Conversational Analysis of Chat Room Talk PHD thesis by Dr. Terrell Neuage University of South Australia National Library of Australia.
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Case Study 7 1
CS 7.0
Introduction 1
CS 7.0.1 Why
this chatroom? 3
CS 7.0.2
Questions 4
CS 7.1 Methodology 5
CS 7.1.1
Transcriptions 5
CS 7.1.2
Theories 6
CS 7.2 Discussion 9
CS 7.2.1
Prague School 10
CS 7.2.2 Functional Sentence Perspective 16
Rheme and
Theme 17
CS 7.2.3
Meaning-Text Theory (MTT) 17
CS 7.2.4
Grammar 19
Systemic-Functional
Linguistics -Functional 20
Stratification
grammar 21
Context 22
Field 22
It is the
usernames that establishes the social relationship between chatters, 23
Mode 25
CS 7.3
Findings 27
CS 7.3.1
Altered language 27
10,558
words
This
is the last of my case studies on linguistic analysis of text-based chatrooms.
As I have not discussed the grammar of online text-based chatroom it seems
fitting to place it at the end of my research. Chatrooms do not demand use of
formal grammar, even at the often relaxed andrelaxed and
idiomatic levels of everyday conversation.
Spelling in particular, because of the rapid rate of scrolling text,
seems to be an unimportant aspect. Abbreviations on the other hand do become
important – part of the “anti-language” established for an “in-group” of expert
and rapid key-boarding on-line communicators.
It is much quicker to write BTW than to write ‘by the way’. The
abbreviation also functions as a way of signaling chatroom-use experience.
There
are many ways in which chatroom talk could be considered an informal use of
language. Will
we stop using prepositions altogether, after extensive chatroom experience? Yet
at another level it is possible to see not a “relaxation” of grammatical rules,
but the establishment of a new set. This chapter will examine chatroom
practices, to see whether particular usages are becoming sufficiently
widespread and recurrent, as to constitute a new “on-line grammar”.
For
Case Study Seven I have used another topic-specific chatroom. The one I will
examine is on the topic of the sport of baseball. This follows Case Study 3’s Three’s chatroom analysis of another topic-specific chatroom, focused on on‘”Britney
Spears”
Chatroom’.
Interestingly, in chatroom Chatroom three Three there
were few utterances on the topic of the person on whom the chatroom was based.
My findings there showed such high levels of inter-social or relational talk
(greetings and group-behavioural “maintenance” work),
that I was able to suggest that the topic worked more to select a delimited
social category of participants: a “style tribe” of taste – and probably of age
and gender – than to afford the opportunity for topic-based discussion.
In
the other topic specific case studies, ‘”Storm’Storm”,
Case Study 1One, and Case
Study 6
Six on ‘”3D
animation’animation”,
there was more dialogue in the chatrooms on the topic headings for the
chatrooms, with evidence for group-maintenance behaviours
being used to militate against excessive off-topic postings. But to date I have
not considered whether particular repertoires of grammatical usage emerge to
mark performance within given chatrooms. . In this case
study, ‘”Baseball
Chat’Chat”, which
combines an expert population with informal and colloquial speech behaviours, I will research several linguistic models for
examining the grammatical functions most often evident – and ask whether these are
general across all sites examined so far, or whether some forms and behaviours
are specific to this site..
Researchers
and linguistic historians, who study various aspects of online language,
communication, cognition, socio-culture, psychology and other facets of
cognitive and communicative behaviour, may find the discussion of grammar and
structure below a useful modeling forum for
researching online communication. If certain behaviours are coalescing around IRC,
the formats in which they are configured must in and of themselves be relevant
to the analysis. Indeed, recent re-theorisation
within Cconversation Aanalysis in particular,particular and socio
linguistics more generally, suggests that it is the preferred techniques in
which cultural dispositions are being expressed which constructs identity. Rather than
language “expressing” pre-established identities, it becomes a stage upon
which selves are enacted; a surface on which identity is inscribed. Within such
a theorization, the sorts of language selections dominant in a given
context are indicative of more than communicative intent. In particular, the
site and the cultural positioning of a speech context are likely to be impacting
on both individual decisions to access such a site, and on subsequent
behaviours within the site. A baseball chatroom thus becomes an important site: one likely
to display gendered and classed language selections, yet within the
casual or “conversationalised”
range, while mixing expertise and sociability. Baseball, as a widely popular
male-dominated spectator sport, centres a great deal
of general male social communicative activity – and thus becomes an ideal forum
for the examination of distinctive communicative patterns in online use.
I
chose baseball as a topic-specific chatroom to balance the probable
gender-balance of the Britney Spears site, and to provide for a broader social range
of users than in the specialist 3d animation room. Sports spectatorship is a
broad-based social activity, which improves the chances of locating not a class
or educationally-based grammatical usage, but one arising within the chat
practices. I have had a long interest in baseball. and o One
of my sons was signed as a pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2001 and he is
hascurrently
played
ing for
4. |
/\-- |
<BLUERHINO11> |
1a. |
sox beat the
tribe |
5. |
/\4? |
<NMMprod>
|
2a. |
Nop |
6. |
/\4 |
<MLB-LADY> |
3a. |
no clev fan but like wright |
In
the above three turn-takings, which are the first three turns I captured in
this chatroom, it is clear that the ongoing topic is on baseball. The
first speaker, <BLUERHINO11> says <sox beat the tribe>. The user
name could be in part a name of the professional Major League baseball team in ,
Bboth
teams are in the same league, the American League, and are rivals.
The next speaker, <NMMprod> does
not have a username that is easily reduced to a baseball term and as it is only
the second turn captured in this dialogue it is not possible to know whether
<Nop> is a form of “no”
in response to the early statement of <sox beat the tribe> or some
earlier utterance. The next user is
easier to identify as a baseball fan, with the name <MLB-LADY>, MLB being the
initials for Major League Baseball and ‘her’ response to turn 4 (/\4) is that
she does not like the Cleveland Indians (the tribe) but she does like the
pitcher (Jaret)
Wright[1]. These turns are written in the
abbreviated chatroom talk and the participators demonstrate their knowledge of both baseball
and chatroom talk in this room. What they do not demonstrate however at this stage
is any depth of expertise in the game – beyond knowing
results and the names of major players – all information which can be gained
from general media news coverage. Is this then in fact an expert group, as with
the animators in the previous Case Study, or is this instead a
loose-affiliation topic-focus group, seeking sociality above information exchange? One way to
examine this proposition is to test the grammatical selections and preferences
of this group.
Which at is the
functions
of grammar dominate in baseball chatroom
language? In this case study I will examine theories of grammar,
and look at grammatical patterning of the language used in this case study.
The
questions I am posing for this review of chatroom grammar are firstly, ‘Are there distinctive grammatical structures
in chat dialogue?’ For example, is there a similarity to the everyday usage of broken English as
it is used by speakers who have English as a second language? One web site that
caters to non-English users has an area for English-speaking people, ‘CRIBE a Chat Room In Broken English’
‘English is not the only
language on our small planet. Chat Room In Broken English (CRIBE1) is a cyber
chatroom system for users of englsh as a foregin languages and anyone tolerant
of misspelling, mistyping, system lag and diffrent culutures.’ See http://www.cup.com/
- http://www.cup.com/bm7/cribe.htm
Sorry Terrell, but this is a
pretty offensive topic: “broken” English indeed. So there’s some perfect type?
