Neuage – PhD research into conversational
analysis of chat room talk – this page is a very rough draft.Individual case studies and other areas are
being worked on at various times. 30-Jan-02
Analytical
tools developed in pragmatics have found frequent application in discourse
analysis. Much of Pragmatics grew out of Natural Language Philosophy: Wittgenstein “meaning as
use” and “language games”
In this case study I will use pragmatics to examine
the utterances in the turn-taking exchanges.Pragmatics examines. “…the problem of how listeners
uncover speakers' intentions…” (McArthur 1992). In pragmatics research
speech acts and semantic formulas are difficult to define; therefore, it is
difficult to develop means in which to categorize semantic formulas. This case
study will code the turn-taking sequences to find discourse markers in order to
establish the role of a speakers’ intention in a chat room.
As communication analysis is an investigation into
meaning generation, pragmatics
Pragmatics
is sometimes included into systemic semantics. (I will discuss this briefly in
case study six – baseball
chat when I am looking at different linguistic schools of research)
De Saussure[ii]constitutes a
key work for whoever is interested in the language and the languages; it is
regarded as founder of modern linguistics. It is there that are expressed for
the first time certain of the most fertile concepts of linguistics: binary
oppositions (langue/parole, signifiant/signifié, synchronie/diachronie),
arbitrary of the sign. These concepts will be largely refined or disputed, and
will nourish the reflexion of generations of linguists.
Semantics
is divided into three components:
Ideational Semantics
(the propositional content);
Interpersonal
Semantics (concerned with speech-function, exchange structure, expression
of attitude, etc.);
Textual Semantics (how
the text is structured as a message, e.g., theme-structure, given/new,
rhetorical structure etc.
The Lexico-Grammar concerns the syntactic
organisation of words into utterances. Even here, a functional approach is
taken, involving analysis of the utterance in terms of roles such as Actor,
Agent/Medium, Theme Mood, etc. (See Halliday 1994 for full description).
I will also briefly examine how emotions are too a
‘representation of meaning’ or ‘semantic representation’.This notion of meaning representation
borrows from Noam Chomsky’s ”Form and meaning in Natural Language” (Augenstein
1969)
Optimality
theory (OT) The acquisition of syntax and phonology.Optimality Theory (OT) is based solely on constraints which are
employed in such a way that derivation is a secondary aspect of the language
process.
Table one are the types
of phrases used (ie. Greeting, answers etc) in the Britney Spears chat room.
Table two denotes
abbreviation, emoticon and the beginning of threads of conversation in the
Britney Spears chat room.
Table three are the
user names of the participants in the Britney Spears chat room.
Table four is the
raw data as it occurred in the Britney Spears chat room.
Table five lists the
utterances used without user name or other coding devices in the Britney Spears
chat room.
Table seven are all
words in the Britney Spears chat room separated in order of appearance in the
chat room.Table eight
are the words in alphabetic order as well as number of occurrences for each
word and word type.
3.Semantics [1890s: from
French sémantique, Greek semantikós
significant, from sêma a sign]. The study of meaning.
The term has at least five linked senses: (1) Sometimes semasiology.
In linguistics, the study of the meaning of words and sentences, their
denotations, connotations, implications, and ambiguities. The three levels or
components of a common model of language are phonology, syntax, and semantics.
(2) In philosophy, the study of logical expression and of the principles that
determine the truth or falsehood of sentences. (3) In semiotics, the study of
signs and what they refer to, and of responses to those signs. (4) In general
usage, interest in the meanings of words, including their denotations,
connotations, implications, and ambiguities. (5) Informally and often
pejoratively, the making of (pedantic and impractical) distinctions about the
meaning and use of words.
[ii]Ferdinand
de Saussure (1857-1913) is usually
considered to be the father of modern linguistics. Born in Geneva into an
illustrious family that included famous natural scientists, Saussure trained as
a comparative philologist, studying (1876-78) in Leipzig, the main center of
the Neogrammatical movement. There he gave precocious proof of his genius with
a Mémoire (1879) containing insights that lie at the root of some of
the most interesting twentieth-century developments in comparative philology.
After a period of studying and teaching in Paris (1880-91), Saussure was called
in 1891 to teach Sanskrit in Geneva. He published relatively little in his
lifetime (see his Recueil 1922). Between 1907 and 1911, he taught
three courses in general linguistics to small groups of students. After his
death, two of his colleagues (Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, with the help
of one of his students, Albert Riedlinger), on the basis of students' lecture
notes and some of Saussure's own jottings, compiled a coherent Cours de linguistique générale (CLG;
1916). It proved to be perhaps the most influential text in linguistics, at
least up to the publication of Noam Chomsky's work. Cut from http://cognet.mit.edu/MITECS/Entry/lepschyaccessed Wednesday, 30 January 2002
Today working on picture poem links starting around "better" (September 19, 2014). Picture poems are the digital format of work I did as a street artist in New Orleans in the 1970s, as well as New York City, Honolulu, San Francisco and Adelaide South Australia. Follow @neuage.