CASE STUDY 2 Terrell Neuage Conversational Analysis of Chatroom Talk PhD Thesis THESIS COMPLETE .pdf
Monday, 4 August, 2003 1:37 PM THESIS COMPLETE .pdf
Conversational Analysis of Chat Room Talk PHD thesis by Dr. Terrell Neuage University of South Australia National Library of Australia.
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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?
Computer technology in and of itself impacts on the “interactive” writerly-reader/writerly-writer who is responding to the reading of online text, as shown in Case Study One. This impact changes the exchange of information. Chatrooms have much in common with oral folk telling. The story is not put into print, to be archived and resuscitated at whim. It is written, and then lost. Ideas are written and read and re-written without ‘readers’ often knowing where they originated. What differs between computer technology and oral folk telling is that computers can ‘capture’ the story and allow readers to examine it - and yet unless oral speech is recorded there is no permanence to its existence. Memory alone allows it to be reviewed, critiqued, reconstructed – or even to achieve its intended outcomes in affecting or motivating listeners.
In chatroom postings the fusion form of the ‘talk-text’ has qualities of both speech and writing. As was established in Case Study 1, how meaning is given to the utterances in a chatroom is dependent on the reader of the text as well as on the writer of it – a processing which is arguably more clearly understood in this combined communicative form than it is for conventional speech. The “distantiation” effects of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) act to problematise chat texts: require us to think more carefully than is usual about what is going on, and to act more creatively than usual in ensuring that our intended messages are received. CMC provides the technology for speech communities to exist with no more than typed characters to hold the chatters together. Into these few standardised characters we pour all the complexities of our selves and our social interactions. It should then be no surprise that complex codings are so rapidly evolving, to convey at least something of those complexities.
At one level, CMC systems are themselves diversifying, providing more and more distinctive services, with users selecting multiple specialist channels for different communicative tasks and situations. One such aspect of CMC I will discuss in this Case Study is Instant Messenger (IM). ‘Over 41 million people (40 percent of Internet users) use it at home. Almost 13 million people use it at work (nearly 31 percent of the work population), spending 45 percent more time on it than at home. Approximately 63 percent of all Internet users are regular participants.’ (Approximately 63 percent of all Internet users are regular participants.’ (Nielsen NetRatings[1])‘. So what is distinctive in Instant Messenger as a CMC service? When are users selecting it – and how are they developing its functions into their communicative repertoires?
Because
Instant Messenger (IM) chats cannot be viewed by anyone outside the specific
cyberspace of two participants, unless permission is granted, it is impossible to
save an IM chat. I received permission from the two participants to use this in
my work providing I did not identify them in person. For this case study I
‘captured’ two Instant Messenger conversations. The first is an Instant
Messenger conversation in 1999 between mutual acquaintances, (A and B) who have
never met physically. They had been connected to the same religious cult in
I approach this case study with two questions related to Computer-mediated communication.
Does
the technological design of computers in itself change conversation? In asking
such a question, is it worth considering whether Instant Messenger chatrooms, with their one-to-one talk relations, are closer
to offline-person-to-person conversation than dialogue in a multivoiced
chatroom? In other words, is chat room talk more
affected by CMC interventions, than by its approximations or deviations from
familiar speech relations in the physical world?
My
first question seems obvious in the light of knowing that many of the
person-to-person cues of conversation are removed with text-based chat. A study
of the medium people use to communicate through, such as this case study will
attempt, is important in answering a subsequent question: see 3.2 question 3 ‘how is electronic chat reflective of current
social discourse?’ As the inter-relational elements of communication
pressure CMC to expand its service modes – from BBS (Bulletin
Board Systems) to IRC; from IRC to IM, and so on – how
is each new mode formed from existing practices – and what pressures, in turn,
does it exert on its users?
Computer-Mediated Communication is the process of one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many communicative exchange using a computer-based communication channel; currently at least, taking place predominantly in a text-based environment (Oshagan, 1995; Boudourides, 1995). Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) is NEW SITE = JULY 2014 - http://neuage.us/2014/July/ - Today being theorized within multiple disciplinary frames, including: Spears & Lea's SIDE Model, Speech accommodation theory, Walther's Social Information Processing model and Fulk's Social Influence model. Each attempt to locate what is specific to computer-mediated communicative exchanges, as distinct from their “real life” counterparts – but given the disciplines in which each arises, a different emphasis ensues. What then does each have to say about the rapidly diversifying forms of CMC – and which are of most use to this study?
Spears and Lea (1992) in their SIDE Model (social identity model of de-individuation effects) explore the social-psychological dimensions of CMC. One of their observations of most significance to this study is that groups communicating via computer sometimes exhibit more polarization[4] than equivalent groups communicating face-to-face, but less polarization on other occasions (Lea & Spears, 1991; Spears, Lea & Lee, 1990). Spears and Lee found that “True co-authoring stresses the need for support of multiple writers which have equal control over the text and within the interaction”. It is evident that communicating via computers is more time consuming than face-to-face as in face-to-face communication participants are able to quickly shift from person to person. Galegher and Kraut found that, ’the greater amounts of time that people in the restricted communication conditions spent working and communicating about the project can be seen as adaptations to a difficult set of circumstances’ (1994). As is discussed throughout this thesis, chatrooms can become a community, where the individual takes on the chatroom single-mindedness. Fish’s (1980) "interpretive community" and Bizzell’s (1982) "discourse community" are appropriate models by which to explain the acquisition by the group of shared meanings and understandings–shared cognition–which are vital elements in community formation (Giordano, 2000; December, 1993). For example if the topic in a chatroom is very specific: perhaps sports, sex, politics or religion, as I have shown in these Case Studies, chatroom users tend to display similar thinking; in time even coding responses in specialized forms.. A 'speech community' can be identified by linguistic convergence at a lexical and/or a linguistic structural level. Because Computer-Mediated Communication is strongly oral in nature, even in its texted modes, (Giordano, 2000) the turn-taking that builds discussions, and from them, communities of consensus, is often performed in a playful manner. One form taken in this play across words is the way people in chatrooms accommodate others in the room by ‘speaking’ the same language: mimicking one another’s lexical selections, modalities, specialist codes. I show this in several chatroom, specifically Case Study Seven, with the chatters using baseball-related usernames and discussing baseball at an intensely referential level, that only those who understood the game could follow. What emerges is a linguistically-defined community, where only those who can access the codes of exchange can access the communality. In Spears’ and Lee’s terms, the polarization in such groups is especially low – except in relation to attempts by non-experts to “enter” the space and contribute to the discussion. Social identity and de-individuation are high – but demarked purely in language, since that is the only available register. To return to the research frame of the previous case studies, this is a discourse not lisible to the general reader, and that alone seems to attract the scriptible or writerly participant: someone who wants not to consume, but to help enact this discourse. Paradoxically, entrée to such online communities appears more accessible as the discursive modes become more specialized – they offer higher levels of de-individuation as they demark themselves more clearly from “everyday” registers. To first time or casual Netizens this is a curious and frustrating phenomenon: either you encounter specialist chatrooms where you cannot easily “read” the evolved and evolving local codes, or you enter general social spaces in which no codes dominate, and so must exchange unprofitable and even phatic conversational gambits before a “scriptible” relation can emerge.