You must tell me some time exactly who speaks it.
and secondly, ‘Is there a difference between
grammatical usages in “live”
conversational English and those of chatroom dialogue?’ You can’t
ask this question either: WHICH “live
conversations”? Language varies from context to context: linguistics has huge
problems with postulating universals…
The methodology for Case Study
7, Baseball Chat, will be taken from various ‘schools’ of linguistics that
concentrate on structures of the utterance. I will give a short overview of
their basic premises, followed by an analysis of the usefulness of their
linguistic views as analytical tools for the case study using chunks of chat.
In the discussion section to this thesis, chapter 6, I will formulate my own
conversational analysis of chatroom ‘talk’ taken from the various schools and
theories discussed in all the case studies.
The chat I captured for this case study cannot be replicated as Talkcity[2] now uses java applets as
shown above, and the utterance can no longer be cut, pasted and saved as they
are in appendix six. Doesn’t
add anything.
The
transcription method is the same as used in previous chatrooms. However, in orderI have
endeavoured to discover how conversation flows within the chatroom
between particular speakers, I and
have put each user’s utterance in sequence in tables, as well as
showing the more conventionally threaded interactionalthreaded interactional
utterances between the participants. Also, I suggest that removing usernames
may not make much difference to the conversation in a text-based chatroom where
people may not know each other, as each entrance of ‘”speech’ speech” is
separated so that a reader can know the beginning and end of an utterance. For
example,:
62. |
<Nickatnite13> |
How will Finley do for the Indians this year? |
63. |
<NMMprod> |
hellolady |
64. |
<dhch96> |
reds and red sox |
65. |
<smith-eric> |
he'll do ok |
66. |
<Pizza2man> |
fifteen wins...hell of a lot more than gooden |
62. How will
Finley do for the Indians this year? |
63. hellolady |
64. reds and red sox |
65. he'll do ok |
66. fifteen wins...hell of a lot more than gooden |
With the usernames not inserted above the conversation, apart from the <hellolady> utterance, is as readable as it is with the usernames present. Usernames often are a source of greetings but once past that and there is a conversation developed or developing, it is the subject matter that is important. Therefore I am suggesting that the user names are NOT the codes chatters use to achieve de-threading – or at least the primary cues for that exercise. To this degree at least, the grammatical patternings of the language are significant, since it is these which help users determine response modes from new threads.
Linguistics
is the scientific study of human language . (Fromkin, ed. P. 1998.).
Trying to find an umbrella for all the theories available in linguistic
dialogue is difficult. There are
overlaps and overlaps of overlaps. Often
there seem to be very few little
differences between Speech Act Theory, Discourse Analysis, Conversational
Analysis and many other linguistic mazes.
R.
M. W. es the term
‘Basic Linguistic Theory’ in his writings.,
“The
term Basic Linguistic Theory has recently come into use for the fundamental
theoretical concepts that underlie all work in language description and
change...” (Dixon, 1997, p. 128).
Others
use this term in a similar way. For example, “Basic Linguistic Theory refers to
the theoretical framework that is most widely employed in language description,
particularly grammatical descriptions of entire languages” (Dryer, Matthew S. 1995).”
Therefore, for a language
describer, Basic Linguistic Theory can describe all of the “structuring”
features which regulate communicative utterances, and make them consensually
meaningful. In this case study I will examine
chat using such “Basic Linguistic” grammatical
descriptions, applying across many theoretical frames.
In all
communication there is the use of grammar. Without grammar there
would be no communication. This may not be It is not the
formal grammar of educated written communication. Yet And
while a
given grammar may be it is closer to the relative
informality of everyday conversational speech, it is always going
to be different from that as well, dependant upon
its context, its user group, and its topic focus. Chatroom grammar
therefore is likely to be a form that incorporates
many traditional forms of grammar analysis, since it must be accessible
to a broad – indeed in theory at least, entirely open – public of potential
users. . How then might such a traditional grammar be
described, while at the same time open to indications of different,
specifically online, practices?
Several of the discourse theories and
linguistic schools of thought which focus on the exploration of explore
grammar in conversation and the construction of meaning, including\:
the Prague School of Linguistics (sSee,
Vachek, 1966; Jakobson, 1980), Paris School Semiotics (sSee,
Parret, 1989;,
Perron and, Paul &
Frank Collins, 1988), Tagmemic Discourse
Theory (sSee,
Edwards 1979;,
Pike 19983) and Systemic Linguistics and Optimality Theory (sSee,
Archangeli and Langendoen,
1997). There are many Grammar
Theories: Categorial Grammar (See,
Wood, 1993; Morrill, 1994.), Word Grammar (See, Hudson,
1995), Dependency Grammar (((See, Bauer,
1979; Fraser, 1994), Construction Grammar ((See, Goldberg,
1995), Relational Grammar (See, Blake, 1990), Montague
Grammar (See, Partee, 1980), Transformational Grammar (See,
Roberts, 1992; Chomsky, 1957), Cognitive Grammar (See, Huttar, 1996), Generalized-Phrase Structure Grammar
(See, Gazdar, Klein, Pullum, and Sag, 1985),
Lexical_Functional Grammar (See,
Bresnan, 2001), and yet as of December 2001 there were
no publications regarding an Online Grammar,
which might
would use parts of some of these other
grammar theories.
Grammar is the system of structural rules
that describe how words combine with each other to form sentences. On the
Internet in chatrooms speakers of English already have an instinctive knowledge
of its grammar and it is this knowledge that enables us to distinguish a well-formed
English sentence from one which is clearly ill-formed in natural
person-to-person conversation. For example, native speakers of English would
know that the following sentence is well-formed and `”grammatical”':
'I “I am not a '”
Native speakers can produce and understand a sentence like this without ever thinking about its grammar. Conversely, in a face to face or letter writing communication no native English speaker would say <no clev fan but like wright>.
6. |
<MLB-LADY> |
no clev fan but like wright |
But in a chatroom not only would saying 'I
am not a Cleveland fan but I like their pitcher Wright.', look out of place in the steady stream of
quicken
chat,
but there would not be the time to write it. , h Hence
the version: of <no clev
fan but like wright> - a grammatical elision which fits
the technologisation of online communication, and,
immersed in the stream of other such postings pre-existing this one, signals
the chatter’s capacity to perform speech acts suited to this online context.
The
main dimension of the linguistic systems to be explored below involves the distinction between
linguistic resources (which describe
the potential for forming well-formed utterances within a given language
system’s repertoires) and linguistic processes (which describe how
the resources can be used).[3]
For example, Saussurean structuralists
observe that, syntactically, "Terrell" and "Narda" are the same, as are "cat" and
"rat." It is not the meaning of a word that provides one with a total
meaning, but only the way it relates to other words. All of these examples are
nouns, and can be used as nouns. The first two are proper nouns and can be used
differently from the others – in that , for instance,
while all can stand as noun subjects or objects in relation to sentence
formation and their relation to verbs, only the first two may stand without
definite or indefinite articles – since only the first two can convey identity
outside a general category. The “rules”
outlined here pay no heed whatsoever to the meaning of these words – only to
how they may, or may not, be placed in relation to other words. One
is thus able to define a word grammatically, only in a relation to
the roles it plays with other words.
To further complicate things, in chat turn taking, we often have to go beyond the turn to know what a word “means”, even in the limited grammatical sense of establishing what role it is playing in the stream of communication. In the example below,
17. / /\ 16 <dhch96> 5 b. big baby |
|
<big baby> is not a description unless we put it into
context. Who is a big baby? What is a big baby? Are we speaking of a woman just
giving birth to a large baby, or a big baby elephant, or someone who complains
a lot? The two words big and babyand
baby can have
opposite meanings, just as in “small” and “tall”.
