Conversational Analysis of Chatroom ‘talk’ in Hurricane Floyd
chatroom updated
19/07/01 14:17 PM (Murray River Houseboat)
Ř
previous
page – methodology http://se.unisa.edu.au/phd/one/method.htm
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notes and references for ‘analysis’ section
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Note:1 This document reflects the opinions and
ideas of Terrell Neuage who
is solely responsible for its content. The contents of this document are
copyrighted to Terrell Neuage (copyright (©) 2001). Please recognise that
this document is only a draft of a PhD
thesis at the University of South
Australia to be published at a later date. Note:2 Chatrooms
in this thesis refer to text based chatrooms and not electronic Internet
based chatrooms which can be used with voice and videocams. |
ANALYSIS OF STORM -
A. Using Reception
and Reader-Response Theory
B.
Reading Theory <o:p></o:p>
I
will begin my analysis of Storm using ‘Reception and Reader-Response
Theory’.
Comprehension
and dialogue in ‘Storm’ will be viewed from a holistic form, rather than as a
series of fragmented components. To communicate through a chatroom has
different requirements than face-to-face dialogue, and by looking at several of
how these requirements work together I hope to show how meaning is established
in ‘Storm’.
Before
we isolate this particular chatroom we will show how we need certain
requirements to begin with any chatroom discussion.
Firstly,
readers of chatroom ‘talk’ need a means in which to communicate such as a
computer, or other transmission device. Currently mobile phones, Palm
Computers, Laptop computers as well as desktop computers are used in chatroom
dialogue. Communicating via chatroom is available in many airports worldwide,
as well as on planes, trains, buses and ships and within shopping centres,
restaurants. The growing availability will mean that eventually it will be as
common to chat via computers and easy as making a phone call. The difference being that more than one
person is engaged in conversation in a chatroom situation.
Secondly, one must have different skills and
strategies in order to participate in chat talk than one would need in
face-to-face conversation. As well
there are certain requirements to accomplish face-to-face conversation that is
not needed to converse electronically.
The overt processes involved in language - the
four skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking change their focus in a
chatroom. Electronic conversation is carried on most successfully through a
process-task approach. The emphasis is put on reading and writing and the
processes of listening and speaking are done through text on the screen we are
reading from. Quite simply put, a person who cannot read nor type cannot
participate in a text-based chatroom.
Each
of the process-tasks of reading and writing are composed of component
sub-skills. Grabe(1992:50-3) lists six in particular in the case of reading.
These are: 1) the perceptual automatic recognition skill; 2) linguistic skills;
3) knowledge and skills of discourse structure and organisation; 4)knowledge of
the world; 5) synthetic and critical evaluation skills; 6)metalinguistic
knowledge and skills.[1] Below I will use each of these sub-skills in
the anaylsis of ‘Storm’.
One
of the features of ‘Reception and Reader-Response Theory’ as I am using it in
chatrooms is that it shows how a reader brings certain assumptions to a text
based on the interpretive strategies he/she has brought to a particular
community. The community here is the Internet community and every chatroom is
an individual textual based social community. Interpretation of the text will
depend on the perceived purpose or dynamics or sphere of the chatroom community.
The ‘talk’ within a community can at times be ‘policed’ by others within the
chatroom. For example, a ‘speaker’
maybe harassed into either conforming or leaving a chatroom if their talk is
inappropriate for that room.
A
mild form of this is present in the lines I will be working with in this first
section. The ‘speaker’, <SWMPTHNG>
in turns 105 and 115 is
starting a process of getting the chatroom interested in talking about Mexican
roofers. The ‘speaker’ <Zardiw> in turn 123 makes a short sharp comment to let
<SWMPTHNG> know that his/her line of dialogue are not necessarily
appropriate. Of course this is a very
mild rebuttal compared to when several participators push a person out. An example of this can be found in a
chatroom where a voice appearing as a rude-male has entered and is harassing a
room of females who do not want the male impute. Then the voices become more
harsh and attack the ‘intruder’ until he leaves.
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105 <SWMPTHNG>
YOU AINT TALKING ABOUT MEX
ROOFERS ARE YOU? |
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115 <SWMPTHNG>
i SAW A BUS LOAD HEADING ACROSS
THE GEORGIA STATE LINE THIS MORNING |
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123 <Zardiw> smptthing................go
back to your SWAMP |
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This
particular group of words will be isolated later for other analysis.
Reading Theory
The
first task in understanding meaning within a chatroom is through the reading of
the text. My first section of this analysis will focus on Reading Theory. Reading Theory is important for the
interpretation of the text. The next
task is to create a response to the reading of the text through typing a text.[2]
The
following lines 97 – 131 have been isolated from the STORM chatroom. In table 1 below is the turn-taking as it
appears before looking for a thread of conversation to interpret.
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TABLE 1 |
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In
table 2 the turn-takings which are on the particular topic of Mexican roofers
has been isolated.
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TABLE 2 |
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READING THEORY APPLIED TO CHATROOM ‘TALK’ OF storm
1)
the
perceptual automatic recognition skill
2)
linguistic
skills
3)
knowledge
and skills of discourse structure and organization
4)
knowledge
of the world
5)
synthetic
and critical evaluation skills
6)
metalinguistic
knowledge and skills
Several
theorists and writer I will borrow from in my exploration of chatroom talk are
Umberto Eco (1979, 1986, 1995), J. Kristeva (1980) and Michael Payne (1993).
Kristeva
(1980, 1986) builds on the works of Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida and Bakhtin
to examine the speaking subject and the signifying structures of social practice.
It is Kristeva's work on intertextuality which is useful in this study of
Internet "conversations".
Kristeva
(1986) charts a three-dimensional textual space whose three "coordinates
of dialogue' are:
1. the writing subject
2. the addressee (or ideal reader)
3. exterior texts
Kristeva
describes this textual space as intersecting planes which have horizontal and
vertical axes.
"The
word's status is thus defined horizontally (the word in the text belongs to
both writing subject and addressee) as well as vertically (the word in the text
is orientated towards an anterior or synchronic literary corpus) ... each word
(text) is an intersection of words (texts) where at least one other word (text)
can be read ... any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is
the absorption and transformation of another." (p. 37)
Essentially,
every text is informed by other texts which the reader has read, and the
reader's own cultural context. The simplest articulation of intertextuality can
be seen in the footnotes that indicate source materials to which a given text
is alluding, or which are known to have influenced the author. A constructive
hypertext can make this notion of intertextuality an externally accessible
"mosaic" of multiple texts, placing the internal connections about
which Kristeva theorizes into a visible forum which can be expanded by each
subsequent reader.
My own
work seeks to extend Kristeva's modelling of the layering of text, into the
ever more complex and shifting systems of talk-texts. By combining her highly
theorised models with the analysis of conversation and discourse linguistics, I
hope to establish both a theory-rich, and methodologically complex, means of
analysing contemporary electronic talk-culture.
A
SEMIOTIC MODEL FOR NATURAL LANGUAGE
Eco (1995) states that natural language (or any other semiotic system) is articulated at two levels: the expression-plane and the content-plane. On the expression-plane, 'natural languages consists of a lexicon, a phonology and a syntax'. The concepts which we can express are on the content-plane (Eco, 1995 pp 20-24). Eco further subdivides these two planes into 'Form, Substance and Continuum'. How we think and express ourselves, according to Eco, is dependent on our 'content-form'.
[1] . Thread – A line of conversation