One complex and as yet under researched
issue in relation to this perversity of site-accessing practices lies in the
dominance to date of linguistic behaviours arising in English. It must be anticipated that non-English
speaking communities online have based their chat practices on their own
culture, and that they will be demonstrating specific practices arising out of
the structuring systems of their own language traditions. Online communities
have to date been dominated by English speakers, because of the work done by
Microsoft and other English centred software companies. However there are many
language-cultures entering the computer age of communication – and even some
experiencing renaissance because of CMC services supporting diasporic
interconnectedness. After English the most common language on the Web is
Spanish, followed by Japanese, according to the “Courier International” (July 5, 1968) – and with
Already some evidence for this is
occurring. According to the Social Information Processing Model (Walther, 1992)
people learn to verbalize online that which is nonverbal offline, by using
emoticons and images (Utz, 2000). The use of verbal
paralanguage becomes an important factor in the development of impressions.
Walther and others (see also Hiltz & Turoff, 1978; Rice & Love, 1987) have questioned the
validity of online presence being regarded as similar to offline communication.
People are motivated to exchange social information with others only if they
are able to decode the verbal messages of the communicative partner. Walther argues that with enough time spent
together, people online will move to form relationships by decoding one
another’s messages – such as those who persist in the “general topic” or social-encounter
chatrooms, mentioned above as problematic to many new
entrants, because they are so loosely topic-defined, and display too few
behavioural cues. The popularity of such spaces, even after many reports of
negative experiences, suggests that clearer sets of cues and discursive
strategies will evolve and become commonplace. In fact some commentators are
certain that such spaces are the latest in a long line of socially-evolving
cultural locations controlling and forming communication. Computer-Mediated
Communication is regarded by some as the fourth age of civilization and its
prime new model of communication (Strassmann,
1997).
Period |
Medium |
Economic |
Civilization |
1 million BCE-10,000 BCE |
speech |
tribal |
hunting |
10,000 BCE-1500 AD |
script |
feudal |
agriculture |
1500 AD-2000 AD |
print |
national |
industrial |
2000 AD- |
electronic message |
universal |
information |
From "Information
Systems and Literacy" by Paul A. Strassmann
(1997).
There are already several online journals
dedicated to Computer-Mediated Communication. The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
(http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/)
published by the University of Southern California, and the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem have each had numerous specialist articles, focused around
specific communicative uses, such as issues on CMC and Higher Education, which
shows the value of using computers for distance education; or Play and
Performance in CMC, an edition discussing the use of Chatrooms. The largest and third oldest online journal
on communication is The Communication
Institute for Online Scholarship (http://www.cios.org/)
based at the University of Albany, New York (SUNY) containing thousands of
links to academic institutions and scholars who write on topics of CMC.
Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine ran issues
from May 1994 to January 1999, reporting about people, events, technology,
public policy, culture, practices, study, and applications related to human
communication and interaction in online environments. Volume
5, issue 1, (January 1998) had a special focus: ‘Disability and CMC’ to shows
the value of communication through computers for the disabled; while Volume 5,
issue 1 had a Special Focus: ‘Online Relationships’, focused on the meeting of
people online and couples who had later met offline and formed relationships. This
proliferation of studies suggests an already rich variability in online
communicative repertoires – as well as a flurry of academic and analytical
attempts to describe and explain these new processes. The very existence of
such a rich new literature supports a view that diversity in CMC practices is
likely to expand rather than to standardise across all formats.
What follows then is an attempt to add to this diversity of inquiry, as well as to the growing awareness that online communication and its texted talk is already not one but many phenomena, each with special responses to the particular pressures of the technologisation of the speech relation enabled in the software, but also with evidence of creative re-positionings around those pressures. In pursuit of my programme of the testing of a range of existing analytical tools for understanding speech relations and practices, in this Case Study I intend to review speech behaviours in a one-on-one use of the IM or Instant Messenger site. And in the first instance at least, I seek to uncover and foreground those distinctive speech practices which are either appearing only within IM, or are especially heavily used there. Without wishing to imply that such changes in linguistic behaviour are technology driven, I do want to assess how far the software appears to restrict or enable certain types of communicative act – and whether such preferred IM forms are sufficiently recurrent as to characterise this type of texted talk.
‘It is in the history of any particular communication that the utterances can be studied for their mappings’[6]. For example, grammar could be derived from distributional analysis of a corpus of utterances without reference to meaning. What is reflected is the consensus users establish at a certain social and cultural moment and location, as to what is or is not utterable, and as to how it may be uttered. The World Wide Web however, as we have seen, brings new ways of engaging in conversation which are emerging with the growing wide spread use of computers as a form of communication. How much people begin to rely on the Internet or other computer-based mediating devices as a source of communication will determine many of our future practices in communicating – even impacting on person-to-person conversation. There have already been surveys suggesting that the amount of time some people spend on the Internet in chatrooms is disproportionate to the amount of time they communicate face to face with others[7].
In Case Study One I discussed how chatroom users respond to reading chatroom text. In this case study I consider in more detail the technology which mediates the communicative act. The introduction of computers has changed the communicative act of “conversation” by allowing for new forms of discourse exchange which are not possible with physical offline person-to-person contact. The most obvious is the ability to speak with others over large distances through synchronous textual dialogue, providing an “interactive written discourse” (Allen & Guy, 1974, p. 47). Without the physical cues associated with offline person-to-person conversation, in a chatroom, the “speech splits off from visual co-presence” (Hopper, 1991, p. 217). Other ways of transferring meaning then become important, including specific chatroom features, such as emoticons, abbreviations and font style, size and colour of text. Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) with its new repertoire of possibilities has several functions to play in the chatroom communicative act. Several researchers have found for instance that the more emoticons a person uses, the more friendships he or she builds (see Ultz, 2001 and Roberts, Smith, and Pollock, 1996).
Firstly, computers can be considered to enhance or to hinder person-to-person communication. Computers can for instance enhance communication for individuals with disabilities, who cannot easily converse; for people who do not have access to other forms of communication or information sources due to distance or social restrictions; and for people who have social difficulty in communicating with others in face-to-face situations (see Grandin, 1999; Rheingold, 1991, 1993, 1999; Turkle, 1984, 1995, 1996). Computers can however also hinder communication: because of technological problems such as networks malfunctioning, or people hacking into computer systems and disrupting discourse flow or sending information as someone else (Harvey, 1998). Social interaction skills can be underdeveloped within real-world encounters, leading to equal or even intensified inhibition with computer communication (see Perrolle, 1998). As society becomes more dependent on computers those without them may be disadvantaged in communicating with others. And as is discussed throughout this research it is the interchange in online communication that may have the most impact on how we ‘speak’ in the future.