We need the earlier utterances in the chatroom to clarify what this means: which
roles these terms are playing. So from the outset chat conversation
relies on two layers of context: the words to which each word relates within an
utterance, and those to which it relates in other preceedingpreceding
utterances. While grammar can be seen to be regulated from within the systems
of its home language, with some modifications in varying speech communities,
online chat appears to have an extremely specialized speech community of usage,
and a regulatory system built around
1) the The possibilities
of English
2) the The conventions
of selection used in standard conversation
3) the The specialized
vocabulary and usage of “topic indicated” speech communities and the special
on-line needs of “de-threading” interpretation and its related cues.
With
the rapidly evolving modes of communication electronically, from SMS messages
to Palm Computers and the still in use ‘old-methods’, ie.
computer text-based chats of the late 1990s and early first couple
of years of the 21st century, which this study is
concerned with, the grammatical structures of a new language
appear
to be re evolving. This new language is
based on symbols (emoticons), hheavy use of
consensual systems of abbreviation, and admits significant
levels of creative wordplay and neologism, as well as such partial cues and “gestalt”
forms as s and misspelt words and reduced sentence structures. Knowledge of this new evolving language permits one
to connect with another person to communicate meaning through written thoughts.
Knowledge of chatroom linguistics in the chatter’s mind reveals their knowledge
of “the language”. Chatroom dialogue format – at least at the graphic level of
emoticons – already goes past nationality, culture and individual languages. In
the appendix to the conclusion (appendix-conclusion, table 4) to this thesis I
compare chatrooms of several nationalities to show that the same emoticons are
used in many languages. Already however such a
selection contains paradoxes. Abbreviations for instance and the use
of selected text forms are peculiar to the chatter’s native
language,
as are most examples of creative wordplay - but emoticons are
becoming universal, deployed in many online language communities which
work with the necessary keyboard elements. posing the
question whether text-based chat could become
a universal language.
Theories
build upon one another, and linguistic theories are no different. My reason for
briefly looking at linguistic theory as I have below and as I have throughout
this thesis is to discover what is useful and what I believe isn’t useful from
the many ‘schools’ to build a theory of online dialogue. It is not the purpose
of my study to explore any one of these theories in depth individually, rather
I am looking at different methodologies employed by the different theorists to
find one which can usefully be applied to this ‘new’ language of online
communication.
I have begun
with the Prague School (1920s and 1930s) as
several of those who were influential in it are still being cited and their
work is being expanded upon. A central aspect of the Prague School
of Linguistics’[4]
approach is the belief that linguistic theory should go beyond the mere
description of linguistic structure to explain the functions fulfilled by
linguistic forms - and this is important to the study of chatroom conversation.
The
Formalists who were the members of the ‘”Bakhtin School’School”, which
combined formalist and Marxist traditions into an analytical technique that eventually was
ended by Nazism in the 1940s. What it offers this study is
its offers insight into the ways that
language,;
as being
formally regulated by such structuring systems as phonology, grammar and
vocabulary formation, can could be linked
to analysis
of language in use: the systems as deployed by groups in
distinctive social settings. Where de Saussure had
been able to posit a binary coding system driving elements of language
construction from phonology (“Cat” not “rat”;
“cap”
not “cat”)
to grammatical rules (“I runned?”
No, “ I ran”) or vocabulary selection (“regal”? “rRoyal”?
“kKingly”?)
Bakhtin (1981) in his principle of dialogism was able
to show that all communicative forms – spoken or written – were inherently intertextual (See Kristeva, 1984 and 1987), constantly
working in and out of the ‘already uttered’
communications, to make new utterances, the meaning of which
belonged to both ‘sender” and “receiver” of the utterance.
The
simultaneous coexistence of competing discourses or systems of usage,
provided a dialogue between ‘voices’, that anticipated then answered one
another.
at the
same time, unless Even when, as shown below,
the speaker carries a monologue, the speech is built over pre-established texts,
and re-enacts in varying ways their techniques. Bakhtin refered to this multitude
of voices as a heteroglossia: different voices
speaking together to form a complexly layered dialogue. In a chatroom every
voice is then already a mosaic of voices,
picking
up and reapplying the textual and communicative forms of earlier postings and
earlier chat experiences, in order to maximize comprehensibility.
Yet, at the same time, inside the scrolling lines of chat’s technologisation, a different form of heteroglossia is compiled, with many simultaneous voices competing
with one another to be heard and answered.
In turn 84 of this baseball chatroom for
instance, <smith-eric> states: <cinni
has already changed rules for jr.>
(Cincinnati Red’s outfielder Ken Griffey Jr.).
There is no earlier indication of a thread to discussing
this player, or references which can help
decipher which what ‘rules’ are
being discussed. The only other response
to this utterance is in the next turn, where
<Pizza2man> says <he'll hit sixty in cincy...maybe
sixty five>. This is referring to how many home-runs Ken Griffey Jr. may hit. In 1997 and 1998 he hit 57 home-runs
for are
a multitude of voices, yet with one voice seemingly operating alone – at least until
<Pizza2man> cooperates. Much the same can be said however for the other exchanges and turns
within this extraxctextract. What
emerges is a set of different conversational relations, each ongoing in its own
dialogue, yet technologised by the chatroom software
into a merged entity or multilogue. , that of
<smith-eric>.
84. |
<smith-eric> |
cinni has already changed rules for jr. |
85. |
<Pizza2man>
|
he'll hit
sixty in cincy...maybe sixty five |
86. |
<BLUERHINO11>
|
u |
87. |
<dhch96> |
|
88. |
<Pizza2man>
|
with casey and vaughn around him...he'll see a ton of good piches to hit mwillie1 ! |
90. |
<Chris_Pooh> |
Hey Mike |
91. |
<BLUERHINO11>
|
asl dhch96 |
92. |
<mwillie1>
|
hey chris |
93. |
<BLUERHINO11>
|
wuts th nic mean |
94. |
<dhch96>
|
24 m bos |
95. |
<smith-eric> |
jr. will sell the tickets!!!!!! |
96. |
<dhch96>
|
me and wifes name and ann. |
97. |
<Pizza2man>
|
already has! |
Only by
reconnecting grammatical connections here can we discover which turns relate to
others. Turn 86 with its single character entry can be seen
to be a question, once turn 87 “answers”, with the location cue, “ The reply at turn 94
complies: <dhch96> is 24 years old, male, and lives, as we learned above,
in
Both intertextuality
and dialogism are therefore central to chatroom
conversation – yet even at the most basic of linguistic levels, display
new and inventive elements of linguistic change in play. Bakhtin’s gave the
term dialogism here reveals a in order to
imply the double interplay within of communication:
language
building itself within pre-existing regulatory systems,
learned
from earlier communicative experiences, and another
logic of two or more communicative relations ons
progressing at the same time. The logic describes the distance
and relationship between different units of a sentence or narrative structure,
or in a chatroom the different turn-takings, indicating a becoming in
opposition to the level of continuity and substance, both of which obey the
logic of being and are thus monological as all chat turns are independent
speech events.
Because
the phonic elements of language are absent in print text, “voicings”
cannot cue us as to who speaks which utterance. Wwe
re-learn
a cue
technique as readers, discovering for instance how to unravel even
unattributed dialogues, relating comments to possible
speakers. to
We become expert at using e
context to distinguish between those elements distinctive in meaning, but
similar in phonetic composition. To some extent within text spelling
conventions cue us to decisions which might be harder in spoken language: for
instance, dispelling any problem between “cue” and “queue”. But
in chatroom conventions, where abbreviation rules, both of these are likely to
be rendered as “Q”. Perversely,
even at the level of phonology which might seem almost irrelevant absent
in texted chat, we are confronted by the need to
actively interpret which phonic elements refer to which semantic elements, by
referring not to the aural binaries which regulate language at the phonological
level, but to the much broader social and cultural context which we call
discourse.
