Conversational Analysis of Chat Room Talk PHD thesis by Dr. Terrell Neuage University of South Australia National Library of Australia. THESIS COMPLETE .pdf / or
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
5.0 Findings of Case Studies 1- 7
5.1 Unique features of chatrooms
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/pdf ~ postscipt.html/pdf ~ O*D*A*M.html/pdf ~ Bibliography.html/pdf ~ 911 ~ thesis-complete.htm/pdf ~ Terrell Neuage Home Appendixes 1 ~ 2 ~ 3 ~ 4 ~ 5 ~ 6 ~ 7 ~ DATA ~ Case Study 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thursday, October 16, 2003
Overall, work in this new area of study postulates two major
features of the online communication milieu:
1.
That new ways of thinking about conversation will emerge
with the growing widespread use of computers as a form of communication.
(Charles Ess, 1996; Michael Stubbs, 1996),
2.
That
chatrooms involve exchange more hastily done than in any other form of
electronic talk-texting, and so therefore more likely to respond to and reflect
back the particular pressures and influences of on-line communication (Spender,
1995).
I
will firstly look at the findings of the seven case studies used to research
chatroom conversation; secondly I will discuss the commonality of features
peculiar to online chat which make it different from face-to-face chat; thirdly
I will propose answers to the five questions I asked at the beginning of this
study and finally I will discuss whether the five assumptions I stated in my
proposal[1]
for this research were supported or unsupported by my research.
By
using several linguistic theories as lenses through which I have examined seven
case studies I found that online communication in a chatroom has unique
features as a communication form.
This
study was undertaken during a specific period of Internet history, from 1998 to
2001. The Internet had its start in September 1969 when two computers were
hooked up and the first computer-to-computer chat took place at the University
of California, Los Angeles. The first Internet Relay Chat (IRC) began in August
1988 and rapid advances followed, with many different forms of Net based
communication arising[2].
My research however has focused on text-based chatrooms. With new technologies
new forms of chatrooms are becoming available, including graphical
conversations[3], 3D
Chatrooms (see CS 3.3.2) such as ‘Traveler’ and 2 D animation systems such as
those in use at ‘The Place’ and the multimedia chat avatar-based environments
discussed in Case Study 2. This study however is limited to a particular moment
of web-chat’s brief history: the moment of dominance of Internet Relay Chat, as
it spawned a variety of talk-spaces and styles, contained within the simple
text-exchange model of typed ‘chat’.
I
chose the following linguistic and text analysis theories to examine chatroom
talk, seeking a range in investigative tools to capture and describe the
systems of conversational exchange arising in IRC:
·
Reading-response
Theory (Case Study 1),
·
Computer Mediated
Communication (Case Study 2),
·
Semiotic Analysis
(Case Study 3),
·
Speech Act Analysis
(Case Study 4),
·
Discourse Analysis (Case
Study 5),
·
Conversational
Analysis (Case Study 6), supplemented by
several linguistic theories relating to discourse theories and
·
Linguistic schools
of thought, which explore grammar in conversation and the construction of
meaning, such as the Prague School of Linguistics (Case Study 7).
In
the first instance my task within each research frame was to simply examine
what each particular methodology could capture and describe within the
talk-text as data. Only then could I begin to detect directions within these
accumulating sets of features, and so to hypothesise that online chat had
recurrent or characteristic behaviours and selective techniques, which, while
varying across the types of chat sites examined, tended towards the
establishment of recognizable “online chat” linguistic strategies. Firstly then
I summarized the most explicit findings in each study and now move to compare
the seven studies, adding where appropriate
observations from five supplementary chatroom studies, to show features
common to all text-based chat, and generalisable as the ‘core’ discursive modes
of Internet chat. Despite their often incommensurable focus, the range of the
theoretical methods used for analysis revealed particular communication
features common to all chatrooms. Most of these features are not part of
person-to-person offline talk, and therefore are unique to text-based electronic
dialogue- although there is evidence that some of these behaviours occur
in related CMC-delivery formats, such as SMS.
The
purpose of the case studies and supplementary chatroom data ‘captured’ was to
answer the five primary research questions in my methodology section (3.3):
1.
Is
turn taking negotiated within chatrooms? If so, do the rules differ from live
speech, and if so, how?
2.
With
the taking away of many physical identifying cues of participants (gender,
nationality, age etc.) are issues of sex, race, gender, class, age, and
political correctness as prevalent as in face-to-face talk? (see, Turkle, 1995, 1996; Mantovani,
1996a; Parks & Floyd, 1996; Spears & Lea, 1992).
If so, how are these matters signaled, read, and negotiated? If not, what are
the consequences of abandonment of social sanctions existing elsewhere?
3.
How
is electronic chat reflective of current social discourse?
4.
Is
meaning contractible within chatrooms? If so, how does this occur?
5.
Could
chatroom discourse become a universally understood language? If so, what might
it add to existing language behaviours?
These
five were posed to question my five assumptions, drawn from the CMC literature
and from personal experience of IRC, at the beginning of the methodology
section (3.2):
1.
That people adopt a ‘textual self’ for the chatroom
environment they are in.
2.
That conversation within Chatrooms will change how we come
to know others.
3.
That observational study of chatroom conversation can capture
some of the adaptations of conversational behaviours.
4.
That this work gives us a better understanding of how, and
why, Chatrooms are an important area in which to create new conversational
research theory.
5.
That 'chat' does not differ from natural conversation in
certain key aspects, but does so in others.
Each
case study had three components useful in bringing about conclusions of
chatroom analysis. The first component was the theory used to identify how text-based
chat ‘worked’. Secondly, each case study identified features of conversation
that were unique to text-based chatrooms, and thirdly each case study allowed
for the analysis of chatroom behaviours demonstrating elements of communicative
activity specific to the theory driving that particular case study. In other
words, both general and specialised features were pursued in each case study.
In
summary, the primary discoveries in each case study provided a map of IRC, in
both general and specific terms, across a broad spectrum of exemplar
behaviours, at least during the sample period, and most likely beyond.
In Case Study 1 the
research tool for analysis was Reader-response theory, a field which enabled
the discovery that in online chat, both the person writing and the one (or
many) reading are co-language-meaning creators. Chatrooms are an active reading
environment where the ‘reader is left with everything to do…’ (Sartre, 1949, p. 176). In order to engage in conversation the
‘speaker-writer’ first needs to be a ‘listener-reader’. What is left open in chatrooms but not in person-to-person conversation is what
later commentators called “preferred readings”: techniques whereby texts are
arranged to position readers to receive and interpret them in certain ways
which optimize selected understandings and suppress others. Such texts may construct within
themselves 'an inscribed reader', or
such a figure and its attendant roles may emerge in 'interpretative
communities' (Chandler, 2001). But do such positionings occur in
the “texted” talk of IRC and its user-groups?
Using
Reader-response theory to examine chat in a community of users checking
progress of an extreme weather-alert emergency, I found that there are two
moments of “reading” a chat participant carries out in understanding meaning within a chatroom,
even before beginning to read the actual utterances of the other chatters. In
person-to-person conversation early “readings” of someone else before we listen
to what he or she says involve viewing the person, their appearance, their
posturing, body language and the environment
(see McCroskey and Richmond, 1995; Ong, 1993; Goffman, 1995).
In
chatrooms, firstly, the title of the chatroom is read. In Case
Study 1 I found that the chatters carried on conversations that were reflective
of the chatroom title, Hurricane Floyd. In other Case Studies – although not in
all - with clearly designated topic-related titles I found the same reading
techniques used. In other words
speakers tended to converse about the topic established by the chatroom title.
I discuss this later in 5.2 where I show the commonality between chatrooms. In
chatrooms the reader’s response fits with the chatroom milieu. There can be a
new utterance that begins a new thread in a chatroom with the response
dependent on the reading. For example in Case Study 1 turn 107, <SWMPTHNG> inquires
<YOU AINT TALKING ABOUT MEX ROOFERS ARE YOU?> in assumed response to turn
99
<EMT-Calvin>: <folks need to be careful for con artest after the
storm>. This reading is still on the same topic of the storm as a thread
alongside, which talks about the storm itself. There are few threads during
this conversation that are not directly on the storm Hurricane Floyd. Below
shows that 254 of the utterances in this chatroom are directly on the storm, 14
turns are about whether Mexican roofers will become involved with rebuilding
after the storm, seven turns are personal, for example, <your last name
wouldn't be Graham would it>, and several turns had nothing to do with the
topic of the storm, commenting more on personal circumstances extraneous to the
discussion, yet at least arguably bearing on the participant’s performance
within the chat exchange: for example, <VIAGRA
AND PRUNE JUICE....DON'T KNOW IF I'M COMING OR GOING.....> or <ankash> stating <I gotta go get
some Xanax.>. Such lines are not uncommon during even focused chat, and are
most often used to explain intended temporary absences or lapses of
concentration – so that, even when coded directly as punning jokes – like the
prune-juice line – they operate as meta-textual utterances.
Thread |
Example |
Number
of turns in thread |
Storm
thread |
Turn4 <TIFFTIFF18> DO U MOW IF ITS GONNA
HIE JERSEY AT ALL |
254 |
Mexican
thread |
Turn77
<SWMPTHNG> THERE'LL BE PLENTY OF MEXICAN ROOFERS IN N CAROLINA NEXT
WEEK |
14 |
Personal
thread |
Turn189
<guest-Beau> Calvin, your last
name wouldn't be Graham would it |
7 |
Chocolate
thread |
Turn15 <mahmoo>
brb.......gotta go get me some chocolate |
6 |
Other
|
Turn215
<guest-Capt> VIAGRA AND PRUNE
JUICE....DON'T KNOW IF I'M COMING OR GOING..... |
6 |
The illustration below shows the threads branching out
from the primary thread. The primary thread is all that relates directly to
Hurricane Floyd (Mexican thread, Storm thread) while the secondary threads are
the three other threads shown below. Secondary threads can be about the primary
topic but do not as obviously continue the primary topic. Secondary threads, if
added to at length, can become primary threads. A secondary thread becomes a
primary thread when most of the participants in the chatroom contribute only to
that thread, such as the ‘talk’ about the storm – its location, strength,
destruction,[4] and the
thread about Mexican workers who will offer to re-roof damaged properties.
In assessing
how and how far topics of conversation are based on the title of a chatroom,
reader-response theory takes us further however than just the recognition that
topic controls dominant conversational thread-construction. Here, I found that
the “writerly-writer” or actively constructing text-talker who initiates a
conversational thread, and the “writerly-reader” who responds, and who might be
expected to simply respond in topic-compliant ways to developing conversations,
could in fact be shown to demonstrate especially “open” and “active” strategies
of initiating text and responding to it, even while based on the title of the
chatroom. The talk remains topic centred, yet works to focus and refocus
threads around certain aspects or themes of a topic. This is not just information
provision, but creative exchange build around information exchange. At times
this is built around direct question and answer. In the example below for instance, <TIFFTIFF18>, in captured-turn 4, enquires whether the
hurricane is going to hit New Jersey, and is answered in captured-turn 8 by
<ankash>, that New Jersey is currently under a storm watch. However, the
conditions of IRC; its technologisation and the de-threaded running-order which
results, “open” the text for an unusually creative and reconstructive reception
– one which leads to what reader response would term a “writerly” reading. From
the outset, a large enough sample of
turn takings needs to be logged from any chatroom, in order to be sure of what is being said. If for instance an
entrant to the Hurricane Floyd chatroom entered after <TIFFTIFF>’s
question, they could well read
<RUSSL1>’s response, stating that the storm was overhead, and
interpret that to mean that it was
indeed going to hit New Jersey Yet
<RUSSL1> was replying to an earlier posting, asking where the storm was – and could therefore
confidently expect interlocutors to have been ”present” in the chatroom when
his or her location was revealed. . All chat interpretation or reception is
therefore only as current as it is when the chatroom is entered. What is said
before is unknowable, unless a log of the prior utterances is available, and
new entrants take the time to read it – which mostly they do not, and indeed,
cannot – given both the ongoing nature of most chat sites, and the pace at
which talk continues to scroll. Chat
entrants then anticipate certain speech content and behaviours, focused around
the chatroom title – but also display tendencies towards adapting rapidly as
topic focus shifts and new threads develop, and even a capacity to shift off
topic, especially into personalized referential chat explaining chat behaviours
influenced by external circumstances. One of the features of reader-response theory
as I am using it in chatrooms is that it shows how a reader brings certain
assumptions to a text, based on the interpretive strategies he/she has brought
to a particular community, from other social-cultural contexts (see Gass, Neu,
and Joyce, 1995; Blum-Kulka, Kasper, Gabriele, 1989; Rheingold, 1994; Turkle,
1995). The racial tone in Case Study 1, displayed toward Mexican roofers, is an
example of this. Increasingly, such socio-cultural contextual experience and
therefore capacity for interpretation involves on-line communities themselves.