Secondly, computer exchanges are now fast enough and their repertoires similar enough to physical real-time communication to replace or be an adjunct to offline person-to-person talk. Because of the capacity for anonymous communication in a chatroom environment fellow chatters have little to judge an individual by, except his or her statements (Kollock & Smith, 1996, p. 109; Schegloff, 1991, p. 49). Chatrooms are a virtual ‘mindfield’ where only the mental activities of chatters are known. It is not possible to know about the other chatters in a chatroom except from what they choose to tell us in their written statements. Therefore, “the most important criterion by which we judge each other in CMC is one’s mind rather than appearance, race, accent, etc” – at least insofar as the text can be thought of as equivalent to or representative of, “the mind”. (Ma, 1996, p.176). Therefore computers, as an extension of at least the socially represented self, become part of the speech act (see Case Study 4).
And thirdly, CMC embraces several genres of communication, with the multi-layeredness of online communications such as e-mail, or discussion lists, as well as chatroom interactions. Together, these provide a range of new genres for the transference of ideas, information and creativity. There are many ways to create new textual landscapes within the possibilities of collaboration available with online communication. This study will suggest however that linguistic, lexical, and stylistic convergences form faster in chatrooms than in discussion groups and newsgroups, due to the instant collaborations between chatters. Asynchronous study allows time for reflection between interactions: it offers the same forms of critical “distantiation” offered by print-based media – in effect merely dispatching printed text more speedily than physical means, and making it more readily available for transformational use in reception than in competitive contemporary text transfer systems, such as faxing. Synchronous interactions allow real-time interactive chats or open sessions among as many participants as are online simultaneously, creating for the first time the possibility of immediate text based reciprocal exchange – and so for very rapid consensual development of new linguistic behaviours and codings.
Chatrooms are close to combining 'spoken' and 'written' language. Computer-Mediated Communication is still largely a narrow-bandwidth technology and it will be another decade before world- wide usage of fibre optics or 4th generation WAP will be available to carry videos and the amount of data needed to enable full oral and visual communication world-wide (Technology Guide, 2001). Much of the information we obtain in face-to-face interaction is from body language, sound (phonetics and phonology), and other physical codes. In narrow-bandwidth communications, such as on the Internet of 2000, this information was not transmitted, causing frequent misinterpretation. When cam-recorders are mounted on the top of computers and combined with text-based chatroom 'written' language, and participants can see one another and write at the same time, we will have other tools to analyse how language between people is exchanged. In the meantime, it is important to assess existing techniques for observation and analysis of the emergent new "talk" of this interactive communicative format.
The
impact these forms of communication may have on future interactions between
people is just beginning to be studied. Verbal language was the first major
step toward interconnection of humans (Chomsky 1972, 1980; Pinker,
1994) which led to a
fundamental change in the way we collected knowledge about the world. With
symbolic language people are able to share experiences and learn about others’
lives as well as share information on their own. Chatrooms
are one area of this rapid evolution in the sharing of minds. Language has
allowed us to become a collective learning system, building a collective body
of knowledge that far exceeds the experience of any individual, but which any
individual could, in principle, access. We have made the step from individual
minds to a collective mind. As shown in the table above (From “Information
Systems and Literacy”) individualized communication has evolved from tribal to
feudal to national to the current
universal collective sharing of ideas and ‘talk’. The Internet provides a
global brain that is based on the integration of computer technology and
telecommunications (Russell, 1983; Bloom, 2000). With the
various forms of online communication chatrooms are
the closest to person-to-person offline conversation. Chatroom
conversations are more hastily carried on than e-mail is. Conversations in chatroom are rarely planned out, making this environment an
ideal source of casual conversation analysis. Chatroom
conversations are informal, often experimental and frequently used for
entertainment and escape (Rheingold, 1999). Virtual conversations, as they are
in chatrooms, can be undertaken with the intention that
they have little to no real life significance, or they can be as real as any
off line community is.
The Internet provides the link for an
electronic interactive conversational – and so its hypertextual
format has an immediate impact.
Electronic digital technologies lack a sense of linearity; in fact, they
are based on a nonlinear structure that tends to facilitate a more associative
way of organizing information, through the
hypertext principle. (Landow, 1994 and 1997;
Bolter, 1991). While print media work as a flow of conversation or writing
directed in an organized progression, online conversations fragment
multi-directionally. Conversation on the
World Wide Web, whether in chatroom, Instant
messenger (IM), discussion groups, or even in role-playing games such as MUDs and MOOS involves two new paradigm shifts (See
Introduction 1.2.4). Firstly, there is the shift from print
to computerization. Print relies on
hierarchy and linearity (see: Comte, 2002; Landow,
1994;
Computer interactivity however can be
either asynchronous or synchronous. Instant Messenger, ICQ, and PalTalk have
only two voices at one time, but not necessarily following one another. In
text-chat only one line shows at a time, unlike the overlaps in voice-chat or
in real-life chat. People still "talk" at the same time. One does not always wait for a response. If
two people are typing rapidly back and forth, they can return and respond to
something which was said whilst the other was typing. But their typed lines appear
as if in dialogue. The software mimics a conversational relation, at least in
its reciprocal relation on the screen. Therefore IM and its variants are a
synchronous CMC format.
Asynchronous communication is communication taking place at
different times or over a certain period of time. Several
currently used examples are
e-mail, electronic mailing lists, e-mail based conferencing
programs, UseNet newsgroups and messaging programs. Asynchronous communication requires
computer conferencing programs and electronic
mailing lists that reside on a server that distributes the messages that users
send to it. Any computer user with e-mail and a connection to the Internet can
engage in asynchronous communication. Web-based conferencing programs that
distribute many messages, or messages containing attachments, require more
system power and a current model computer with a sound card and speakers and a
fast connection to the Internet. (Aokk, 1995; Siemieniuch & Sinclair, 1994).
Synchronous communication is communication that is taking place at the same time. Several voices can be going at once or there can be multiple conversations involving multiple subjects happening at the same time. Several currently used examples of synchronous communication are: Chatrooms, MUDs (multiple-user dungeons), MOOs (multiple object orientations), videoconferencing (with tools like White Pine’s CUSeeMe and Microsoft's NetMeeting) and teleWeb delivery systems that combine video programs with Web-based resources, activities and print-based materials.
To
use synchronous communication in a text-based environment one can have the chatroom on their server or the chatroom can be imported into their Web site as an applet.
An applet is a program written in the Java
programming language
that can be included in an HTML page, much in the same way an image is
included. These programs open in a separate window from the main source window
being used. Real-time interactive environments like MUDs
and MOOs are Unix-based programs that reside on
servers. In both kinds of synchronous
communication, users connect with the help of chat-client software and log in
to virtual "rooms" where they communicate with each other by typing
onscreen. Because MOOs and chatrooms
frequently attract many users, it is advisable to access them using a high-end
computer and a fast connection to the Internet. MOOs
and chatrooms often have their own sound effects to
denote communicative gestures (such as laughter and surprise); to use or hear
them; the computer must be equipped with a sound card and speakers.
