The influence of the relationship between language and society on the methodology of the social sciences is well-known, beginning with the analyses of primitive forms of classification proposed by Mauss and Durkheim, and extending to the theories of discourse found in Ricoeur or Habermas. Less popular are sociolinguistic approaches that focus on the relation between forms of speech and social life, rooted in the linguistic relativism of Sapir-Whorf, Wittgenstein's linguistic pragmatics and Austin's Speech Act Theory. The aim of this article is to reconstruct a number of linguistic approaches to the analysis of mediated communication, highlighting Goffman's Frame Theory - artifices that frame interpretation and simultaneously comprise its necessary conditions for existence. The article closes with a case study, examining the possibility of applying Frame Theory to the analysis of e-mail as a form of computer-mediated communication.
Conversation Analysis; Goffman; Frame Analysis; Sociolinguistics; Computer-Mediated Communication
