CURRENT RESEARCH Dr Terrell Neuage Curricula de vita Notes on Secondlife project [Division or Synchronization can the person still exist when there is no physical counterpoint?]
Latest blog #USA 2019 posted 15/September/2019
Thoughts in Travel for August on Behance (posted 15/09/2019)
new picture poem collection Thoughts in Travel for August on Behance (posted 15/09/2019)
@Twitter ~ Tumblr ~ Pinterest ~ linkedin ~ Flickr (2019) / Flickr (pre-2019) updated 14/September/2019 Vista, South Australia
Textualities (DAILY thought splats) updated 15/September/2019 Vista, South Australia
This is the next to final draft. The final and accepted thesis , "Conversational Analysis of Chatroom talk" is available at the The University of South Australia, 2005. 452 p. : ill. (some col.); 30 cm. + 1 CD-ROM (4 3/4 in.) and at the National Library of Australia.
Conversational Analysis of Chat Room Talk PHD thesis by Dr. Terrell Neuage University of South Australia National Library of Australia.
THESIShome ~ Abstract.html/pdf ~ Glossary.html/pdf ~ Introduction.html/pdf ~ methodology.html/pdf ~ literature review.html/pdf ~ Case
Study 1.html/pdf~ 2.html/pdf~ 3.html/pdf~ 4.html/pdf~ 5.html/pdf~ 6.html/pdf~ 7.html/pdf~ discussion.html/pdf ~ conclusion.html~ postscipt.html/pdf~ O*D*A*M.html/pdf~ Bibliography.html/pdf~ 911~ thesis-complete.htm/~ Terrell Neuage Home
Neuage, Terrell.
(2005) "Conversational Analysis of Chatroom talk"
Bibliography ODAM Neuage-Resume Neuage-Home ~ Acknowledgements ~ Abstract ~ Glossary
Conversational
analysis of chatroom talk
A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
PhD
2004
Chairperson
of Supervisory Committee:
Professor Claire Woods
Date
Saturday,
1.1 Evolution of language from early utterances to
chatroom utterances
1.2 Internet-based communication systems
1.2.1 E-mail, discussion forums
1.3.1 Print to computerization
1.4 Purpose of examining on-line conversation
1.5.1 Problems of researching on-line
1.6 Are Chatrooms
Public or Private?
1.8 Personal
interest in researching on-line conversation
2.2 Technology of conversation
2.2.2.1 CMC and on-line
talk-texting
2.2.2.2 Analysing electronic textual data
2.2.2.3 On-line writings on CMC
2.2.2.3.3 Role playing chat sites
2.3 Analysing on-line conversation
2.3.1.1 The Reader as interpreter
2.3.1.2 The assumed or implied reader
2.3.1.3 The background of the reader (“mosaic of
multiple texts”)
2.3.1.4 The role of the reader
2.3.3 Symbolic activity in chatrooms
2.3.4 The language/action approach
3.4 Protocol of a
transcription methodology
CS 1.0.1 Reason for choosing this chatroom
CS 1.0.2 Background to Hurricane Floyd
CS 1.2.1.1 Skills of shared language
CS 1.2.1.2.1 Knowledge and skills of discourse
structure and organization
CS 1.2.1.2.2 Metalinguistic knowledge and skills
CS 1.2.1.3.3 Phenomenological approach to reading
CS 1.3.1 Two readings of a chatroom
CS 1.3.1.2 Three different Hurricane Floyd discussion
strands
CS 2.0.1 Choosing an IM chatroom
CS 2.1 Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC)
CS 2.2.1 Is electronic talk comparable to verbal talk?
CS 3.3.1.2 3D virtual chats and ikons
CS 4.0.2 Why I chose this chatroom
CS 4.2.1 Speech situations as speech events
CS 4.2.3 Speech Act Disruptions (SADs)
CS 5.2.2.2 <B_witched_2002-guest> 0HI
CS 5.2.2.3 <jenniferv> ** rofl
CS 6.2.1 Adjacency Pairs and Turn-taking
CS 6.2.2
Moderated/Unmoderated
CS 7.1.2 Functional
Sentence Perspective
CS 7.1.2.2 Meaning-Text Theory (MTT)
CS 7.1.2.3 The loss of formal or traditional text
Grammar
CS 7.1.2.3.1 Systemic-Functional Linguistics – the functions of
on-line chat
CS 7.1.2.3.2 Stratification grammar
5.1 Findings of
Case Studies 1 - 7
5.2 Unique features
of chatrooms
5.3 Research Questions and answers
5.4
Assumptions at the beginning
(*TN) following a
term is a new glossary word devised by
the researcher (Terrell Neuage) for this thesis.