As we have familiarized ourselves with all of these new possibilities, a second paradigm shift is currently taking place around the changing environment of on line discourse, parallel to the shift from print to the Internet (See Introduction 1.4.2). Within the Internet interactive environment, there is a shift from e-mail and discussion groups, to chatroom and "Instant messenger" and ICQ by users of online technology. (Cassell, 1999; Atkinson, 2000). E-mail and discussion groups are more or less a one-way road. For example, one usually waits for a return e-mail, which often is a complete response with several paragraphs: a considered and edited "textual" piece. Conversely, chatroom environments are composed of one or two lines of text from one person followed by a response of one or two lines from another person. Chatrooms thus consist of spontaneous and casual “conversational” text, while discussion groups are e-mailed "texted" responses, which are usually thought out and spelling and grammar checked before they are sent to the discussion group. Discussion groups, I hypothesize, are even more controlled and planned than e-mails, more "textual". In other words, the Internet has already produced its own set of "text-talk" genres and practices. The online universe of discourse is rapidly diversifying.
Because of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC), the World
Wide Web activities of ordinary users have
taught a new form of communication to hundreds of millions of people in
less than a decade. Such learning is a social and interpretive activity in
which multiple members collaboratively construct explanations and
understandings of materials, artifacts, and phenomena within their environment
(Dewey, 1966, c.1916).
544.2
million |
|
4.15
million |
|
157.49 million |
|
171.35 million |
|
4.65million |
|
181.23
million |
|
25.33
million |
This case study then introduces the technology into consideration of the new online discourse between people. To summarise: the technology used for text based interactive chatroom discourse is CMC based. As technology advances and changes so too does communication – and CMC techniques are proving no exception. One of the primary changes away from the text-based-chatroom (TBC) is the move to new technologies which replace text with talk and multimedia capabilities of videos, DVDs, webcams and sounds as well as 3D animated worlds and author/avatars. In the new chatrooms the text is replaced by sound waves, which may not be the author’s actual voice, but a simulation of his or her voice, tone and mood: a constructed “other” as substitute “self”. Already in graphics enabled chat “habitats” the author’s username is replaced with a representational avatar. Even the simple one-to-one messaging services of ICQ and IM are now multimedia communication tools which contain features such as file transfer[9], voice chat, SMS paging, post-it notes, to-do lists, greeting cards, and birthday reminders. Chatrooms which were once text-based only are in the process of incorporating virtual worlds and the use of “intelligent agent” avatars[10] instead of just usernames. Meanwhile, each variant within the new sets of on-line interactive communications media is establishing its own sub-culture of use.
Computer-Mediated Communication which
uses the Internet takes users via e-mail, discussion groups and chatrooms beyond the immediate physical world. Within
online communication a user becomes
socialized by learning a number of new “socio- technical” skills such as
typing, reading and writing at the same time and learning the protocols of
online discourse which includes emoticons and abbreviations. The different
forms of interactive or ‘conversational” CMC genre such as e-mail (see, Hawisher and Morgan, 1993), Homepages (see, Dillon, and Gushrowski,
2000;
Within the chatroom genre the
Instant Messenger chat arenas are the closest to one on one offline dialogue.
The popularity of the format is already some guarantee of the likelihood of a
generic (re)development in process. ICQ which began in
ICQ Screen
The importance of online communication has been highlighted
by a study released by Jupiter Media Metrix (http://www.jmm.com,
November 2001) which found that Americans last year spent over 18.5 billion
minutes, or 309 million hours, logged into IM services such as ICQ and Instant
Messenger. Accurate world-wide studies of how much time people spend online in chatrooms are not currently available but one would assume
the amount of time spent world-wide, with people logged into IM services would
be high, since the number of people logged into online chatrooms
of all kinds is growing. The Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2002 reported
that half of Australians now use the Internet, and a third of all households
have Internet access. About ninety percent of 16-20 year olds use the Internet
regularly. Almost 55 percent of all Australians, or 10.6 million people, had
Internet access in January 2002, according to Nielsen NetRatings
(http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/). These are higher levels of penetration
than most European countries. E-mail/chat remains as the Internet’s “killer
application” since 92% of the users reported using e-mail/chat and 71% of the
users ranked it as the most frequently accessed application. (http://www.abs.gov.au/).
One study reported in BetaNews (Niese,
2001) estimates that more than one-hundred million people are in chatrooms each day. Computers as a form of communication
thus affect many aspects of human discourse from daily correspondence to
entertainment and information purposes.
The sheer mass of such activity once again raises the
question: do computers in and of themselves change how people communicate?
Firstly, Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) can be expected to promote more
diversity of thought than offline communication primarily because people from
so many cultures and social groupings, i.e. age, race, gender and beliefs, are
able to be together without the hindrances of physical presence. As my
subsequent analysis will show, such discourse is already observably different
from that between people in offline-person-to-person conversation. It has been
argued (See Berge and Collins, 1995;
and work by Sloman, 1978), that
Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) enhances dialogue[12].
A study by Ruberg, Moore and Taylor (1996) reveals that the CMC discourse
encourages more experimentation, sharing of early ideas, increased and more
distributed participation, and collaborative thinking compared with face-to-face
communication.
Instant Messenger Services are an outgrowth of MUDs and MOOs which are textual
created games and learning environments, as discussed in the Introduction. Chatrooms, ICQ and IM especially, are reader/writer driven
interactive sites. One participant enters and writes text and another person
responds. Often there is the feeling
that one is writing and reading at the same time. In chatrooms
this can become chaotic due to the near impossibility of following the rapid
scrolling of text, and it is especially difficult in a room where there may be
dozens of people waiting for one person to say something then answering that
one person. What differentiates "speakers" within chatrooms
is their logon names. If there are several voices, none following any
particular protocol, all "talking" at once, the question becomes,
"what is being said?" and at the same time "what is being
heard?" To date, no explicit protocols have emerged for managing the flows
of talk, or even for identifying the flow of talk, though for my analysis in
the individual case studies, I have developed a transcription methodology to
examine online chat flows and types of speech.
Instant messenger services however come closer to an
offline-person-to-person conversational turn-taking environment. Unlike
multi-voiced chatrooms and discussion groups no one
else can enter the dialogue. Here the "talk-text" dynamic comes
especially close to that isolated in the "turn-taking" categories of
Conversational Analysis, so that IM can operate as a foundational text for
other Net forms, such as the multi-voiced Internet Relay Chat (IRC) services.
But is IM “the same as” live dialogue? Are alternative behaviours
and functions emerging from its use?
