Conversational Analysis of Chat Room Talk PHD thesis by Dr. Terrell Neuage University of South Australia National Library of Australia. Thesis full text availalbe from the University of South Australia library
THESIShome ~ Abstract.html/pdf ~ Glossary.html/pdf ~ Introduction.html/pdf ~ methodology.html/pdf ~ literature review.html/pdf ~ Case
Study 1.html/pdf~ 2.html/pdf~ 3.html/pdf~ 4.html/pdf~ 5.html/pdf~ 6.html/pdf~ 7.html/pdf~ discussion.html/pdf ~ conclusion.html~ postscipt.html/pdf~ O*D*A*M.html/pdf~ Bibliography.html/pdf~ 911~ thesis-complete.htm/~ Terrell Neuage Home
Below is saved from the Languse Discussion List March - April 2002. I have included the date and contributor’s name. This has been saved and copied for referencing in my thesis: Conversational Analysis of Chatroom ‘talk’, completion date 2/2003. I hope that a completed rough first draft will be online mid-June 2002 at: http://se.unisa.edu.au/boo.htm
My current research is working with various linguistic theories to discover mapping procedures within online communication (including SMS messaging and Palm Computers). I am interested in electronic communication as I believe, like music, there will be a universal notation formed via emoticons which may help in shared meaning between different cultures and beliefs. I hope that this is not the beginning of a wider globalization which threatens to homogenize the world but a bridge to improved communication.
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>In chatrooms would a
person signing in and lurking be considered a TCU?
>
>Terrell
Neuage
>
>
Valentina Noblia [University of Buenos Aires] 2
E. Sean Rintel [State University of New York] 4
Terrell
If 'turn-constructional
unit' (TCU) is the name for the units out of
which turns at constructed,
then you might ask yourself the question,
is lurking something that is
turn organized? That is, is there
an
organization that
distributed opportunities to lurk to lurk among
participants in the
chatroom? Some forms of human
activity are
turn-organized (e.g.
speaking in conversation) and some human
activities are not (e.g.
eating dinner at home). One would only want
to ask about what
constitutes a TCU for activities that are turn
organized - that is, for
activities that participants can be seen
doing specific work to
maintain the allocation of opportunities at
that
activity.
Gene
Tue 3/26/2002
My answer is 'no!' 'turn'
stands for 'turn at speaking' (or it's
equivalent). When no one
speaks after a turn, there's a silence, a pause,
that's not a turn. When
someone does not answer a question, that's a
failure to take a turn,
etc.
Paul
Tue 3/26/2002
Actually, I think there is
not a turn because there is not interaction. In
the chatrooms, the presence
in the channel is not a guarantee of
communication. (Think, for
instance, the continous failures in the beginning
of a conversation. Many
times the participants don't receive response to
their appeal to others and
they left out the channel. When someone does not
answer a question, and does
not talk, there is "nothing" but a supposition
of his presence) If the cooperation is presupposed in the
presence of a
person (actually, a
nickname), not to talk is a way of no cooperation (in
the sense in which Grice
defined it). So it is impossible think in a chat as
a discoursive form of
communication, a conversation without words, and
without another forms of
interchange meanings. Less possible is to think in
a
turn.
Valentina
Noblia
Tue 3/26/2002
At
>Thank you for the
comments from different folks on TCUs in chatroom lurking.
>
>Often times someone will
enter a chatroom and it is obvious he or she is
there
>as it will say
<****> has entered...
>Some of those present in
the chat-area will offer a 'hello' or (usually in
most
>chatrooms) 'are you a
male or female'. What happens then is if the person
does
>not respond then others
will start probing into why they are not saying
>anything. This changes the discourse of the room
especially if some of the
>chatters become agro
about it. That is what I meant by does lurking
constitute
>a turn taking. Or
another example is when someone leaves and enters several
>times and <****>
has entered...will show on the screen and one assumes for
>whatever reason that is
a particular utterance that is a turn taking.
I think the expression
'notable absence' fits very well here. That's from
the early papers on
adjacency pairs, prob. Schegloff & Sacks, 1973, or
Schegloff
1968.