Technological features of the virtual environment combine with self-selected
membership to create a community with a strong shared sense of values
(Bruckman, 1992). This is especially so with chatrooms in culture and country
specific sites, such as Middle East sites (Gudykunst, 2000) in which talk about
the US war against Iraq in 2003 is supported by pro-American websites and
opposed by pro-Mid East sites. Often pro-American chatters will enter sites on
Iranian or Iraqian sites and speak negatively about the country in question.
For example see chatrooms at http://www.iraq4u.com
and http://persepolis.com/chat/ChatPage.htm.
But even within more benign examples – such as the weather alert site used in
Case Study 1 – a community of values emerges, with chat participants responding
in aligned and non-aligned ways with one participant’s new thread on Mexican
roofers. And within this, chat behaviours in themselves are being defined,
maintained and even patrolled, as chatters self-correct and comment on
technical or presentational aspects of the entries of others. To this extent
then, chat behaviours are both “readerly”, working to detect and accept chat
conditions as illustrated in pre-existing strands – yet also “writerly”,
playing with chat forms, actively interpreting and re- and even
mis-interpreting postings, and re-positioning both topics and techniques.
Working
from a Reader-Response analytical frame, I set out to examine the complex
relations between readers and writers of texted talk, posing the multi-directed
question:
1.
Is the reader the writer who is writing the reader? In other words, is a posting on
a chatsite read as its writer may have intended – or it it reconstructed and reformed
into the understandings of whoever encounters it?
Online,
a writer produces his or her utterance, based on previously having taking on
the role of the reader, and therefore the reader’s “response”, immediately
activated as a chat reply - is very much
the response the original writer seeks – and works to provoke. If there
is no response the written utterance becomes lost in the scrolling text and
there is no thread or content to build upon. Both those moments of intensive
reciprocal posting, and those irruptions into disagreement, indicate strong
tendencies towards consensual exchange – or a markedly “writerly” texting,
constantly reviewing its positioning, and working to accommodate postings to
act within and upon those of the chatroom.. Does the reader or
the writer produce meaning within ‘this’ chatroom, or do they create meaning
together?
At
the same time however, as shown in Case Study 1, the fact that the “author” of any
chat posting is ultimately unknown makes the reading of the text in a chatroom
self-creating. The author becomes an imagined author – possibly male or female,
young or old, rich or poor, Muslim or Christian or any other identity. Meaning
is created in a chatroom only as much as the reader finds it to be meaningful –
so that the “author” of any posting must work hard on their text. The multiple
text structures of chatrooms can provide for different interpretations of the
same utterance (see Reid, 1996; Qvortrup, 2000). As a result of the limited
information about authorial identity or context within a chat channel, it is
difficult to argue for a single or consensual set of text practices in
chatrooms. Previous research on conventional text production and reception has
not had to explain issues such turn taking, backchannels, and co-presence in
online environments (Cherny, 1995). How a print-text reader assesses meaning
cannot accurately or totally be applied to real time written “utterances” in a
medium such as a chatroom or SMS messages on a mobile (cell) phone. Where the
”flow” of words suits the already-established contexts of both the chat session
itself, and the “chatters” in their broader social settings, a consensual flow
of “developing responses” occurs – yet this is a more fluid and immediately
reciprocal relation than that of the time-and-space distantiated world of print
text. The flow of the chat in Case Study 1 is evoked by the storm – itself a shifting and changing
topic, so that it is the flow that
establishes the context of the chatroom. Everything said in this space clearly concerns the storm, even, arguably,
two isolated statements: turn 215 where <guest-Capt> states
<VIAGRA AND PRUNE JUICE....DON'T KNOW IF I'M COMING OR GOING.....> and <ankash>
in turn 24: <I gotta go get some
Xanax> (an anti-anxiety agent). If
these can be seen as reflecting affect: introducing “real world” demands of the
storm topic, so too may the three
threads[5] about chocolate (turns 15, 23, 25, 163, 171
and 177)[6]. Turn 215 could be uttered in frustration
over the chaos of the storm conditions
(<VIAGRA AND PRUNE JUICE....DON'T KNOW IF I'M COMING OR GOING.....>). Needing Xanax – and even the “comfort food”
chocolate - could therefore be related to being anxious about the storm. The
ostensible shift in topic is still resolvable, in terms of the growing relation
of trust and recognition of concern among the group, as individuals feel more
able to indicate their emotional response to the situation, rather than simply
information seeking. What is being “written” therefore builds on what is being
“read” – yet those texts are read back as inviting and allowing the
introduction of affect: a notably active “reading”, already halfway to an act
of innovation within a subsequent “writing”. In chat, even when quite tightly
topic–focused, the reader and the writer create meaning together, to produce
threads of conversation. The writer and the reader are co-creators or
co-authors in the communicative act.
3.
How important is the particular chatroom context for the reader-writer
interpretive relation?
It is
the title of the chatroom that I suggest lures a participant to a particular chatroom. In Case Study 1 it
was the topic of Hurricane Floyd. In Case Study 7 it is baseball and in Case
Study 3 the title of the chatroom indicates that chat will focus around the pop
idol Britney Spears – although in this
case, as the analysis suggests, talk focused more into a Britney Spears style
culture than into direct discussion of the ostensible topic. . It appears then
that despite the title as indicator, the chatter has to deal with multiple
frames of interpretation, assessing the motivations and attitudes of others in
the room. When in turn 105 of Case
Study 1 <SWMPTHNG> asks <YOU
AINT TALKING ABOUT MEX ROOFERS ARE YOU?> the question indicates a moment of
direct consensus checking. <SWMPTHNG> picks up a hint in an earlier
posting that there may be an opportunity to redevelop a current thread, and
intervenes to “take the floor” in CA terms, in a powerful bid to redirect
conversation. Here “context” is both shifting – from hurricane alert
information, to discussion of ethnic tension – and not shifting, since
<SWMPTHNG> in making this move is assuming that he or she is culturally
contextualised: conversing with a group of like-minded non-Hispanic Americans,
who will share his or her views on “Mex roofers”. The “aint”, with its appeal
to a colloquial repertoire, helps establish that cultural context, and
indicates not only a chat entry which has “read” a cultural framing in earlier
postings, but which re-inserts its interpretation of that framing, hoping to
evoke response in kind.
The
chatroom as context appears then to both pre-dispose – in Bourdieu’s terms –
its users towards certain expected behaviours, values and topics. But since
this appears to be only partially established through the title and topic
selections, chatters also display complex techniques for both signaling and
reading back rather less directly expressed aspects of the social and cultural
framings brought to the chat.
Case
Study 2 examines online chat as a form of Computer-Mediated Communication
(CMC), with all the special features and characteristics this implies.
Computers do not replace but supplement communication. Despite the many obvious
influences of the technologisation of online talk, communication remains
dependant on both the sender of the message and the receiver. The many tools
available for CMC research conventionally divide the research objects into either
asynchronous CMC (emails; mailbases; network groups; annotatable webpages;
databases and discussion boards) or synchronous CMC (chatrooms and computer-conferencing)
– although future studies might well address this division from the
perspectives established in studies such as this. While the “liveness” of
synchronous chat enables application of such analytical methods as CA, the use
of script in “chat” still places interesting limits around the act of
communication, and links even the immediacy of IRC to the more stable and
enduring CMC forms. Since Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) is used in
business, non-profit organizations, education, and entertainment as well as for
personal use, better understandings of how each format works as a communicative
act, and of how each suits its wide range of uses, might assist in future
selections and development of the various formats, for specialist use. However,
as this study has suggested, CMC at this stage still lacks established and
specific methodologies to analyze chatroom talk. While this thesis has used
several conversational analytical theories, such as Speech act theory and
Conversational Analysis, as a lens to examine the data in CMC, it has also
uncovered in a preliminary way many limitations for analysis, as techniques
developed for real-world talk are transferred into electronic forms of
communication. Until CMC research moves beyond its current emphasis on
pragmatic and developmental studies of user applications, and begins to examine
instead the practices of those users in observational, descriptive and
analytical ways, “how to” introductions to CMC formats will remain largely at
the level of technical glossaries. The most common use of CMC research
currently is surveying students and instructors (see Romiszowski and Mason,
1996; Harasim, Hiltz, Teles, & Turoff, 1995; Mason, 1992; Rice, 1990) and
tracking e-business supported work coordination (Bowers
and Churcher, 1988). CMC is however beginning to be used as a method, as well
as a tool, for researching online conversation (see Cicognani,
1996, 1997, 1998, 2000; Parrish,
2000; Rheingold, 1993, 1994, 2000; Vallis, 1999, 2001; Turkle, 1982, 1984,
1995, 1996) – but such studies to date work within broad sociological or
social-psychological modes.
Synchronous
CMC has its own particular set of difficulties, as I have shown in case study 2. Multiple threads of discussion
become difficult to follow. Slow Internet connection can mean that the speed of
reading and responding cannot be maintained. This results in discussion losing
its focus and side discussions (threads) developing. Sometimes participants may
simply be slow typists. The result is that what is written is often a response
to something written many turns earlier.
Three
terms, “gap”, “lapse” and “pause” are used to refer to silences in CA[7].
In chatrooms however, there will never be silences in the proper sense of the
word, let alone with the specificity and distinguishability of CA
analysis. If there are silences in
real time, the text will simply scroll together to cover these spaces. The CMC
technologisation masks what is, in CA terms, significant rupture in talk. Because of the threaded nature of the
arrival of chat postings, chat users learn to bridge and to braid: to cross
between postings, to reconstruct postings into reciprocal turns. As yet, there
is no means of assessing how extended, or how complex, such bridgings and
braidings might become – or of registering or measuring their impact on
subsequent “replies”.
In
the example below I have looked at the space between a person’s turn, and the
next time the same person has a turn. I have called the distance between the
two turns a ”lag”. A “lag” in this segment is the distance between speech
events of a speaker in a chat situation, a pause between one utterance and
another.
For
example in Case Study 1 <EMT-Calvin> has the following number of
turns in between his or her utterances:
turn |
|
# of turns in between |
Turns
on a singular down line |
1 |
hahahaha lol |
|
|
14 |
That weather building in cherryt point says it s
126 degrees in cherry point |
13 |
|
35 |
well folks im signing off here |
21 |
|
42 |
i need some sleep |
7 |
|
63 |
i like being self employed |
21 |
|
69 |
dont have to worry about someone telling me to |
6 |
|
70 |
report to worl |
|
|
82 |
and those folks will be sent back to mexico |
12 |
|
85 |
The locals will be the ones to get jobs |
3 |
|
97 |
folks need to be careful for con artest after the
storm |
12 |
|
112 |
i aint worried our new 99 home is under warrentyu |
15 |
|
118 |
morehead guess how many tie downs are on here |
6 |
|
121 |
68 tie downs |
3 |
|
153 |
folks my God is able |
32 |
With CMC
the conversational lags are self-created. There is no one physically urging an
answer, as there would be in face-to-face communication. <EMT-Calvin>
appears to “answer” his or her own utterances for (1) signing off in turn 35,
and stating seven turns later <i
need some sleep>. There is a varying conversational lag between utterances
throughout <EMT-Calvin>’s contribution to this chat. Looking at all 282
turns in this sequence <EMT-Calvin> has the following lags between
utterances 13>21>7>21>6>12>3>12>15>6>3>32>5>5>1>9>6>9>5>7>14>8>9>7>14>7>3>.
In
other words, there are 13 turns from
<EMT-Calvin>’s first turn to his next, then 21 turns separate his
second turn from his third, and so on. I have shown this graphically in column
four. The upright line represents all
282 turns in the chat segment. The short horizontal lines represent
<EMT-Calvin>’s turns, giving a visual image of the spaces between
<EMT-Calvin>’s turns – and so, breaking open the CMC technologisation,
providing an opportunity to consider whether the time-lags in entry are
significant.