One
other aspect of Instant Messenger ‘talk’ that is different from the multivoiced chatrooms is that
with some computers there can be a voice wave used. Instant Messenger utilizes
Text-to-Speech technology. When a new message appears the computer reads it
aloud in a chosen voice. You can hear the voice whilst running any program,
such as a graphics or word program and do not have to bring AOL IM to the front
to hear it. The
voice is however not the other person’s actual voice, but a simulation by the
computer, that is picked from a limited range of options, by the user. For
example, I was using an Apple brand computer during my dialogues with the
person I have referred to in this case study. I was able to chose from a large
range of voices and chose a voice called ‘princess’. Every time my IM buddy wrote
words the computer would read the words back to me in the ‘princess voice’,
which was a soft feminine vocalisation. Over several
months I equated this person with the voice of my computer. After nearly six
months of daily correspondence in Instant Messenger she telephoned me. She
lived in
In the film "You’ve got mail", (1998, Warner Bros.)
Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan dialogue through an IM environment. However, people
still have to find one another online before they pair off - unlike in a chatroom where people meet through the random chance of
entry at a particular moment. One of the features of chatroom
‘talk’ I am interested in is establishing at what point the dialogue between
strangers or even acquaintances changes in the online environment. For example,
in the movie 'You Got Mail' the dynamics between the two strangers change when
one of the participants (Tom Hanks) writes, "we should meet". This is
however a fictional dialogue - one which parallels a major "moral
problem" discourse in relation to IRC and the constitution of electronic
persona. There are such moments in “real” online IM dialogues (see Internet
dating sites[13]).
In Instant Messenger someone steers the conversation into a
particular area of discussion, establishing, in CA terms, the "flow"
or speaking space for a topic (See Case Study Six). This allows me to look at a
simple two-person chatroom before I begin to analyse the multi-voiced chatrooms.
Multiuser chatrooms are
public and anyone in the chatroom is capable of
viewing what others are saying, unless participants go into a private chatroom and only allow one other person to join in.
Instant Messenger chatrooms can only be used by the
two people in them. This in itself can be expected to change the speech dynamic
and behaviours available in this space.
My research data for this Case Study consists of two
conversations, one between two people I knew to be IM users, and one between
another person and myself. Otherwise the very privacy of this format makes it
extremely difficult to observe and study.
IM Screen
When I ‘captured’ these two chats in 1997, AOL (American
Online) Instant Messenger (left) was the only IM available and it was only
useable as a text-based turn-taking instrument. The two people ‘speaking’ could
observe letter by letter what was being written by both themselves, and the
other person on the screen, in real time. Instant Messenger does not have the
chaos of multi-chat entries that most chatrooms have.
Currently, in 2002, there are several other IMs.
Microsoft Messenger is available in 26 languages. Yahoo Instant Messenger,
begun in March 1998[14], has entered the virtual world chatworlds with the release of Yahoo Messenger 5.0[15]. As such “themed” environments become
available, it will be interesting to observe whether the online environment,
such as the background images of the chat area, influences the dialogue. Yahoo
IM is available on mobile (cell) phones as well as hand-held computers.
As well as Yahoo, ICQ and American Online, which started its
service in May 1997[16], there are IMs
from Lycos, Odigo, Microsoft, begun in July 1999[17], Netscape and Paltalk,
which have video conferencing facilities as well as IM, voice-mail and
PC-Phones.
American online IM
Odigo, Inc., was founded in 1998, claims to have a worldwide community of over 8 million users (2002). Their IM screen is shown below.
The IM services are thus already diversifying in themselves,
a direct result of ISP competition. But some features remain the same –
especially those conditions under which a user of any of these variant services
experiences the processes of use. In each case, as well as being engaged in a
chat with another person in Instant
Messenger, a person may simultaneously be doing other things, such as writing a
thesis whilst having the Internet on. A little icon appears on the screen showing when the person
is working online. Unlike text messaging on mobile phones which are currently
limited by the use of 26 characters typed in at a time, and the limits of
sending, and then waiting for a response, IM users are capable of writing as
much as they wish and at speeds close to
real-time synchronous conversation. In addition to this, IM users have
the ability to engage in texted chat with another
user at any time and any place (using a palm computer or a laptop).
The feature I have emphasized in this Case Study is the
ability for people to engage in real time conversation with people in different
locations far removed from each other. This has always been possible for
telephone or telegraphic correspondence but not until the World Wide Web has this
been possible with conventional written text. For example in the IM that I use
in Case Study Two one person is in California and the other is in Australia,
and as the characters are typed on one keyboard they appear on the other
person’s computer.
In this conversation the two speakers had started out
discussing spirituality, but the male (speaking in capital letters) quickly
turned it into a sexual theme, with the female then ending the conversation:
34. ******: oh my god!...thats
what i thought you were going to say.....but i didnt want to go there! |
At this stage the female writer (lower case text) could have been revealing a familiarity with social norms (eg male sexual behaviour) or with IRC practices or both. Without other cues: visual, knowledge of the participants and their familiarity with one another, it will be difficult to define the "talk". Yet the female participant suggests that she manages to do just that - because she is familiar with her interlocutor.
For the conversation analyst, not familiar with the co-speakers, the grammar, fonts and abbreviations are all significant. Several of the standard online abbreviations are for instance already used as shorthand for several phrases. How font size is used online is also well illustrated in this chat. The male uses what is conventionally considered ‘shouting’ by writing everything in capitals, as illustrated in example 3. In net-etiquette[18] using the caps key all the time in an online conversation, whether it is e-mail, a user group or in a chatroom, is considered rude and aggressive. However, when a reason is given or understood as to why someone carries on certain behaviour, it may not be considered rude. The person who types in capitals in this Instant Messenger posting types in capitals all the time whether it is in chatrooms, in usergroups or in e-mails. He believes he is a master teacher of a religious cult[19] and that the only way he can show his ‘authority’ and ‘high attainment’ is by using capitals. It is possible though for an experienced IM user, habituated to the ‘shouting” code from other CMC encounters, to suppress one interpretation and accede to this rather more idiosyncratic “rule”, though in this instance the capitals are used to show his authority, as he has written me to say as much.
In line 10, “LOL” is used as shorthand for “lots of laughs”. In chatroom talk LOL is also used for "lots of love" or “laughing out loud”, but in this context I am able to interpret it as "lots of laughs", as it follows the word "HE" – itself ambivalent, but here signaled by its repetition as part of the laughter representation, "he he he".
10. ######: I PRACTICE THE 4 RULE. I HOPE YOUR NOT INTO THE EQUALITY TRIP BUT I FEEL THE MAN ONE THE WOMAN 4. THAT WORKS GOOD SHE REALLY SMILES A LOT AFTER THAT HE LOL |
IM dialogue II
The talk-text is therefore providing cues for the “writerly” or actively interpreting reader/writer. The problems of this “emergent” genre are however constant. Two abbreviations in this IM I am not familiar with. That, and the way that both abbreviations are used within a few lines of one another, suggests that these two speakers have their own rules of engagement for meaning exchange. This talk-text is not immediately “lisible” for the outsider. The two abbreviations I am referring to “OBE” in line 11 and “IBE” in line 14 - though in line 15 the writer clarifies IBE by saying that the “I” is for “in”. To an outsider such as myself who does not know what the abbreviation represents it would not be possible to know what is being said. Language here is used as an antilanguage where the ones who know what is being said are the participants who at some time must have given a shared meaning to the used words or abbreviations (see Halliday on “antilanguage”, 1978).
