http://se.unisa.edu.au/phd/thesis/intro.html Tuesday, April 09, 2002 10:25 AM
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION TO CHATROOM“TALK”
1. 1
Problems of researching online
Are
Chatrooms Public or Private?
How is turn-taking negotiated within chatrooms?
1.3 Personal interest in researching online conversation
1.4 Purpose of examining online conversation
1.6 Theories of discourse analysis
1.7 Is electronic talk comparable to verbal talk?
1.8 The evolution of language from
early utterances to chatroom dialogue
1.9 SOCIOLOGICAL and psychological
perspectives
1. 0 Introduction
I am interested in the on-line interactive environment, its departure from the culture of a print milieu and changes affecting both the reader and the writer in that environment. As on-line chatrooms grow in popularity and importance and as the possibilities of these applications increase, so too, will the analysing of these environments, both in depth and range. This study offers ways of conducting such analysis.
This thesis proposes that chatrooms are a new genre of writing and I will develop a theory to support this. The theory I will develop in this thesis is an ‘Online Discourse Analysis Theory’ (nODAT, Neuage Online Discourse Analysis Theory). Chatroom discourse is a new genre of literature with several features which differentiates it from other writings. Firstly, there is the feature of the fleeting text. What is written is seldom ‘captured’ for future reference. Whereas other literary genres such as thesis, fantasy, poetry, emails and letter writing are preserved, discussed and subjects of future writings, chat dialogue is seemingly chaotic and disappears when the chatroom is left or the computer is turned off.
Some chatrooms preserve chat logs of what is said in the chatroom which can be viewed at a later time. However, most chat rooms are written in java script and appear in an applet[1] which disappears once the chat room is logged off of. Chatters know that their text may be lost forever, yet ideas, prose, experiments of identity and statements are written that in other writing genres would be saved and elaborated on.
Secondly, features peculiar to online communication, especially emoticons, give chat writing a different quality than any other writing format. Abbreviations and miss spelt words are common to all online writing, i.e. email, discussion groups and SMS and are accepted as proper online discourse protocol. In chatrooms the combination of emoticons, spellings and abbreviations create a writing language that makes chat writing a unique genre.
I will discuss the theory I am developing to analyse this genre, borrowing from several discourse analysis theories; Reading Theory, Speech Act Theory, Discourse Analysis, Semiotics and various linguistic schools of thought, to create this theory.
This thesis is the final phase of research into new
discourse genres. The first was an Honours Degree (Deakin University, 1995), 'Graffiti
as Text' How youth communicate with one another through street art and the
second phase into new communicative genres was for my Masters thesis (Deakin,
1997) 'How the Internet changes literature'.
1. 1 Problems of researching online
There are many forms of electronic communication to choose
from. Identifying the area of electronic communication to analyse, was the
first task in this study. A continuing array of new communication forms are
being developed. How people 'talk' has gone through many transformations, from
hieroglyphics to smoke signals to beating drums to electronic and now to
digital systems to share meaning. One of the first forms of non face-to-face
'turn-taking' communication available to most people in Western Society on a
large scale, was the telephone. Now non face-to-face 'turn-taking'
communication is being used on a worldwide scale with the growing use of
computers. Currently, as discussed below, there are many technologies available
to carry on online discourse, such as telephones, mobile phones with SMS text
messages, hand-held computers, pagers, as well as computers in all sizes.
Research online is different from face-to-face research. There are the obvious differences:the researchers not always able to verify who the writer of the text is, determining whether the writing has any validity to it and not knowing if what is read is a cut-and-paste of several others’ writings. There is the problem of intent regarding why has the ‘speaker’ has chosen to begin the turn-taking process in a specific chat area. For investigator and participants, there is often no knowledge of the original, the beginning, the source or even the end of the discourse, as a chat room could be in operation continually.
Let us first examine one of the problems of not doing face-to-face research, namely, that of intent. Writing has a long history of questionable intent. Research based on unknown writing is, at the best of times, experimental. For example, who wrote the Biblical line “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God” (John1:1)? If we read it NEW SITE = JULY 2014 - http://neuage.us/2014/July/ - Today, how many generations of “cut-and-paste” are involved. What were the original words? What did it mean? Whose translation are we quoting? We could say that we are talking about sound. Can we ask ‘what was the word that was in the beginning?’ Was the word spoken in Yiddish, American, French or were emoticons and abbreviations used as is common in chatrooms?
When we do not know the source and all we have is our perspective on something, then we are left with our translation of someone else’s meaning and translation of an earlier writing. In other words we don’t have a clue as to the intent of the originator. Online research can have this same problem. How do we do research online? Obviously we do it online. When the research is on chatrooms the only way to do this research is online. Just as one who is researching a radio talk show would need to record the conversation from the radio, one analysing chatrooms would need to save the data to a file for research. Several problems with doing this have been addressed.
Another problem is the enormity of the task in analysing chatroom ‘talk’. Where do we go from here? I have narrowed this topic to a very few chat rooms; seven case studies. The problem with a study of anything involving technology is the brevity of its relevance. Every day I get emails from other researchers beginning to write theses or papers in this field. Online conversation has become the trendy subject to investigate.
This study seeks to enhance understanding of communications within electronic textual sites. There have been several researchers who have begun discussing the Internet and communications within electronic sites (see Rheingold, 1985, 1991, 1994; Poster, 1988, 1990; Mattelart, 1996; Woolley, 1992; Eco, 1987; Gibson, 1986; Turkle, 1995) as well as an increasing number of Internet based academics, such as Chandler, Landow and Cicognani. The French philosopher and social critic (hyperrealistic reporter), Jean Baudrillard is continuing his work in cyberspace, and is currently listed as an editor in CTHEORY[2], a weekly international journal of cultural theory, technology and philosophy. I come back to these researchers in the literature review chapter (http://se.unisa.edu.au/lit.html) for this thesis as well as discuss these people in the individual Case Studies (http://se.unisa.edu.au/phd/studies.htm).
When I started this research in 1997 I was able to gather very little material from anyone else doing an analysis of chatroom talk. There were several who had written theses on the sociological and psychological aspects of online behaviours, but I was unable to find many researchers who were examining chat-communication from discourse linguistic theories, such as Conversational Analysis and Speech Act Theory. The most I could find on Internet dialogue at the start of my research was from the semiotic researchers Daniel Chandler and George Paul Landow[3] who have published their research on hypertext at Brown University. Landow’s research is of limited value for analysis of chatroom “talk”. However, his research of hypertext has similarity to my research as hypertext is one of the modes for moving around in cyberspace.
