the careful and reflective construction of an abstractable and highly structured text, but the pressure of making a quick reply and the potential for rapid feedback often result in texts that are interactive, colloquial and spontaneous (Foertsch, 1998). Colloquial discourse, or conversation-like interplay, has often been considered nonacademic and in the past, rarely utilized by the academy. This is changing though. Louise Rosenblatt was one of the first reading theorists to note the interaction between text and reader. E-disc personifies her transactional theory in that the connections between reading and writing have varied parallelisms and differences. They both constitute involvement with texts and lack the verbal aids afforded to oral discourse. They differ in the respect that the writer starts with a blank page and produces meaning while the reader starts with the printed page and "composes" an interpreted meaning. It is at this stage that e-disc affords Rosenblatt's "efferent" and "aesthetic" stances to meet. While the efferent stance is referred to by Rosenblatt (1978) as to "what is carried away or retained after the reading event" and the aesthetic stance, "pays attention to the feelings, images, emotions, sounds, or rhymes of words or tensions of the text" e-disc affords discourse to blend both. Bakhtin was also interested in the aesthetic---in his theory, aesthetic activity. He asserted that aesthetic activity can help to establish a mode of reciprocal intersubjective relationships necessary to produce an intimate unity of individuals whose specificity is in no way endangered (Brandist, 1997). This aesthetic element is key to online collaborative discourse. Engaged readers make meaning, and to become an engaged reader, one must blend efference and aesthetics through dialogics. Conversational dialogue accomplishes this task.

Engaged readers actively respond to and understand the text as conversants respond to one another when engaged in a dialogue. Mikhail Bakhtin elaborates:

E-disc affords this blending of speaker/listener, efferent/aesthetic. By asking collaborators involved in electronic discourse to keep a journal and to notate thoughts, feelings, emotions and responses to the text they have just read BEFORE responding to it, researchers would be able to analyze or possibly locate the linguistic markers within communication that negate or succeed in creating meaning. George Landow concurs that Bakhtin's theories in regards to dialogics are the foundation of hypertext. "Hypertext does not permit a tyrannical, univocal voice. Rather the voice is always that distilled from the combined experience of the momentary focus, the lexia one presently reads, and the continually forming narrative of one's reading path (Landow, 1992).

Gleaning key principles of Bakhtin's Dialogics, discourse analysis, Foucault's rhetorical theories of power and Cognitive theories could better help researchers understand how scholars make meaning through online discourse. Discourse analysis is sometimes defined as the analysis of language 'beyond the sentence.' (Tannen, 1993). Discourse analysts do not study smaller units of language, like phonemes or morphemes, but they study large chunks of language as they flow together. Frame analysis is a type of discourse analysis that asks, What activity are speakers engaged in when they say this? or What do they think they are doing by talking in this way at this time? (Ibid.) This type of analysis parallels Bakhtin's dialogics in that he asserts, "The framing of the dialogue, whether in text or conversation, is crucial to understanding (Bakhtin, 1986). What frames the dialogue affects how the reader or listener will perceive it. Another key principle of discourse analysis that could be used to analyze electronic discourse is 'turn-taking'.

Conversation is an enterprise in which one person speaks and another listens. Discourse analysts who study conversation note that speakers have systems for determining when one person's turn is over and the next person's turn begins. This exchange of turns or 'floors' is signaled by such linguistic means as intonation, pausing and phrasing. When speakers have different assumptions about how turn exchanges are signaled, they may inadvertently interrupt or feel interrupted. ). In electronic discourse, symbols and systems unlike those in oral discourse determine turn taking. For instance, if one typist is slower than the other, 'floor' exchanges become difficult, as there are no conventional linguistic signals directing the discourse. Emotions move to the forefront in e-disc as opposed to oral or written discourse conventions. On the other hand, interrupting purposely may be a power issue (Tannen, 1993).

Power or perceived-status issues can be a problem in collaborative work. Collaborative success is contingent upon all members mastering the discourse of the collaboratory. James Gee labels this 'secondary discourse': the primary discourse being that framework upon which all secondary discourses are acquired (Gee, 1996). He also defines literacy as mastery of secondary discourses (ibid.). To master the secondary discourse of an online collaborative community requires more than being able to type correctly. It requires an involvement and interaction with people with whom one is either not "intimate', with whom one cannot assume lots of shared knowledge and experience, or they involve interactions where one is being 'formal', that is, taking on an identity that transcends the family or primary socializing group (Gee, 1996). This can be a daunting task for people with power issues and perceived status roles. How does acquisition of secondary discourse occur in an online collaboratory?