11. ******: and where does she live....I hope not in Australia.....thats too far even for a good old fashioned OBE |
14. ######: WE DO A |
15. ######: THE I FOR IN |
To some extent the textual "appearance" of these examples of IRC script in IM is accidental. If people are not skilled at typing, they make a lot of errors trying to keep up with IRC conversation. This is especially true in chatrooms where there are several people 'speaking' at the same time. Nevertheless, contributors in Instant Messengers do also use text forms in deliberative ways.
As the chat below shows, sequential
dialogue, even in an IM space is difficult to maintain. If there is not a
turn-taking process in which one person waits for the other before ‘speaking
again’ the dialogue is as difficult to follow as one in a multiuser
chatroom is. In the example in Table 4 CS 2:1
below the IM chat on the left, even though between two people, does not show a “listening
then responding” regime. Speaker <******:>
does not respond to <######:> who has made references `to knowing her in
another lifetime’. Unlike in offline person-to-person conversation, topics are
rarely pursued. In this instance there is no more discussion after turn number
seven on the topic of other life times. In multiuser chatrooms there are similarly few times when topics are
continued, but
that is often because there are so many people ‘speaking’ at once. In the same
number of turns as the Instant Messenger example, the multiuser chatroom shown below
shows few instances of continued
dialogue,
From Instant Messenger, two person chat. |
Afghan Chatroom. http://www.afghanchat.com/chatroom.htm
|
1. ######: WE WERE TOGETHER IN THE HAREMS OF CHINAS THRONE, THE GOOD OLDL DAYS 2. ######: MINE 3. ******: ah...one of those past life miracles 4. ######: COOL LETTERS. I LIKE GRAPHICS AND BIG BLACK LETTERS, COOLNESS 5. ******: oops....better get a little more humble again 6. ######: WE WERE INDIANS IN THE NEW WORLD TOGETHER TOO 7. ******: WOW! far out man! |
1. [MrAnderson] hopefully Zahir Shah will help to bring all AFG tribes - together in peace & establish fair governing body 2. [ZtingRay] Si 3. [FRANKY] I CAN RECOGNIZE HIS MORONIC SPEAKING WAYS ANYWHERE 4. [fRANKIE] you are so low you have to have an umbrella to keep the ants - from peeing on you 5. [MrAnderson]
texasrose: are U in 6. [afraid] gina, where are youu 7. [oliv] HEI FRANK YOU AFRAID MAN
|
IM dialogue VI
compared with Afghan talk
Discontinuity however exists even in the IM space. In Chatrooms, notes Werry, “successive, independent speech acts are simply juxtaposed, and different topics interwoven. The kind of sequencing evident contrasts significantly with that of oral discourse, as well as most forms of written discourse” (Werry, 1996, p. 51). Conversations branch out constantly as participants follow several streams at once and interact with many others at a time. The demands of this mutli-processing mean that many threads snap and discontinue. However, in the Instant Messenger genre, with only two speakers, there is still overlapping and checking going backward if the conversation is not strictly in the question and answer genre of talk. In person-to-person conversation the classic CA talk-relation of adjacency pairs is are one method by which people structure conversation. But due to the overlapping conversation enabled by the ‘first come first served” packet-switching of Internet software, in chatrooms, this is rarely found in chatrooms. Similar software provisions impact on IM dialogue. Both people in an IM situation could be writing at the same time, but because of the longer life span of text printed on the screen (when compared to verbal speech) a speaker is able to scroll back up and read what occurred earlier, while they were distracted by their own act of writing. This “recoverability” of text-entries enables a more considered, second-guessing approach, which can be shown to intensify the focus of IM users, shifting their attention from their own assertions to those of their talk-partner. Also in IM there are not as many people to contend with as there are in multi-speaker chatrooms therefore the chatroom users do not have to contend with overlapping conversations. But as shown in the example above sometimes they do. In the second example of an Instant Messenger dialogue, between myself and the female in the sequences above, the dialogue is more continuous and there is turn-taking which is based on writing, then reading the other person’s writing before responding. This is difficult in a multiperson chatroom because of the interruptions of other chatters and even of advertisement ads, which some chatservers put in between turn-takings. Here however the conditions of IM allow me to think more carefully about my responses – and there is textual evidence in the contrast between the performance of my talk-partner here and her previous chats with her other talk partner, that IM users act responsively to the texted talk-strategies within given exchanges. By using the tools provided by IM, this woman was able to react differently and enact different talk relations during her two captured IM chats.
As I was one of the participants in the chat below I am of course able to give a different and more informed interpretation than for the previous IM example. With any conversational analysis the interpretation is key to the understanding of the textual interaction. There are limitations to how people speak, even with others they are already familiar with. One of the areas of on-line conversation that would be worth study in future is the differences between conversations of already-known participants and unknown chatters. Most chatrooms conversations are between participants unknown to one another. In IM however, the "speakers" are generally known to one another to some degree, as they need to know each other’s ‘handle’, ‘screen name’ or username before they can access one another’s personal account. Instant messenger is thus similar to face-to-face talk in that participants already are familiar with each other, even if through only a few correspondences.
One person whom I met in a chatroom and got to know quite well over a short time period on IRC is the person in these two Instant Messenger examples. This person has a history of psychiatric illness, confirmed not only by her, but also several others on my buddy list. (IM has category lists such as Buddy, family, Class-mates). Most of our chats were just bantering and at times quite silly. Our IMs were more entertainment than anything and provided me with a break from the stresses of every day life. However, there were times when this person drifted into suicidal talk, wanting 'to return to her home in the cosmos', her cue that she "wanted to die". Mood and directional changes affect the dialogue even without having tonal or gesture signals. This can be read back within the flow of talk by creating a string of text of lines 1, 7, and 9, or as coded above: 1>7>9. It is line 9, when the person says "on this plane", that the message becomes clear. Even though it is using the same text: "on this plane", by line 9 it has taken on new meaning, following line 7 "I am am (sic) not going to be around too much longer". It is now clear the person is thinking of dying.
The following dialogue has the other
party's name deleted. Until this scenario begins the respondent was telling
jokes and seemed quite happy. As this stage I have only arranged the text into
single exchanges, omitting the full transactional coding, which I have used in
other case studies as my transcription method. In those I have shown the order
of discourse, i.e. [34/\ 33/\ 32/\ 31/\ 29/\ 10] where the numbers show the previous
turn-takings which are part of the topic or thread[20]
and so build a sense of the inter-weaving of the talk.
Instead, here I have added interpretive commentary; to indicate the response
processing underway as the exchange proceeded. At a later period I intend to
use the more objective "coding" on this transcript as well, to test
the efficiency of my own "intuitive" conversational responses.