Therefore, due to limited researchers in the field I
studied, I had the sense of ‘flying solo’ at the beginning of my research. On the positive side, this has given me the
opportunity to break new ground; “blaze a new trail” in online conversational
research. In recent years (2000 plus)
there has been much interest in online communication from a linguistic
theoretical view, as can be seen in my rapidly growing collection of resources
on online communication studies (see, http://se.unisa.edu.au/vc~essays.html).
Therefore, I have been able to share in exciting new developments in this area
of knowledge and research which will undoubtedly have profound implications on
our world because of the growing use of the Internet.
An ethnographical approach provides a method for learning
about, and learning how to talk about, that elusive process we call
culture. In this study I am discussing what is
loosely referred to as an Internet culture.
An understanding of an Internet Culture is extended by the work of this
thesis. One purpose of my work was to find the most appropriate method to examine
the chatroom milieu. Most simply put it is the participant-observer in
chatroom, the writer-reader of the text who influences and is influenced by the
chat milieu. Essentially, I am more
interested in the marks on the screen as they appear and how meaning is derived
from the often rapidly passing text on a screen, whether it is a computer or a
device as small as the screen on a mobile telephone. It is this form of
communication through writing online which I believe will affect the future of
communication.
Are
Chatrooms Public or Private?
One of the first issues that must be addressed by the researcher who examines chatrooms is the one of whether chatrooms are public or private. There is the question of whether communication on the World Wide Web, especially exchanges within chatrooms, are public or private (Cybersociology)[4]. All exchanges within chatrooms, accessible to the public, are public, unless there is a notice saying all the dialogue is copy written. A chatroom where the participant has to log on as part of an organisation such as a university, company or government web site, could be private and confidential. The behaviour of the participants could be different than in a chatroom that is open to the public and participants make up usernames which do not reflect or identify them. This issue of public access versus privacy is one I had to consider in regards to ensuring the methods I chose for my study complied with the principles of ethical research.
My proposal to the Ethics Committee for this research was that I would set up an online journal (ezine) for the University of South Australia and within that there would be a chatroom from which I would take the chat logs for this thesis[5]. However, no one visited the chatroom I set up during the two years of its existence. I therefore collected my data from other chatrooms that I visited. I ‘lurked’ in the chatrooms, making one entry at the beginning of each chat that I saved.
‘I am saving this dialogue, as long as I am in this room, to use in research on Internet Chat for a postgraduate degree. If anyone is opposed to me saving their conversation say so and I will not save the chat’.
In the chatrooms for the six Case Studies only one time was there any comment on what I had said, that I know of and that became a discussion into why I was doing what I was doing[6]. In two chatrooms there were lines following what I said which may have been addressed to me, but as nothing was said directly in regards to my research I do not know if anyone cared that I was observing the dialogue.
From Case Study Five, See Appendix 5, table 4.
|
<Neuage> ‘‘I am
saving this dialogue, as long as I am in this room, to use in research on
Internet Chat for a postgraduate degree. If anyone is opposed to me saving
their conversation say so and I will not save the chat’. |
|
1. / /\ 1a. <SluGGiE->
lol |
|
2. / /\ 2a. <Mickey_P_IsMine>
LoL |
Whether, <SluGGiE-> and <Mickey_P_IsMine> were responding to me or something said before I entered the chatroom I do not know. The abbreviation ‘lol’ has several interpretations in English speaking chatrooms, for example,
|
LOL |
Laughing Out Loud -or- Lots of Luck
(or Love) |
I have an Internet page with thousands of emoticons and
abbreviations at, http://se.unisa.edu.au/phd/storm/abreviations.htm.
There are also various ‘types’ of chatrooms. Chatrooms can also be divided into either moderated or non-moderated. Moderated chatrooms can be subdivided into chatrooms where people submit questions and answers are provided. This is most common in cases where people who are publicly known are in the chatroom, i.e. sport stars, politicians, and experts on a particular topic. Moderated chatrooms are ‘controlled’ by a particular person who controls the movement, the turn-taking, of chat. For example, if there is inappropriate language which is considered offensive to others in the chatroom, the participant infringing can be prevented from continuing in the chatroom. Or if the ‘speaker’ wishes to dialogue on a topic that is not the assigned topic at that time, the moderator can block the ‘speaker’s’ messages from appearing in the chatroom. The chatrooms investigated were the open, non-moderated chatrooms as these provided the opportunity to analyse flowing chat interaction. A question that I explored throughout this thesis was “Are these chatrooms the closest to casual conversation?” And another question addressed was whether we are all "eavesdropping" and taking a voyeuristic look into other’s conversations? Governments, especially the United States Government since September 11, 2001, has developed sensitive listening and recording devices to track all online communication[7]. The question of whether people listen to other’s conversations in chatroom has been discussed by others in sociological and psychological studies, as the Internet is so fluid, listing onsite essays on this topic is futile as they may not be online at a future time. As far as articles in journals or studies cited in books on this, I have not found any as of February 2002. The term ‘lurker’ or ‘lurking’ describes one who chooses just to read the exchanges, instead of joining in the chat by posting their own messages. Most people will ‘lurk’ in a chat room at least until they feel comfortable about joining in.
The emergence of the term 'chat' to describe electronic communication text forms is one indication of its difference from existing talk modes. There is the perception that online conversation is not serious and therefore may not be worthy of an intensive linguistic study. The term, 'chat', however captures only some of the dimensions of this emergent communication form. As online communication changes almost daily with new technologies have only commented in passing, on new services. What is new NEW SITE = JULY 2014 - http://neuage.us/2014/July/ - Today may be commonplace in a few months. For example this week, Wednesday, 13 February 2002, British wireless carrier, Genie, announced a new type of messaging service that lets mobile phone users send and receive messages containing a mix of different media, including pictures and sound recordings. Most mobile phones currently (February 2002) only send and receive e-mails, instant messages, or short messages but Genie’s multimedia messaging, or MMS, will be able to send messages exchanged between wireless devices which will include pictures, music, images, graphics and ring tones. With the changing technologies of chat, conversational analysis of online chat offers much opportunity for future research.
Chatrooms differ from TV or radio “chat shows” in several
ways. Apart from the obvious physical
voice giving a ‘hue’ to the speaker, the amount of dialogue which can be
conveyed at any time in a chatroom is limited, primarily due to the amount of
words which can be put in a chatroom at one time. This ‘speaking’ within a chatroom can be very much limited to the
ability of the participant to be able to type quickly. A person able to type
120 words per minute will be able to convey much more in a short time than a
person typing with one finger is able to perform.[8] I have found in my research that in a
chatroom, from examining many thousands of lines of chat, that an average of
five words is taken for each turn.