Michel Foucault asserts that discourses create 'social positions' (perspectives) from which people are 'invited' (summoned) to speak, listen, act, read and write, think, feel, believe and value in certain characteristic, historically recognizable, ways, combined with their own individual styles and creativity (1980). This theory allows members of secondary discourse communities to utilize what Bakhtin labels, "ventriloquation." Ventriloquation is a voice that we use that causes us to be perceived in another light. To define it more clearly, let me use a metaphor. I am a woman who in certain discourse communities, shows my disdain for dancing and drinking by vehemently proselytizing the immorality of these acts while participating as a member of that community. After departing from that community and while participating in another discourse community, I drink and dance the night away every weekend. Some may perceive this as hypocrisy. What it represents in Bakhtin's and Gee's terminologies is a mastery of the secondary discourse communities of which this woman is a member. Because of her mastery she is accepted in both secondary discourse communities. Which is the real person and which is not? Bakhtin would argue that both women are part of the whole woman in that they are examples of her 'authoritative discourse' and her 'internal discourse' (Bakhtin, 1981). These discourses may best be described as compulsory and those that satisfy us by their feel of authenticity (Foucault, 1970; Labov, 1972;Tannen, 1979). Ventriloquation is a critical concept in the success and failure of collaboratories. How can one know if a member of the collaboratory, a member that has already been defined as one with whom we are non-intimate (Gee, 1996), is practicing ventriloquation? Furthermore, does ventriloquation accelerate acquisition of secondary discourse mastery and as such, blur values such as honesty and truth within the discourse community? Once more, these issues may be perceived as power issues in that they are a form of gatekeepers to other members of the discourse community: they allow other members to form intimacies, which in turn forge strong relationships or they do not. Foucault discusses this form of power in many of his works (1970; 1977; 1980) and asserts that truth is, from a sophistic viewpoint, a delusion. "Truth is not some absolute state of affairs that precedes discourse and transcends the rhetorical situation; instead, the 'truth' in discourse is a rhetorical construction, a set of objects, ideas, and propositions that the rhetor arranges in collaboration with the prevailing ways of thinking shared by readers and auditors" (Covino, 1995). Research into these issues regarding collaborative work may shed more light on these sensitive areas and theories.

The potential of collaboration seems to empower rather than to silence. Community-oriented theories of empowerment suggest collaboration can be about reclaiming political and personal determinacy because working in pairs or groups can enable writers to encourage each other toward greater freedom of expression as they realign authority from external and institutional to internal and personal voices (Clark, 1993). This would seem to be the answer to the questions previously asked regarding power. But what about a collaboratory, not unlike the one forming at TWU, of non-intimate scholars with no previous affiliation to one another albeit the university at which they work? Other problems exist as well: issues such as authorship, individuality, fear of technology, etc. Ede and Lunsford address many of these issues in their book, Singular Texts/Plural Authors. They uncovered two major modes of collaboration--one they call 'hierarchical' and the other 'dialogic':

Cynthia Selfe (1994) Mary Louise Pratt (1987) and Sherry Turkle (1990) all discuss the negative impact collaboratories may have in regards to colonialism, privilege and differential treatment. These articles represent words to the wise regarding the oft-times delicate egos of academia. Ede and Lunsford's dialogic mode of collaboration parallels Bakhtin and is representative of the TWU collaboratories early stages:

This dialogic definition of collaboratory is interdisciplinary in scope and could best be described as heteroglossic in nature, again reinforcing my contention that a Bakhtinian theoretical framework best serves electronic discourse and collaboration

The benefits gained through research of electronic discourse collaboration should prove beneficial to literacy theory and cognitive theories across the disciplines. Collaboration is an important part of the scholarly work we do and it leads to better departments with broader understandings of research, knowledge building and scholarship. The role of the reader is both an advantage and a risk. One must understand the cognitive machinery that constitutes a collaboratory and as a reader/participant in said collaboratory, remind one's self of one's own contribution to meanings made within the collaboratory. Multiplicity, heteroglossia, transaction, community, intertasking and intertextuality mean nothing if they stop at the end of the e-mail one is reading.

Bakhtin's theory of dialogics seems to have predicted the use of electronic discourse as a framework for making meaning within a collaboratory in that electronic discourse is most successful when it is conversant in nature. I think he would nod approvingly!