Applet Window A program designed to be executed from within another application in
which a small window opens within the larger window.
Casual Chatroom Chat (CCC) (*TN) A
conversation in a chatroom which is not serious or intended to discover details
on a subject. Most casual chatroom chat, similar to non-formal pub casual chat,
consists of conversation typical of, “hi” “hows everyone”.
Chat Events (CE) (*TN)
These are all the individual turn-taking texts
of a particular participator in a chat room, including entering, leaving and
lurking.
Chatroom graffiti (*TN) The messages conveyed through the work of graffiti
artists are often highly political and deliberately aggressive. Some people
will go from chatroom to chatroom leaving messages but not particpating in
actual chatroom conversation: I refer to this as chatroom graffiti.
Chat Utterance Sentence Structures (CUSS) (*TN)
These are the sentences of a chat turn-taking. Unlike sentences which use nouns
and verbs to establish a complete thought, chat sentences are typically made up
of two to five words or emoticons. I have averaged the amount of words in
twelve chatrooms, consisting of 1357 lines (turn-takings) and found the average
word count, including abbreviations and emoticons to be 3.7.
Chatter's-Event-Response-Gaps (CERG) (*TN) This is
the pause between chatters who are “speaking” with one another. There are often
other voices which fill these gaps.
Conversational “lag” (*TN) Conversational
lag is a pause where the next speaker has been selected but it may be filled
with responses from others in the chatroom responding to other turn-takings.
The “lag” may be caused by many other factors, as I have alluded to above.
Cut utterances (*TN) Due to hitting the entrance key an utterance is cut between turn-takings in a chatroom. In some cases several turns of other chatters could occupy this space.
Event Pause (EP) (*TN) This refers to the break between utterances of a user in a chatroom. The most usual incidence of this is when the server places an advertisement in the chatroom and it appears between utterances. It also occurs when no one writes for a specific period of time.
Lag is the distance between speech events of a speaker in a chat situation,
a pause between utterances.
Metaphysical-chat-linguistics (MCL) (*TN) is
anticipating what will be said before the completion of the utterance, either
due to the writer-speaker hitting the “enter” key on the keyboard or the chat
server not allowing more than a couple of lines at a time to be shown on the
screen, thus breaking the conversation before it is completed.
Multilogue are the many conversations happening at one time within a chatroom as well
as the overall conversation of all who are present.
Multiple
Selves Chat (MSC) (*TN) Is a feature of chatrooms.
The author is able to have several different representatives of his or her self
in conversation at one time. As only one person can log on a chatroom at a time
the person wanting to have multiple representation in a chatroom would need to
have several windows open of the one chatroom but be logged on as a different
username in each window.
On-line
Discourse Analysis Method (ODAM) (*TN)
The method I am developing to study the language of on-line communication using
abbreviations, misspelled words and emoticons.
On-line native speaker (ONS) (*TN). Speech behaviours are established first off-line, and
are then modified for on-line use – most notably by the current technology
which at least demands that texted formats intervene in the “chat” processing.
Person2Person-off-line (P2P-off) (*TN)
Person2Person-on-line (P2P-on) (*TN)
Readerly
and Writerly Texts
These are translated from Barthes' neologisms lisible and scriptable,
the terms readerly and writerly text mark the distinction between traditional
literary works such as the classical novel, and those twentieth century works,
like the new novel, which violate the conventions of realism and thus force the
reader to produce a meaning or meanings which are inevitably other than final
or “authorized.” (Keep, McLaughlin, Parmar, 2000). https://www.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0250.html
Speech
Act Disruptions
(SAD) (*TN) Sponsorship ads appearing in chatrooms are a
performative speech act disruption.
Speech
Act Community On-line
(
Speech
situations
(chatroom situations) are composed of “speech events” (chatroom events) (Hymes,
1974) and these activities have rules governing the use of speech getting, for
example, getting to-know-you conversations (Gudykunst and Kim 1997 p. 328).
Tangent
Topic Thread (TTN)
(*TN) This occurs when the
original chat topic is taken over by others in different strands of unrelated
chat.