The
largest frame is the 32 conversational lags between turns 121 and 153 (shown in
the fourth column above ‘<<---‘) between the utterance of
<68 tie downs> and
The
turns between were utterances concerning the storm, for example:
<I
know the anxiety you must be feeling~I was in two typhoons in Taiwan last year>,
<Winds
are picking up but not tropical yet>,
<The news says the eye should hit us in the early AM
hours.>”.
What these case studies have shown is that there is a form of “reading” in between the frames
(see CS 1.1). In face-to-face conversation a
conversational lapse or pause can be equated to a listening phase of
conversation (see Sacks, 1992). In chat rooms this is a reading phase, interpretive, reconstructive,
and wholey significant in the chat process. Without consideration of the lag
times, as well as of the intervening utterances, it is impossible to see how
much interpretive work is occurring. In de-threaded sequence
<EMT-Calvin>’s postings seem in fact incommensurable. Several unconnected
themes develop – and only by consideration of both the time <EMTCalvin>
takes in achieving these changed frames and in shifting focus as new threads
intersect and gain attention, can we make sense of the whole contribution. A CA
methodology therefore, with its primary focus on relatively immediate
conversational responses, even within multilogue circumstances, will need
adaptation when dealing with IRC conditions.
This newly revealed “active presence” within lags also
reminds us of the IRC convention of “lurking”, or being present but not posting
in a chatroom. In chatrooms that do not indicate when a user is entering or
leaving there is no way of knowing
whether the chatter is lurking or has indeed logged off. In column B below <Kiera> makes no utterances between entering and
leaving. Given a presence of just under one minute in the space,
Kiera must be understood as having scanned the conversational threads under discussion,
and found none of interest. The speed with which this is achieved is in itself
interesting.
B. http://se.unisa.edu.au/september11/new_york_city_chat_chat.htm
|
|
(20:34:49 SignOn) suzi enters Sapho's Retreat |
8. 14:57:20 ||||||||| Kiera just entered this channel |
(20:35:23 SignOff) Roxy leaves Sapho's Retreat |
9. 14:57:43 ||||||||| novyk just entered this channel |
(20:35:37 SignOn) teenieamber enters Sapho's Retreat |
10. 14:57:35 Sascha: no from germany |
(20:38:42 SignOn) jb28m enters Sapho's Retreat |
11. 14:57:50 oscar: ok hello! |
(20:41:16 SignOn) voyeur(mwm) enters Sapho's Retreat |
12. 14:57:56 MissMaca: is anyone from NY? |
(20:41:26 SignOn) slamman enters Sapho's Retreat |
13. 14:58:01 ||||||||| dolly just entered this channel |
(20:42:16 SignOn) ellie enters Sapho's Retreat |
14. 14:58:04 ||||||||| Will just entered this channel |
(20:42:21 SignOn) Marian enters Sapho's Retreat |
15. 14:58:05 novyk: hello from Spain |
(20:42:43 SignOff) Marian leaves Sapho's Retreat |
16. 14:58:09 damaged: im a fread what will happen next |
(20:42:49 SignOn) Becci enters Sapho's Retreat |
17. 14:58:14 mike: that was an organized terror act. what
do you people think. |
|
18. 14:58:14 Sascha: i watch it in tv it is unbelieveble |
19. 14:58:15 novyk: what's happened there ??? |
|
20. 14:58:17 ||||||||| Kiera just logged off. |
Conversely, in chatrooms that auto-record every instance of
keyboard usage, including entry, leaving, changing names, and using pre-set
text, there can be moments of extreme difficulty in following
conversation (see for instance the example in Case Study 6 ‘6.3’ where there were only two actual utterances in thirty-six turns). And yet this is
not to suggest that immediately reciprocal conversational flows are any less
complex. Indeed, it may well be that it is the sophistication of our learned
capacities to manage the threads of even dialogic conversational posting
sequences which enables us to override such problems within the
technologisation of chat. In examination of an Instant Messenger chatroom that
had two people, this study found just
as many threads happening as there would be with multiple speakers. Measurement of thread rates alone cannot
indicate fully what is happening in terms of communication.
It is
important then to locate techniques which will allow analysis of the
differences in communicative responses
between various Internet communicational devices. In discussion groups and
emails people observably take more time and care with what they write, and are
therefore not as immediate in their communication as in Instant Messenger (IM)
or chatroom conversations. Users of discussion groups and email may use a
spell/grammar check, and plan more consciously before posting their text. There
is for instance a more textual format with discussion groups. But while Instant
Messenger and chatrooms appear at first sight to be less disciplined and more
varied, with the relative spontaneity of casual interchange ignoring many more
formal communicative conventions, analysis has shown complex patterns of
interpretive and pre-dispositional structuring under way. In the example below
the message from the Hurricane Floyd Messages Board appears more developed
textually than the chatroom utterance – but is this an absolute, or a relative
judgement? While IRC postings are far less grammatically formal, they remain as
communicatively active and complex.
Hurricane Floyd Messages board |
September 13, 1999 - 08:45 am: |
By <wpapas> |
Significant safety concerns for family, friends, and property
on San Salvador, Rum Key, Turks & Cacos. If anyone is on line there
Please post to messaging board, I know there are those monitoring short wave
radio on San Salvador; Please radio The "Pitts" Sandra & Nick
on San Salvador and forward any request or messages. There was very little
news before after and during Dennis. Sincerely. Wp |
Floyd chatroom |
|
<ankash> |
Tornadoes in Pender Count |
With the above examples it is of course possible to postulate
that, in the absence of directly reciprocating co-locutors, postings must
address an unknown and general audience, in their quest for the specific
addressee – and thus the more formalized and “public” mode of expression. In an
Instant Messenger chatroom, the contrary is true. Interlocutors – most often
established acquaintances, or at least those who are able to establish cultural
commonality within the immediate communicative context – form responsive
exchanges through their readings of informal, yet nevertheless complex and
sophisticated – talk-texting repertoires. The demands for some degree of
security within an expressive consensus can be clearly seen in those cases in
which utterances accumulate from a single chat participant, before responses
appear. In both cases below there are repeated entries by the same IM chatter
before the other chatter ‘speaks’. The example below in column “A” shows the
male speaker, coded as <######:>, making another entry in advance of any answer, giving
five multi-utterances and seven single utterances. Between the female’s turn at 11 and her next turn at 16 there are
four male utterances. Interestingly, especially for work on male-female “power”
relations in talk, this shows in at least these two chat examples that the male
utterances outnumber the utterances of
the female (see Tannen,
1990; Morgan, 2000, on conversational maintenance by men and women in both CMC and face-to-face discussions).
The posting frequency alone suggests an
imbalance in the power relations of the speech – but when the thread sequences
are assembled, more can be read from the “lag” durations. The degree to which
threads either change direction, or alter their intensity, “inside” the lag
frame, is in itself of communicative significance, and suggests that serious
study is needed into how “silence” works inside various chat forms.
From this example it is evident that the males are
initiating threads and the female is maintaining them[8].
In the next example, the male has initiated the thread on past lives and the
female has commented on it.
1. ######: WE WERE TOGETHER IN THE HAREMS OF
CHINAS THRONE, THE GOOD OLDL DAYS |
2. ######: MINE |
3. ******: ah...one of those past life miracles |
In Case
Study 4 the speakers who dominate the conversation by contrast are female
usernames[9].
<Nicole528> has taken 24 turns and <judythejedi> has taken 22.
Below <judythejedi> is marked as and <Nicole528> is marked as so that they can
be easily seen as the dominating influence in this chatroom[10]. By colour coding the speakers I could easily
identify who was speaking the most.
I approached this case study with two
questions related to Computer-mediated communication:
‘Do
computers change conversation’ and ‘are Instant Messenger chatrooms
closer to offline-person-to-person conversation than dialogue in a multivoiced
chatroom’? It has certainly become
obvious that computers do change conversation, and especially in relation to
the suppressions of paralinguistic cues, direct address carried by gaze or
gesture, tonal emphasis … all of those techniques used in “live” communication
to manage the conversational relation. While we have found many emerging CMC
techniques being used to replace these physical features, and noted the
extraordinary creativity and pace of application in many cases, the informality
of the new repertoire: its constitution within practice and its lack of a
tailored analytical method, mean that CMC has not yet delivered all of its
secrets. Nor can we anticipate that users will cease their creative
transformations of the mixed-mode of “texted talk” into these new communicative
forms. Already it has become obvious that while CMC has produced and still
produces new talk techniques, there is no monolithic regulatory influence being
exerted. Practices differ – between chat spaces, between chat participants –
even at different moments within a particular chat sequence, as talk-topics
shift emphasis, and behaviours adapt. CMC itself has already spun into many
different formats, and the talk-texting and speech relations within each have
also differentiated. Some patterns appear to cross between CMC technologising
practices in different formats. For instance, as with the chat in Case Study 1
where multithreads (five) branch out from the primary topic of the storm,
multiple chat-focus threads were also present in this Instant Messenger
conversation (in this case, three). The overall topic stems from the fact that
the two people in the conversation appear to know one another (confirmed later
in my research). The threads in this ‘talk’ are about past lives, current
relationships and sexual relations. The new threads were each initiated by the
male speaker.
1. past lives - <######:> <WE WERE TOGETHER IN THE HAREMS OF
CHINAS THRONE, THE GOOD OLDL DAYS>
2.
current relationship
<######:> <YES, I GET TO CALL HER IN ABOUT 2 HOURS
3.
sex talk
<######:> <THE WOMAN HAS FOUR ORGASIMS, A LEAST ONE VERY BIG TWO
MEDIUM AND ONE OR MORE SMALL THE MAN HAS ONE BIG AND MAYBE A FEW SMALL ONES>
The conversations begin with talk about past lives,
then branch into a current relationship (the male’s current relationship), and the
male initiated topic of sex - and the conversation ends there.
Instant
Messenger or two-only chats are more intimate than multi-chats. In a public multi-chat
room where it is not known who is present, utterances are viewable by all who
are present. In the maze of scrolling texts threads, an individual can be found
and lost by both the reader and the writer. In IM there are only the two
viewers, who choose to respond or not to respond. Instant Messenger is thus
similar to face-to-face conversation in that responses must be made if there is
to be a conversation. In a multi-person chatroom by contrast, if there is no
response by one person then someone else may respond to carry a thread forward.
As I have shown in Case Study 2 and in the other case studies, multi-voiced
text-based chat confuses talk-relations to the point that not only is dialogue
difficult to follow, but it is difficult to know who is dialoguing. One-to-one
online discourse is personal, uninterrupted, and in this sense closer to
‘normal’ offline conversation.
What
is changed – and markedly so within chatroom technologisations - is how we do
conversation – the waiting for a direct response, dependent on the person with
whom we are communicating and the speed at which they type and the speed of
their computer connection. The speed of turn-talking and of understanding what
is being said is dependent on the number of people in the chatroom. The more
voices there are to sort through to carry on a personal conversation, the more
a one-on-one conversation can be prevented from developing. If there are more
than 40 people in the same chat, all typing and entering text at the same time,
there can be a lapse between what we write and its appearance in the order of
chat. For example in the chat below that occurred during the World Trade Centre
collapses, there were sixteen entrances with eleven participants in the minute
between 3.07 PM and 3.08 PM. Turn 123
and 124 are both recorded at 15:07:17.
|
15:07:00 |
||||||||| sascha just entered this channel |
|
15:07:03 |
1Bone!!: Ich bin deutsch |
|
15:07:06 |
Spain_17: Here in Spain everyones talking about
what's happening there |
|
15:07:09 |
novyk: yo alucino, what's happened in London ??? |
|
15:07:12 |
damaged: morons, there weher 2 attacks again, one
in pittburg |
|
15:07:16 |
Hello: news: may be Osmat behind this attack |
|
15:07:17 |
mike: where are you from, damaged? because you
d'like to escape to mars. |
|
15:07:17 |
Spain_17: Anybody from the N.Y?? |
|
15:07:19 |
oscar: yo de menorca! que pasada no? |
|
15:07:19 |
1Bone!!: koischer chat hier |
|
15:07:27 |
Hello: I just heard from news |
|
15:07:28 |
oscar: que pasada no? |
|
15:07:32 |
captain_insaneo: in london the stock exchange has
been evacuated |
|
15:07:32 |
Spain_17: Oscar? |
|
15:07:42 |
MissMaca: what's happened in London? |
|
15:07:58 |
||||||||| tach just entered this channel |
Not
only is it difficult to follow conversation at this pace but one has to quickly
respond to a very specific utterance in order to be read and responded to. The speed
that communication occurs at with computers, and the inability to access the source of the information and the
context that it is in, presents the biggest problem of finding meaning in
transcripts in multi-person text-based chatrooms. In Instant Messenger or any
two-person-only chatroom there is more opportunity for an organized and
familiar turn-taking within communication, and therefore a meaningful exchange,
than in a multi-person chatroom.
