E-mail communication has attracted increasing interest not only in news media but also in the academic world during the last years, because it enables persons who live in different areas of the world to communicate quickly and easily. The increasing use of e-mail has been accompanied by investigations of various aspects of computer mediated communication (CMC) including organizational, social psychological, and cultural aspects and impacts of CMC (cf. Lea (ed), 1992; Garton/ Wellman 1995; Shields 1996; Jones 1995). In many of them, only single aspects of language use like the different interactive modes in multiuser dungeons (MUDs), chat-rooms etc. (cf. Reid 1994; Baym 1995; Ruedenberg/ Danet/ Rosenbaum-Tamari 1995) come into the focus of attention. Others concentrate on specific textual features like "quoting" (Uhlirova 1994; DuBartell 1995), action sequences which are compared to face-to-face interaction processes (Ekhlund 1986), or on "improper behavior" like flaming (Lea et al. 1992). There are also investigations which show, that CMC as a whole can be viewed as a distinct variety (at least in its English "variety"), which is different from written as well as from spoken forms of English (Yates 1996; Collot/ Bellmore 1996; Gruber 1997a). In this paper I report the results of a study in which I investigated different characteristics of language use of scholarly e-mail discussion lists. In order to do this I have to narrow the focus of my investigation and to define which kind of CMC I am dealing with. Korenman/ Wyatt (1996) list three interactional features of academic discussion lists, namely that communication is conducted electronically, sequentially, and asynchronously (Korenman/ Wyatt 1996: 227). However, these features seem not to be specific enough to distinguish academic discussion lists from other asynchronous forms of CMC. One important additional feature is, that discussions on academic lists are topically restricted, i.e. there are clear thematic restrictions what might constitute a discussion topic and what not. Another important characteristic (of all Internet discussion groups) is the many-to-many communicative mode, i.e. the fact that every message is simultaneously sent to every list subscriber. In order to become a subscriber of a discussion list a person has to send a "subscribe"-command to a certain e-mail (listserv) address. From this time on he/ she will receive all items which are distributed by the list. In linguistics, discussion lists exist for different linguistic subfields as well as for the whole area of linguistics (cf. below). According to an own informal survey the possibility of discussing theoretical and/ or methodological problems in certain linguistic subfields is the main advantage
