Neuage – PhD thesis on
Conversational analysis of chat room talk - updated 8 November 2001
Conversational Analysis of Chat Room Talk PHD thesis by Dr. Terrell Neuage University of South Australia National Library of Australia. THESIS COMPLETE .pdf / or THESIShome ~ Abstract.html/pdf ~ Glossary.html/pdf ~ Introduction.html/pdf ~ methodology.html/pdf ~ literature review.html/pdf ~ Case
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Acknowledgements
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Theorists/writers: Norman
Fairclough (1989, 1995), Deborah Tannen (1989). 2061 - Thursday, 8 November 2001
ANALYSIS of chapter three Discourse Analysis
A modern term (first recorded in 1952) for the linguistic
analysis of stretches of language with the aim of disentangling the unspoken
rituals strategies and implications built (unconsciously) into them and the
inferences to be drawn from them. A standard textbook on the subject is by
Gillian Brown and George Yule (1983).
The New
Fowler's Modern English Usage, © Oxford University Press 1968 |
In linguistics and related disciplines, the analysis of 'units'
larger than the sentence; e.g., in writing, an analysis of paragraphs, in
speech, an analysis of turns at talking, etc. The Penguin Dictionary of
Psychology Edited by Arthur S. Reber |
As we are going beyond the structure of the words in the chat room and are looking more at the context beyond the individual utterance for this chapter we will examine a few of the many theories regarding language development. These theories have emerged from disciplines such as linguistics, philosophy and psychology, which have influenced one another and the outcome of language acquisition theories.
Discourse analysis is concerned with the recorded text within the language
system. What should happen then is that we should find generic conventions and
expectations within a chat room. To do this is to expect participants to
understand and use certain conventions of dialogue. As I have shown in previous
case studies in this thesis there is a body of accepted linguistics, lexical
and syntactic and semantic resources utilized in chat rooms. These are often the abbreviations and the
emoticons used as well as the acceptance of poor grammar and misspelt words
used so often.
We accept these conventions of hurried utterances because the chat room dialogue passes by so quickly. For example, I was able to copy and paste a chat in a chat room today (http://se.unisa.edu.au/phd/chat/afgan.htm) that in less than five minutes had more than two-hundred-fifty turn-takings.
Language acquisition occurs gradually through interaction with people and the environment. Whether it is a new language or the first utterances of childhood or learning how to communicate in a chat room the process is the same. There is often a trial and learning progression involved. To have meaning in exchange understandable there has to have been prior experiences at communicating. For example in this exchange we have turn-taking that would not have been learnt in school or in any way except through these participants having exchanged prior:
3) C/ /\/ 3a. <jenniferv> SCUD |
10) A/C/ /\3 6a. <scud4> hiya jenn hugz and kotc S"S" |
12) C/ /\10 2c. <Leesa39> heyyyyyy scud |
14) C/ /\10 3c. <jenniferv>
heheh
scud |
15) C/ /\12 6b. <scud4> leesa ltns hugz and kotc S"S" |
18) A/ /\15 1b. <tab_002> hiya scud |
23) C/ /\15 2d. <Leesa39> same to ya scud |
29) C/ /\23 6c. <scud4> thanx
leesa "S" |
What can we make of <scud4>’s popularity in these exchanges? <Leesa39>, <tab_002>, and <jenniferv> each seems familiar enough with <scud4> to carry on what would have to be a conversation. We will look briefly at the concept of an anti-language as a way of understanding this exchange. Halliday has written extensively on the topic of anti-language referring to it as slang developed by members of “anti-societies” such as criminals and prisoners. My Honours degree from Deakin University (“graffiti as text” 1995) focused on anti-language as the language of gangs, adolescents and hip-hop/graffiti crews. In my thesis I researched the development of language that graffiti crews used to communicate with one another. Mary Bucholtz’s essay: “Word Up: Social Meanings of Slang in California Youth Culture”[i], investigates identity within linguistic anthropology of her core subjects and her research is useful in this study of chat room only to note:
Eckert and McConnell-Ginet advance the
concept of the community of practice as a useful alternative to the speech
community, the traditional unit of sociolinguistic and linguistic-anthropological
analysis. Where the speech community proposes language, in one aspect or
another, as the basis of community definition, the community-of-practice model
instead considers language as one among many social practices in which community
members engage; such practices, in which different community members
participate to different degrees, are the foundation both of community and of
identity.
anti-language
or a language of defiance By Sami Gorgan Roodi
August 1, 2001 in The Iranian[ii]
I
believe that in order to fight linguistic imperialism, we need to devise a
language of defiance and struggle and create an anti-language to resist the
capitalist-Imperialist-racist-sexist-terrorist faith and berate the falsity and
vacuity of their linguistic culture.