148. / /\ <Pizza2man> still has a 4 era |
Read
aloud, especially at random; for example when a person just arrives in the
chatroom setting and sees a phrase such as, <still has a 4 era>, this posting is most likely to be
construed as ‘four era’. Then the
question could be asked, ‘what is a four era?’ An era could be a time period,
such as in the Internet era. It could mean many things. Google Search
Engine gives
gave a result of 13,300,000 entries for
the letters, “era”
(for example, Equal Rights Amendment, Electronics
Representatives Association, European Regions Airline). This would mean
that “era” in this utterance could potentially have any of thirteen million
referents. But in this utterance there is a shared knowledge of meaning: a
specialist discourse. In baseball slang, “era” is the Earned Run Average, and
is important for a pitcher, as he or she wants to keep the era at a low number,
usually fewer than three. A pitcher with a “four era”
is allowing four runs per nine-inning game, which is not considered good. Once
the referent is in place, not only does the ambiguous phonological
element become meaningful, but its communicative load may be immense – as in
this case. The feature of post 148 which suggests
this reading however is the grammatical
construction. The suppression of the subject (“he”) is so
common in chatroom usage as to signal through its absence – and if the
implied “he” is signified in this way as agent of the verb, and as doubled by
the term “still”, then we are cued to locate a possible
subject within a pre-existing prior utterance, to which this will act as a
reply. Scroll far enough back, and we will find a requisite
“he” – one who we can expect to have been praised, since the logic here is that
he carries a handicap (the era of 4) which may disqualify him as a successful
player – signaled by the
insertion of “still”: an argumentative indicator suggesting something which
must yet be taken into account.
Secondly, is
there a phonology The capacity for interpreting
and responding to this reduced and recoded online grammar is clearly
present. It includes for instance grammatiucal
roles for emoticons, which act as we have so often seen above, as
intensifiers or mitigators –
effectively, in terms of traditional grammar, as adverbs,
heightening or softening the intended speech acts of chat participants. ? When a chatroom user sees :) or “I say
this smilingly”, is
there is
no a phonological referent.?
Even when the emoticon suggests weeping, or an abbreviation phrase refers to a
physical response (for instance, “LOL”, or “laughing out loud”), there is no little
evidence that the action or emoting actually occurs. What we come to then, as this thesis argues
often, is that what is said in a chatroom is only translatable
by those who know the online ‘chat acts’ of that room: who are thus conversant in
its additional grammatical features, constituting a new expressive range. , and is
quite This grammar has already evolved to a stage where
it is strongly rendered in communicative elements which are
outside the repertoires scope of
live-enacted, face-to-face, “natural conversation”, and yet which also defy the
formal grammatical conventions and narrative techniques of texted prose genres. .
Does this
imply a “chat universal” repertoire however, or are there
grammatical conventions which are chatroom or at least chat-topic specific? It
is difficult to tease out such possible specialist repertoires from their
natural conversational and even popular media texted
equivalents. In some special chat communities for instance it is the vocabulary
alone which
appears
to signal s the discursive
frame. One who is not Anyone unfamiliar
with baseball for instance may have difficulty
understanding the sequence of utterances in this baseball chatroom.
31. <CathyTrix-guest> anyone have predictions for who will take the west? |
32. <BLUERHINO11> yans, sox,orioles,jays,rays.......indians....mariners rangers a's,angels.........final standings |
<CathyTrix-guest>
is referring to the Western Division of the American league, or soor so <BLUERHINO11>
must believe, or he or she would not have
responded with the team names. <BLUERHINO11> shows not only a the
knowledge of the requisite baseball teams,
but has enough time in between turns (either he or she is a very fast typist or
there is a long enough pause in between turns to provide the utterance) to list
not only several teams in the Western Division <indians....mariners rangers
a's,angels.........> [The Seattle Mariners, Texas Rangers,
Oakland Athletics and the Anaheim Angels] but also the Eastern Division Teams
<yans, sox,orioles,jays,rays.......>. [The than the other two lists. But the
second feature of this response lies in the compression of its structure: its complete
elision of any personal verb-subject structuring: “I think
that…”, or “My list would be…” in favour of a direct
listing. This plunge into the instrumental is often held as the preserve of
high-masculine speech behaviours, as opposed to relational female
speech work – or at least to the claims masculinity has traditionally exerted
over the occupancy of public spaces and discussions (see for instance Holmes,
1998). But the apparently simple “listing” of nominals also carries two other grammatical markers:
firstly, the reduction to colloquial abbreviations – especially in the case
of the Anaheim Angels – and secondly the use of suspension points (…….) to
segment the entries into their regional League categories. There, even the
possible error of attribution with the inclusion of the Cleveland Indians in a
Wwestern
league listing is semi-negated by the suspension of that team within two sets
of extended dots.
Here then at least three forms of grammatical work are under way. Firstly, <Bluerhino11> annexes the colloquial nominals which emerge from sportschat inside natural conversation in real world settings, to list a predicted set of winners. By adding to this claim on familiar expertise the sorts of abbreviation behaviours which act in everyday speech, and especially in everyday male speech, a breezy disregard for formality and a set of “in group” conventions for indicating consensual usage, <Bluerhino11> enacts a powerful speech format which endorses a right to express opinion, and to be listened to. But at the same time this utterance slides its grammatical features across into the very similar grammatical formulae of online chat. There too abbreviation acts to license authority and the right to utter, as we have so often seen in earlier case studies. And finally, <Bluerhino11> uses keyboard functions exclusive to online chat – in this case, the points of suspension – to segment the categories listed, and so reinforce the expertise and knowledge of the regional Ledague structure which underlies the posting. There is then in this one posting an indication that online grammatical codes are both co-extensive with, and differentiated from, specialist codings in natural conversation – and especially so in topic-specific zones, such as baseball chat.
It could be argued then that the style of utterance in a chatroom is a form of dialect.
"…speakers
of one dialect may be set off from speakers of a different dialect by the use
of certain pronunciations, words, and grammatical forms" (292).
Roger W. Shuy (1998, p. 292).
In
a spoken dialect, phonological cues are especially qually
important in when we identifying
what someone means. “Accent”, read back as preferred pronunciation of some
phonetic elements, is absent from texted
chatroom talk. ; selection of some lexical items and grammatical
constructions, and recurrent So are those conventional arrangements
of intonation, pitch and pace, which we learn to relate to regional or classed
communication preferences is once again only partially
available within chatroom practice. But the selection of some lexical items and
grammatical constructions, especially when recurrently used, and the texted indication of certain phonic behaviours and
grammatical elisions (“gonna”, “gotta”, “ain’t”) are all
continuous with dialectical forms. SinceWhile
the use of certain words or grammatical forms in speech marksspeech marks a
person's membership within the communicative forms chatroom
of that dialect, shared
“local” meanings of emoticons and abbreviations are also used to compensate the
loss of other linguistic markers. It it should be
anticipated that chatrooms are also segregated according to the ‘accent’ of
their text. Therefore, as is shown iI In
this baseball chatroom, having a shared subcultural knowledge
(the beginning of the baseball season) is as important for
a successful
chat speech event to be accomplished. But so is as knowing
what the shared language is, and being able to perform within that discursive
order.