>
>Another TCU I am
interested in and which is part of my exploration of how
>people communicate in
chatrooms (and how it may effect us in real life -
>http://se.unisa.edu.au)
is the interpretation of emoticons, abbreviations and
>sounds in a
chatroom.
>For example, if there is
a discourse between several chatters and one of the
>chatters uses the sound
device (most chatrooms have them) which sounds like a
>fart or burp or giggle
(leading to the question is a fart a TCU as when in a
>person-to-person
conversation someone is annoyed or wants to express
themselves
>they do so by farting,
burping, giggling etc. is that their utterance? For
>example, my younger son
use to annoy me to no end when I would ask a question
>and he would just grunt
and that was his response. Now he is a pitcher for
the
>LA Dodgers in Spring
Training in
>people there or was it
just at me? I think most teenagers do this).
>
>A turn in a chatroom
could just be an emoticon; :), that is their turn, their
>response, their
utterance, their meaning.
These all full under the
rubric of 'activities', don't they?
>Also, may I use some of
the comments from before from you all on this in my
>thesis (in my footnotes
in my current case study and I will reference that it
>was from email from this
listserv?). Especially, Valentina Noblia, Paul ten
>Have (whom I have
referenced several times already in my thesis) and Gene
>Lerner so far. I am not
sure of how to reference from listservs as there does
>not seem to be an
excepted protocol yet.
I think the name of the list
and the date of posting will do.
Best, Paul
Thu
Hi Terrell, when I was doing
my thesis on chat rooms I
wondered about the same
thing and in the end I decided
to go with treating
'lurking' as members oriented to
it. That is, the members in
the chat rooms I studied
seemed to treat 'lurking' as
'presence' rather than a
'turn' in conversation. They
treated it in the same
way as someone standing near
you, who could be a
possible conversant but
wasn't actually one until they
or someone else initiated a
sequence. It's interesting
that with the new type of
chat rooms that have
avatars, chatters can now
'face' one another with
their avatars and increase
the physical proximity,
adding a dimension to the
chat that was absent from my
data. Best of
luck.
Rhyll
Fri 3/29/2002
Ecole des Hautes
Etudes en Sciences Sociales in
You are very right to bring
up some of the differences between chat and
face to face interaction
especially in regards to the expectations of
interactions and responding
to turns (eg. when a lurker prefers
to remain
"silent" at least in the
public arena, because we don't know really if he
or she is pursuing a private
conversation on a different level... hmmm).
A turn then can be
understood as a volontary means of conveying a message
to others in the chat room.
This includes emoticons, sounds and even
manipulation of the server
messages such as "topic" changes and nickname
changes. Indeed, in IRC the
turn takes on a visual aspect (including sounds
which are volontary or
associated with certain types of messages).
Afterall, almost ALL of the
interaction is visual and cannot be spoken,
contrary to the definition
given by SSJ and by Paul ten Have, more
recently, have
expressed.
This definition is
problematic for IRC because it either bars this type of
interaction from the status
of a "converstional activity" (I won't discuss
the question if it is
conversation or not), or it demands the reevaluation
of the definition of a turn
in CA terms.
Then there is the question
of the TCU. Turns in Chat are limited by the
technical system. They
cannot go on forever, for pages and pages, which is
a major difference from the
definition of a turn given by SSJ. Indeed, a
person cannot even
techincally guarantee that he can keep his turn without
a server message or other
contribution introjected between the lines.
So, how do we deal with
this? I suggest in my PhD that a turn is this
volontary contribution to
the chat room, that they are visual elements and
that each turn is exclusive.
Turn internal TCUs can be evaluated in terms
of the grammar used in the
turn, or in terms of a visual layout of the turn
which uses punctuation or
icons or emoticons etc, but in IRC the difference
between a turn and a TCU is
almost a moot question. The TRP is after the
person has composed and sent
his/her message.... Besides, the participants
may not even be aware that a
turn is in the making until it is sent (see
the partner deems a TCU has
been accomplished, is not possible.
