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 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 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

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