However, when conversation is ‘pieced’ together from ‘speakers’ a
coherent conversation can be found. In
other electronic chat modes such as radio and television talk shows, more words
can be ‘spoken’ by each individual.
Another major difference in most chatrooms where there is no moderator,
is the lack of focus on a topic[9].
In radio and television chats there is a moderator who keeps control. It is,
however, up to the other participants in the chatroom, if they wish to, to
control the topics.
Another behaviour that would be difficult, if not impossible, to know whether it is being done online is that a chatroom participant could easily insert pre-typed text. However, we can assume that if the same chunks of text repeatedly appeared that it was done through cutting and pasting the text. At a more functional level a particular phrase or word can be added to an ongoing conversation with the push of the copy (usually control-C) key on a computer. An example of this is in Case Study 3, the ‘Talk City’ chat of February 16, 2000. In this dialogue the ‘speaker’ “B_witched_2002-guest” copies in ‘OHI’ 37 times in 75 turns of ‘speech’. One-half of the conversation is computer generated which I have examined in chapter 8 in my analysis of this particular chat.
1.1 Research Questions
My approach to examining online chatrooms began with the posing of the following research questions[10] as a starting point toward analyzing a culture of electronic-talk:
1. Is turn taking negotiated within chatrooms?
2. With the taking away of many identifying cues of participants (gender, nationality, age etc.) are issues of sexism and political correctness, as prevalent, as in face-to-face talk?
3. How is electronic chat reflective of current social discourse?
4. Is meaning contractible within Chatrooms?
5. Will chatrooms (as part of an online discourse) create a universal language?
How is turn-taking negotiated within chatrooms?
How
is turn-taking negotiated within chatrooms? What does turn - taking
reveal? In face-to-face conversations,
people can speak simultaneously (talk over one another) but in chatrooms, only
one voice is ‘heard’ (seen) at a time because of the scrolling effect of the
computer screen. In a chatroom where there are more than two ‘voices’, there
are two primary functions of turn-taking that need addressing. Firstly, each participant needs to know when
it is appropriate to ‘speak’ if he or she wishes to be heard and responded to.
This is further broken down into two more functions of turn taking. The
‘speaker’ is either addressing one particular participant in the chatroom or
the ‘speaker’ is addressing the group.
For example, by referring to something someone said in particular e.g.
‘how is 3+3 equal to 11’ or ‘speaking’ to the group, e.g. ‘whats the Mets/Bull
score?’ the ‘speaker’ is identifying where he or she is placing ‘talk’. Secondly, in casual conversation between
people ‘there has to be a way of determining who the next speaker is to be’ Eggins & Slade p. 25). In moderated
chatrooms, however, there is no protocol which indicates who the next speaker
will be. The next speaker is who ever
hits their return key next. This turn taking is significant in online chat and
is be analysed and discussed throughout this work.
Cues
2) With the taking away of many identifying cues of participants (gender, nationality, social and economical standing, age etc) are issues of gender, nationality, social and economical standing, age as prevalent as in face-to-face talk? Does the chatroom milieu provide a pure communication space, where only words have meaning, and the author’s significance lies only in the words produced.
Current social discourse
3) How is electronic
chat reflective of current social discourse? I examine whether eChat and
in-person conversation appear to break down barriers between people of gender,
nationality, social and economical standing, and age. Some studies have shown that barriers still exist and are created
by the authors themselves. For example,
it was found in one particular study that, female users who wrote themselves into a virtual community, did so, in
an imagined social space very much defined by their experiences in a
patriarchal culture. As a result their
discourse patterns were ‘gendered’; meaning that the female users were less
participatory than their male counter parts, and often silent. (Dietrich, 1997:
p. 181)
Meaning
4) Is meaning constructible within
chatrooms? In this study I examine whether eChat is a vehicle to assimilate and
exchange information or are the words on the screen too random to produce a
decipherable message? It seems to me, that meaning is not always a primary
means for chatting online. There are times when it appears that people use
chatrooms for entertainment and not to discuss, learn, explore or any other
communicational resultant technique.
Universal language?
5) Will chatrooms (as part of an online discourse) create a universal language?
1.2 Research Hypothesis
My hypothesis for this research is that chatrooms are a new genre of writing and communicating style. Firstly, chatroom talk can be added to other genres of writing such as poetry, novels, letter writing and emails to name only a few writing genres as a form of writing style which can be analyzed from a linguistic view, and this thesis will prove the argument that chat is a writing genre. Secondly, chatrooms are a new (since about 1992) form of communicating style in which people are able to carry on conversation. At the start of this thesis I have formulated several other hypothesis as a framework of investigation of online communication. These hypothesis can not be answered using quantitative analysis, as there is not a way at this time to know who is in what chatroom. I discuss the problems associated with attempting to answer these hypothesis in the Methodology Chapter and suggest areas for further research in the conclusion of this thesis.
Different ‘textual self’
That people create a different ‘textual self’ for each chat room environment they are in.
Change
That conversation within Chatrooms will change how we come to know others.
Adaptations
That observational study of chatroom conversation can capture some of the adaptations of conversational behaviours
How and why
That this work gives us a better understanding of how, and why, Chatrooms are an important area in which to create a new conversational research theory.
Natural conversation
That 'chat' does not differs from natural conversation
1) That people create a different 'textual self' for each electronic environment they are in, and that we should not continue to regard all electronic textual practices as equal. (A question arises whether the speaker makes the chatroom or does the chatroom create the speaker?) Just as in real life, talk parallels an environment. For example, one speaks differently at a church supper than at a brothel) I am referring to different chatroom environments and not the wide range of electronic dialogue tools available such as eMail, eGroups, newsgroups and one-on-one eChat areas such as Instant Messenger or ICQ. Some chatrooms invite participators to play a role such as in ‘Friendly Bondage Chat’[11].
‘A person may claim to be a different gender, or might use two identities at the same time in one chatroom....It’s up to each individual to decide how they wish to represent themselves...’ http://www.bedroombondage.com
Participators in a religious chatroom may choose to ‘speak’ differently than they would in the bondage chatroom or in a baseball chatroom or an academic or policy-making chatroom or a crisis care chatroom. These are the various ‘textual selves’ I am exploring. In my research I use a variety of chatrooms to analyse how text is written.
2) That conversation within chatrooms, without all the cues of previous forms of conversation (physical or phone meeting and dialogues) will change how we come to know others and new cues based on written conversation may become as important as the physical ones which we rely on now.
3) That observational study of chatroom conversation can capture some of the adaptations of conversational behaviours from the way people identify themselves (log-on or screen names) and how they 'talk' As this is a grey area from an ethics point of view, the identifying of the user, I may not be able to explore this as fully as I would want to.