This "anti-language" can be defined as a language of protest that acts against strategic and false use of words by exposing the horrors that have been covered in euphemistic words and phrases. This anti-language would help us to debunk the deceptive language of the Establishment in an attempt to bring people face to face with the darker sides of capitalist ideology.
Language acquisition theories have basically centred around “nurture” and “nature” distinction or on “empiricism” and “nativism”. The doctrine of empiricism[iii] holds that all knowledge comes from experience, ultimately from our interaction with the environment through our reasoning or senses. How does this work in a chat room?
Chat room dialogue centres on
the assumption that someone else within the room is able to interpret their
words. Going beyond their individual turn-taking gives us an insight into what
the speaker is saying or asking.
However, chat rooms do not provide an opportunity to see the context of
all one has to say in a holistic manner.
There is seldom even a coherent chain of speak-events. For example, in the following, <jenniferv> has made eight entrances or utterances in a space of
seventy-eight-turns (turns 3 – 81).
Below is the eight turns. If <jenniferv> had a point about anything then it becomes missed.
3) C/ /\/ 3a. <jenniferv> SCUD |
6) C/ 3b. <jenniferv> *) nice to see you to
tab ;) |
14) C/ /\10 3c. <jenniferv> heheh
scud |
26) A/ /\21 3d. <jenniferv> *) buh bye scud ;) |
39) ?/ 3e. <jenniferv> ** LOL |
57) D/ /\54 3f. <jenniferv> good tab and you? |
73) B/ 3g. <jenniferv> ** rofl |
81) A/ 2j. <jenniferv> hiya ray |
As we can see there is little coherence in the sum-total of <jenniferv>’s conversation. What if we take the previous turns, the ones we assume <jenniferv> is responding too? Will this make <jenniferv>’s conversation coherent?
The previous turn that this, below turn-taking, is in response
to is not known as this, like most chat rooms is a ‘jumped into’
conversation. |
3) C/ /\/ 3a. <jenniferv> SCUD |
1) A/C/ /\/ 1a. <tab_002> *) HI nice to see you
too Jennv :))))))) |
6) C/ 3b. <jenniferv> *) nice to see you to
tab ;) |
10) A/C/ /\3 6a. <scud4> hiya jenn hugz and kotc S"S" |
14) C/ /\10 3c. <jenniferv> heheh
scud |
21) --- <scud4> <----on his way to the main room |
26) A/ /\21 3d. <jenniferv> *) buh bye scud ;) |
36) --- 6d. <scud4> <----is now door testin |
39) ?/ 3e. <jenniferv> ** LOL |
54) G/ /\39 1d. <tab_002> so
how you been jenn? |
57) D/ /\54 3f. <jenniferv> good tab and you? |
It is not clear who the below ‘rofl’ is addressed to. |
73) B/ 3g. <jenniferv> ** rofl |
It is not clear who the below is addressed to as no one in the
chat room had the name ray. |
81) A/ 2j. <jenniferv> hiya ray |
With dialogue such as the above we are left to ponder what exactly is going on with communication in a chat room. As has been shown in the previous chat room dialogues and is obvious in any other chat room presented in this study, there seldom is a lot to base where we are going when exchanging turns in a chat room.
In other words can we establish what the purpose of the person in a chat rooms is through utterances? For an act of speaking (locution[iv]) in a face-to-face conversation to be valid as a locution, an utterance must be grammatical and draw on a recognisable lexical wordlist. In this reading, a locution has meaning independently of the context in which it is used. Using the utterance in context amounts to lending it a particular force (illocution[v]).
However, what do we make of the following discourse in this chat room?
7) 5b. <B_witched_2002-guest> 0HI |
Is there a recognisable lexical wordlist involved? This ‘OHI’ occurs 37 times in the 89 turn-takings recorded, or 42 % of the utterances have these turn-takings involved. We surely do not have lexical cohesion.
