Writing projects are socially-situated identities. The rhetorically-loaded aspects of writing, like metadiscourse marking, are more prone to carry such identities. Through analyzing metadiscourse strategies employment in Persian and English (as the lingua franca of academic discourse community) research articles, this study makes an attempt to find out whether Persian native writers take on the...

........................................................................................ 8 CHAPTER ....................................................................................... 1 11 ..................................................................... 1.1 Rationale and background 12 ................................................................... 1.1.1 The virtual workplace 12 .......

This study investigates knowledge exchange in a Hybrid Virtual Communities (HVC) for patients with multiple sclerosis, that is a group of people with shared interests who meet face-to-face to exchange information or provide emotional support, but also coordinate or share information in a “virtual” or online environment Using discourse analysis and semi-structured interviews, I examine a face-to...

What semiotic potential resides in a 3D virtual environment? This paper accounts for some system features of a Norwegian virtual world, Patagonia, which is part of the 3D Render Ware based ActiveWorlds. It is argued that these features constitute a semiotic resource in interplay with language. The paper suggests visual semiotics as an additional framework to discourse studies of computer-mediat...

It is very important to understand the nature of digital media and its various categories and the position of this media and modern communication technology in the present social and political interactions. Explaining different kinds of discourses and different principles, theories, and conceptual models of the society along with the role of digital media is one of the most effective tools of i...

• You can have as much security as you want – What are you willing to give up to get it? • Security always involves trade-offs – If no airplanes flew, 9/11 couldn't have happened – Gated communities offer more security but less privacy • We make decisions every day about these trade-offs • To do it thoughtfully, we must understand: – How security works – The threats and risks – The costs

In this paper I outline the characteristics of built environments that are believed to be effective in supporting social activity in physical space. I then discuss the degree to which these features can be translated into digital space. I argue that, although we can learn much from studying place-based communities, simply replicating the appearance of participants, architectural backdrops, and ...

We have been experiencing an explosion in the market of social websites that aim not only to entertain us, but also to help us enlarge our professional networks, to redefine business models and capture new customers, to modify the way learning and teaching are performed, among others. So far, little research has been done on what drives individuals to contribute to online communities, as there ...

Communities offer a context for people to meet, communicate and collaborate. Tools to support communities usually provide a communication and coordination medium and functionalities to find communication partners. Thereby, they strengthen existing communities or enable completely new (virtual) communities. In this paper we briefly present some ideas towards the extension of community support to...