In
Case Study 3, using semiotic and pragmatic analysis as my tools of
investigation of online chat, I particularly wanted to uncover not just how
‘talk’ is accomplished in a chatroom, but how far chatroom “talk” generally may
be said to include a broader than usual repertoire of representation, working
to “manage” talk relation problems as outlined above, and to compensate the
loss of offline conversational cues. Mihai Nadin (1977) claims that the
computer is in itself a semiotic machine, as it is at core a machine that can
be programmed to manipulate symbols. Using computers as semiotic generators has an aesthetic
appeal to users, because semiotics change over time and provide new meanings to
old ideas. This seems interestingly close to the sorts of marked creativity the
IRC and IM users in particular display in the case studies for this research –
although the continuity of these creative “solutions” to communicational
problems online, with strategies and talk/texting techniques evolved in offline
conversation and reading-writing practices, reduces the implied suggestions
that it is the CMC technologisation, and not human communicative ingenuity,
which drives these changes.
In this case study I focused on the most obvious of the CMC
elements of creativity, exploring how the use of non-word representation: emoticons
and abbreviations, as well as the “identity” sign-tags or the usernames of the
chatters, influenced the turn-takings of the chat-talk (see Crystal 2001;
Rivera 2002).
I chose a chatroom named after a celebrity to firstly
discover whether usernames, their “identity” sign-tags, would be reflective of
the title of the chatroom.
In this case study on ‘Britney Spears
Chat’ one chatter did indeed identify as a Britney fan: <baby_britney1>.
This identification with the chat-title is consistent with what I have found in
the other chatrooms in this thesis, such as in Case Study 1, Hurricane Floyd,
where there was the username <IMFLOYD>. In Case Study 4 on astrology
participants used the names ‘astrochat’, <AquarianBlue>, <TheGods>
and <Night-Goddess_>; in Case Study 6, ‘web 3d animation’ there were <web3dADM> and < Web3DCEO)> and
in Case Study 7, ‘baseball chat’ <MLB-LADY> (major league baseball).
Therefore it is evident that usernames can be directly associated with the
name-directed topic of the chatroom.
When the dialogue is read from the postings of these specific users it is clear that each chatter is indeed interested in the topic of
the chatroom:
<AquarianBlue>
in Case Study 4;
10).
<AquarianBlue> Nicole 528 is gemini |
<web3dADM>
in Case Study 6;
10)
<web3dADM> just got the Cult3D folks to agree to show up on March 3 |
<MLBLADY>
in Case Study 7;
6.
<MLBLADY> no clev
fan but like wright |
<IMFLOYD>
in Case Study 1;
55
<guest-Sundance> Has it flooded
very bad on the island, heard they haad a tornado
in emerald Isle |
and
<Spain_17>: in the Postscript – 911 Chat;
120.
<Spain_17>: Here in Spain everyones talking about what's happening
there |
But in each of these chatrooms there are also
participants, as we saw in each study, identifying against or outside the
title-topic convention; contributing postings off-topic; playing with textual
form rather than following content threads – even resisting efforts to bring
them back on topic. And both within and off topic, we have seen intense moments
of creative communicative play, frequently directed more towards the
maintenance of communicative relations than to focused engagement with talk
topics.
Case Study 2 therefore centers on inquiry into whether
the “playfulness” of online chat is a CMC specific impulse. In face-to-face
conversation it is clear that people also use an array of semiotic
communicative cues: intonation, physical gestures, facial expressions - but
with CMC communication semiotic play is
restricted to lines of text on a screen as an expressive marker (Stone, 1995a, p.93) as well as such
“characterising” elements as semantically-layered usernames, expressive
emoticons or colour selections, and
added sound. Semiotic analysis thus enables this study to move beyond a purely
linguistic base into examination of the graphical and expressive modes used to
compensate, and maybe beyond that, to create meaning in new ways, within the
new “conversational” spaces of the chatroom - and particularly so in a chatroom
of saturating expressiveness within identity work, as is the case with Britney
chat.
In Case Study 3 to fully explore this drive to identity
performance and exploration, to find out how users extend the actual
communicative range of the “language” or coding system used, it was first
necessary to examine which communicative functions were actually in use in the
Britney Spears chatroom, and to reveal which are dominant and recurrent.
Firstly, it was obvious in this chatroom that chatters
employed usernames as signs to give others clues about their identity – or at
least about their “preferred identity”, or particular identification with a
Britney community. In person-to-person conversation the clues that are given as
aspects of identity are personal – indeed, physical. Online, these are replaced
by the sorts of identity markers which demark offline social or cultural
status: one’s employment or educational
level for instance.
Here, in keeping with the Britney world, user tags are
about image and “claiming”, or the image that one wishes to have represent
one’s status within the particular social context of the Britney chat group.
Each asserts either a relational claim, or one’s desirability as a relational
being: <Mickey_P_IsMine>, <JeRz-BaByGurL>, <Pretty_Jennifer>, <baby_britney1>, <IM_2_MUCH_4U>, <AnGeL_GlRL>, <Luvable_gurl15>, <buttercup20031> and <guest-hotgirlz>. These
usernames suggest that the chatters, if not actually young girls, are at least
identified with a popular teen culture of physicality and cuteness. In
real-life <Luvable_gurl15> could be a 58 year old male, but if so he is
entirely conversant with the codes and values of the Britney culture – even
down to the assertiveness of the orthography: the post-feminist/netchick “gurl”
replacing the conventional – and less powerful – “girl”.
Secondly, the title of the chatroom identifies the
chatters as interested in the celebrity ikon, Britney Spears. The chatroom
title alone can provide information on the identity of a participant; for example, in a chatroom such as ‘Iraq4u’. An adolescent chatroom such as
this one is likely to focus discussion on aspects of personal self, as users construct identity around the image and
stylized behaviours represented in their idol. As I show in the comparison
table with a computer software discussion chat below, this can be seen to be
true in the Britney Spears room. And yet there are distinguishing features
beyond the level of topic as well.
Abbreviations were used more extensively; suggesting that adolescent
play over identity is also enacted within talk-texting strategies.
|
Emoticons
too serve a purpose beyond just the saving of time. They are also a marker of
informality, and so an “antilanguage”, in Halliday’s sense, indicating a
special subcultural group identity, and used to show who is familiar or
‘up-to-date’ with the latest language being used. Of the seven case studies, I
have found the highest incidence of abbreviations (30%) and emoticons (6%) in
the Britney Spears chatroom (see http://se.unisa.edu.au/tables.htm
for a statistical comparison of the seven chatrooms). In fact the abbreviation
for laughing-out-loud ”lol” was used fifteen times. In this chatroom frequency
counts of specific language forms are indeed revelatory. There were 294 words
used within the collected data corpus, with the personal pronoun ”I” used the
most frequently, (18 times) and ”lol” used the next most frequently (15 times).
In the sequence shown below ”lol” is used nine times in 20 turns, which is more
frequent than in any other chatroom examined in this study. Another form of laughing-out-loud ”LMAO” (Laughing my ass off) was used five times.
Firstly
then, chatroom semiotics shows the specialist communicative skill-level of the
participator and whether he or she is in the right communicative arena to
continue to be an accepted part of the chat community. Yet identity work of
this kind in the Britney Spears chatroom is limited to the user name and the
textual input of the chatter. By contrast, in face-to-face conversation, forms
of identification are much more extensive and include cues which can
reveal personal identity, national
identity, occupational identity, corporate identity, gender identity and even
religious identity. (see Berger, 1998). So the talk-texting and linguistic
creativity of these young chatters must achieve high levels of sophistication
in order to convey all of the information needed to assert a “Britney” self,
and yet remain a distinctive and desirable co-locutor in the “flattened” yet
still competitive space of the chatroom. One dimension of chat, which seems to
become suppressed in these conditions is that of extended reciprocal
conversation – those longer threads of debate, information exchange or
narrative, which appear in some other chat spaces and cultures. Here, while
such narratives of experience for example do exist, they are constantly
interrupted by the “social recognition” postings of greetings and farewells,
and reactive-expressive turns, working less to cement sociality than to
maintain affective role within the chat relation.
The
only thread of a conversation ‘captured’ in the Britney Spears chat sequence
shown below is about the wish to see a particular person online. This somewhat
casual and intermittent chat contrasts with that in the 3D Chatroom, where there was a more developed discussion of
computer software.
1.
well heather he going to end it i just know it 2.
No Syd damn it meee 3.
No hes not ter 4.
Lol 5.
hmmm mickey 6.
But i think hes got a gf so i dont miss him that muc but well see what
tomrrow bringslol 7.
Ok Jenn lol 8.
Yayay lol! 9.
Lol justin 10.
lol 11.
iz lost 12.
will find ya lol 13.
do any guys wanna chat? 14.
afk 15.
Jenn Am i talking to a brick wall??? 16.
Sis i want Justin to get here! 17.
need to fix my hair.. 18.
hello 19.
wel I duno Mickey lol I juss think hes hottie so i cant really miss him 20.
lol s
dead=( i
am going to cry if i dont see my baby soon |
What
VRML options work within AOL? dunno ahhh
an ausse...a bunch of good vrml folks there I
don't believe AOL supports VRML at all Will
X3D work better there because it's Java-based? which
really sucks...but i'm not completely sure X3D
is not necessarity Java based that is just 1 implementation option I'm
sure there will be stand alone and plugin versions of X3D viewers so
did len say x3d not finalised yet? x3d
is not finalized yet...yes true i
think the final spec is due by siggraph time this summer but a lot should
happen at the web3d conference too is
a lot of business done there? yeah
quite a bit i suppose....most of the
working groups meet |
Here
for instance we can see in posting 2 an interesting expressive embellishment,
as a chatter who is entirely capable of entering the term “damn” with its
correct spelling, renders an extended “meee” to assert both presence and the
sort of “self” focus typical of the chat group. Alongside this focus on various
forms of “I”, the recurrent laugh-cue “lol” creates a terrain of good humour
and reciprocal sympathy, even in the midst of small narratives of loss: “I am
going to cry…”; “he going to end it…”; “s dead =(…” The heavy layers of
expressive play suggest a dramatized rather than an experienced reality: an
enactment of how one should appear in a Britney world (relationship obsessed)
concerned over the appearance or not of one’s “justin” or one’s “hottie”,
rather than how one is: hanging out in cyberspace with one’s “gf”s who care,
and who respond in kind.
Having
established such high degrees of symbolic or creative-linguistic play, it
becomes important with this chat culture to examine more carefully how this
specific talk-texting repertoire works.
Pragmatics as a lens of conversational analysis in chatrooms (Ayer,
1968; Peirce, 1980) can
reveal a socially embedded reading of chat ‘talk’. Pragmatics helps to focus on
how the various communicative items in chatrooms; emoticons, abbreviations and
misspelled words as well as chat utterance sentence structures (CUSS) are used
within an online linguistic society. Pragmatics in chatrooms starts from the
observation that people use online language to accomplish certain kinds of
acts, broadly known as speech acts
(Speech act theory is discussed in Case Study 4 below). Studies by Simeon J.
Yates (1996) have shown that the language used in interactive speech in
chatrooms more closely resembles spoken than written language, especially in
the interpersonal respect (including use of personal pronouns). As we have seen
above, in Britney Spears chat, Table 8 - http://se.unisa.edu.au/phd/chapter5/table_8.htm ‘I’ has been used 18 times in the chat, the
most used word in the whole chat.
Writing
(or text-talking) back to a previous utterance in a synchronous conversational
situation in chatrooms leads to a pragmatic re-contextualization of the use of
the sorts of double-loaded semiotic expression discussed above. It is how the
signs are read which provides meaning, and entices, or provokes, other
participants to either continue building an utterance into a thread, or begin a
new thread. In Case Study three there
are several utterances that do not become threads, as they evoke no comment on
them. For example neither of the following utterances have a response.
23.