4) That this work
gives us a better understanding of how, and why, chatrooms are an important
area in which to create a new conversational research theory. This new eclectic
approach to ‘chat’ ‘borrows’ from existing theories of linguistics and Computer
Mediated Communications as outlined in the beginning of the Literature Review.
5) That 'chat' does not differ from natural conversation
1.3 Personal interest in researching online conversation
This thesis is a study of the use of text-based
communication as it is used in chatroom in the period between 1998 and early
2002, the life of this thesis. My interest in electronic communication is first
and for most an interest in communication. How do people exchange, relate and
create meaning? Having ‘done the ‘60s’
in the United States of America, with all its ‘bits and pieces’ I came in
contact with others who were interested in a global mindset. I lived in Greenwich Village in New York
City in the mid-1960s. Listening to Bob
Dylan, Judy Collins, Joan Biaz, Alan Ginsberg (I read my own poetry with him at
St. Marks Place Church on East 9th Street) and being part of the
great wave of protesters (we marched on Washington DC to stop the Viet Nam War,
to stop segregation, to give women more rights. I marched for so many things I
forgot what we were marching for at times) and rebelling with so many others of
the time against the ‘way-it-was’ I had a conviction, as did so many others of
the time that there was a better way.
Being young and idealistic I followed the trek of those who were seeking
change to San Francisco in 1967. There
was the summer of love and the world had changed, or at least to us it had.
In 1969 I found myself in Hawaii and before long had joined a new age cult, the Holy Order of Mans. This Order was an extension of my beliefs and searching that there was a better way. It was about communication, integration of a world mind (an ‘Over-Soul’) which connected the parts to make a whole. But the world did not live up to my idealistic sense that we are all one that we could all communicate that we could exchange ideas and that our differences were just part of what made us all humans.
At the same time some of us were thinking there was a whole, there were others who saw the parts as being subservient to the whole – they became the multinational companies: Nike, McDonalds, Woolworth and the world became a market place for western products. Globalisation now threatens the planet with a homogenized worldview. A post-colonial Christian American driven capitalistic system has reduced the individual to a consumer, a market of one. We have groups attempting to establish a one-world-religion (which would obliterate the individual cultural ways of viewing creation), one-world medias, one-world sports lines of clothing, we have the Euro dollar which could eventually become a world dollar and English (the United States corrupted version) becoming the language of choice (though Spanish is coming on strong). We have one ‘Super Power’, policing the world and using its own moral codes and values systems, which are multinational company driven, as a basis to attack other countries and cultures.
Out of this mixture of 1960’s idealism, multinational marketing and globalisation came a need to communicate with every one. The paradigm became ‘we are the world’. With the growth of the personal computer, the Internet and then chatrooms, my once idealistic pursuit of communication with different mindsets and various cultures became a reality. After a study of 35-years of astrology, metaphysics, literature, art, philosophy and many other aspects of life on earth I felt as if I had found what I had always been looking for; a way of turn taking in conversation where there was not a dominance of culture, gender, philosophy, nationality or age.
There are many researchers who are or have investigated why people use chatroom. I am interested in what happens on a linguistic level in chatroom. It is through linguistics, the use of words that we establish and create and interpret meaning. ‘We seem as a species to be driven by a desire to make meanings: above all, we are surely Homo significans - meaning-makers…’ (Chandler 2001). I am not concerned with gender, age, nationality, and race or beliefs of people in a turn-taking situation. These are topics for future research. It is what is said that conveys the message. In a chatroom, the words of the person are paramount. What the ‘speaker’ looks like or is wearing or what day of the week it is does not matter.
1.4 Purpose of examining online conversation
Conversation is very much about negotiation. Negotiation in conversation is based on turn taking. This research on electronic communication is being undertaken at the same time as chatrooms are being used more. It is during a time of change in chatroom use and rapidly evolving software. The nature of chatrooms will undoubtedly change in the future from the way it is discussed in this thesis.
I am interested in the online interactive environment, its departure from the culture of a print milieu and the effect of these changes on both the reader and the writer. As online chatroom and discussion groups grow in popularity and importance and as virtual conversations increase, so too will the analysis of these environments, both in depth and in range.
This thesis proposes that through the interactive forms of the day society changes. The more accessible communication becomes to everyone, the quicker ideas can be exchanged and meaning developed and shared. Through the exchange of ideas and information, we become better informed and we are able to make decisions, which affect not only ourselves but also the world in which we live. It is within an analysis of how ‘chatrooms’, as the latest form of communication ‘works’ or does not ‘work’ that I explore electronic conversation as a force of social change.
All areas of communication are worth examining. Communication primarily requires speaking,
listening and awareness. One must plan to communicate; there is effort
involved. Successful communication does
not “just happen”. Simply put,
communication is sharing information, to make known to another person, to
transmit, exchange and impart information.
Understanding and giving meaning to what is communicated is necessary in
order to progress. At the two ends of
communication are the message sender and the message receiver. The classical conception of communication
was that it traveled in one direction from a sender and was immediately
understood by the receiver:
sender receiver
This model has become more complex as we realize that what is clear in one’s mind, may be distorted by physical, cultural or other interferences. These factors can alter the message so that it is understood differently by the receiver than by the sender. A message can become quite scrambled and misinterpreted in a chatroom, rendering the communication less effective. This study examines the communicated message within the online environment and seeks to find how meaning is shared within chat rooms.
I investigate one area of communication; but one which is changing the way people communicate worldwide, that of communicating within chatroom. There are many theories used to understand communication as complex forms. Some function as umbrellas for more specific communication theories such as Communication Metatheory[12], Cybernetics[13] and Complexity Theory[14]. As I outline in my methodology section I use seven particular case studies and focused on one specific theory of discourse per study. Since research in this area is so new, using a different approach for each study allows the researcher to test the potential of each theory to contribute to better understanding of the research questions and for the development of a new theory of Online Discourse (nODAT).