“Continuity may be
established in a text by the choice of words.
This may take the form of word repetition; or the choice of a word that
is related in some way to a previous one..” Haliday (1994 p. 310)
Many statements are ambiguous in isolation but clear in
context or are amenable to logical analysis: although there are scores of
meanings of see, someone who speaks of seeing someone online is not likely to be using the word in
the sense of seeing you in front of me, although that is
possible and may in some circumstances be so.
1) A/C/ /\/ 1a. <tab_002> *) HI nice to see you
too Jennv :))))))) |
6) C/ 3b. <jenniferv> *) nice to see you to
tab ;) |
In this chat room no one is
being seen as we would consider seeing someone with our eyes but <tab_002> and
<jenniferv> see one another.
And
of course <tab_002> sees others.
31) A/ /\29 1c. <tab_002> see ya scud |
Then in context we know, because this is a chat room that does not boast cam-cameras (this was a couple of years before their general popularity) that seeing someone may mean seeing their action, what they are doing in the chat room. For example, <B_witched_2002-guest> says the same thing over and over and <Leesa39> responds to this annoyance by saying:
68) C/ /\67 2g. <Leesa39> B_witched we see ya |
Some theoreticians have based their discourse theories on environmental factors while others believed that it is the innate factors that determine the acquisition of language. We can not assume what the innate factors here are but the acquisition of language, if shown here, is of limiting value. What is shown in chat rooms is the invention or even the reinvention of communication using the minimal amount of words.
Possessing a language is the quintessentially human trait. The Internet chat room, in its universality, is in the process of redefining what the language is that we are going to use in the future to communicate. It is possible that these exchanges that are presented here are part of the entertainment cycle of the chat room inhabitant. However, just as in any casual conversation the importance of exchange is fundamental to who we are and how we understand our world around us. Without language we can not understand one another and it this currently new language used that will tell how we will communicate in the future. If chat room language and turn-taking dialogue becomes a normal way of communication then our every day conversation will be just as incoherent.
The acquisition of computer based language is just as important as the learning of a child to speak. Because it computer-speak is done by people who already have a basic language it is a learning of a new language or a shortening of linguistics to what would be in a social person-to-person setting a series of grunts or maybe even just hand signals. Chat room conversation is similar to earlier forms of communication such as smoke-signals. They are simple in their expression but meaning is derived from knowing what they mean in context.
The primary intents and purposes of the practice of linguistic
science, directly point to its fundamental capacity to convey, to transfer and
to exchange meaningful information by physical means of expressing and
exchanging information.
For example, with respect to our special species' case, we
cannot alter the fundamental nature of the matter, whether the physical signals
are sent in the secondary form of smoke signals from hilltop to hilltop, or by
way of drumbeats from jungle settlement to jungle settlement, or whether the
physical signals are sent in the secondary form of fiber-optic cable telephone signals
from sea to shining sea and from shore to shifting shore, or in any of the
various, possible other secondary physical forms of different ways of which
there are many more.
http://www.nuclear-free.com/savage/partthree.htm#four
Structural Linguistics
FROM SMOKE SIGNALS TO THE INTERNET - http://www.chariot.net.au/~michaelc/ELLS/conf.html
1.
Smoke signals and
Internet
2. http://www.ccci.or.jp/newsletter/96autumn_e/issues.html
It is, however, important to note that neither nurturists
(environmentalists) disagree thoroughly with the nativist ideas nor do
nativists with the nurturist ideas. Only the weight they lay on the
environmental and innate factors is relatively little or more. Before sifting
through language acquisition theories here, therefore, making a distinction
between these two types of perspectives will be beneficial for a better
understanding of various language acquisition theories and their implications
for the field of applied linguistics. In the following paragraphs, the two
claims posed by the proponents of the two separate doctrines will be explained
and the reason why such a distinction has been made in this article will be
clarified.
Environmentalist theories of language acquisition hold that an organism’s
nurture, or experience, are of more significance to development than its nature
or inborn contributions. Yet they do not completely reject the innate factors.
Behaviorist and neo-behaviorist stimulus-response learning theories (S-R for
simplicity) are the best known examples. Even though such theories have lost
their effect partially because of Chomsky’s intelligent review of Skinner’s
Verbal Behavior (Chomsky, 1959), their effect has not been so little when we
consider the present cognitive approach as an offshoot of behaviorism.
