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Conversational Analysis of Chat Room Talk PHD thesis by Dr. Terrell Neuage University of South Australia National Library of Australia.
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Casual Chatroom Chat (CCC) (*TN) A conversation in a chatroom which
is not serious or intended to discover details on a subject. Most casual chatroom chat, similar to non-formal pub casual chat,
consists of conversation typical of, ‘hi’ ‘hows everyone’.
Chat Events (CE) (*TN) are
all the individual turn-taking text of a particular participator in a chat
room, including entering, leaving and lurking.
Chat Room Analytical Practices (CRAP) *TN
Chatroom graffiti *TN The messages conveyed through the work of graffiti artists
are often highly political and deliberately aggressive. Some people will go
from chatroom to chatroom leaving messages but not particpating in actual
chatroom converation, I refer to this as chatroom graffiti.
Chat Utterance Sentence Structures (CUSS) *TN The sentences
of a chat turn-taking. Unlike sentences of with nouns and verbs to establish a
complete thought, chat sentences are typically made up of two to five words or
emoticons. I have averaged the amount of words in twelve chatrooms,
consisting of 1357 lines (turn takings) and found the average word count,
including abbreviations and emoticons to be 3.7 items.
Chatter's-Event-Response-Gaps (CERG) *TN The pause between
chatters who are 'speaking' with one another. There are often other voices
which fill these gaps.
Conversational
“lag”. Conversational lag is a pause where the next
speaker has been selected but it may be filled with responses from others in
the chatroom responding to other turn-takings. The
‘lag’ may be caused by many other factors, as I have alluded to above.
Cut utterances – due to hitting the entrace key an utterance is cut
between turn-takings in a chatroom. In some cases
several turns of other chatters could occupy this space
Ethnomethodology refers to understanding
the meaning systems and procedures people use in doing what they do, the ways
in which people make sense of their social world. Ethnomethodology represents a recent sociological perspective, founded by the American
sociologist Harold Garfinkel in the early 1960s. Garfinkel redrew the sociological map of the late 1960s and
1970s, with later developments extending to conversation analysis (CA) and
actor-network theory (ANT). The main ideas behind it are set out in his book
"Studies in Ethnomethodology" (1967).
Event Pause (EP) *TN The break between
utterances of a user in a chatroom. The most usual
incidence of this is when the sever places an ad in the chatroom and it appears between utterances. It also occurs when no one writes for a
specific period of time.
Illocutionary is a complete speech act, made in a typical
utterance which consists of the delivery of the propositional content of the
utterance and a particular illocutionary force whereby the speaker asserts,
demands, promises, vows or suggests. Relating to or being the communicative
effect (as commanding or requesting) of an utterance <”There's a baby under
you” may have the illocutionary force
of a warning>.
Lag is
the distance between speech events of a speaker in a chat situation, a pause
between utterances.
Lexical
Semantics A term in linguistics for the
study of the meaning of words, phrases, and lexemes, especially in sets rather
than in isolation. See Lexical Field/Set, Semantics. [Language]. T.McA. The
Oxford Companion to the English Language, © Tom McArthur 1992 online: http://www.xrefer.com/entry.jsp?xrefid=442733&secid=.-
Locutionary is
defined with reference to the intentions of speakers while speaking. Locutionary acts are referring, predicating, negating and
subordinating. A constative (see below) or locutionary act involves the utterance's proposition or its
propositional content.
Metaphysical-chat-linguistics (MCL) *TN is
anticipating what will be said before the completion of the utterance, either
due to the writer-speaker hitting the “enter” key on the keyboard or the chat
server not allowing more than a couple of lines at a time to be shown on the
screen, thus breaking the conversation before it is completed.
Multilogue are the many conversations happening at one
time within a chatroom as well as the overall
conversation of all who are present.
Multiple Selves Chat (MSC) *TN A feature of chatrooms. The author is able to have several different
representatives of his or her self in conversation at one time. As only one
person can log on a chatroom at a time the person
wanting to have multiple representation in a chatroom would need to have several windows open of the one chatroom but be logged on as a different username in each window.
Multiple-Authorship
Chats (MAC) *TN First discussed in Case Study 2.
MultiUser Talk (MUT) written
by Jukka Pihl
Online Discourse Analysis Method (ODAM) (*TN) Online Discourse Analysis Method. The
method I am developing to study the language of online communication using
abbreviations, misspelled words and emoticons.
Online Lingo (OL) (*TN) Using all the parts of speech in a chatroom includes the emoticons, abbreviations, sounds (if available in a chatroom setting) and the words typed in.
Online Native Speaker (ONS) (*TN) Speaking fluently online using properly emoticons,
abbreviations and miss spelt words to communicate.