<baby_britney1> do any guys wanna chat? |
27.<SluGGiE>
need to fix my hair.. |
Despite
the direct question/invitation in posting 23, and the focus on a
Britney-culture preoccupation with physical appearance in posting 27, neither
turn is answered. The sorts of creative play with chat-semiotic loadings which
we have seen above appear to evoke reciprocal posting, when otherwise powerful
conversational and communicative strategies such as direct invitation or topic
and contextual focus do not. Even those postings which access and reproduce the
contextual “antilanguage” or specialist codes, with the conventional
attitudinal and behavioural signifiers in place, do not always succeed in chat.
In these next two turns <Mickey_P_IsMine> similarly receives no response
- but responds to him or her self in turn 64.
56.
<Mickey_P_IsMine> Ahh i got a
retest tomrrow mi failin math lol..and i think science |
64. <Mickey_P_IsMine> which i duno how
im failin science |
The
casual texting, including colloquialism (“dunno”), spelling lapses “tomrrow “,
and “mi” for “im” = “I’M”) – even the “lol” abbreviation – code into the
established styles of group talk – yet seemingly without sufficient creativity
to gain notice. While responding to abbreviations and emoticons and colloquial
forms and specialized lexical terms shows a commonality of understanding
amongst those who are chatting, this appears not enough in itself to command a
reply. Commonality is clearly
indicated when <Paul665> in turn
44 asks <Jen> to give details on his or her self, and it is evident that
to evoke a response <Paul665>
must assume that Jen knows the abbreviation ‘asl’.
44.
<Paul665> Ok Jenn asl |
<Pretty_Jennifer> responds:
51.
<Pretty_Jennifer> 15/f/fl u? |
But
while we can clearly see that here the codes are exchanged in perfect
reciprocity, what we cannot do is calculate with certainty why this exchange
succeeds, while others fail. The gambit is not as directive as in
<baby_britney1>’s direct question in posting 23, so that we are left with
an interesting possibility that the direct question works less effectively in
this chat context than the coded-abbreviated “asl” convention: perhaps a signal
of <Paul665>’s chat-credentials and comparative “cool” – while <baby-britney1>
may be showing too much real-world social desperation and push. But it is
impossible to be certain. Maybe chatters were attending to other surrounding
threads as posting 23 arrived. It is at such points that textual analysis, no
matter how multi-layered, begins to fail, and only ethnographic or
observational work can succeed.
How
then can we assume that w/readers respond in certain ways to certain language
selections within chat postings – and especially to the sorts of chat-codes and
conventions which seem most often to evoke interested responses? I use
semantics, (Korzybski, 1954; Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet, 1990, 1995) to
investigate the ‘meaning’ of a linguistic item, considered as part of a
specific syntactic system, in terms of how the item, (in this case, an online
abbreviation) carries meaning out of and back into its culturally specific
context. Yet even the most recurrent items can fail to connect with certainty,
even to established referents. For example, the online abbreviation ‘lol’ can have
different interpretations, such as ‘laughing-out-loud’ (the meaning I would
ascribe in this case study);
‘lots-of-love’,[11] ‘learning-on-line’[12];
Liechtenstein on-line[13]; Lots-Of-Luck[14] or even Little Old Lady[15].
16.<Mickey_P_IsMine> But i think hes got a
gf so i dont miss him that muc but well see what tomrrow bringslol |
17. <Mickey_P_IsMine> Ok Jenn lol |
18. <Pretty_Jennifer> Yayay lol! |
19. <Mickey_P_IsMine> Lol justin |
20. <SluGGiE-> lol |
|
22. <Pretty_Jennifer> will find ya lol |
While
“laughing out loud” is the most likely coding here, at least in postings 17, 18
and 19 “lots of luck” and “lots of love” are also possible. Only when the
threads are carefully teased apart can more certainty be added – and the
process remains, even then, teasingly open. To establish an analysis of online
dialogue thus requires both semantic
representation (content of what the different ‘speakers’ in a chatroom are
saying) and pragmatic information, to evaluate the kinds of speech acts
chatters are performing, such as asking a question, answering a question that
has been asked, or just announcing
their presence. Case Study 3 found in
this particular chatroom conversation continued in a seemingly casual and
colloquial manner, with abbreviations such as ‘lol’ fulfilling a user’s turn,
acting as a “continuer”, even in the absence of certain application to a given
referent. It appears than that semantic loading can weaken, as long as
pragmatic potential remains intact – but that this “openess” or undecideability
in the speech relation requires a compensatory layer of cultural-contextual
work – and that it is the online chat techniques themselves: the abbreviations,
the emoticons – which provide this, and not the direct relational work of fully
formed questions, or the “style-culture” topics of behaviours of the “world of
Britney” which we might otherwise anticipate as the goal for the entire
communicative project.
The
first question I posed in this chatroom was whether a popular person’s name as
title of a chatroom creates a difference in dialogue in a chatroom. In this chatroom, surprisingly, there was
only one mention of Britney Spears, even though the chatroom bears her
name. There would need to be study of
many celebrity chatrooms before an answer could be definitively given as to
whether celebrity establishes not a fan-celebratory space, but a looser
social-relational peer group or “style tribe”, in Maffesoli’s terms. There are
chat-events when a celebrity is present, and questions are addressed to them,
in an online talk-genre closer to the practices of a web-forum. In this case however, while the chatroom was
named after a celebrity there was no indication that it was an ‘official’ site
for Britney Spears[16]
and I did not find more than a few users at any one time during the research
sampling, suggesting that the myriad of Britney fans do not see such sites as
this as part of fan activity.[17]
It is then entirely feasible that an entirely otherwise-directed communicative purpose
is evolving within such spaces.
The
second question asked in this chatroom was whether emoticons and abbreviations
are used more frequently in youth orientated chatrooms than elsewhere.[18] Findings from this chatroom suggest that
this is so, and I show this in 5.1.1 Table 1. This chatroom had 30 percent of
turns with an emoticon or abbreviation used, compared to the next highest room,
Case Study 6, which had .06 of turns with emoticon usage. With Case Study 3 based on a teen pop star and Case Study 6 on computer 3D animation participants are likely to be older – and
certainly appeared so (many made some
mention of family during the conversation).
A Pew Internet Project report (see http://www.pewinternet.org)
in August 2002 found that 17 million young people aged
from 12 to 17 use the Internet. That represents 73% of those in this age
bracket. Fifty-five percent said they used chatrooms and close to 13 million teenagers, representing 74% of online
teens, use instant messaging. In comparison, 44% of online adults have used IM.
A further finding by the Pew Internet Project found that 24% of teens who have used IMs and email or have been to
chat rooms have pretended to be a different person when they were communicating
online. I have therefore felt it statistically safe to assume that the majority of those in this case
study were indeed teenagers, and
suggest that the high ratios of expressive talk, social-relational and
affliative talk, and online coding use, are typical among such groups.
Since
Case Study 3 therefore raises the question of whether the conversation in each
chatroom varies in its focus in relation to talk techniques, and not just in
topic focus, this study moves to consider which talk forms are evident in chat,
and whether variability in given chat spaces can be detected – and perhaps even
predicted, from the “chat community” present. Case Study 4 used speech act
theory to identify dominant types of speech activity in a single chat space. While IRC chat makes application of speech
act theory difficult, because of the indeterminacy of the “response”, it is
still possible to categorise postings within the speech act repertoire, and,
where threaded exchanges are evident, to evaluate the success or “felicity
conditions” of an utterance. It remains difficult to assess how much of the
intentional load of a chat utterance is carried by para-linguistic elements
such as emoticons or abbreviations, codings shown as of immense communicative significance
in previous case studies. Given the frequency of use and rapid assimilation of
these elements into online communication in various media, it is important to
attempt at least a preliminary investigation of their “speech act” role.
Direct
Speech Acts
In
chat there are clear examples of direct speech acts being deployed, and in
quite conventional ways:
Speech Act |
Sentence |
Function |
Examples |
Assertion |
Declarative. |
conveys information; is true or
false |
(Case Study 4) 11) <Nicole528>
im a Gemini (Case Study 1) 10)
<guest-MoreheadCityNC> NO she's near 10th & Gville Blvd (Case Study 1) 77) <SWMPTHNG>
THERE'LL BE PLENTY OF MEXICAN ROOFERS IN N CAROLINA NEXT WEEK |
Question |
Interrogative |
elicits information |
(Case Study 4) 2) dingo42 nicole
wahts your sign ?? (Case Study 4) 17)
<AquarianBlue> your meeting her judy? when? (Case Study 4) 32)
<Night-Goddess_> anyone cool in here? (Case Study - 911) 182) Brazilian report: some one know any new about the
manhattan situation ??? |
Orders and Requests |
Imperative |
causes others to behave in
certain ways |
(Case Study 5) 47) <scud4> bwitched stop scrollin in here (Case Study 1) 123) <Zardiw>
smptthing................go back to your SWAMP |
Direct speech acts that use performative verbs to accomplish
their ends expand the three basic types shown:statements, requests and
commands. (as shown below)
Statements
(Case Study 1 turn 37) <EMT-Calvin> well folks im signing off here
Questions
(Case Study 6 turn 49) <Brian> r u talking about
blaxxun and shout3d implimentations or something else
Orders and Requests
(Case Study - 911 turn 296) <MissMaca> Brazillian
Report: Iknow it was a building %&#%head. Give up on the %&#%ing nuke's
ok!!!
Indirect
forms in chat are dominated by a generalized activation formation, which
masquerades as a question addressed to the entire chat community:
(Case Study 1 turn
74) <guest-Tom> does anyone
know where floyd isnow
(Case Study 1 turn
125) <guest-kodiak> does anyone know why UNCC has not closed
(Case Study 1 turn
162) <guest-EZGuest367> Anyone know if I should worry about daughter in
west NC?
The
form has even evolved its own abbreviation:
(Case Study 911
turn 370) <England> n e one know of other active new york chat rooms?
The first four postings are clearly in the form of questions, but equally
clearly are not inquiries about
issues the chatter can anticipate will be answered by an expert
“knower”. Thus the speech act is in itself indirect, as we can see by examining
possible answers. Most of the time, the answer "yes, I do" to any of
these four questions would be an uncooperative response. The normal answers we
would expect in real life talk would be "Yes, the Weather Channel tells us
that Hurricane Floyd is passing over North Carolina now", <UNCC is
closed because of the storm>, <if your daughter is in the eye of the
storm you should be worried>, <another active New York chatroom is at
http://www.superglobe.com/chat/>. Because of the anonymity of the chat
situation, each response depends upon what could be called a “validation”
format: the use of an indirect statement or reported speech from another
context: “The weather channel tells us that…” A simple "yes" answer
that responded to the literal meaning would usually be taken for an
uncooperative answer in actual social life.
For example "Yes, I do", would be heard as "Yes, I do,
but I'm not necessarily going to tell you where the storm is, why UNCC is
closed or the location of other active chatrooms in NY". So the five
examples above function as indirect questions, more accurately coded as “I want
you to tell me where the storm is now”, “I would like to know whether UCC is
closed yet”, or “Please tell me of some other New York chatrooms so that I can
move to them” and the chatroom participants are clearly able to interpret this
function, and respond appropriately. In other words, despite the added
indirection of chat speech act formation, chat continues.
The key question for
this Case Study and this chatroom:
“What is a successful speech act in a chatroom?” thus
appears to require consideration of the more than usual loadings of indirect
speech acts inside a non-physical and multilogue talk community.
Austin and Searle claim that the speech act is the basic
unit of meaning and force, or the most basic linguistic entity, with both a
constative and a performative dimension. They both accept that there are
illocutionary acts and perlocutionary acts, using speech act theory as their
theoretical foundation and analysing the data by message length, distribution,
message links, and interaction. Speech act theory is based on the notion that what people say is consistent with what
they do (Howell-Richardson; Mellar, 1996). Such a definition indicates the
zones in which chat “unravels” some of the regulatory functions hypothesized in
speech act theory. Distribution roles, or those aspects of speech working to
direct talk relations and to control its performative dimensions, are problematic
within the generalized speech relations of chat: one explanation of the sorts
of indirect strategies outlined above – and maybe of the retreat into
saturating expressives and relational work.
In part this indeterminacy which bedevils speech act analysis
in chat rests in the technologisation and “de-threading” of the format. It is
not determinable for instance whether <hmmmmmmm> in the utterance below
is a truth statement (agreeing with a previous utterance) or an answer to the
previous utterance from <Night-Goddess_>
(anyone cool
in here?) – or even <AquarianBlue>
expressing a response to some offline pleasure. For these reasons alone
Speech Act Theory cannot categorise
all utterances in a chatroom, with certainty – and it may be that the
confusion and chaos that new users so frequently report of the chat experience
relates to this indeterminacy, in relation to off-line talk. Yet at the same
time regular chat users do manage their talk successfully.