126. / /\ <dhch96> 5w. sox are gonna get radke |
Sox
would be understood by others in the chatroom to be the Boston Red Sox baseball
team,
while Brad Radke, at the time of this chat, was a
second base player for the Minnesota Twins. Within this specialist discursive
frame then, the selection of “gonna get” becomes
“accented” by elements of the class, masculinity and contestational
aggression associated with talk about competitive sports. Once again,
interpretations must be established from within context – this time, the
“local” context of surrounding postings in this thread. Two interpretations of
what <dhch96> means could be firstly, “Radke
will be recruited into the Red Sox team” – which would give the utterance a
tone of positive affirmation – or “the Red Sox players will completely outplay Radke and leave him looking foolish” – which colours the comment altogether differently. In either case,
even in the absence of direct intoning of the words, “accent” is present.
*Itf
we would be
assumed that what is meant is that Radke would ill
be recruited into the Red Sox team history would have proved us wrong. .
This
chatroom is at the beginning of the baseball season in April 2000, however a
few months later it is clear that Radke
did not go to the
Already
it is becoming apparent that the apparently simplest of chat utterances
requires multiple layers of linguistic analysis to tease out its complete
communicative activity. No There then
is not one linguistic school of theory which can accommodate
all of the necessary interpretive elements.
The next
theory I will look at, as part of an understanding of how structure in a
chatroom dialogue is established, is the To extend the sorts of basic
grammar analysis used above to examine the complex relations between online and
natural talk forms, it is necessary to look at how the total structure of an
online dialogue can be described and interpreted. The theory of Functional
Sentence Perspective (FSP). FSP is concerned with the
distribution of information as determined by all meaningful elements, from
intonation (or online, for speech), to emoticons
and abbreviations) to context.
Functional Sentence
Perspective (FSP) was developed in the early 1960s by J. Firbas[6] and others in the tradition of the pre-war
Theme and rheme Rheme and theme
are the parts of an utterance alluding representing in the first
instance to already given
information, which iscommunication
which is considered the lowest level degree
of communicative dynamism (or CD), and in the second instance to : i.e. the
amount that, in context, they communicate to addressees is
the least. These form the theme. Parts representing new
information. These latter elements have the
highest degree of communicative dynamism, and : these
form the rheme. Parts which have an intermediate
degree are sometimes said to form a transition between theme and rheme.
The
term ‘Theme’ is used to refer to the elements of an utterance
which serves as the point of departure of the
message. The remainder of the message,
the part in which the Theme is developed, is called in Prague school
terminology the Rheme (Haliday, 1994. p. 37).
Rheme is the part of a sentence which adds most to the
advancing process of communication; it has the highest degree of communicative
dynamism as it expresses the largest amount of extra meaning, in addition to
what has already been communicated. Below, consider look at
the posting: <How will Finley do for the Indians this year?> Adding
<for the Indians this year?> provides extra meaning in this chatroom.
Given the fact that in a chatroom the common approach to dialogue is to disburse
only a few words at a time, adding a complex the
Rheme to an utterance is unusual. Within FSP
therefore, we are able to see that chat communication may often carry
comparatively low levels of dynamism.
Theme (themat-ic,
-ization) carries the lowest degree of communicative dynamism. The
theme is the part of any sentence which adds least to the
advancing process of communication. It expresses relatively little (or no)
extra meaning, in addition to what has already been communicated.,
When <Nickatnite13> asks <How will Finley do for the Indians this
year?> and in reply, <smith-eric> says
<he'll do ok>, his contribution remains focused on theme. His own rheme element is minimal - “ok” – and he
fails to pick up anything offered by Nickatnite’s rheme extension: “for the Indians this year”. Replies which
could have developed discussion on the Indians, or on this season’s play, or on
the Indian’s record this year as opposed to previous years, all fail. The
minimalism of chat appears to favour theme over rheme.
23<Nickatnite13> How will Finley do for the Indians
this year? |
26. <smith-eric>. he'll do ok |
|
What this suggests is that there may be dynamism
inhibitors inside the technologisation of online chat
– including for instance
both the requirement for brevity arising in the technical limitations on space
and pace of entry, and the socio-cultural demand for adjustment of speech act
styling into the semiotic modes of abbreviations and emoticons as
expressives and relational markers. These both
enforce significant amounts of “theme” over “rheme”, building large amounts of
conservatism into the chat text, and requiring all participants to attend to
the stylistic demands of a given chat location before uttering. In terms of the
reader response theories which began these case studies, chat then becomes a
markedly “readerly”
communicative form. How then might we describe the grammatical demands of this
act of reading a chatsite and its transactions? Is there
a linguistic theory and method of inquiry which can help us to examine the
processing activities as they unfold?
Meaning-Text
Theory (MTT), was first developed as a theory
by Zholkovskij & Mel'chuk
(1965),. MTT
operates on the principle that language consists of as
a mapping from the content or meaning (semantics) of an utterance to its form
or text
text(phonetics). In a
chatroom, MTT is useful for detecting how a if the chatter
is able to map content quickly enough to respond – and for
assessing differences in the mapping repertoire, as chat develops its own distinctive
communicative forms. . However, if one entered t
The baseball chatroom for this Case Study offers extreme challenges to
MTT analysis. and saw this complete conversation, h How
can
chatters would they know, without reading and remembering
the turns taken ings
earlier, what the semantics here revealed?
In
the turns,
99 – 111,
every utterance, with six chatters involved, is linked to by
what was said before turn 99.
98. |
/ |
/\ |
<NMMprod> |
2n. |
if you like the yanks press 3 |
99. |
/ |
/\ |
<dhch96> |
5p. |
1111111111 |
100. |
/ |
/\ |
<BLUERHINO11> |
1l. |
got it |
101. |
/ |
/\ |
<dhch96> |
5q. |
1111111 |
102. |
/ |
/\ |
<smith-eric> |
8j. |
5555555 |
103. |
/ |
/\ |
<dhch96> |
5r. |
11111111 |
104. |
/ |
/\ |
<dhch96> |
5s. |
111111 |
105. |
/ |
/\ |
<CathyTrix-guest> |
6g. |
2I hate the Yankees |
106. |
/ |
/\ |
<smith-eric> |
8k. |
don't have a 3 |
107. |
/ |
/\ |
<Pizza2man> |
7o. |
12456789 |
108. |
/ |
/\ |
<CathyTrix-guest> |
6h. |
2blech |
109. |
/ |
/\ |
<NMMprod> |
2o. |
hahahahahaha |
110. |
/ |
/\ |
<dhch96> |
5t. |
yankees s-ck |
111. |
/ |
/\ |
<BLUERHINO11> |
1m. |
im removing that # now |
A
person who enters at turn 99 has no clue what the dialogue is about. For the content of this dialogue to be mapped one needs more than
the immediate content. Even to follow the speech events which ensue
means a quick reading of the participants’ expertise with their keyboards: the
knowledge for instance that # is the keyshift for 3.
The degree to which the postings switch from direct contribution to the “like
or hate the Yankees” challenge to competitive play within the repertoires of
chatroom keyboard codings – and recognition of clever contributions – indicates
yet again the predominant focus on the formalities of chat communicative
activity itself., eEven
in topic-selected chatrooms participants appear to raise their participation
levels highest at such moments of play across the chat repertoire. Here “rheme” is achieved by creative use of a limited keyboard –
all in response to a single “themic” element. , and
perhaps beyond that the aAttention is thus
focused on given to patrolling the “chat
community” as expert at two levels: that of the chat topic, but also in regard
to chat skill. This is a double discursive focus, as signaled in post 100,
where <BLUERHINO11> indicates that the joke-code has been broken. But by
post 102 chatters have begun playing within the new repertoire – including the
cleverness of posts 107 and 111, which act within the repertoire of keyboard
entry, to deny the act of homage to the Yankees. All
chatters – even those working only at the simple repetitive insistence of
<dhch96> - display immediate capacity to read the degree to
which <NMMprod> has coded
semantic load inside online chat format. Across this dialogue stream responses
interact, not only referring back to the themic cue
of <NMMprod>’s original challenge, but to
individual “rhemes” as they add to the
repertoire. When <smith-eric> at post 106
denies his capacity to praise the Yankees (“don’t have
a 3” – a good joke for its obvious untruth -) <Pizza2man> picks up not
the omission technique, and intensifies the wit by omitting the 3 in his
listing – evoking <dhch96>’s
subsequent suppression of alphabetic markers at post 110. In other
words, participants prove able to map semantic and formal loads both back to
the initiating moment, and from moment to moment – and all at the
pace of chat posting, and within its preferred repertoires..
