The effect of emotive language in virtual teams

Technology continues to change en evolve in amazing ways. The use of technology is also evolving at a dizzying pace. The way virtual environments are being used continues to challenge the norm in education. The questions driving this research study centers around the use of emotive language and emoticons in the written communication in a virtual environment between two high school aged students. The more focused question is, how does the use of emotive language and emoticons affect the negotiation, and how will a virtual facilitator interact within that same virtual environment? This study will provide insight into how the use of emotive language affects the ability of students to reach a negotiated solution. Also, this study will provide an opportunity to look at the use of text language from authentic sources. The implications of this study are quite powerful. The potential of a virtual facilitator that understands modern colloquial text based language, may provide an additional level of safety for online interactions between young adults, in effect, giving a tool to combat such things as cyber bullying.