Are there specifically graphical forms of communicative competence?
Present forms of communicative competence in OnChat included: • Moving towards the person when you wanted to talk to them, • Not leaving the room without saying good bye to the people you’d spoken to. Communicative competence in ActiveWorlds included: • Not standing too close to people you weren’t chatting with. I found there was a sense of personal space and privacy in conversations. I even had people move away when I was clearing eavesdropping. • Don’t follow people without speaking to them. Again, this is similar to real-world etiquette of personal space. • Most conversations happened in groups of 2 or 3 and to join into a conversation it was proper to move closer to the group and join by addressing someone by name. • Some worlds, like the University, told new-comers to openly ask if there were any teachers. While I was there, there weren’t any teachers, but someone would always respond to the question with some helpful information. It was a way of signaling an entrance and properly