So
does such an exchange, seemingly enjoyed by all as a peak moment of online
communications, indicate the emergence of a new, reduced and double-coded,
online grammar? Which other elements of traditional or formal texted or spoken grammar are absent, or transformed, in online
usage? And is this a steady, replicable, and universal online re-processing,
or do individual online chat communities – and even individual chatters – enact
an online grammar differentially?
In the next paragraphs I will
look at a wide variety of grammar theories to see if any one or a combination
of some may be useful in capturing this dual-focus emerging within online chat.
Once chattersone learns
the language, it appears that they then can speak
like a native, displaying a sometime formidable command of online
codes. But they can never become be in effect ing
an online native speaker (ONS). Speech behaviours are
established first off-line, and are then modified for online use – most notably
by the current technology which at least demands that texted formats intervene in the “chat”
processing. Yet the logic of this developmental trajectory suggests that online
chat, mediated through writing, would have become more formal
than natural speech – not, as we have seen, markedly less so.
Online chat is already in its short history notable for its flouting of at least some of the rules for formal written-text grammar. Most immediately obvious is perhaps the loss of rigorous capitalization rules:
[Not capitalizing "I"] is fairly typical and
seems to be a direct result of the immediacy of the computer mediated
communications environment. This...is probably due to a sense of urgency that
is not usually present in a writing mode coupled with a medium that takes much
longer to compose a message in. Capitalization is something he just does not
want to bother with - it takes too much time and destroys the flow of his
"speech". The same is true of spelling errors and other typographical
blunders. The written word on the net is built for speed, not for show. If, in the
opinion of the writer, the meaning is more or less clear there is no social
need to go back and correct such blunders. (Giese, 1998).
To many people grammar refers only to the basis for “proper” communication[7]. Presentation of our language to others signals many things, for example, our command of language, our social position, our educational level and much about ourselves. “Improper” grammar is thus often associated socially with laziness, low self-esteem or being a ‘foreigner’. However, the focus in Internet chat is on constructing effective or meaningful messages quickly. Traditional rules of grammar are replaced with a new set of emerging grammar protocols – and the meaning of “grammar” for analysis of this shift must move to that of formal linguistics, where grammar is examined first as a system of regulation of word order, established consensually within given languages, and again within their social sub-sections, to optimize communication. In other words, to make the sorts of “inclusive or exclusive” social regulatory decisions based on grammatical “correctness” which dominate the popular understanding of the term “grammar”, we must first be able to undertake the purely “descriptive” work of the formal linguist, in identifying which elements in a given language or “dialect” are considered standard or variant.
In NEW SITE = JULY 2014 - http://neuage.us/2014/July/ - Today’s online environment we can
rarely form
make a definite social opinion about
another person based on their ability to write online. For example, my
physician types painfully slowly, with one finger at a time,
however, she has been through university and medical school. Meeting her in a
chatroom may at this level be the same as corresponding with a child. She has
told me that she has never used a chatroom because her typing skills were too
poor. However,
iI If she were communicating in a chatroom with many speakers and the
text was scrolling by at a rapid rate her timely consumed
utterances would quickly be lost in the
shuffle. However, if instead of being careful and typing
slowly to be accurate with grammar and spelling, she typed
quickly and
disregarded the forms of speech she was disbursing, the
others in the chatroom might would not take
her professional
doctor qualifications seriously. In a
chatroom then we we can assume authority
not from externally recognized credentials, but from the internally
obvious cues of high levels of chat “literacy” – the capacity to process and
enter texted talk rapidly, and with creativity,
inside the keyboarding repertoires of online grammar. that it is not the person
speaking who is qualified outside the linguistic chat-circle but the one who is
highly computer literate, especially with the use of emoticons and
abbreviations who is taken seriously as one worth listening to. When <BLUERHINO11> is able
to list the baseball teams above, properly
segmented in the quick notation of chat, keeping the colloquial nominals, and reducing grammatical sequences to the bare
minimum, we would
treat him or her with respect, for both the baseball expertise and the chat
literacy displayed. and as one
to listen to because of his or her knowledge to accomplish such a linguistic
feat in such a short space of time. Traditional grammatical
exactness as required in high-social status speech and formal written texts has
been replaced by systems of reductive syntax and compensatory keyboarded
creativity, built from within the very limits placed on CMC by its technologisation. So is
there yet in existence a linguistic theory and associated analytical method with terms ot describe this reduction-compensation
online grammar?
Systemic-Functional Linguistics -– the
functions of online chatFunctional
The function of language is central (what it does, and how it does it) within the field of Systemic-Functional Linguistics[8] (SFL ). In place of the more structural approaches, such as the Prague School mentioned above, which place the elements of language and their combinations as central, SFL begins with social context, and looks at how language both acts upon, and is constrained by the social context.
The
social context in a chatroom is the chatroom milieu itself. The social context
of an online community is a self created and constantly changing group. Without
a moderator as discussed in Case Study Five, the group goes from one topic to
another with no set direction. As was shown above, see Appendix 6, Table 5, the
‘Tangent Topic Thread’ (TTT) usually lasts only a few turn takings before
another topic-thread is started and the group joins that. Even within
topic-selected chatrooms, as we saw above, the talk often turns to the
relational or to the skills of chat entry. Chat is “theme” directed, rather
than dynamically skewed to “rheme” construction. SFL can help us to finally assess the
“sociality” of chat, by locating the major social ‘functions” to which it is
oriented.
The social function of communication, as theorized
within SFL, can range from entertainment to learning to
communicating news and information. "The value of a theory," Halliday wrote, "lies in the use that can be made of
it, and I have always considered a theory of language to be essentially
consumer oriented" (1985a, p. 7). A
theory of online linguistics, the social ‘what-is-said’, as with any technological
based communication, will always have changing values and
redeveloped theories. Grammar
is thus
by definition flexible rather than unchanging, natural and organized around
the text or discourse and with such a fluid communicative form hat
as that
found in electronic communication of chatrooms,
natural
grammar is a grammar both of change which
embodies and discourages traditional rules. of grammar at the same time. The rules,
described as netiquette have been discussed in Case Study six (CS 6.2.3) the challenging of the rules
in order to carry on a dialogue have been shown in this case study when several
speakers decided to communicate through using numbers as language describers.
Central
to SFL is the concept of 'stratification'. Linguistic function is
divided for the purposes of analysis into its social context, its semantic
loading, its deployment of a lexico-grammatical
selection, and its phonological-graphological
choices. In chat terms this relates to the specifics of a given chat community,
the topic focus – or relative
lack of one, the terms and structures used from posting to posting to build
threads, and the online chat codings recurrently itemized above:
abbreviations, emoticons, creative use of the keyboarding repertoire. ,
analyzed
by the four strata of Context, Semantics, Lexico-Grammar and
Phonology-Graphology.
Stratification
grammar views language as a system of related layers (strata) of structure.