The nativist theories, on the other hand, assert that much of the capacity for
language learning in human is ‘innate’. It is part of the genetic makeup of
human species and is nearly independent of any particular experience which may
occur after birth. Thus, the nativists claim that language acquisition is
innately determined and that we are born with a built-in device which
predisposes us to acquire language. This mechanism predisposes us to a
systematic perception of language around us. Eric Lenneberg (cited in Brown,
1987:19), in his attempt to explain language development in the child, assumed
that language is a species - specific behavior and it is ‘biologically
determined’. Another important point as regards the innatist account is that
nativists do not deny the importance of environmental stimuli, but they say
language acquisition cannot be accounted for on the basis of environmental
factors only. There must be some innate guide to achieve this end. In Table 1
below, a classification around the nurture/nature distinction has been made.
Discourse and Frames
'Reframing' is a way to
talk about going back and re-interpreting the meaning of the first sentence.
Frame analysis is a type of discourse analysis that asks, What activity are
speakers engaged in when they say this? What do they think they are doing
by talking in this way at this time? (Tannen [vi])
Notes and bibliography for case study three
[i] Bucholtz , Mary. “Word Up: Social Meanings of Slang in California Youth Culture” - http://se.unisa.edu.au/phd/chat/youth_slang.htm accessed, Thursday, 8 November 2001
[ii] Irianian on_line - (http://www.iranian.com/Opinion/2001/August/Language/index.html)
From the Concise Columbia Encyclopedia. Copyright © 1991 by
Columbia University Press.
See also: the reference site at http://www.xrefer.com/entry/551908
for more on emiricism.
[iv] Locution:
From: xrefer http://www.xrefer.com/ - from Latin
locutio/locutionis (style of) speech, from loqui/locutus to speak]. (1) The act
of speaking; utterance; speech as the expression of thought; (style of)
discourse. (2) A formal, technical, sometimes pedantic term for an utterance,
word, phrase, or idiom, especially if regarded as characteristic of a social or
regional group: Irish locutions. (3) The base on which the British philosopher
J. L. Austin coined a set of terms for the discussion of utterance and its
consequences: 'The act of "saying something" ... I call, i.e. dub, the
performance of a locutionary act, and the study of utterances thus far and in
these respects the study of locutions, or of full units of speech' (How to Do
Things with Words, 1962/75, ch. 8). For Austin, a locutionary act is an act of
speaking (a result of locution); an illocutionary act is an act of speaking
that promises, requests, suggests, warns, etc. (a result of illocution); a
perlocutionary act is an act that leads to an action of some kind on the part
of a listener (a result of perlocution, an instance being a perlocution), such
as laughing, complaining, or departing. 'He said that I should go' is
locutionary; 'He argued that I should go' is illocutionary; and 'He convinced
me that I should go' is perlocutionary. The Oxford Companion to the
English Language, © Tom McArthur 1992
[v] Illocutionary act:
From: xrefer
http://www.xrefer.com/ Applied in the theory
of speech acts to the force that an expression of some
specific form will have when it is uttered. E.g. a speaker might stop someone
and say 'Please, can you help me?' By virtue of its form (interrogative
preceded by please) this would have the
illocutionary force of a request for assistance.
Cf. locutionary;
perlocutionary. In the theory developed by Austin and his successors, the simple
act of uttering this sentence is a locutionary act; the illocutionary act is
that of uttering it as a request; the perlocutionary act is what is
accomplished by uttering it (e.g. the addressee might ignore the request, or
might in fact help). But what is 'illocutionary' and what is 'perlocutionary'
plainly depends on how much is judged to flow conventionally from the form of
an utterance. E.g. if the chairman of a meeting says 'This meeting is now
closed', this may be seen as a formula which has the illocutionary force of
closing it. But its form is more generally that of a statement, and, as made by
the chairman, it might instead be claimed to have that as its perlocutionary
effect.
[vi] Tannen online - http://www.lsadc.org/web2/discourse.html
sited 8/11/2001
Haliday, M. A. X. Functional
Grammar. St Martin’s Press Inc. New York New York, 1994
http://se.unisa.edu.au/phd/chapter3/bib_notes.htm - Empiricism
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