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Return to Introduction updated Tuesday, 24 July 2001
Begin - With the rise of electronic
communication text is rapidly exchanged
Re. RULES (guidelines and netiquette) –
Chatrooms are one of the latest in interaction communication forms to exchange meaning. Rules for chatrooms, though being changed constantly are beginning to be uniform in what is expected behaviour of the participants. Examples of rules that are what would be considered standard protocol are on the Xena chat site.
When addressing online conversation, the terms "conversation", "dialogue", "discussion", and are often used interchangeably. This thesis will attempt to clarify some of the subtle distinctions among them, describe how they work, and present some current research findings regarding both online and face-to-face conversations that take place within our current forms of electronic communication.
The word "conversation" comes from the
Latin word "convertere" -- to turn around. It may also be interpreted
as "to
take turns". Jellinek and Carr (1996)
identified three broad purposes of conversation:
- Transacting:
conducted for the purpose of negotiation or exchange within an existing
problem setting;
- Transforming:
conducted when individuals suspend their own personal opinions or assumptions
and their judgment of
others' viewpoints; and
- Transcendent:
where the purpose is to move beyond or "leap out" of existing
mindsets.
Within chatrooms we find all three purposes
used, often at once. Transacting or
negotiation is more apparent in purpose chatrooms such as in the examples I use
of ‘Storm’, ‘astrology’, ‘baseball’ and ‘web-3D’. As there is more turn-taking for a purpose in these –for example,
to discover or exchange information participants will often wait for a
response. To find out something is most
often a process of negotiation.
The least used purpose as described above in
chatrooms is the act of transformation