In the conversation below my comments, which are not part of the original transcript, are written in italics. These comments help to clarify sections of text as the conversation went forward.
1. @@@@@@: Terrell......we will probably never meet on this plane |
2. @@@@@@: realize that |
3. T Neuage: really we will never meet [at this point I thought she meant because she lived in California and I lived in Australia – and due to the distance this would never go beyond a cyberfriendship.] |
4. T Neuage: why not [I second posted here as there was a long pause of several minutes without a response] were you scrolling back to pick up that “on this plane” comment? |
5. @@@@@@: I dont know |
6. T Neuage: but you believe that? |
7. @@@@@@: I
am am not going to be around too much longer [here I first realize she is talking about
leaving the world] |
8. T Neuage: that is not true |
9. @@@@@@: on this plane |
10. T Neuage: why do you say that |
11. @@@@@@: it is so |
12. T Neuage: that is silly stuff |
13. T Neuage: it is not so |
14. T Neuage: for what reason would you leave [I triple posted here as there was several minutes with no response and I was feeling impatient at the time] |
15. @@@@@@: it ois time soon |
16. T Neuage: i am not into control but you can't go |
17. T Neuage: it is not time soon |
18. @@@@@@: but I will always be with you [a metaphysical translation being that she believes she will die and her spirit will be with me] |
19. T Neuage: who told you that that you will leave |
20. T Neuage: it is not true |
21. @@@@@@: I am not sure.....but I am am being taken soon [here begin the 'I will be taken' beliefs. She claims to be an 'experiencer' - an “alien” abductee. An alien abuductee is one who believes they have been kidnapped by a being from another planet or galaxy or realm of existence. There is a support group for victims of alien abductions on the Internet at: http://www.cosmiverse.com/paranormal101102.html ] |
22. T Neuage: you need to be around different people |
23. T Neuage: by whom [this refers back to 21] |
24. @@@@@@: it is not people [this confirms she is not talking about earthlings] |
25. T Neuage: if they take you can they come and get me too |
26. @@@@@@: I have had a good life [proclaiming her death sentence here] |
27. T Neuage: and you will have a better one Here on this planet |
28. @@@@@@: I have to go home soon |
29. T Neuage: where is your home |
30. @@@@@@ : inside my heart |
31. @@@@@@: because.....this is not my life |
32. T Neuage: It is not fair for you to have information that yhou won't share with me |
33. T Neuage: I thought we were mates |
34. T Neuage: mates share |
35. T Neuage: tell me |
36. @@@@@@: I gave up my life.....so what is left is not up to me |
37. T Neuage: what |
38. T Neuage: come on you can't believe that |
39. @@@@@@: I should be dead.....should be....and am not [proclaiming her death sentence again] |
40. T Neuage: no you should not be dead |
41. @@@@@@: yes |
42. T Neuage: you can not trade or sell your soul |
43. T Neuage: that is myth |
44. @@@@@@: no |
45. T Neuage: reality is what you are in right now |
46. @@@@@@: my daughter was my dear friend and she died 26 years ago from an overdose of heroin |
47. T Neuage: what about your daughter now |
48. @@@@@@: I really better not tell you anymore |
49. T Neuage: up to you |
50. T Neuage: we can change the subject |
51. @@@@@@: she is still my friend.....we are not like mother and daughter....not at all |
52. T Neuage: what about the daughter you said died |
53. T Neuage: mixed me up |
54. @@@@@@: never mind |
55. T Neuage: ok |
56. T Neuage: how is your bird [time to # - change the topic] |
The
next day this respondent was back on-line, seemingly with little memory of the
day before conversation. Apart from the psychological implications of such conversations,
systematic analysis shows that such conversation may seem aimless in structure,
but it is in fact a structured conversation in a "Casual" format
carrying serious social, and maybe psychological, consequences. Yet I had not
met this person at the time of this interaction. Nor can I be am I sure of how
our interaction operates within this construction of a social self. There is
more involved than casual conversation with someone I would never be in touch
with again. Probably I would have left the chat and gone on to another person
if I were in the mood to have a conversation with someone at the time. This is
one of the primary differences between online chatting and face-to-face
conversation, where the user cannot simply disappear and never be seen again.
But in this case we had each other’s e-mail address and even home phone
numbers, and we had shared similar experiences decades earlier, of being in the
same religious order in the 1960s. My talk-partner here could anticipate in me
a capacity to decode her less obvious comments – even if, as shown above, I
attempted to deny her vision. It may be that the comparative reversion to
formal lexis and even syntax, in contrast with the abbreviated IRC forms used
in her other talk-texts above, relates to this earlier – pre-Net – relationship
and its talk exchanges. At the same time, the re-focus work that I carried out
here, scrolling to check earlier statements and multi-posting to create
dialogic continuity out of silences, was dependent upon the capacities of the
software. The exchange displays both elements of face to face dialogic
practice, and online technologisation.
My question and the reason for choosing Computer-Mediated communications
as an analysis tool for Case Study Two was to find whether computers change
conversation between people especially when only two people are able to
correspond at a time. To some extent I have found that they do. As discussed
above and throughout this thesis, computers do not replace but supplement
communication - though how that occurs is dependant on both the sender of the
message and the receiver. I would suggest at this stage that computers are an
effective way of transferring information quickly though not as accurately as
if there were other cues such as physical cues involved. With
person-to-person conversation we exchange a lot of audio and visual information
along with the words. Computers, however, don't hear between the lines as they
are socially inept, blind to the meanings of subtle pauses and changes in tone.
What is different
between the multi-speaker chatrooms, where the CMC
influence is extreme and creates heavy pressures on conversational behaviours, and the Instant Messenger services, where
dialogue can shift towards or away from its physical equivalent, is that when
there are only two speakers at a time in a conversation, the speaker’s lack of
‘voice’ is more noticeable as there are only two. With many ‘speakers’ in a
room the absent voice (see lurking at http://se.unisa.edu.au/lurking.htm)
is not as readily missed as when there only are two.
A second question I explored in this case study is whether
Instant Messenger, one-to-one dialogue, is closer to offline person-to-person
conversation than dialogue in a multivoiced
text-based chatroom. Multivoiced
text-based chat confuses discourse to the point that not only is dialogue
difficult to follow but it is difficult to know who is dialoguing. One-to-one
online discourse is more personal, uninterrupted and closer to ‘normal’ offline
conversation. Another feature of text-based multi-person chat is the random
placement of an utterance. This happens when the enter key is pressed[21]
following the typing on a keyboard of what one has to ‘say’. The utterance made
can fall entirely in a place not expected due to the rapid movement of text. In
a multivoiced text-based chat this can give a very
random effect to dialogue and unless a chatter identifies who he or she wishes
to communicate with the line can be out of place. IM thus appears as more
focused, and so enables more depth, and perhaps, as shown above, confessionalism. As with the movie “You got mail”, key
transitions within the talk-texting – moments when
the depth of the relation and the topic shift – are signaled in both annexation
of prior relations between the talk-partners, and in activities enabled by the
software design – such as scrolling to check earlier contributions, or multi-posting
to recreate dialogic processing amidst extended silence.