Optimality
Theory. Theory of constraints in phonology, floated in the
early to mid-1990s, in which any universal constraint on the form that units
can take is capable, in principle, of being broken; in any particular case,
however, the constraints will be arranged in a hierarchy from least readily to
most readily broken, and their optimal application to forms in a particular
language can be computed from this. The Concise
Performative Verb - A term used in philosophy and linguistics for a
type of verb (apologize, forbid, inform, promise, request, thank) that can
explicitly convey the kind of speech act being performed. In saying I
apologize for my behaviour, someone is making an apology, which could also be
done in part at least without such a verb: My behaviour was utterly deplorable. Generally, the
performative verb in such sentences is in the simple present active and the
subject is 1, but the verb may be in the simple present passive
and the subject need not be 1: Smoking is forbidden; The committee thanks you for your services. A test for whether a verb is
being used performatively is the possible insertion
of hereby: I hereby apologize; The committee hereby thanks you. In hedged performatives, the verb is
present but the speech act is performed indirectly: in saying I must
apologize for my behaviour, the speaker is expressing an obligation to make
an apology, but implies that the acknowledgement of that obligation is the same
as an apology. In contrast, I apologized is a report, and Must I
apologize? is a request for advice. The Oxford Companion to the English Language,
© Tom McArthur 1992 http://www.xrefer.com/entry/443329
Perlocutionary is
the effect of their utterances, 'This means that every utterance can be analysed as the realization of the speaker's intent to
achieve a particular purpose' (Eggins &Slade
1997, p. 40). Perlocutionary acts are persuading,
intimidating and incriminating. Perlocutionary and llocutionary are both kinds of speech acts found in this chatroom.
Person2Person-offline (p2P-off) *TN
Person2Person-online (P2P-on) *TN
Phenomenology: ‘A system of
"presuppositionless" philosophy developed
by Edmund Husserl, who sought to investigate the pure
data of human consciousness -- its Lebenswelt, or
"lived world." According to Husserl's key
concept of intentionality, consciousness is always consciousness of something;
it is always directed to an object. Bracketing external reality (epoché) and making neither epistemological assumptions
about the foundations of knowledge nor ontological assumptions about the nature
of being, the phenomenologist examines the intentional objects of consciousness
without making reference to any external objects or real existence.’ © Greig E. Henderson and Christopher Brown,
Readerly and Writerly Texts:
Translated from Barthes' neologisms lisible and scriptible,
the terms readerly and writerly text mark the distinction between traditional literary works such as the
classical novel, and those twentieth century works, like the new novel, which
violate the conventions of realism and thus force the reader to produce a meaning or meanings which are inevitably
other than final or "authorized." ©
1993-2000 Christopher Keep, Tim McLaughlin, Robin Parmar. http://www.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0250.html
Speech Act Disruptions (SAD) *TN Sponsorship ads appearing chatrooms are a performative speech act disruption.
Speech Act Community A
group of speakers, whether located in one area or scattered, who recognize the
same language or dialect of a language as a standard. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language:
Fourth Edition. 2000.
Speech Act Community Online (
Speech situations (chatroom situations) are composed of “speech events” (chatroom events) (Hymes, 1974)
and these activities have rules governing the use of speech (e.g.
getting-to-know-you conversations - (Gudykunst and
Kim 1997 p. 328).
Tangent Topic Thread (TTN) *TN For example, see appendix 6, CS-6.5 Table 5.
Text-Based-Chatrooms (TBC). *TN Text-Based-Chatrooms are a blip in the history of
human writing and only short time period of computer-mediated communication
(CMC). As more and more chatrooms add multimedia
attributes, writing may become a minor or even a non-existent form of online
communication. With voice-boards and voice-forums such as available from Wimba (http://www.wimba.com/)
and chatrooms being 3D with virtual worlds which use
voice and keyboard commands to move around the screen and with the growing use
of avatars, TBCs may fade into a past genre of
electronic writing peculiar to the period from approximately 1993-2003. Virtual
chat is available from several sources such as Traveler (http://www.digitalspace.com/traveler/),
The Palace (http://www.thepalace.com/)
Active Worlds (http://www.activeworlds.com)
Thread – A line of
conversation
Thread-framing - Thread-framing is a phenomena in chatrooms, where a
topic beginning and ending are marked. In a chatroom these framed pieces of conversation are not necessarily sequential. They twist
around, stop and start, and several may occur at one time in a seemingly
chaotic fashion. Framing gives a starting and finish point to a thread.
Turn-taking
A pragmatic conversation principle usually
(but, heaven knows, not always) respected in which each participant in a
dialogue takes turns at speaking. The rules that govern turn-taking are rather
complex and involve subtle factors like intonation, contour and pausing as well
as the more straightforward invitations from the other person to speak, such as
questions and partial lead-ins. The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology, © Arthur
S. Reber 1995
Virtual-Mindfield *TN Creations of one’s world view online.