Text-Based-Chatrooms (TBC). (*TN) Text-Based-Chatrooms are a blip in the history
of human writing and only represent a short time period of computer-mediated
communication (CMC). As more and more chatrooms add multimedia attributes,
writing may become a minor or even a non-existent form of on-line
communication. With voice-boards and voice-forums such as available from Wimba
(https://www.wimba.com/) and chatrooms being 3D with
virtual worlds which use voice and keyboard commands to move around the screen
and with the growing use of avatars, TBCs may fade into a past genre of
electronic writing peculiar to the period from approximately 1993-2003.
Thread is a line of conversation.
Thread-framing
Thread-framing is a phenomenon in chatrooms, where a topic beginning and
ending are marked. In a chatroom these framed pieces of conversation are not
necessarily sequential. They twist around, stop and start, and several may
occur at one time in a seemingly chaotic fashion. Framing gives a starting and
finishing point to a thread.
Virtual-Mindfield (*TN) Creations of one’s world-view on-line.
In this study I started in a purely empirical
mode, “capturing” seven primary chatroom dialogues. I chose several of these
sites randomly, based on the ease of their access. As the study progressed, I
chose several other chatrooms because of my slowly focusing interest in the
varying “talk relations” I was encountering, and my suspicion that chat users
were themselves make chatroom selections by anticipating the online social
relations offered in various sites, according to the subject matter of the
chatroom as signalled in its name. While this sometimes was or sometimes was
not a safe prediction, it extended the range of sites, techniques and behaviours
I was able to collect and analyse, and required only occasional supplementation
with sampling from sites outside the core selection. For the most part, this study concentrates on
seven case studies, each case study being based on a saved piece of representative
dialogue from one very distinctive chatroom. Together, these case studies
demonstrate features peculiar to on-line chat which make it very different from
the face-to-face chat of everyday conversation – but also from any forms of
text-based communication. In the broadest sense chatroom “texted talk” combines
face-to-face chat with text-based communication.
There are however a number of central and
distinctive features that disrupt what might otherwise traditionally be
considered a simple conversational communication model. There is far more in
Internet Relay Chat than can be explained in a “sender-message-receiver”
relation. Most obviously such features include for instance the use of avatars
to replace or to represent the physically absent “speaker”; text-graphic
“emoticons” as interfaces to replace words or aural elements representing
emotions; the fleeting motion of scrolling text; silence or “lurking” by
participants as itself a form of
message: the complex “braiding” and overlap of various conversational “threads”
and the need to compensate and interpret discontinuity of posted messages; as
well as new forms of word structure, such as standardised abbreviations and
idiosyncratic mis-spellings. Each of these – and the many more complexities
each of them conceals – signals major shifts in the communicative activities of
online “chat” communities.
To test ways in
which these new communicative forms might be examined and understood, in this study, I capture and sample a moment in time of on-line exchange
behaviours, and look at them through the lens of a wide range of linguistic and
discourse theories. Using these theories demonstrates how, despite the
differences in “chat” conducted on-line from that carried out face-to-face,
on-line chat and “natural conversation” share some features. Analytical
theories developed for inquiry into both conventional speech and print-based
text reception, can be used for examining on-line chat, and are able to produce
findings which help explain these new communicative acts. The seven case
studies and the theories and associated methodologies used to assess are as
follows:
Disaster Chat (Hurricane Floyd). Beginning with Reading
Response Theory as a text-based analytical tool, this Case Study of a
natural-disaster-based chat site shows that in
on-line chat, both the person writing and the one (or many) reading are
co-language-meaning creators.
Instant Messenger. Using the one-on-one talk relation
of the Instant Messenger system, this Case Study focuses on the
technologisation of online talk, and its foundation in the ideas behind Computer
Mediated Communication. I approached this case study with
two questions related to Computer-mediated communication: “Do computers change
conversation?” and “Are Instant Messenger chatrooms closer to
off-line-person-to-person conversation than the multi-dialogue found in a
multivoiced chatroom? ” The findings suggest that computers do indeed
change conversation, and that Instant Messenger chat is closest to
person-to-person communication – but that even here, the “texted” nature of the
talk has produced differences.