The use of CMC has changed the communication landscape in
some societies as is shown below. In a recent study (2000, Nomura Survey -
Japan) a survey of Japanese public attitudes toward the Internet and Computers
compared with Korea and the US showed the following results:
Q. Do computers and other information technology increase
human communication? |
|||
|
|
|
US |
Yes |
43.2% |
75.4% |
73.8% |
No |
56.4% |
23.6% |
25.0% |
One of the major problems with Arabic and Asian languages
being used on the Internet is the obstacle of inputting into a word processor
using non-Roman scripts. . For example, in Japanese the writing system requires
two stages of inputting, which slows typing and makes chatroom participation
difficult. Users must press the space bar to bring up the desired combinations
of Chinese characters, which are then entered in the text by pressing the enter
key. This contrasts with English and Korean, both alphabet languages, in which
the typed letters enter the text as they are typed. The Nomura survey shown
below reveals that
Typing proficiency – Nomura Survey on keyboard literacy |
|||
|
|
|
US |
Fast without looking |
6.2% |
16.8% |
29.8% |
Fast but Look |
17.5% |
14.8% |
24.6% |
Slow and Look |
39.2% |
26.2% |
31.8% |
Barely Use |
36.7% |
42.2% |
11.4% |
Typing proficiency January 2001 - http://www.nri.co.jp/english/news/2001/010131.html
Until faster or better translators become available chatrooms will be populated primarily by English speaking users. While these figures show only the technical aspects of IRC and IM access, they reveal something of the more detailed interactions between technologies and users, which I suggest are operating together to reform and reshape communication practices as we develop online conversational behaviours. Perhaps broadband access, with its break away from texted communication, will resolve these text-entry problems for some language groups. Perhaps “texted” talk of the type analysed here in IM transactions will prove an historical anomaly, and simply a convenient moment for the talk analyst, providing useful access to ready-texted transcription. But at this stage it has certainly revealed a complex interrelationship in users’ negotiations of the new interface space between CMC technologies and the social interactions that we loosely call “talk”.
In the next Case Study I will begin to examine the bits and pieces of online chat such as emoticons to discover whether meaning is found in a chatroom when more than just text is used.
[1] Nielsen NetRatings is available online
at: http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/
See also How Many Online? http://www.nua.com/surveys/how_many_online/
[2] In the transcription method used in this Case Study I have not used the usernames of the participants. In the conversation between the male and female chat participants I have identified their turn-takings with ****** in front of the female utterances and ###### in front of the male’s turn-takings. This notation device has no other point to it than to differentiate the two speakers. In the second transcript I ‘captured’ for this study the female turn-takings are identified with @@@@@@ and the second speaker, myself, with T Neuage in front of the turn-takings.
[3] Holy Order of Mans was a cult
pseudo-new age religious group that existed from 1968 until 1976. There is a
page of links for this sect at http://se.unisa.edu.au/h.html
[4] Nunamaker et. al. [1991] say that groups make more extreme decisions than individuals. They express either very risky or extremely risk-averse behaviour. This phenomenon is called group polarisation. The group polarisation effect is illustrated in the following figure. (see Group process gains and losses at http://infolab.kub.nl/pub/theses/w3thesis/Groupwork/gains_and_losses.html)
[5] Centre for Arab Studies at
[6] ‘The
Media History Project’ Promoting
the study of media history from
petroglyphs to pixels http://mediahistory.umn.edu/index2.html
Monday, 4 August 2003
[7] What
do users do on the Internet?
[8] How Many Online? http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/
[9] File transfer allows text and images to be uploaded to a chat at any time.
[10] Avatars are representatives of the self in a chatroom represented by a figure : character of an animal, structure or any abstraction imaginable that is displayed in a single pictorial space. Avatars can be a simple smiley faces or a Medieval an animated drawing. Text is still used for conversation. As long as one is connected to the Internet server of the chatroom presence is maintained by one's graphical representation which remains as long as the chatter is in the chat arena. One problem that avatars present is that they can distort or limit conversation by providing the same representative expression that over-rides all communication. Avatars as of early 2001are not as complex as word description is.
[11] ICQ is available in the following languages as of November, 2002: ,
Português, Italiano, Norsk,
,
,
,
,
English, Español (Iberian),
Français,
,
Dansk, Svenska, Deutsch,
,
Nederlands,
,
Türkçe (see http://www.icq.com/download/
)
[12] A bulletin board Forum: “Intelligence & Machines” with the
thread, “Man is obsolete”[12],
discusses the AI (Artificial Intelligence) concept of a computer with a
conscience e-communicative device computers displace prior
offline-person-to-person discourse mechanics with new forms of symbolic
exchange.
[13] Several online dating services claim that people who have met online through their services and who have corresponded via IM or other chat facilities have formed real-life relationships. See RSVP - http://www.rsvp.com.au; Friend Finder - http://www.seniorfriendfinder.com./; Soul Mates http://www.soulmate.com
[14] Yahoo Messenger began in 1998, http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/pr/release158.html
[15]
Yahoo describes their services as: “IMVironments
are interactive, themed backgrounds for Yahoo! Messenger conversations that appear
directly in the instant messaging window!”
[16]
[17] Microsoft Launches MSN Messenger Service
http://www.microsoft.com/PressPass/press/1999/Jul99/MessagingPR.asp
[18] A comprehensive site on net-etiquette is at http://www.the-eggman.com/writings/etiquitte_1.html
[19]
[20] The turn-takings which these turn-takings refer to are:
10. ######: I PRACTICE THE 4 RULE. I HOPE YOUR NOT INTO THE EQUALITY TRIP BUT I FEEL THE MAN ONE THE WOMAN 4. THAT WORKS GOOD, SHE REALLY SMILES A LOT AFTER THAT HE LOL |
31. ******: dont get it...please explain better for us illiterate unpsychic ones 4 what?....ask i thus |
32. ######: THE WOMAN HAS FOUR ORGASIMS, A LEAST ONE VERY BIG TWO MEDIUM AND ONE OR MORE SMALL THE MAN HAS ONE BIG AND MAYBE A FEW SMALL ONES |
33. ######: THIS RATIO KEEPS THE NIGHT ALL NIGHT. |
34. ******: oh my god!...thats what i thought you were going to say.....but i didnt want to go there! |
[21] Whatever one says lays dormant and does not exist in cyberspace until the utterance has been committed. Unlike person-to-person conversation when what is said is heard instantly, in a chat dialogue what is said is not heard until the speaker-writer wishes to reveal the content to the chatroom. Once the enter button is pressed there is no taking back what was said. If the chat can be saved, either by saving the screen shot of the chat or by copying and pasting or reading the chat logs the dialogue can be ‘captured’ for future reference.
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