The World Wide Web is one of many Internet-based communication systems [15] and the primary source of this thesis. There is significant value in analyzing current forms of communication as they change the way humans communicate in the future. Communication in chatroom is based on ‘speaking’ and understanding very short, usually packets of five or less groups of words, often miss spelt or abbreviated, to decipher meaning from.
|
World Total |
513.41 million |
|
Africa |
4.15 million |
|
Asia/Pacific |
143.99 million |
|
Europe |
154.63 million |
|
Middle East |
4.65million |
|
Canada & USA |
180.68 million |
|
Latin America |
25.33 million |
More and more people are communicating through electronic-online services. It is difficult to estimate the number of users online. A large number of surveys, many claiming to be ‘official’, using all sorts of measurement parameters, are available. According to Nua Internet (http://www.nua.ie/surveys/) and surveys noted over the last two years, an estimated 513.41 million usersare on line as of August, 2001. Eighty-four percent of US Internet users have contacted an online group (Nov 01 2001), according to research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. (http://www.pewinternet.org/). Pew Internet also reports that of the 59 million Americans who go online daily, 49% send email, 10% send instant messages and 4% use a chatroom daily. More than 2.4 million Americans or about five million world-wide are in a chatroom communicating daily. In 9/04/2002 there were more than 115 million registered ICQ users around the world (ICQ.com). Other research results in January 2002 have give these figures:
Between 6% (Chilton Research) and 35% (American Psychological Convention) of online users participate in chats.
Roughly 4% of all online time is spent in chatting (Price Waterhouse).
88% of teenagers dubbed online chat "cool" in a recent survey by the author of Growing Up Digital[16].
See also Internet Demographics and eCommerce Statistics http://www.commerce.net/research/stats/stats.html for Internet traffic usage statistics.
1.5 Modes of Online Chat
|
Chat |
Instant |
Point-to-Mass * 1 |
Synchronous communication |
|
Instant Messaging |
Instant |
Point-to-Point |
Synchronous communication |
|
ICQ |
Instant |
Point-to-Point |
Synchronous communication |
|
SMS (mobile phone messages) |
Instant |
Point-to-Point |
Synchronous communication |
|
Chatboards |
Instant |
Point-to-Mass |
Asynchronous communication |
|
Email |
Delayed |
Point-to-Point * 2 |
Asynchronous communication |
|
Message Boards |
Delayed |
Point-to-Mass |
Asynchronous communication |
|
Usenet / Newsgroups |
Delayed |
Point-to-Mass |
Asynchronous communication |
‘Although the boundaries can blur, there are basically five different forms of Internet Chat: telnet[17], IRC[18], web chat[19], direct chat[20], and world chat[21]. All of these mediums are different ways of allowing people from all over the world to come together and interact on a real-time basis.’ (Cyberdude[22]).
There are many ways to communicate online, and a useful grouping is whether the communication is delayed or instant. Textual behaviour appears different, based on two factors. Firstly, is there time to respond and structure a response as one can with email, or secondly, does instant communication occur as it does in chatrooms; with no time for thinking or correcting the speech.
There is also a difference between point-to-point
communication; when a message sent by one person is sent to only one person,
and ‘point-to-mass’ when the message
sent by one person can be sent to many others simultaneously. How one responds to messages may be a result
of whether the communication is ‘point-to-point’ or ‘point-to-mass’.
Also, as more devices become available that are chat enabled, the list on the right will grow. Some of the devices currently available to use as a source of just ICQ chat are: Cell Phones (A person can send messages to cell phones from ICQ. One can also send text messages from the Web to cell phones and receive and send SMS. Web-based ICQ, with the ability to launch ICQ from any computer enabling millions of ICQ users to communicate with each other easily. ICQ email provides emails directly to ICQ users. ICQ phone - PC to PC and PC to phone with ICQ makes it easy to call anyone in the world with ICQ. Also available are Internet Telephony and Chat Requests, Online Phone Book, Dialler Hand-helds and ICQ for the PDA (Personal Digital Assistant is any wireless device for keeping calendars, addresses and Web access).
1 Chat rooms can also be ‘point-to-point’ if one enters a private room and communicates with only one other person; however, in this study I am using the multilogue turn-takings as these can be easily logged by entering the chatroom.
Ø 2 Email can be ‘point-to-mass’ by sending messages to many mailboxes.
Discussion groups operate around the concept of threads, where a topic takes on a life of its own. Even within the topic chosen there can be offshoots and there are a growing number of studies into discussions within discussion groups. The Internet has thousands of special interest discussion groups, each individually managed by an Internet server known as a list server. On one day, Tuesday, 25 September 2001, two-weeks after the attacks in New York City on the World Trade Centre[23] there were more than one-half-million (552761) messages posted to the CNN community discussions area in reference to that day’s events. Discussion groups have not been examined in this thesis but to date (Saturday, 26 January 2002) there have not been any studies on linguistics within discussion groups that I am aware of, making this a good area for future research.
Instant Messenger protocols, such as Yahoo Instant Messenger, ICQ and PalTalk have two voices at one time, but not necessarily following one another. People still "talk" at the same time. One does not always wait for a response. If two people are typing rapidly back and forth, they can return and respond to something which was said whilst the other was typing. Here someone steers the conversation into a particular area of discussion, establishing, in CA terms, the "flow" or speaking space for a topic. Unlike chatroom and discussion groups no one else can enter the dialogue. Here the "talk-text" dynamic comes especially close to that isolated in Conversational Analysis, so that IM can operate as a foundational text for other Net forms. I examine Instant Messenger in Case Study 7 of this thesis.
Chatroom and IM especially are reader/writer driven at the same time as asynchronous communication [24]. Often there is the feeling that one is writing and reading at the same time. In chatroom this can become chaotic. What differentiates "speakers" within chatroom is their logon names. If there are several voices, none following any particular protocol, all "talking" at once, the question becomes, "what is being said?" and at the same time "what is being heard?"
1.6 Theories of discourse analysis
Because of the developing diversity and its clear formation around both textual and conversational practices, this study encompasses several linguistic descriptive and analytical methods: Reading Theory, Speech Act Theory, Discourse Analysis, Conversation Analysis, Semiotics and Pragmatics, Linguistic schools of thought and Computer Mediated Communication. Together these methods provided sufficient range to enable me to develop a theory for chatroom analysis, which encompass more of the combined attributes than is possible within any one of the existing frames.
The primary data corpus for my research came from chatroom. Chatrooms exist for almost any subject imaginable. According to Eastgate, hypertextual author, Stuart Moulthrop (1997),
Internet Relay Chat ("IRC") is a computerised version of citizen's band radio. It is also similar to talk back radio, community forums and is similar to every form of meeting since recorded history. The only difference is that the physical cues available in sight of the "speaker" are missing. IRC is the most used online chat software. Internet Relay Chat gained international fame during the Gulf War in 1991, where IRC users could gather on a single channel to hear updates from around the world as soon as they were released. IRC had similar uses during the Russian coup against Boris Yeltsin in 1993, where IRC users from Moscow were giving live reports about the unstable situation there.
