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. 29-Nov-01
Appendixes
for Thesis on Chat Discourse by Terrell Neuage
Conversational Analysis of Chat Room Talk PHD thesis by Dr. Terrell Neuage University of South Australia National Library of Australia. THESIShome ~ Abstract.html/pdf ~ Glossary.html/pdf ~ Introduction.html/pdf ~ methodology.html/pdf ~ literature review.html/pdf ~ Case
Study 1.html/pdf~ 2.html/pdf~ 3.html/pdf~ 4.html/pdf~ 5.html/pdf~ 6.html/pdf~ 7.html/pdf~ discussion.html/pdf ~ conclusion.html~ postscipt.html/pdf~ O*D*A*M.html/pdf~ Bibliography.html/pdf~ 911~ thesis-complete.htm/~ Terrell Neuage Home
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Britney Spears chat room is case study five of a research study into chat room conversation by Terrell Neuage for a PhD at the University of South Australia
Thursday, 29 November 2001
In this case study I am hoping to
create an integration of semantics and pragmatics. To establish an analysis of
dialogue I need to have both semantic representation, (content of what the
different ‘speakers’ in a chat room are saying), and pragmatic information,
(the kinds of speech acts they are performing, such as; are they asking a
question, answering a question that has just been asked, or just announcing
their presence? The list of different pragmatics I use are available in the
‘data’ section - http://se.unisa.edu.au/phd/chat/britchat.htm
- section) In this case study I
hope to identify a dialogue system which will identify both semantic and
pragmatic information.
notes re.
The
semiotic
triangle
Word as
Sign, Language as Code:
Pragmatic accounts of co-reference (Prince, Levinson,
Clark): Referring as a cooperative/collaborative process
When we examine the turn-taking
considerations of face-to-face conversations in order to hear a message correctly,
one person must be listening and not talking or being active in a non-listening
manner, because the message itself is evanescent. of a chat room Also since it
is relatively easy to notice the completion of utterances, turn taking can be
easily regulated. The situation is different for our media, however. First of
all, the messages will persist (in the MOO until they scroll off the screen,
and in the whiteboard until explicitly deleted). Also, since the receiver can
only notice the message when it has been completed, it is quite possible that
both partners are composing messages at the same time. Thus we often observe
crossed-topics in turn-taking in which an utterance ignores the previous
utterance and, it relates back to a previous one.
According to Noam Chomsky, Galileo
regarded the discovery of a means to communicate our "most secret thoughts
to any other person with 24 little characters" as the greatest of all
human inventions.[i] Whether our
communication with one another will change as a result of chat rooms is a
possibility. Using emoticons to
represent what could take a sentence to explain is our latest communicative
invention. Instead of saying ‘I didn’t
really mean what I said I was laughing or at least smiling when I wrote what I
just wrote’ once could simply put :) which on most computers becomes J to say it
short and simply.
Replacement repairers switch the direction of upcoming talk through substitution of part of a prior talk – the turn-taking utterance before.
Shifting in the intention of the ‘speaker’ - compare this to the meta-linguistic phrases
found if they exist in the chat
Focus on properties of the code (on ‘langue’) as well as
speech used in speech situation.
Ethno-methodology focuses attention on the common sense
procedures used by individuals to construct social worlds. ‘Ethno’ is the Greek
word for a people or nation and its usage in our study will be the methodology
used for the linguistic behaviour patterns of chat room participators.
Finding recurrent patterns of morphemes – independent of
either their meaning or their relationships to non-textual interactions –
The illocutionary force of an utterance is often signalled
by particles, conjunctions, and interjections.
A performative verb[ii]
specifies all of the illocutionary force whereas particles and conjunctions
usually specify only some parts of the illocutionary force.
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.
[i]Language and Mind: Current Thoughts on Ancient Problems (Part 1) Noam Chomsky: sited online: http://www.utexas.edu/courses/lin380l/nc-pap1.htm 25/10/2001
NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CASE STUDY FIVE
[ii] 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
BIBLIOGRAPHY
James, William. Pragmatism: A new Name for some Old Ways of Thinking. New
Yhork: Longmans, Green, 1907. P. 45.
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