Hello All, I am a Masters student in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature working on my thesis. However, I have encountered a problem on the use of pseudonyms. The site of my study is on a online forum-based interactive gaming site, and I am focusing on how the forum-based (text) role players negotiate various identities through their language use. Therefore, my participants have multiple layers of identities and names -- real name, screen name, and names of the characters they created. To ensure the confidentiality of the participants, of course I will use pseudonyms when presenting their real names and screen names in my thesis. But I am not sure if I should use pseudonyms to replace the names of the characters that my participants create, as those names sometimes have more profound meanings to them than just a name, and may signal their change in identity. Yet I am worried if I don't replace the names with pseudonyms, it may somewhat influence my participants' rights to full confidentiality. Please give me some advice as to how I can handle this issue. Thank you. -- Min-Ju Liu (Emily) M.A. Student in Applied Linguistics Department of Foreign Languages and Literature National Sun Yat-sen University