Celebrity Chatrooms (Britney Spears). In this Case Study the high levels of text-graphic fusion elements and
abbreviations invited a Semiotic analysis; unexamined on-line communication’s potential to evolve
cross-communicative formats. This study reveals analysis within the same
repertoire of images, words and mixed-mode forms, such as specific “chat
community” conventions of abbreviation.
Astrology Chatrooms. Here, Speech Act Theory is
used to examine the practical and goal-related
uses of online language, and so extends the study into how chat participants
on-line direct their communicative activities towards social actions – and
whether these vary in the on-line world from those used off-line.
General Chat. To assess how the more open chat
communities entering general-topic chatrooms on a less regular basis, make
sense of the chat behaviours present, it is important to understand exactly
what it is that arriving chat participants “read” from the online texted-talk
on screen. Discourse Analysis examines the message structures organizing an on-line
community into consensual, resistant or negotiative communicative moments. In the case of General Chat it is
able to assess how the communicative elements appearing on the screen provide
participants with the general or generic “cues” to enter and participate in a
conversation.
Computer Chat (on the topic of expert software WEB3D). This case study asks does an expert community chat-site operate in
the same conversational environment as general chat participants, or as in
sites offering focused talk relations among strangers. Conversational
Analysis, used to examine the structuring rules of natural or real-world
conversation, has uncovered regulatory behaviours in talk, such as ways to
perform sequential organization of talk, allocate turn-taking and negotiate
repair to conversational break-down. CA is able to depict interactional
competence in conversation. This Case Study examines how useful it might be in
reading the rules of chatroom talk.
Baseball Chat.
Here an informal “expert” group, with regular and casual users intermixed, is
examined, to test whether the specialist forms used to demark a specific chat
“community” are annexed in from outside “natural” baseball chat, or evolve new
online “baseball chat” forms of their own. This study applies techniques for
describing grammatical systems drawn from a number of Linguistic Schools, to examine how
many of the common grammatical conventions – such as word order, sentence
structure, question formation, do not hold up in on-line chat. Further:
baseball-chatters on-line do not use the same specialist formations as their
off-line brethren – raising interesting questions as to the special pressures
of online chat, even in very specific talk communities with strong offline
conventions in their speech.
Other chat samples saved and referred to in
this thesis to enhance and support points include: 911
Electronic communication has opened a new realm
for communication – both as necessary information exchange, and as social play
and psychological development of self/selves. With continually evolving
innovations enabling new communicative activities, we must anticipate new and
unpredictable – even as yet indescribable – communicative behaviours and
understandings. By applying more detailed forms of textual analysis to the
actual examples of computer mediated communication (CMC) my project sets out to
detect new modalities as they evolve.
Chat on-line is “global” only to the extent of
accessing many varying “local” structuring references. A “global” or universal
“chat speak” is not evident in on-line talk selections – for all the emergence
of expressive repertoires in netiquette, emoticons or IRC/SMS abbreviation. In
this study, I suggest that what is evolving here is not – or not yet –
separated from speech in the physical world, to the extent of disconnection
from dominant discursive framings: that on-line texted-talk “chunks” its
interactions in familiar ways. I am also suggesting however that at the level
of “chat” or interpersonal interactivity, new behaviours abound.
I declare that this thesis does not incorporate
without acknowledgement any material previously submitted for a degree or
diploma in any university; and that to the best of my knowledge it does not
contain any materials previously published or written by another person except
where due reference is made in the text.
All transcription from the Internet was undertaken by the author/candidate.
All chat logs are on the accompanying CD. They are listed under the name of the case studies they are used in, for example, the log for case study 1 is called 1a on the CD.
Terrell Neuage
My
appreciation and thanks for the accomplishment of this study are directed to Dr
Jackie Cook for her years of patience and guidance of this thesis. Without her
this would not have been possible. I am much in debt to Dr Cook, of the
department of Communication, Information and New Media at the
I also
thank Associate professor Maureen Nimon for keeping me on track and giving
valuable advice and Professor Claire Woods,
And I
thank my wife, Narda Biemond, for putting up with my doing this thesis year
after year and for her suggestions and support.
I
dedicate this thesis to my sons, Sacha and Leigh Neuage, who began the process
of online communication with me in the mid-1990s. Sacha’s creative and free
spirit has led him to achieve wonderful things in the world of art and music.
As a critical thinker, he has challenged me often to dig deeper, and to further
explore my own position on many issues.
Leigh was a baseball player for
Thanks
guys.