Conversational Analysis of Chatroom ‘talk’

PhD thesis - Terrell Neuage at the University of South Australia this page updated 16 March 2001: Adelaide

Ø This page is from CASE STUDY ONE Hurricane Floyd

Ø MAPPINGS for this thesis

Ø literature review for this thesis

Ø bibliography for this thesis

Ø previous page - Why examine chatroom dialogue?

Is electronic talk comparable to verbal talk?

Needs a detailed general discussion first...

Chatrooms have limitations that conversations in which physical speech is produced do not have. Talk in chatroom is limited to short phrases. Rarely will there be more than several words written at a time by a 'speaker'. Looking at a sampling of a dozen Chatrooms and hundreds of entrances I found that there was an average of 7.08 words per turn. Within that sampling 25 percent of words consisted of two letters, and 20 percent consisted of three letter words. Eighty-three percent of words used in chatroom conversations were five letters or less. how does this compare with “live/natural” communicaiton? The way we will communicate will change and is now changing. As we are faced with more choices and more to do all the time communication will become more concise or the speaker will be left behind.

.How this will affect the future way people speak with one another can only be hinted at. For example, will people only ‘speak’ with those people who understand what they are saying. Instead of explaining meaning, will conversation only continue with those who grasp what is being said immediately? In the rapid pace of chatroom ‘talk’ this seems to be the case. There is also the danger that people can become poor communicators. Chatrooms do not demand proper grammar as a conversation in person would. Spelling, because of the rapid rate of scrolling text is an unimportant aspect. Abbreviations become important. It is much quicker to write BTW than to write by the way. All chatroom talk could be considered informal speech. Will we stop using prepositions? In a Chatroom one may say, "he'll hit sixty in cincy...maybe sixty five" (turn #85 in baseball chat). When can such a statement be made? Without knowing the context there is no meaning. As I will explore later in this thesis, words do produce meaning, however the difficulty in Chatrooms is not only finding meaning within any 'talk' but to have others understand or follow what we mean.

What talk is there when the cues are deleted? Who holds the power? Can conversation even exist without knowing anything about the participants? My research says yes! People are fully able to communicate as long as there are structures to communicate within. These structures have a linguistic base, wyhich “stand in” for our categorisation of speakers. all of these need discussion in more detail

Chatrooms do provide structure. There is an architectural setting, an existing space. There are rooms, towers, Plato's cave, cathedrals, cities, states, nations, worlds and universes. The fact that the space does not have a physical locale is irrelevant. One moment we can have a philosophical discussion with characters as real as the gods were to the Greeks, another time we discuss tofu preparation, how to blow up an air plane, assassinate the pope, or love our neighbor. We can laugh, talk, complain, and argue in any setting at any point in time or space we want.  Need to read Lefelore/Soja on “ #### “ - but why is this important to your study?

Two ways which dialogue can be studied are through grammar and discourse (Eggins & Slade; 1997: p.178). Grammar provides the “nodes” of speech, the constituent mood structures of conversational clauses. In physical interacting conversation, linguistics provides a system of rights and privileges of social roles in culture. Words very much define the speaker. However, in electronic 'talk' words do not define social roles as much as they define ideas. how do you know? This is very much the core of your thesis!! you need BOURDIEU here!

· http://www.concentric.net/~Jhonnold/writing/Bourdieu.shtml Bourdieu and the status of the post-modern self

· http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/bourdieu/ the Bourdieu Forum

· http://www.massey.ac.nz/~NZSRDA/bourdieu/pierre.htm Pierre Bourdieu Bibliography

· http://www.itcs.com/elawley/bourdieu.html The Sociology of Culture in Computer-Mediated Communication: An Initial Exploration

· http://www.utu.fi/erill/RUSE/blink.html Links to sites related to Pierre Bourdieu

· http://www.api-network.com/mc/reviews/words/bourdieu-c.html In Search of - Philosopher: