Nothing that can't be fixed...

To start things off, sorry for being so incredibly lurky after my brief flurry of being almost-fannishly-involved.  I'm here.  I'm reading, and y'all are still incredibly awesome, I just don't have the brain power to interact as much as I'd like (read: at all, even responding to the lovely lovey feedback left on my HCL snippet).  There were finals (blergh), immediately followed by six weekends of RenFaire (like, less than 18 hours after my last exam I was selling statues in a Scottish accent, and I'll post more about how awesome it was to have my old summer job back later), and a three-week three-credit Classical Mythology course (fun, although the prof had a remarkable talent for assigning papers and stuff about all of the least interesting aspects, and was the nitpickiest grader of papers I've ever encountered), and now I'm three weeks into a four-week anthropology course.  Which brings me to what this post is really about.

I am currently taking ANTH 315/515: Language in Culture and Society.  We're graded on two take-home written exams/papers, and one fieldwork assignment.  The fieldwork assignment is pretty basic:  Find a group of people and watch them for a couple of hours (maybe do some interviews or surveys), looking specifically at the way people use language within that group.  And I thought, hey, what better place to observe the use of language than an almost entirely language-based environment? 

So!  I don't have a concrete hypothesis yet (I only got the assignment sheet on Wednesday), but I plan to focus on the formation of identity in a text-based environment, perhaps with the angle of "LJ speech as perfomative speech."

What I need from you: Please take the survey at the end of this post, and if you have anything at all to say on the subject, please leave a comment (whether it be expanding on your answer, pointing out something I may have forgotten to take into account, directing me towards other semi-reputable meta on the subject, or even just vague thinky thoughts - anything will help).  Link to the poll in your journal, if you will, the bigger sample size the better.  (Pretty please with the fancy topping of your choice?)  I will close the poll sometime around Wednesday (July 7) night or Thursday (July 8) morning.

What I'm going to do with this info:  I will use the statistical data and comments gathered by this poll to construct a theory on how the average LJ/DW-based fan uses language to construct their identity within the community.  I may quote (anonymously) from the comments on this entry.  I will also wander LJ, looking critically at how we use language in our interactions, in order to supplement the general gist I've gotten over the course of four-and-a-half years on LJ.  I solemnly swear that I will NOT quote, or provide detailed description of, anything written outside the comments to this entry without first gaining permission from all parties directly involved.  Finally, I will submit my written fieldwork report to the professor and give a five-minute summary of my findings on Thursday afternoon.  If there's enough interest, I may post the report here after I get my grade back.

Thank you very much for your participation in this little academic adventure.  And now, the actual survey:

(Follow the fake cut to the poll on LiveJournal)