Solving disagreements: multiple cases study about interaction during digital collaborative writing

Abstract

In digital and collaborative writing students must reach agreements to achieve their objectives. This is why they develop interactions in which they negotiate points in disagreement and achieve group consensus. In this article we analyze linguistic and discursive resources mobilized by students from different educational levels from Buenos Aires during the group writing of homework in an online platform. Results from a multiple cases study indicate that students utilize various politeness strategies when they have to make negative criticisms or give particular indications, in order to preserve their peers’ positive and negative images, as well as their own. The contrastive analysis between the cases allowed us to observe differences in the variety of politeness strategies and linguistic resources used in relationship with educational level and the type of activity they write. Based on this observation, we propose that in interactions during digital and collaborative writing, different agendas and forms of constructing group and personal identity are activated according to the students’ level of education and their purposes in writing.