Virtual Orality: How Ebay Controls Auctions Without an Auctioneer's Voice

Auctioneer, n. The man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue.

--Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

A lot of people are intimidated by auctions. They fear being recognized for bids they never intended to make; they are confused by the array of items; they are unclear about terms like choice or by the piece, two times the money; ¹ and they have difficulty making their minds up fast enough to get in on a sale before the bidding stops. They are afraid of getting stuck with an inferior item at a ridiculously high price. Ultimately, however, they put their trust in the person in charge: the auctioneer.

The auctioneer controls the sometimes frenzied proceedings orally. Cassady (1967, 165) notes, "The auctioneer's appearance, voice, rhythm of patter, good nature, imperturbability, and storytelling ability may have an effect on bidding activity, thus enhancing prices." Often amplified by a microphone, the auctioneer's voice rises above the din of the crowd and assistants to maintain order and demand the attention of prospective bidders. If, for instance, a person is erroneously recognized for a bid, the auctioneer has the discretion and power to make things right. And, naturally, the auctioneer wants to do so, because auctioneers want people to feel comfortable and safe at auctions. Whatever the situation, the auctioneer's voice organizes and controls the proceedings.

An audible voice is missing, however, from a new kind of auction that has appeared in the past six years. This auction still sells items to the highest bidder, it still can be confusing, and it still is a jumble of items and action and unfamiliar terms, but with one notable absence: there is no auctioneer. This auction is the on-line auction, and instead of a single person orally controlling the auction, there is only a Web site. Instead of a bidder able to observe competing bidders in the crowd, there are only the "buyer" and "seller" usernames. And yet these on-line auctions, led by industry behemoth eBay, have thriven. How is this so? Across cultures and times, auctions have taken place under the supervision of an auctioneer whose voice commands attention and maintains order. On-line auctions have to create hypertext messages that somehow compensate for the missing orality. This essay argues that eBay and other auction Web sites are actually not that different from live English auctions of livestock, antiques, fish, tobacco, broadcast licenses, household goods, or myriad other items (Cassady 1967). On the contrary, in a virtual space eBay has maintained order and interest by mimicking the auctioneer's oral style and the rules of in-person English auctions.

On-line Auctions and Communication

Auctions represent one of the most communication-intensive methods of selling. Because price is determined through the chanting and bidding processes, communication about value is central to the successful completion of any auction. Considering the critical importance of communication to auctions--the method by which most used cars, beef, and tobacco (among other things) in the United States pass on their way to consumers--it is remarkable that the linguistic performance of auctions has been so ignored. With the exception of Kuiper (1992, 1996), explorations of auctions have come from sociology (Smith 1989) or business and economics (Cassady 1967; DeVany 1987; Kagel and Levin 1993; Hendricks and Paarsch 1995; Lucking-Reiley 2000). Cassady (1967) calls his overview "the beginning, not the end" of understanding auctions. My essay attempts to add a communication perspective to the understanding of auctions by focusing on the elements of linguistic performance re-created in on-line auctions.

On-line auctions are a rapidly growing segment of Internet commerce. Not only did they account for $1.4 billion in trade in 1998 (Grant 1999), but they have attracted major on-line businesses such as Amazon.com and Yahoo! as well as traditional auction house Sotheby's. Specialty auctions...