Discussing course literature online: analysis ofmacro speech acts in an asynchronouscomputer conference

This paper presents a macro speech act analysis of computer-mediated conferencing on auniversity course on language pedagogy. Students read scholarly articles on language learningand discussed them online, in order to make sense of them collaboratively in preparation for areflective essay. The study explores how the course participants made use of computermediatedconferencing for such collaborative text processing. A discussion thread with 97messages was analyzed for its macro speech acts. The conference messages were treated aspragmatic macrostructures where micro-level speech act sequences can be mapped onto ahigher-level, global speech act or textual function. The discussion turned out to be readercentredand practice-oriented. Approximately two thirds of the messages were concerned withinterpreting theory from a practical point of view, expressing the students’ personal experience,opinion or idea about a certain issue related to the article. In comparison, only one tenthdealt with checking the explicit propositional content of the article. The results are interpretedin terms of the distinction between a narrative and paradigmatic/expository discourse