1.7 Is electronic talk comparable to verbal talk?
Chatroom is close to combining 'spoken' and 'written'
language. What was missing in early 1999,were the visual cues, which were
provided by the people involved. Computer-mediated-communication currently is a
narrow-bandwidth technology and it will be another decade before world wide
usage of fibre optics will be available to carry videos and the amount of data
needed to enable full communication world wide. (Technology Guide, 2000[25]).
Much of the information we obtain in face-to-face interaction is from body
language, sound (phonetics and phonology), and other physical codes. In
narrow-bandwidth communications, such as on the Internet, this information is
not transmitted, causing frequent misinterpretation. When cam-recorders are
mounted on the top of computers and combined with chatroom 'written' language,
and participants can see one another and write at the same time, then we will
have another tool to analyze how language between people is exchanged. In the
meantime, it is important to assess existing techniques for observation and
analysis of the emergent new "talk" of this interactive communicative
format. My study involves recording and
analysis of several types of online text environments and the examination of
its similarities and differences in relation to conventional texts, and its
developing uses.
Chatrooms with many interactants are multilogue (see Eggins and Slade, p. 24) environments. Separating these voices as conversation has been be a focus of this study (and something of a methodological challenge, involving the creation of new transcription protocols - see below.) IRC (Internet Relay Chat) provides a way of communicating in real time with people from all over the world. It consists of various separate networks (or "nets") of IRC servers, machines that allow users to connect to IRC. The largest net is EFnet (the original IRC net, often having more than 32,000 people at once). Once connected to an IRC server on an IRC network, one is able to join one or more "channels" and converse with others there. On EFnet, there are more than 12,000 channels, each devoted to a different topic. Conversations may be public (where everyone in a channel can see what you type) or private (messages between only two people, who may or may not be on the same channel). Conversations rarely follow a sequential pattern - "speakers" following one after the other. There are often jumps to an earlier speaker, or someone beginning their own thread. This is the first departure point from 'casual conversation'. When there are many "voices" at once, conversation becomes chaotic. The only way to follow who is "talking" is through the log-on names, such as in Example I: Janis, dammit, steven, 1love. To analyse conversation between two "speakers" I need to cut and past the "speakers" I wish to analyse. Even then it is not always clear who is speaking to whom, unless the "speaker" names the addressee in their message. The speech is then, seemingly inevitably, a "multilogue" or multi-directional system, rather than the more conversationally organised "dialogue" we find in print text.
It is in the history of any particular communication that the utterances can be studied for their mappings [26]. For example, grammar could be derived from distributional analysis of a corpus of utterances without reference to meaning, and I have done that in several of my case studies (see Case Study 5). The World Wide Web brings new ways of engaging in conversation which are emerging with the growing wide spread use of computers as a form of communication. How much people begin to rely on the Internet as a source of communication will determine much of our future ability to communicate in person to person conversation. For example, there have been surveys suggesting that the amount of time some people spend on the Internet in chat rooms is disproportionate to the amount of time they communicate face to face with others [27].
The impact these forms of communication will have on future interactions between people is just beginning to be studied. Verbal language was the first major step toward interconnection of humans which led to a fundamental change in the way we collected knowledge about the world. With symbolic language people are able to share experiences and learn about others’ lives as well as share information on their own. Chat rooms are one area of this rapid evolution in the sharing of minds. Language has allowed us to become a collective learning system, building a collective body of knowledge that far exceeds the experience of any individual, but which any individual could, in principle access. We have made the step from individual minds to a collective mind. (The GLOBAL BRAIN and the Evolution of the WWW[28]).
Concepts such as ‘the human superorganism’ and ‘global brain’ first appeared in modern form in Herbert Spencer's The Principles of Sociology (1876)[29] and the Internet is now regarded as a global brain (see also Russell (1983). Russell proposed a Global Brain that might emerge from a worldwide network of humans who were highly connected through communications. There are many articles that appear in search engines on this topic as of9/04/2002, whereas there were only two or three articles on conversation on the Internet as being linked with a global brain concept a year ago. This shows the interest of academics, philosophers, and researchers in this topic.
The most common form of Internet communication, E-mail, is replacing a lot of traditional letter writing and its primary difference is the rapidity of response expected when an e-mail is sent. Unlike letters, which often are not answered for a varying period of time, it is assumed that e-mail will be responded to within a day or two. For example, if we do not respond to an e-mail within a day or two from a friend, another e-mail will prompt us to respond, inquiring why we had not responded yet. Therefore, e-mails tend to be answered in haste with at least a short response, maybe even just a "got your e-mail, am too busy to answer now, but will in a few days". Though e-mail can be a form of turn-taking with people writing back and forth immediately after receiving correspondence, it does not provide the conversational turn-taking choices chatroom does. Statistics of email usage and behaviour are varied and often the reliability of surveys found on the Internet are questionable.
A few studies of computer dialogue are beginning to appear on the Internet. I note studies in progress and completed theses on this topic in the Literature Review section. A study of computer conferencing for instructional purposes[30] has categorized ‘on line’ study by students as asynchronous or synchronous. Asynchronous study allows time for reflection between interactions. Synchronous interactions allows real-time interactive chats or open sessions among as many participants as are online simultaneously.
Chatroom conversations are more hastily interactive than e-mail. Conversations in chatroom are rarely planned out, making this environment an ideal source of casual conversation analysis. Chatroom conversations are informal, often experimental and frequently used for entertainment and escape. (Rheingold). This has been further elaborated in my case studies. Virtual conversations, as they are in chat rooms, can have little to no real life significance. For example, in some chatrooms, participants experiment with various personas, as they are not seen, heard or known by others in the chatroom. I have not explored this aspect of chat room behaviour. However, one who has written on this in length is Sherry Turkle, Professor of the Sociology of Science Program in Science, Technology, and Society Massachusetts Institute of Technology[31].
To bring into being an "electronic interactive conversational analysis" requires a cross over between print and conversation-based analyses and theorisations. Electronic digital technologies lack a sense of linearity; in fact, they are based on a nonlinear structure that tends to facilitate a more associative way of organizing information, e.g., hypertext. The prime example studied in this research is chatroom where there can be multiple conversations involving multiple subjects simultaneously. While print media works as a flow of conversation or writing directed in an organised progression, online conversations fragment multi-directionally. Conversation on the World Wide Web, whether in chatroom, Instant messenger (IM), discussion groups, or even in role-playing games such as MUDs and MOOS involve two new paradigm shifts. Firstly, there is the shift from print to computerization. Print relies on hierarchy and linearity. Computer interactivity can be either asynchronous or synchronous. Instant Messenger, ICQ, and PalTalk, have only two voices at one time, but not necessarily following one another. People still "talk" at the same time. One does not always wait for a response. If two people are typing rapidly back and forth, they can return and respond to something which was said whilst the other was typing.