Stratification grammar[9]
has two meanings: 1) the act or process of stratifying or the state of being
Stratified or 2) a stratified formation. The first of these allows us to assess
the formational processing carried on in chat.
Stratification
firstly
allows language to be
examined for its relation to context,
introducing consideration
of what is called Tenor and Mode. Context concerns the
Field across which the talk plays (“what is going on?”), while Tenor considers
the social roles and relationships between the participants (“who are these
people”?),
and Mode reviews the ways in which the talk is conveyed, considering
aspects of the channel of communication, such as whether it is monologic or dialogic, spoken or written, +/-
visual-contact, and so onetc. (Halliday, 1985).
In
"Online on Time: The Language of Internet Relay Chat," Juliet Mar includes
within refers to ‘Field’ as
the entire
context of an online the conversation:
the activity, the topic,
and language choice. In her view “what is going
on?” is answered not by the topic advertised for instance in a Talk service
listing, such as those for Talkcity, but instead by
what an arriving participant
witnesses as they log on and enter a given chatroom. In my case
studies of chatrooms I refer to the ‘Field’ as
the chatroom itself, what the topic is about or what the chatroom concerns. It
is also the activity that is going on whether there is a social air or flaming.
The ‘Field’ in a sex chatroom is talk about sex, in a baseball chatroom as in
this case study the Field is the interactive dialogue about the game of
baseball. The ‘Field’ is announced as the title to the site: Her system would
therefore produce an understanding of chat “field” as experienced in the
following strata:
1.
The ‘Field’ as topic title:,
*** Welcome to |
2.
The ‘Field’ as activity:,
sox beat the
tribe |
no clev fan but like wright |
I sure hope wright
gets out of his funk this year |
hes a headcase |
3.
The ‘Field’ as language choice:,
fifteen
wins...hell of a lot more than gooden |
With the run
support I say 20 |
won't be
coked up like gooden either |
2anyone have
predictions for who will take the west? |
sox,
orioles, jays, rays mariners, rangers,
a's, angels...
final standings |
Having indicated the field
across which talk is proceeding, has the chat “wreader”
entering a site exhausted the possible information being offered? Within SFL, T tenor
is also
considered, an element concerned with processing and indicating the
social relationships among the participants, including their relative
power or status.. Power (or status)’
Usernames
alone can be seen
to work to form the social roles between
chatters.
These are the first-encountered signals as to a
participant’s intended relation to others in the chatroom. But usernames alone
are no guranateeguarantee that what
is promised will be and can be delivered – for “tenor” is
established in a broad range of chat activities: and is the ‘tenor’ in the chatroom.
Tenor
is concerned with the social relationships among the participants. Power (or
status), contact, and affective involvement are three important dimensions of
Tenor. Power is the operator (an individual that monitors, guides, and polices
the room), an individual that seems to be an "expert" on the topic at
the time, or one that has a more aggressive style in the conversation. Contact
comes in various forms, both intimate and frequent. This contact can lead to
affective involvement. Since contact is usually not outside the chat
environment, affective involvement is usually low . (Juliet
Mar, (2001).
It is the usernames that first work
to establish es the social
relationship between chatters:,
BLUERHINO11 |
NMMprod |
MLB-LADY |
MollyChristine |
dhch96 |
CathyTrix-gues |
Pizza2man |
smith-eric |
Nickatnite13 |
Chris_Pooh |
KnobbyChic-11 |
mwillie1 |
Neeca-Neeca |
Except
for the user <MLB-LADY> (Major League Baseball) none of these users can
be identified by their name as anything to do with baseball. In fact, except
for the probable pizza lover <Pizza2man> and the Nickolodeon
cable TV fan <Nickatnite>, these
names create
no baseball-expertise claims. give no clues to the users. However, the fact that there
are no socially unacceptable names;, nothing that
would stand out as to be
confrontational, as one would find in a sex chatsite, indicates some degree of intentional neutrality. where the In sexchat
users are quite clearly identified in relation to
how they want to be identified regarded by others: and one
would know by the usernames what the chat site is about:
:)Skipped school |
Ali Kat (asian fem) |
Black Love [M]uscle |
Drew(wifes at school) |
FuckBuddy(m)Pa |
I(M)pressive Proportions |
Lisa-PornAddict |
Older is Better (M) |
Prison Guard |
Slut Trainer |
|
cousin lover (F) |
justforfun(m) |
paolo |
In this case
tThe tenor for ensuing exchanges is set
by the names alone, in effect operating as invitations to the establishment of
specialist threads within a general discussion. of the
speaker can set the tone for a discussion or development of a thread, Compare the
relatively neutral and non-informative baseball chat names, where initiating
postings must be produced to evoke discussion threads:
98. <NMMprod> if you like the yanks press 3 |
In this case
<NMMprod> began a thread that
continued for another fifty-two turns, whilst <SWMPTHNG>’s comment in
Case Study 1 began a thread that continued for fifty-five turns – albeit
many of the responses evoked proving antagonistic and combative:.
75. <SWMPTHNG> THERE'LL BE PLENTY
OF MEXICAN ROOFERS IN |
Within chat spaces tenor thus appears, as Julie
Mars suggests, a combined and flexible element, constructed not only from a
combination of communicative features, but varying between chatroom types. Is Tthe same could perhaps be true of other SFL categories.?
Mode
in SFL
terms is refers ring
to the special
circumstances marking a particular communications channel – in the case of chat
the symbolic (emoticons and other typed representations) and or
rhetorical techniques distinctively present, channel
and the role which language plays in the situation (Halliday
and Hasan, 1985:, p.12).
The mode is formed by the type of electronic communication
discourse fostered within the varying Internet
modes already established, such as email, discussion groups or
chatrooms. Mode in chatrooms can be further is broken down into that found in textin text–based
chatrooms, visual chatrooms (with web camera) and multimedia chatrooms. These
chat–modes in turn include are broken down into the
Instant Messenger (IM) forms with two participants or larger
chatrooms with many participants. And each has already established particular speech
relations (tenor).
Using the text–based modes of chatting mutes the visual and aural
ranges of physical activities that offline users use to communicate. A
large part of the power of new technologies to accommodate these intersecting
and overlapping layers of reality lies in their power to simultaneously expand
and constrain interactants’ mutual
monitoring possibilities, giving the participants greater control over
developing how the situation is enacted. (Sannicolas, 1997). Because there are no physical
objects, spaces or barriers participants are often thought to negotiate
physical alignments and levels of involvement at will. The mode then becomes
the framework that is chosen by the chatters seeking to interact within
certain forms of relation. to interact in a
discourse. Perversely, a A
large chatroom with dozens of participants and the chat moving at a rapid rate
provides an arena of the highest safety for a chatter to be non–committed in a
discussion. The aura of invisibility is heightened and it is easier st
to be a lurker hiding amongst many voices than it would be in a chatroom of
only a few speakers. The least safe arena to be in and not participate would be
in an Instant Messenger chatroom, where the one-on-one mode invites a social
relation of intimacy, demanding active participation and an expectation of
disclosure. .
A chatter One just
entering the baseball is chatroom centringcentering this Ccase Sstudy
confronts a medium-activity chat flow, with multiple threads
already established, a topic clearly designated, and chat-expert formulae on
display. The tenor and mode thus align, cueing the new
entrant to the functions a of this chat, and to the
systems within which it operates. While , not
necessarily
knowing exactly who ‘jr. is in the
following extract, the Baseball Chatroom entrant is unlikely to about may assume
a
general discussion about that someone is
selling tickets to the baseball game, perhaps even a
young person, as the letters jr. often denotes,
“junior”.