34) <AquarianBlue>
hmmmmmmm |
In
this chatroom Speech Act Theory can then be used to examine features common to
all chatrooms. In particular it can
help establish interconnections within the threads of conversation. Unlike
face-to-face conversation, where a person appears to respond to the most recent
statement in a conversation in a chatroom, the utterance can be a continuation
of someone else’s utterance - or it can be on a new topic, with the hope that
someone else may join in. The example below shows three unrelated utterances,
but all are either continuations of a thread or the initiation of a new thread:
30) <judythejedi> i don't think
so..she's bringing amtrack down maybe |
31)
<Nicole528> whats your sign dingo? |
32)
<Night-Goddess_> anyone cool in here? |
Because
of the technologisation of chat there are no markers to segregate or ‘direct”
this conversational traffic. Chat participants must then de-code the speech
acts, and re-connect threads into logically sequential strands. Since posting
30 is a relates to an earlier posting, only those participants already threaded
into that particular chat will respond – unless of course a new chatter asks
directly “You don’t think what? She who? Amtrak down to where? Why only
“maybe”? Since such a response would be
an interruption of an implied co-locutor relation, it is unlikely to occur.
Posting 31 creates a similar “directedness”, signing it with the user name
“dingo” – the sole participant invited to reply. So it is no surprise that of
these three consecutive postings, it is 32, the generalized and indirect
question/invitation form, which succeeds. Following <Night-Goddess_>’s
utterance <anyone cool in here?> a thread develops that plays across the
issue of whether anyone is ‘cool’ in
this room – and incidentally provides a possible answer to the role of posting
34 from <AquarianBlue>..
32) <Night-Goddess_> anyone cool in
here? |
33)<judythejedi>
hi night |
34)/\32
<AquarianBlue> hmmmmmmm |
35)/\32
<judythejedi>everyone is cool here |
36)/\32
<Nicole528> is cool lol |
37)<poopaloo>
10ty judy |
38)/\32
<Nicole528> is cold too |
39)<sara4u>
I LOVE YOU TO MUCH.......ACARD |
40)<jijirika>is
back |
41) <tazdevil144> cool |
For
this speech act to be completed there needs to be an understanding of what
<Night-Goddess_> means by ‘being cool’. The speech community within the
room choose in interesting ways to respond by playing across the semantics of
the term “cool” – yet in doing so, indicate their understanding of the
indirectness of her speech act strategy. As <Nicole528> and
<poopaloo> evaluate and reward the claim from <judythejedi> that
all the chatters in this space are cool, and <tazdevil> extends the game
by using the term to express pleasure that <jijirika> has rejoined the
chat, each understands not only the “surface” codes, or display techniques
which sign “cool” chat expertise: “lol”, and “10 ty”, but also the indirection
of <Night-Goddess>’s speech act. This is not a directed question. As its
“anyone” address formula shows, it is an invitation to talk. But specifically,
in its address to not only a chat community, but to a known and familiar group
(note <judythejedi>’s diminutive tag-name response: “night”) it creates a
speech act which is less a general question than an assertion of communality.
In effect, it says something like: “Hello to all my old friends: I’m ready to
be as active in chat as usual” – and those chat friends react entirely
appropriately. Responses demonstrate
“cool”, in chat terms, with a mix of community affirmation:
·
<judythejedi>
everyone is cool here;
appreciation of the communality:
·
<Nicole528>
is cool lol,
and the sort of metatextual play across chat conventions
which establishes the cachet of cool online:
·
<Nicole528>
is cold too;
No surprise then that the thread is continued for
several more turns before a new thread is begun. The original utterance serves
not to ellicit specific answers, but to evoke the sorts of talk which online
chat promotes, and which is distinctive to its form: reflexive, linguistically
aware, communally directed, generalized and inclusive/exclusive, fast-paced,
and multi-threaded:
49) \32 10c. <Night-Goddess_> I is not cool |
50) \49 5l. <judythejedi> yup |
51) \49 6j. <Nicole528> really |
52) \4910d. <Night-Goddess_> I is awsome |
53) \496k. <Nicole528> yes your cool |
54) \465m. <judythejedi> lol..i know
prncess |
55) \476l. <Nicole528> cool dingo |
56) \521c. <gina2b> coolfool |
If there is a preponderance of
relational talk-texting in chat rooms, by examining a chatroom with a
predominance of markedly short turn-taking sequences, it may be possible to
discover if even in the rapidly scrolling conversation of online chat, there is
enough time and enough “speech act” work to establish a communication community
amongst the chatters present.
Talk
in text-based chat is as fleeting as its off-line equivalent. Text disappears
as it scrolls by. The participant gets one opportunity to read the text, after
which time it cannot be retrieved – at least not without time out for scrolling
– during which period postings continue to amass. This capacity I have called ‘fleeting text’. Online fleeting text affects discursive
connectiveness. There is a counter-intuitive distinction here between talk and
text. Conventional spoken language is also dynamic, fleeting, and irreversible
communication, but printed language breaks the strictures of time and leads to
permanence. The two together in an online environment contain elements of both
– what has been said can be ‘revisited’, as long as the chatroom is showing
previous turn takings. My data does not show evidence that users do check back
to re-establish threads.
Thread-framing
is a major phenomenon in chatrooms. A
posting appears to “begin” and “end” because it arrives on the receivers’
screen inside an individual text-box.
These framed pieces of conversation are of course not necessarily
sequential. Threads twist around, stop and start, and several may arrive at one
time, in a seemingly chaotic fashion. What then is the relationship between the
seeming coherence of a single chat utterance, and its equally contained
surrounding utterances?
We
have already seen that the apparent commensurability of utterances, each framed
in the same spatial convention, is an illusion. Immediately consecutive
utterances are often unrelated, or at least out of sequence – and many remain
so. Further, because this form of visual framing is the only contribution to
the communicative regulation of texted talk by its technologisation, users
themselves must work instead at the level of language alone – including of
course both verbal and visual elements – to construct meaningful
communication.
At
the linguistic level the “threading” which constructs meaningful conversational
exchanges across and between these individual and flattening visual frames also
must read back possibilities for response. It is this form of “framing” which gives a starting and
finishing point to a thread, and turns it from an artificial sequence of random
utterances to a meaningful conversation. Since there are no visual codings
contributed by the CMC technologisation to mark a new or ending thread, that
decision too must be made by the chat participants; read back from the speech
act possibilities. Curiously, in many
cases the originator of a thread is
also the last ‘voice’ seen in that
particular thread. In the example below, <Night-Goddess_> begins a
new thread by asking whether there is
<anyone cool in here?>. The
topicis also ended by <Night-Goddess_> 20 turns later, with the
comment: <I is awesome>.
32)
<Night-Goddess_> anyone cool in here? |
49) <Night-Goddess_> I is not cool |
52)
<Night-Goddess_> I is awsome |
Because
this topic had centred so clearly upon the word ‘cool”, this transformation –
“cool” – becomes “awesome” – ends the potential for wordplay, and so terminates
the frame. But to sense this termination chat participants must be able to
“read” and respond beyond the level of conversational turn-taking exchange –
the CA level. By reading speech act intent in utterances, and seeing
<Night-Goddess> “switch off” the topic cue at this point, collocutors can
indeed note a frame termination – and they move on accordingly.
The
initial framing of a thread can thus determine – or at least work towards
determining – its success and duration.
But in the case above, as already noted, there is a particularly
consensual group in communication. This community of astrology followers
appears to be regular collocutors online, and know one another’s behaviours.
How far then is this the cooperative communication of a friendship group, as
opposed to a specific communicative behaviour of online communities generally:
a feature of ‘chat”, rather than of this example of “astrochat”?
If
there is hostility shown in a chatroom, or as shown in Case Study 1, an
attitude such as racism, (in this case towards Mexican roofers) will other
speakers contribute to the thread in
like manner, supportively, as in the astrochat sequence? Here there is clear
evidence that threads can be very deliberately de-railed, and threads such as
<SWMPTHNG>’s stopped by others. A
different speaker can end the thread, indicating a multi-chatter frame (see Tannen, 1998; Bays 2000). Since to do
so they must however also “read” the frame – understand the intent of the
utterance – the termination/transformation intervention still acts as evidence
for the power of talk-text framing. So clear is the framing intent to some
collocutors, that they move to end it – or at least, to re-direct it. And
indeed, without such framing a thread could continue indefinitely. Framing is what
manages
Using
conversation analysis (CA) in chatrooms helped discover how communication
online regulates its exchanges. While the ‘capturing’ of data is different in
chatrooms from that used to research
face-to-face conversation there are similarities in the analysis
process. Traditionally, CA researchers audio record a session and discuss from
a printed readout “what happened” in the conversational exchanges. In the
example below from such a taped session[19]
the time between turns and the pauses in the conversation are noted – not an
element that can be considered in online chat, or at least not in those
chatrooms which do not mark the time of arrival of each utterance – and even
then, given the packet-switching technology, this does not reflect the times of
entry for a given posting. Some aspects conventionally of communicative import
in CA are therefore not available for analysis in chat. In CA for instance most
work is done with two or three people speaking. In the example below two people
are having a phone conversation. This one-on-one speech relation, or its close
approximation within a small group, has contributed many of the techniques and
features of CA method. To an extent, the features identified by CA in
small-group or dyadic talk relations can also describe chatroom interactions.
Conversational analysis of chatroom talk shows for instance examples of
adjacency pairs and turn-taking conventions common in CA-analyses of natural
talk. But both the capacity for
multilog and the technologisation of the talk, through text and through CMC,
create new complexities inside the talk relations. One primary difference as this case study and others have shown
is the interjection of conversation before a thought is complete, due to the
tendency to use the enter button “mid utterance”, combined with the often
lengthy periods between utterances that are filled with other streams of talk.
In examples A and B below we see clear indications of turn-taking, and the
development of a conversation. In A however there are interruptions (for
example in turn 45), impossible in chatroom turn-taking. Utterances are mostly
complete turns in chatrooms, with the only breakage in a particular utterance
being made by the user at the time of the utterance – for only if they press
the enter button does the utterance
become broken. In turns 21-24 below (column B) <Leonard> makes two utterances that are different
thoughts, but because they are entered sequentially without anyone making an
utterance between the two thoughts <web3dADM> is left to answer them both, as different
thoughts, sequentially after <Leonard>’s
entrances.
21)
<Leonard> Anyone used Xeena?
22) <Leonard> 3D just arrived NEW SITE = JULY 2014 - http://neuage.us/2014/July/ - Today
23)
<web3dADM> no it's on my
list
24)
<web3dADM> ahhh great Len
In a
face-to-face conversation one would assume that <web3dADM>
would respond to <Leonard> saying <Anyone used Xeena?> with the utterance <no
it's on my list> and to <Leonard>’s <3D just arrived
NEW SITE = JULY 2014 - http://neuage.us/2014/July/ - Today> with <ahhh great Len>, ordering the conversation differently:
21)
<Leonard> Anyone used Xeena?
23)
<web3dADM> no it's on my list
22) <Leonard> 3D just arrived NEW SITE = JULY 2014 - http://neuage.us/2014/July/ - Today
24)
<web3dADM> ahhh great Len
If in
fact utterances 21 and 22 had been offered in sequence in a natural
conversation, it is also likely that <web3dADM> would reverse the
response sequence, offering his expressive and evaluative response before his
explanation – in effect replying to 22
before 21:
21)
<Leonard> Anyone used Xeena?
22)
<Leonard> 3D just arrived NEW SITE = JULY 2014 - http://neuage.us/2014/July/ - Today
24) <web3dADM>
ahhh great Len
23)
<web3dADM> [no] it's on
my list [too]
In
fact <web3dADM> could have been typing in <no it's on my
list> at the same time as <Leonard> was typing in <3D just
arrived NEW SITE = JULY 2014 - http://neuage.us/2014/July/ - Today> - or even before, since we do not know the relative distances
traveled through the system, or the traffic-flow conditions encountered by the
packet-switching .[20]
A CA transcription from tape recording |
B Web 3D Chat http://se.unisa.edu.au/a6.html
|
|
|
According
to conversation analysis, turn-taking is integral to the formation of any
interpersonal exchange. Unless lurking, the participants in chatrooms
demonstrate their knowledge of the particular chat conventions of the chat-site
they are visiting in order to be accepted or rejected by others in the
chatroom. The signaling of one’s status as an insider is especially important
in establishing dominance. In the chatroom I used for this case study the topic
was computer animation, and it is clear that <web3dADM> is the leader or
moderator in this case study, not only because of the abbreviation for
administrator (ADM) behind the <web3d> part of the username, but because
<web3dADM> provides answers to questions people ask in the chatroom
regarding the chatroom itself. The status of this participant is thus marked in
various ways, but key among them is this specificity of interrelational role –
a feature of turn-taking as identified in CA.