Asynchronous communication is communication taking place at different times or over a certain period of time. Several currently used examples are: E-mail, electronic mailing lists, e-mail based conferencing programs, UseNet newsgroups and messaging programs. Asynchronous communication requires using computer conferencing programs and electronic mailing lists that reside on a server that distributes the messages that users send to it. Any computer user with e-mail and a connection to the Internet can engage in asynchronous communication. Web-based conferencing programs that distribute many messages, or messages containing attachments, require more system power and a current model computer with a sound card and speakers and a fast connection to the Internet. The computer should also be running Netscape 6 or Internet Explorer 5+ and should be Java enabled.
Synchronous communication is communication that is taking place at the same time. Several voices can be going at once or there can be multiple conversations involving multiple subjects happening at the same time (Aokk, 1995; Siemieniuch & Sinclair, 1994). Several currently used examples of synchronous communication are: Chat rooms, MUDs (multiple-user dungeons), MOOs (multiple object orientations), videoconferencing (with tools like White Pine’s CUSeeMe and Microsoft's NetMeeting) and teleWeb delivery systems that combine video programs with Web-based resources, activities and print-based materials.
To use synchronous communication in a text-based environment one can have the chat room on their server or the chat room can be imported into their Web site as an applet. Real-time interactive environments like MUDs and MOOs are Unix-based programs that reside on servers. In both kinds of synchronous communication, users connect with the help of chat-client software and log in to virtual "rooms" where they communicate with each other by typing onscreen. Because MOOs and chat rooms frequently attract many users, it is advisable to access them using a high-end computer and a fast connection to the Internet. The computer should also be running Netscape 6 or Internet Explorer 5+ and should be Java enabled. MOOs and chat rooms often have their own sound effects to denote communicative gestures (such as laughter and surprise); to use or hear them, the computer must be equipped with a sound card and speakers.
A second paradigm shift is currently taking place around the changing environment of on line discourse, parallel to the shift from print to the Internet. Within the Internet interactive environment, there is a shift from e-mail and discussion groups, to chatroom and "Instant messenger" and ICQ. E-mail and discussion groups are more or less a one-way road. For example, one usually waits for a return e-mail, which often is a complete response with several paragraphs: a considered and edited "textual" piece. Conversely, chatroom environments are composed of one or two lines of text from one person followed by a response of one or two lines from another person. Chatrooms thus consists of spontaneous casual conversation, while discussion groups are e-mailed "texted" responses, which are usually thought out and spell and grammar checked before they are sent to the discussion group. Discussion groups, I hypothesize, are even more controlled and planned than emails, more "textual". In other words, the Internet has already produced its own set of "text-talk" genres and practices. The online universe of discourse is rapidly diversifying.
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. The way we 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.
We can only speculate at how this will affect the future way people speak with one another. For example, will people only ‘speak’ with those people who understand what they are saying in five or so words? 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. Text is ‘spoken’ often to no one in particular with the apparent hope that someone, somewhere will grasp the utterance and respond appropriately.
Chatrooms do not demand use of proper grammar as a conversation in person would. Spelling, because of the rapid rate of scrolling text, seems to be 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 to be 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 have explored later in this thesis, words do produce meaning, however the difficulty in Chatroom is not only finding meaning within any 'talk' but to have others understand or follow what we mean. However, as my individual case studies show, it is the particular chat room, its environment, which provides the utterance with meaning. Chatrooms do provide structure. There is an architectural setting, an existing space; these necessarily differ from chatroom to chatroom.
Other differences between online and face-to-face
conversation are understanding what is
being said 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, which “stand in” for our categorisation of
speakers and have been further explored in the case studies.
Two ways in 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, or at least a continuum which can evolve into a
conversation. This will, over a course of many turn-taking sequences, possibly
define enough about a speaker to have some awareness of their social structures
such as beliefs, and sometimes nationality, culture and standing. I have explored this notion of trying to
‘know’ more about a speaker from the words they use in individual case
studies. Of course, it is only a guess
as we can not really know much about someone whom we can not see or hear,
especially if they reveal little of themselves.
1.8 The evolution of language from early utterances to chatroom
dialogue
The study of language is one of the oldest branches of systematic inquiry, tracing back to classical India and Greece, with a rich and fruitful history of achievement.[32] (Noam Chomsky). What has been neglected thus far is a linguistic study of one of our most current forms of electronic communication, chat rooms which offer real-time interaction between participators at any place and any time.
The basic building blocks of communication have changed
little, but the methods through which we are able to use our linguistic
abilities to convey ideas has changed drastically. From the era of pictographs of accounts written on clay tablets
in Sumeria[33] 5500 years
ago, to the first evidence of writing during the Protoliterate period[34]
(Sumerian civilization, to about 28 B.C.)it can be seen that forms of communication
had advanced. For example, by 2800 B.C., the use of syllabic writing[35]
had reduced the number of signs from nearly two thousand to six hundred.[36] For the next few thousand years
communication exchange has evolved slowly.
We cannot know what the world was like before human language existed. For tens of thousands of years, language has developed to what is our modern grammar and syntaxes. Language origins are based on speculations. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there were several proposals with labels such as; ‘ding-dong’, ‘bow-wow’ and ‘yo-he-ho’ theories (Barber 1972) to explain the origin of language. With chat rooms, language may be going through a new and rapid development. Chat room communication separates from traditional language through word corruption and its use of abbreviations and emoticons. I have addressed these changes in language usage in the discussion chapter of this thesis.
The first humans exchanged information through crude
grunts and hand signals. Gradually a
complex system of spoken words and visual symbols were invented to represent
new language. Earliest forms of telecommunications consisted of smoke signals,
ringing a bell or physically transporting a message between two places.
However, during the late 18th and early 19th centuries,
communication codes for meaning were exchanged at a greater distance across
time and began to become accessible to more users. A standard postal system
allowed people to send messages throughout the world in a matter of days. The development of the telegraph cable
including the development of radio made real-time vocal communication over long
distances a reality The Internet is the most recent advancement in
communication. It allows us, in a split
second, to disseminate a limitless amount of information throughout the globe.
All communication involves interaction and thus forms a basis for relationships. “Throughout the history of human communication, advances in technology have powered paradigmatic shifts…” (Frick, 1991). Technology changes how we communicate; big shifts in culture cannot occur until the communicative tools are available. The printing press is an example of this. Before its invention scribal monks sanctioned by the Church, had overseen the maintenance and hand copying of sacred texts for centuries. The press resulted in widespread literacy, with books accessible and more affordable for all. The spread of literacy in turn changed communication, which changed the educational system and the class structure.