But in this case the person referred to is Ken Grifey
jr., the baseball player discussed above. And that he will sell
tickets based on his popularity, as people will want to come and see
him play,
is a given of baseball lore. .
95. |
<smith-eric> |
jr. will sell the tickets!!!!!! |
Even in the absence of
experience of preceding threads, a new chat entrant is likely to review their
previous out-of-chat experience of baseball players and the tag “jr”, to establish the referent. Topic, acting to establish
field, stands in for the missing data – and so the chat still functions.
In this
study I am researching the written word as the spoken word in its dialogic
format, but because of the nature of turn taking in chatrooms also has a monologic
quality to it, I am forced to consider a mixed-mode. There does not need to be another participant
in the chatroom to enter script.
Immediately SFL alerts me to an interesting social element of chat
experience.
In this
chatroom on baseball all Each of the
linguistic approaches to of grammar surveyed
during analysis of this baseball chatroom have proven able
to contribute to our understanding of how chat functions, specifically at the
level of its structuring. Yet none can totally answer looked at do not
explain the question asked at the start of this case study; What is the function of grammar in chatroom
language?
Instead,
what we have discovered is the insight offered by SFL: that grammar, rather
than establishing an unchanging repertoire
of structuring rules for composition of utterances, is a flexible and shifting
system – or set of sub-systems, each established in and providing the basis for
a specific communicative space. Language forms in any
chatroom,
as we have seen, are is constantly altered
- both
deliberately, in the search for creative expression,
and by mistake, arising in the pressures of the CMC technologisation. Mis-s spellings
and changes to language witnessed on the Internet may not be altogether deliberate.
Typing can lead to accidental changes in spelling and punctuation. On the other
hand the grammar of chatrooms, if when enacted it is done
intentionally c. Can display is
a highly sophisticated form of new texted-talk
processing prose that is semantically innovative and daring.
Below,
<CathyTrix-guest> in turn 108 of the
baseball chat site says <2blech>, an utterance
which has no conventional
linguistic place inside any grammar. Is this a noun? A verb?
If a verb, is it a command? A
request? An insult? What is
implied by its combination of numerals and alphabetic characters? Within the “new grammar” of IRC, specifically
within this chatroom, and in particular within the response patterns of this
thread, the, the utterance
is keyed within but in this chatroom it is
an appropriate
grammar.
as tThe The ‘”2’ 2” refers
to an earlier request for chatters to press the ‘31’
(3)?
key if they liked the New York Yankees. <CathyTrix-guest>
emphases his or her dislike of the Yankees by pressing a lower different
key to
han ‘31’
and confirming her representation of disdain it
with a a ‘”blech’blech”.
This
is not a recognized which is not a word semantic
element, but has the same letters as ‘belch’, and most likely
would be interpreted as ‘belch’ which is a fairly conventional onomatapoeiconomatopoeic or phonetic
vomiting representation. In this at
turn there is therefore both deliberative
linguistic response – even while the
riposte perverts the intention or request of the original posting. e and mistaken altered
language. In turn 77 <MLB-LADY> asks asks if ‘”dd any see the atanta score’score”?
with two spelling errors. Assuming the correct wording
is, ‘”did any see the score’score”?.
I would suggest that the first miss spelling is a deliberate alteration to save
time in typing, while the second is a simple typing error..
The removing of vowels in text-based chat is common, for example: <msg> for message, <ppl>
for people and <plz> for please. But in neither case is the
meaning lost because of the suppression. At the level of both chat convention
and simple error, the reconstructive capacity of online “wreaders” is able to prevail. Online grammar is sufficiently
flexible to admit change at many
levels, without loss of comprehensibility.
108. |
<CathyTrix-guest> |
2blech |
77. |
<MLB-LADY> |
nmm whats
new? dd any see the atanta
score they played u. of |
126. / |
<dhch96> |
sox are gonna get radke |
127. |
<MLB-LADY> |
hi chris |
128. |
<BLUERHINO11> |
i hope so d |
As
well as leaving out letters, single digits are conventionally
used in place of whole words: u – you, 4 –
for, r –are, c – see, 2 -–
to;
and in 128 below <BLUERHINO11> refers to <dhch96>by using the single
initial letter “d”. Within SFL
this allows us to see not only a flexible and indeed constantly developing
grammatical repertoire actually under construction and re-application, but
because of the stratified processing, we can also recognize that such moves as
<BLUERHINO>’s use of the single letter “d” construct a
particular social relation, as well as a new grammatical coding for his
interlocutor. Here “d” is admitted to the colloquial “nicknaming” techniques of
diminutives, which indicate familiarity, informality and
friendship.
In
chatrooms, grammar is thus a developing protocol. Common practice theories
of grammar may be are applied
differently in chatrooms – and in different chatrooms, and sometimes even
differently within a given chatroom. In everyday social interactions ety, we have learned
to use the use to
grammar to judge people in terms of social status and education. In chatrooms
the rules have changed. A person may be judged by how efficiently he or she
types, by
their expertise in deliberately miss-spelling words by leaving out
vowels
to indicate the pace of their utterances and their familiarity with chat modes,
as I have demonstrated. Unlike in face-to face formal or professional conversation,
or
high-status text genres, one does not seek to impress others in
chatrooms by the “correct” use of both
spelling and grammar. What is “correct” in chat spaces has already
clearly moved on, to suit its own communicative conditions, and to permit
variability into the increasing range of online modes.
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[2]
Talkcity went bankrupt in early August 2002 and is no
longer in existence.
[3] See www.wagsoft.com/Papers/Thesis/01Introduction.pdf for further research on
‘Integrating Diverse Descriptions See www.wagsoft.com/Papers/Thesis/01Introduction.pdf for further research on
‘Integrating Diverse Descriptions
[4]. Vachek's Josef. The
Below
is copied form the
http://www.bohemica.com/plk/plchome.htm (29 March 2002). I have copied it for reference
purposes due to often occurring disappearing pages on the Internet.
‘The
Although the 'classical period' of
the Circle can be dated between 1926, the year of the first meeting, and the beginning of WWII, its roots are in
much of the earlier work of its members, and also it did not completely cease
its work with the outbreak of the war.
Among the founding members were
such personalities as Vilém Mathesius
(President of PLC until his death in 1945), Roman Jakobson,
Nikolay Trubetzkoy, Sergei Karcevskiy, Jan Mukařovský, and many others who began to meet in the
mid-twenties to discuss issues of common interest.
The, at first, irregular meetings
with lectures and discussions gradually developed into regular ones. The first
results of the members' cooperative efforts were presented in joint theses
prepared for the First International Congress of Slavicists
held in
The Théses
outlined the direction of the work of the Circle's members. Such important
concepts as the approach to the study of language as a synchronic system which
is, however, dynamic, functionality of elements of language, and the importance
of the social function of language were explicitly laid down as the basis for
further research.
[6]
J. Firbas has
written extensively on, Communicative dynamism. See, The
Theory of Functional Sentence Perspective as a Reflection of an Effort Towards
a Means-Ends Model of Language.
[7]
See, Grammar Rules and Other Random Thoughts at,
http://www.csh.rit.edu/~kenny/misc/grammar.html
viewed
[8] For a good introductory article by
Matthiessen and Halliday,
see: http://minerva.ling.mq.edu.au/Resources/VirtuallLibrary/Publications/sfg_firststep/SFG
intro New.html . viewed
[9] Stratification grammar http://www.library.wwu.edu/cbl/ray/concept_dictionaries/fairhaven_student_work/stratification.htm
http://www.library.wwu.edu/cbl/ray/concept_dictionaries/fairhaven_student_work/stratification.htm
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