The
underpinnings of CA, sequential organization, turn-taking and repair, and how
they can depict interactional competence are therefore useful in reading
chatroom talk. However, the circumstances of chatroom technologisation demand
adaptations to CA protocols, to enable analysis of conversational relations
occurring in de-threaded sequences. Unlike face-to-face conversation the
sequential organization of a given chat exchange needs to be separated from
what else is being enacted in the chatroom. The isolating of pairs in the chat
is difficult if there are many people chatting and the text is scrolling at a
rapid rate. In finding adjacent pairs
in Case Study 1 the conversation had to be re-threaded. . What is revealed
below for instance is that there is a turn-taking strategy present between <lookout4110> and <Werblessed>, but each utterance has several turns in between.
|
Turn |
Between
Utterances |
Speaker |
utterance |
|
|
|
||||
|
60. |
|
<lookout4110> |
Who
is in Wilm. right now? |
|
|
64. |
4 |
<Werblessed> |
Im 50
Miles west of Wilm. |
|
|
|
||||
|
73. |
9/13 |
<lookout4110> |
How
ya holding up Werblessed? |
|
|
83. |
10/19 |
<Werblessed> |
So
far just strong wind gusts and lots of rain.. Over 8 inches so far.. |
|
|
|
||||
|
89. |
6/16 |
<lookout4110> |
Have
the winds been strong? |
|
|
98. |
9/15 |
<Werblessed> |
Gusts
up to 60-65 so far its starting to pick up a bit.. Only gonna get stronger
Between now and midnite |
|
The
first number in the ‘between utterances’ column is the number of turns since
the previous utterance was addressed and the second number is the number of
turns since the last utterance by the same speaker. After these three sets of turn-takings <lookout4110> and <Werblessed> no longer interact directly. <lookout4110> contributes
more utterances, concluding at
turn 164 and <Werblessed>’s
final utterance in this segment is at
turn 180. In other words, given the multiple threads available for response in
online chat, threads form and reform, as participants shift focus. But the degree
to which such shifts are driven by the complexities of the multilog are hard to
evaluate – another feature which CA is unable to address, and which may require
a more ethnographic inquiry to assess.
CA is
however able to consider some aspects of conversational breakdown – for
instance, repair, a standard part of normal conversation. Natural conversation
is rich in examples of breakdown – a feature which CA analysts often find
disruptive to other programs of their analysis:
When we consider
spontaneous speech (particularly conversation) any clear and obvious division
into intonational-groups is not so apparent because of the broken nature of
much spontaneous speech, including as it does hesitation, repetitions, false
starts, incomplete sentences, and sentences involving a grammatical caesura in
their middle [Cruttenden, 1986, pg. 36].
In
chatrooms, where utterances are mostly posted complete, this experience of
breakdown at first sight seems less of a problem. But chat-repairs do come
about, due to two primary causes. The first is shown in column A below and the
second in column B. The first is introduced when a word is typed incorrectly - <IroquoisPrncess>
says <hey Judy did a get my car inthe link thingy>. While ‘car’ is a proper word, it is wrongly
entered, and confuses the meaning, since interlocutor <judythejedi> does not associate the word with the
utterance-topic, leaving <IroquoisPrncess> to correct the error. Here the
error is text related: clearly a typing error, and a feature which in natural
conversation would be corrected in much the same way, although enacted as a
mispronunciation, or a mishearing – probably cued by a quizzical glance or
facial frown. Here the interlocutor,
<judythe jedi>, directly addresses the need for repair. The second repair
error however is less techno-conversational than CMC technological. Owing to
pressing the enter key early, dividing his utterance, <Leonard> leaves a
curious suspension in his exchange with <brian>. Has <brian> pre-empted
a reply in advance of all the information, because the utterance object
introduced by “this” must be “spring”? Does <Leonard> enter “spring”
while <brian> is entering his own utterance, or because he thinks if
<brian> has all the information he may change his response? Because we
have no information available on the timing of the utterances we are unable to
analyse the interaction further – an interesting example of chat’s
technologisation defying CA principles on repair.
From
Case Study 4 http://se.unisa.edu.au/a4.html
|
From
Case Study 6 http://se.unisa.edu.au/a6.html
|
57)
<IroquoisPrncess> hey Judy did a get my car inthe link thingy 63)
<judythejedi> car in the link? 66)
<IroquoisPrncess> card |
40) <Leonard>
I will be offereing it on-line through Digital University sometime this 41) <brian>
can't make it 42) <Leonard> spring |
Are there then
instances of chat which require more than the sorts of extended CA repertoires
discussed here, for examination of the full range of utterance behaviours and
conversational techniques? Are the chat participants examined above displaying
both interesting instances of the language-use pressures of chat, and conscious
attempts to redress these? Are there other techniques of talk or text analysis
which can help both identify and explain some of these communicative
behaviours? One issue raised in CA work on chat is the need for a more
finely-focused examination of word-selection and word-ordering in utterances –
and especially in such self-conscious moments as those occurring around
instances of repair. In a final pass over the chat-room communicative
experience, this study used current approaches to grammatical analysis, to
assess how far chat uses and/or departs from standard text or talk grammar
conventions.
This case study examined baseball chat, to
assess whether the functioning of
grammar in chatroom communication could be shown to be the same as, or
different to, that evident in text or talk. Do common grammatical conventions –
such as word order, sentence structure, question formation, hold up in online
chat? Are there any new constructions evident? Language in a chatroom certainly
proved to be altered by its users, both
deliberately and by mistake. Formal sentence structure conventions become less
evident, as abbreviation and graphic elements arise to meet the speed-entry
demands of the chat technology and its new communicative ethos. Compound forms arise, with the informality
of spoken language, but enacted in the sorts of textual play and creativity
otherwise seen in communicative genres such as poetry, or advertising. The grammar of chatrooms, if it is done
intentionally, is developing a highly sophisticated form of prose that is
semantically and semiotically
innovative and daring.
Below,
<CathyTrix-guest> in turn 108 creates the utterance <2blech>. Such combinations of
numerals and letters have no place or “utterability” in spoken conversation –
yet in this chatroom, at this moment, inside this thread, the utterance
communicates. The ‘2’ refers to an
earlier request for chatters to press the ‘3’ key if they like the New York
Yankees baseball team. <CathyTrix-guest> emphases his or her dislike of
the Yankees by pressing a different key from the ‘3’ suggested, confirming it with the comment: ‘blech’ - not conventionally a meaningful word, but
one used colloquially as an onomatapoeic representation of the act of
vomiting. The turn thus communicates
something like “I don’t like the Yankees, they make me sick: I would only score
them at a rate of 2”. The economy, the creativity and the expressiveness of the
utterance overturn the conventions of a more formal sentence construction,
without losing communicative power.
98. |
<NMMprod> |
2n. |
if you like the yanks press 3 |
99. |
<dhch96> |
5p. |
1111111111 |
100. |
<BLUERHINO11> |
1l. |
got it |
101. |
<dhch96> |
5q. |
1111111 |
102. |
<smith-eric> |
8j. |
5555555 |
103. |
<dhch96> |
5r. |
11111111 |
104. |
<dhch96> |
5s. |
111111 |
105. |
<CathyTrix-guest> |
6g. |
2I hate the Yankees |
106. |
<smith-eric> |
8k. |
don't have a 3 |
107. |
<Pizza2man> |
7o. |
12456789 |
108. |
<CathyTrix-guest> |
6h. |
2blech |
109. |
<NMMprod> |
2o. |
hahahahahaha |
110. |
<dhch96> |
5t. |
yankees s-ck |
111. |
<BLUERHINO11> |
1m. |
im removing that # now |
112. |
<NMMprod> |
2p. |
you wish |
Similar
concision in chat utterances operates as both an efficiency forced by the
required typing speeds, and a stylistic marker of online competency. In turn 77
<MLB-LADY> enters a question: ”dd any see the atanta score”. A formally
grammatical rendering would produce the form:
”did anyone see the Atlanta score?”. While the third spelling error: atanta for
Atlanta, is likely to be a simple typing error, the suppression of the vowel
from ”did” and the lack of capitalisation for the proper noun “Atlanta” are
both conventions of online use.
Similar
effects are achieved by the use of single letters or numerals in place of whole
words: u – you, 4 – for, r –are, c – see, 2 – to. In posting 128 of Case Study 7 <BLUERHINO11> refers to
<dhch96>by using the letter “d” – an abbreviation of a user-tag which
works as both familiarity (“may I call you “d”, <dhch96>?”) and as online
efficiency..
In
chatrooms, grammar is thus a developing protocol, reacting to both the demands
of the rapid scrolling of the conversational threads, and to the creative
demands of establishing online communicative competence. Common grammatical
principles and practices are applied differently in chatrooms. In society
generally, we use grammar to judge people in terms of social status, regional origins,
and educational level. In chatrooms the rules have to some extent already
changed. A person may be judged by how efficiently he or she types, and by the
familiarity they are able to display with online chat conventions, such as
abbreviations, graphics integration, and the capacity to respond to creative
utterances in kind – to continue the stylistic directions of a thread, as well
as its content or semantic load – and that may well mean “reading” and writing
back the sorts of grammatical adjustments outlined in Case Study 7.
Overall,
the case study sites have been able to display not only communicative
complexity inside the chat utterances, but complexity resolving into specific
online chat techniques. Electronic chat is no longer only one small
communication exercise among many, sharing most of the communicative styles of
natural conversation or equivalent text forms (such as for instance the memo)
but an important and distinctive form of communication, establishing its own
regulatory systems and practices. Internet text-based chat is already changing
as a technology, with the increasing use of webcams, multimedia and 3D
Graphics-based chat communities[21]
and the ability to use voice instead of only text. New applications of
text-based chat are appearing with the availability of wearable computers[22], including miniature PCs, personal
digital assistants (PDA), cellular phone
watches, cognitive-radios[23], and electronic
performance support systems (EPSS)[24]. Such devices will enable
people to access information via networks anytime, even while out walking. But
as this occurs, it will in turn force adaptations to the sorts of online
communicative practices revealed in this study, and others. From the discussion of the seven primary chatrooms in the case studies
and several secondary chatrooms I have found that there are common,
“core” elements, present on all web-based chat sites, as well as specialist
elements on specialist sites – and further, that these elements are not limited
to a special lexis, as might be expected in such relatively new communication
contexts, but extend to the full range of communicative behaviours.
This
study has shown too that chatrooms place particular limitations on
communication, producing unique communicative strategies which not only mark
them as communicative locations and cultures, but are consciously deployed by
users to demonstrate competence and status within online community. In summary, moving from Case Study to Case
Study, the following communicative features mark online chat:
·
Author as reader, reader as author
(Case Study 1)
Online, as talk text generates, the “reader” and the
“author” can be the same person at the same time. The listening and response phases of face-to-face conversation
are less separable online, where the formulation of a reply is dependent upon a
high-demand interpretation or “reading” of prior postings – including their
formatting, recognition of which is required for reciprocal expression, which lifts
a participant’s status within the chatroom. Without this capacity to process
postings at speed, and to reply creatively and in like mode, chat participants
become less successful in online communication. To be a powerful online “author” is also to be a competent online
“reader”.
·
Misleading chatroom titles: the power
of chat communities to re-direct the role of online communication (Case Study 1)
The title of a given
chatroom often fails to indicate what is actually discussed. Online
communities, like casual conversationalists in the offline world, very often
redirect their communicative focus – and sometimes permanently, with consensual
groups setting up regular meetings in spaces no longer very relevant to their
topics. This “drift” in topic direction
demonstrates once again the focus produced within online chat on communicative
technique, with chat very often more directed towards features of its own
communicative repertoires than to pre-determined topics.