There are many different ways of analyzing the history of the current dominant communication system. Whether one studies the historical, scientific, social, economical or the psychological impact of these changes, depends on the analysis of the system. Lisa Jardine in Worldly Goods, studied the financial and economic forces of change. Elizabeth Eisenstein analysed the social and historical scientific approach, and Marshall McLuhan concentrated on the psychological impact of these changes.
Jardine argues that the development from script to print was driven by economic, emerging capitalist markets forces. For example, the letter exchange between merchants who had an increasing need for reliable information related to economic exchange. (Jardine, 1996). McLuhan brought to our attention the psychological impact of changes of the dominant representation systems. In the Gutenberg Galaxy he focused on the change from manuscript, which according to him was part of an oral society, to print, which transformed it into a visual culture. (McLuhan, 1962). One of the main issues that arises with the shift from manuscript culture, to print, then to online culture, is accessibility. The more accessible communication is to a society, the more opportunities are present to exchange meaning, or as is often the case in chat rooms, to attempt to exchange meaning.
Communication through language is essentially the
relationship between what we are processing in our mind and a resultant bodily
activity that is perceivable and hopefully understood and interpretable by
another person. Language is about how
words are combined through their lexicon and grammar and their semantics and
syntax to create meaning. In chat rooms, the written forms are what is
important in communication, and the written form is different from speech
language. We use chat room language (abbreviations and emoticons included) to
pass our mental organisation to another person. Language has its origins in signs, and chat room ‘speech’ is
similar to an origin of language in that communication is based on very short,
often misspelt words.
"No one has proved that speech, as it manifests when we speak, is entirely natural; i.e. that our vocal apparatus is designed for speaking just as our legs were designed for walking. Language is a convention and the nature of the signs agreed upon does not matter. The vocal organs are as external to language as the electrical devices used in transmitting the Morse Code are to the code itself; and phonation i.e. the execution of sound images, in no way affects the system itself. How would a speaker take it upon himself to associate the idea with a word-image if he had not first come across the association in an act of speaking?... Language exists in the form of a sum of impressions deposited in the brain of each member of a community, almost like a dictionary of which identical copies have been distributed to each individual ... The bond between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary ... I can simply say: the linguistic sign is arbitrary . .. i.e. unmotivated in that it actually has no natural connection with the signified". De Saussure[37] in the ‘Cours de Linguistique Générale’
1.9 SOCIOLOGICAL and psychological perspectives
Cyberculture and Cyberstudies [38]
Current research analysis of online discourse has been conducted primarily from either a sociological or a psychological perspective. Recently there has been an increase of studies on online discourse from a linguistic view. Much of this current research has been discussed in the literature review section.
Online communities and their interactions, are being explored in the sociological departments of many universities. The University of Southern California is one example of a dedicated study of cyber-communities. They are investigating the kinds of social spaces and groups people are creating. How is the Internet changing basic concepts of identity, self-government and community? The University of Southern California heads its site with:
The Center for the Study of Online Community seeks to
present and foster studies that focus on how computers and networks alter
people's capacity to form groups, organizations, institutions, and how those
social formations are able to serve the collective interests of their members.
Each of these social formations can be thought of as some form of community in
the broadest sense of the word. http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/csoc/
Sociological research differs from my own "talk-text" focus. My focus is on the "speech-act,” and the effects of "written conversation.” Chatrooms are instant, changing communities, which often have no consistent centre, no obvious ideology (unless it is a particular ideological chatroom), and no direction (unless one is assigned and adhered to). In a sense, chatrooms conversations are similar to a situation when strangers crowd on to an elevator, train or bus, and all begin to converse. There is usually one who is louder than the rest, one who is funnier, or one who is offended or not interested. My research project aims to provides a set of guidelines for future studies.
I have visited many university psychology departments on the Internet and have not found one that addresses conversation in chatroom and discussion groups. E-Mail Virtual Communities such as Storm King's (see notes) are discussed, and the Psychology of Virtual Communities, but otherwise I have not found any published material on how people "speak" and interact within the interactive environments of chatroom, discussion groups, or Instant Messenger.
My work creates a field of textual interactivity for electronic sites, which takes in discourse theories and includes earlier forms of linguistic studies, with their established and rigorous methodologies.
For example, in the case study ‘ball-chat’ there is this exchange:
|
<smith-eric> cinni has already changed rules for jr. <Pizza2man> he'll hit sixty in cincy...maybe sixty five |
What do we know from this? Do we know what the user ‘smith-eric’ was wearing, how old the person was, their gender, beliefs, nationality, location, race; whether they were blind, had one leg, were on the Cover of Playboy last month, or on the FBI’s most-wanted, are they writing from a hospital, prison, in the dessert, or on a houseboat? We do not even know if ‘smith-eric’ knows ‘Pizza2man’ or likes or dislikes this person.
There is the question of whether cyberspace is even "real" and therefore worthy of study. To most participators chatrooms are real created space. People are able to express ideas, ask questions, and make arrangements to meet in the physical. Many of the same experiences can be gained within the chatroom environment as if people were at a meeting, party or at any social gathering; “chatroom are suitable places for developing the self socially, mentally and culturally, as well as shaping the character traits of the self.” (Teo Soo Yee) Virtual communities can be as important to those who visit the same chatroom as any community in RL (Real Life) would be. An increasing number of essays which discuss virtual communities can be found online. Many of these essays have been be cited in this literature review and as I find more they are listed at: http://se.unisa.edu.au/vc~essays.html. As I am investigating linguistic patterns in chatroom ‘speech’ exchanges I am not overly concerned with who exchanges meaning, i.e. what role the person is playing and whether it is ‘he or she’ ‘talking’ or a made up identity, but rather on how meaning is exchanged.
As one of the latest in interaction communication forms to exchange meaning chatroom rules for ‘talk’, though being changed constantly, are beginning to be uniform in what is expected behaviour of the participants. As has been discussed in the individual case studies, different chat environments may have different rules of ‘talk’. And just as every social grouping has rules of conversational engagement, online ‘talk’ has to have some order, sometimes more strictly than others, for discourse to continue. Examples of rules that would be considered standard protocol are on the Xena chat site (http://se.unisa.edu.au/phd/xena.html) as well many other sites which discuss Netiquette (a comprehensive one is at: http://www.fau.edu/netiquette/net/netiquette.html).
When addressing online conversation, the terms "conversation", "dialogue", and
"discussion", are often used interchangeably. This thesis clarifies some of the subtle distinctions among them, describes how they work, and presents some current research findings regarding both online and face-to-face conversations that take place within our current forms of electronic communication.
1.10
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