This turn/TCU question is
already difficult in the spoken word, but when we
start adding new techniques
to our analyses, it seems to complicate things
further. However, it does
provoke us to reflect on the original
definitions. Are they still
valid?
As a final note concerning
the breath units: The technical limitations on a
turn in IRC can be seen
(literally) as having these types of physical,
natural boundaries, like a
breath unit. Poets in the 50s and 60s also
experimented with the breath
unit. Alain Ginsberg, I believe (or perhaps
charles olsen), wrote poems
based on this breath unit meaning that a line
was composed of as many
words he could utter in one breath unit. These
poems were not only seen as
written works to be read in a book, but
performed in front of (or
with) others.
Hope this stimulates more
discussion,
Hillary Bays
Mon 4/1/2002 6:45 PM
Hey
lang-users!
Thought I might weigh in on
the Chatroom TCU discussion.
I think we need to be clear
that the questions of whether 'turn-taking'
'exists' in chatrooms and
whether lurking is an instance of a chatroom TCU
are of two different orders.
The first is more abstract than the second.
The first seems
definitional, while the second seeks to categorize an
empirical observation by
virtue of an existing definition (of some kind,
maybe the
first).
Whether 'turn-taking'
'exists' in chatrooms is a difficult question. I
agree with Rhyll Vallis's
answer (glib generalization: 'it depends on how
members orient to it') and
Hillary Bay's answer (glib generalization: 'the
system's technical structure
makes turn-taking very different from FTF
interaction turn-taking, so
it needs to be evaluated on its own merits'),
but think that a more
interesting question is what work (for academics, for
users, for designers) would
proving that it 'does' or 'does not' exist (and
'is' or 'is not' similar to
FTF turn-taking) do? What do we gain from the
answer (explanatory power,
political power, etc) ? In all cases, too, we
need to be more focused on
the 'place' - which chatrooms in which media.
I'd ask the same of the
question of whether 'lurking' is an instance of a
chatroom TCU. However, in
this instance there are a couple of further
wrinkles. First, what is
lurking, and what kind of problem is answered by
saying "it is a form of
chatroom TCU"? From whose point of view are we
considering the lurking to
be occuring, and why are we considering it? I
ask this question because I
wonder if the example of lurking that Terrel
used (not talking directly
upon entry into a chatroom, but being
automatically introduced)
might not be a 'lurking' problem but an 'opening'
problem. It matters, I
think, what kind of communicative/relational problem
is being solved in any given
situation, and 'lurking' as opposed to
'opening' are different
problems with different kinds of answers. For some
of my answers, from the point of view of the 'opening
problem', see my
article "First Things First:
Internet Relay Chat Openings."
(http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol6/issue3/rintel.html).
I think that technical
definitions of what is or is not here, or what is or
is not in comparison, need
to be secondary to dealing with questions about
the point of human
interaction: what problem is being dealt with using
communication (whatever it
consists of) in this instance, and how is its
manifestation and solution
being achieved?
Until
anon,
Sean
Tue 4/2/2002 3:17
AM
--
E. Sean
Rintel
Communication
Department
University at
Albany
State University of New
York
1400 Washington
Avenue
Albany, NY, USA,
12222-0001
http://www.albany.edu/~er8430/
Conversational Analysis of Chat Room Talk PHD thesis by Dr. Terrell Neuage University of South Australia National Library of Australia. Thesis full text availalbe from the University of South Australia library
THESIShome ~ Abstract.html/pdf ~ Glossary.html/pdf ~ Introduction.html/pdf ~ methodology.html/pdf ~ literature review.html/pdf ~ Case
Study 1.html/pdf~ 2.html/pdf~ 3.html/pdf~ 4.html/pdf~ 5.html/pdf~ 6.html/pdf~ 7.html/pdf~ discussion.html/pdf ~ conclusion.html~ postscipt.html/pdf~ O*D*A*M.html/pdf~ Bibliography.html/pdf~ 911~ thesis-complete.htm/~ Terrell Neuage Home