·
Multiple-Authorship in different
chatrooms (Case Study 2)
It is difficult in face-to-face conversation to carry on two
or more conversations at the same time, but in chat communication it is
possible to open two or more screens on one’s monitor, in order to chat
in several chatrooms at the same time. This can be expanded to having
conversations in different locations at the same time, for example speaking
with someone in Australia at midnight there and someone in New York in the
early afternoon, New York time. And within a given chatroom, it is also
possible to maintain multiple conversational threads, responding to different
topic-focused chat relations as the relevant postings appear. Online, communicative “authorship” thus
distantiates from the actual “author”, in quite formal communicative ways –
well in advance of any conjecture as to identity experimentation or
concealment. Chat is markedly “presentified”, in Lefebvre’s terms: that is,
attending always to the response happening NOW, as well as displaying a strong
interest in and skill with presentational aspects of communication – but
without arriving at Derrida’s postulation of “presence” in speech: that
authorizing validation of communication which is conventionally thought of as
originating in the physical being of a speaker. This suggests that the curious
and much-remarked physical absence on chatters from the relations they
establish is over-compensated through such practices as multiple simultaneous
engagement in chatrooms and chat strands, and in the excessively conscious
attention to chat utterance forms.
·
Avatars (See, Case Study 3)
Avatars are graphic or textual representatives of the
speaker, based on how the chatter identifies him or herself. The avatar could
be an animal, cartoon, celebrity or any object. An avatar is the chatter at the
time of textual engagement. Again, its created character both distantiates and
characterizes a chat participant, acting to position them in the larger chat
community in a preferred way. The persona thus also becomes a part of the
communicative intent, adding to the complexity of chat techniques.
·
Emoticons (Case Study 3)
Using
a series of keyed characters to indicate an emotion, such as pleasure [:-) J] or sadness [:-( L] chatters are able to
communicate beyond the ‘word’, giving faster communication. Some emoticons are
becoming universal – even carrying the same meaning in different
languages. The first and most used
emoticon is the smiley[25].
Emoticons re-deploy the keyboard repertoire, adding expression to a
communicative form denied the expressive techniques of gesture, facial
expression or vocalization. Once again however they have already established
themselves as a layer of communicative competence, used not only to add nuance
(acting for instance as mitigators or intensifiers) but to demonstrate
creativity and “wit” in interchanges.
·
Threads and Discontinuity (Case Study 4)
Because conversational threads disconnect in online chat, as
the posting sequences react to the technologisation of the IRC software and not
to interpersonal turn-relations, all chat participants must both accept and
learn to negotiate discontinuities in their postings and those of others. The
ability to focus on topic and to build even multilog discussion under these
circumstances has already established itself across many types of chatroom – so
much so that common elements of practice are already evident from chatroom to
chatroom. Often even very extended sequences of intervening text do not appear
to deter thread focus, while chatters are also able to respond to sequences
which “de-thread” as postings arrive in inappropriate order; ie sequences
dictated more by typing speeds or transport efficiency than by the logic of the
topic development. This particular form of “repair” work appears to pose few
problems for chatters. Discontinuity, i.e. popup ads or ads amongst the
turn-takings (See, Case Study 4)
One form of stop in the flow of conversation in chatrooms is
caused by advertisements s that are auto-inserted at regular places amongst
turn-takings. Different chatrooms will have varying spaces for their ads, some
having an ad appear every five turns, others displaying ads that appear to randomly pop-up in the
midst of the chat. These interruptions also appear to be no problem to chat
participants, who remain focused on their threads. It appears that intervening
postings of this kind are dealt with not as chat, but as otherwise-framed text,
which does not “interrupt” the texts of talk.
·
Chatroom graffiti (See, Case Study 5)
The messages conveyed through the work of graffiti
artists are often highly political and deliberately aggressive, positioned in
public spaces most likely to attract notice and force response. Some online
participants go from chatroom to
chatroom, leaving messages but not participating in chatroom converation: I refer to this as chatroom graffiti.
Perhaps because their postings appear to chatters as utterance rather than as
“otherwise-framed” text, these postings are more likely to evoke negative
response – especially if repeated.
·
Fleeting text (See, Case Study 5)
Chat, being a synchronous communication form, lacks the permanency of an
asynchronous form. Thus, despite its texted format, it shares more features
with talk than with prose – among them the tendency to “patrol” or work
positively and negatively to maintain the specific features of the
communicative forms and relations
present in a given chatroom. This drive to include and exclude utterance
forms, utterances and utterers is evident in different degrees and different
ways in different spaces and chat modes, but does mark a communal sense of
control over chat, and a regulation of what is and is not acceptable or
preferred behaviour.
·
Lurking (See, Case Study 6)
Lurking is one behaviour which may not
be welcomed in chatrooms. Some chatrooms do not show the chatters in the room
and therefore the lurker is even more hidden from view. A lurker is able to
read and observe behaviour in a chatroom without making any contribution – but
since chat is by definition a participatory activity, lurking defies all
aspects of the communicative act, with even the “reading” which we might
anticipate as being carried out by a lurker being inactive by virtue of its
failure to connect with the “w/reading” of texted chat which is signaled in
properly configured response postings. Since chat status is judged by the relevance
and creativity and format-matching of one’s postings, lurking is so low status
as to attract derision and censure – or at the very least, nervousness.
·
Collaborated-Selves (See, Case Study 6)
MUDs and
MOOs are collaborative, networked environments where the MOO and MUD consists
of a number of connected rooms. Chatters create a “combined self”, partly
fictionalized but partly built on his or her own chat capacities and skills, in
order to create a space or story or thread in the chatroom. It is the MUD and
MOO experience which signals most clearly the continuity-separation aspect of
chat identity online, where the skills required to chat with authority and
efficacy – elements continuous with our offline expectations of a “present” or
authorizing self from which “expression” can flow – can be shown to be
fictionally deployed, in the service of an online character role. This insight
drives a further wedge between identity and chat-skills: that is, it establishes
the distance that exists online between whatever roles and statuses a chat
participant may be accorded in real life, and those established through their
skills at online chat. It is here that the special chat codings enter the
scene, providing a repertoire of possibility across which chat experts can
play, to establish their online credibility.
Spelling, Abbreviations and Grammatical errors as online ‘normsl’ (Case Study 7).
Abbreviations and grammatical errors are not only accepted
but also dominant in online chat, for two primary reasons. Firstly the speed of
“speech” in a chatroom does not provide time for writing out what can be
abbreviated, leading to forms such as “btw” for “by the way”. Once this is
established as commonplace however, it becomes a marker of expertise.
High-statused chatters – those whose postings gain attention – display creative
innovation and application of such compounds, abbreviations and
grammatico-orthographical reformations.
Moments of reciprocation between chatters all displaying command of
these new conventions become peak moments of online chat, showing the degree to
which chat conventions themselves are a major element of online community
identity, and have become central to chat as a communicative form.
·
Long gaps between asking and answering
in turn takings, with other turn-takings in between – equivalent to the
listening phase in a conversation (Case Study 2).
If chat-community is established in the formal conventions
of chat “style”, “w/readers” or entrants to a chat space who seek to
participate must work to establish the repertoires in play; the level of skills
required to intervene, and the likely acceptability of their own postings, in
terms not just of ideas and opinions – semantic issues – but of their capacity
to reciprocate in kind at the formal level. But other elements of chat skill
are also demanded. The length of gap between turns, and the ability to locate
and follow discontinuous threads, also place a premium on chatroom experience.
For many new chat users this threading complexity is baffling. Its difficulty
is often dependent on, firstly, how many people there are in the chatroom, and
secondly the number of turn-takings offered and taken up – by one or by many
participants. For example, in the “911” chat I have referred to in this study,
there were as many as 45 turns in a minute – sometimes two entries for the same
second – which leaves little time to construct those turns. Below there are
seventeen turns in one minute.
|
14:59:49 |
Pete: Let kill all Palestian terrorist´s
greetings from Finland ps:morjens Will kuis panee |
|
14:59:54 |
1Bone!!: HELLLOOOOOOOOOOOOO |
|
14:59:56 |
oscar: that's not shute will!!!! |
|
15:00:00 |
MissMaca: hikacked planes, and flew 3
planes into the pentagon. |
|
15:00:02 |
mike: I think so, miss maca. |
|
15:00:04 |
sascha: hallo from germany |
|
15:00:08 |
Hello: How many building are still up in
NY |
|
15:00:08 |
1Bone!!: Whats up in NY??????????? |
|
15:00:12 |
damaged: no then we get a world wore 2 |
|
15:00:16 |
dolly: our news says five planes now |
|
15:00:22 |
1Bone!!: I'm from germany too! |
|
15:00:23 |
novyk: who's the author of this ... ???
Anyone know there ??? |
|
15:00:25 |
sascha: 3 |
|
15:00:30 |
Will: Pete: Siinähän se |
|
15:00:47 |
sascha: the 3rd world wore |
|
15:00:48 |
1Bone!!: %&#% 3. Worldwar?!?! |
|
15:00:49 |
oscar: hello 1 bone, where are you from? |
Of these eleven chatters who “spoke”, only three had more
than one turn in that minute. <1Bone!!:> had four utterances
in this minute:
|
14:59:54 |
1Bone!!: HELLLOOOOOOOOOOOOO |
|
15:00:08 |
1Bone!!: Whats up in NY??????????? |
|
15:00:22 |
1Bone!!: I'm from germany too! |
|
15:00:48 |
1Bone!!: %&#% 3. Worldwar?!?! |
The degree to which this chatter also manages to engage other
postings, all within this very tight time frame, suggests online experience –
as does the heavy use of keyboard expressives and “stuttered” repetitions as
intensifiers. <1Bone!!> is able to drive multiple conversations right
across the crowded chatroom, to follow up on postings, but also to present a
coherent and even passionate political engagement – even permitting in a
distraction: “I’m from Germany too!” as he/she notes Sascha’s posting. This
occupancy of close to 25% of this set of postings renders this chatter a
dominant force at this moment.
·
Chat technologisation and turn-taking
disruption: anticipating discourse
As in face-to-face chat there are sometimes instances when
an expected utterance occurs. With the de-ordering that can occur within the
delayed response of entry and posting, curious effects can arise. In the thread
above, <!Bone!!> has an utterance arrive on the site only one second
after <sascha>, at line 44 introduces the phrase and so the concept:
“world war”. Without the time=entry evidence, <1Bone!!>’s posting looks
like a response-turn: reaction either to the suggestion of war, or perhaps to
the misspelling : “world wore”. But the
single second of elapsed time makes this impossible. <1Bone!!>’s other
turns arrive at about 10-15 second intervals – about the time it takes to read,
respond, enter and have a posting arrive. What we have is not a response turn –
a dialogue – but two independent chatters arriving at the same conclusion at
the same moment.
|
15:00:47 |
sascha: the 3rd world wore |
|
15:00:48 |
1Bone!!: %&#% 3. Worldwar?!?! |
Repeated utterances with little or no content i.e ‘hello’,
‘anyone want to chat’ (See, Case Study 1)
In chat terms these are phatic communicative entries: ritual
exchanges, signaling presence in an otherwise unindicatable context. Greetings
have become very quickly established as a formal necessity in chatrooms, and a
round of greetings is considered a requirement for entry into existing chat
threads, or the launching of new ones – anything less is interruption.
Unacknowledged greetings this become signs that a chat group is unwilling to
admit more members: a hint to either await a suitable thread to enter, or to go
away. Repeated greetings from the same individual thus read as intrusive – or
perhaps as desperate. Unless such a potential chat participant can move to
establish the requisite codes of credibility through the “display” features of
their postings, they are less and less likely to receive response and be admitted
to chat exchange.
·
Short conversational utterances
In
almost all cases, talk in chatrooms is limited to short phrases. Rarely will
there be more than several words written at a time by a 'speaker'. Counting the
words of hundreds of entrances in my seven chatrooms (see table below) and in
the postscript which follows, I found an average of 5.82 units per turn;
including words, abbreviations, and
emoticons. Within that sampling 25 percent of words consisted of only two letters,
and 20 percent consisted of three letter words. Using CMC or the computer as
the tool for an electronic discourse analysis, introduced in Case Study 2, I
found that eighty-three percent of words used in chatroom conversations
consisted of five letters or less.
The chart below
collects the major features displayed in each of the seven chatrooms examined
above, adding in the statistics of turn-length in each case, to allow
comparison of turn-length across chat-topic and chatroom type.
Case Study and Data location online |
Theory |
Methodological focus |
Chatroom Features |
Number of users |
Turns recorded |
[1][1] |
|
1. Case
Study 1 Data Location http://se.unisa.edu.au/a1.html
topic
focus chatroom
(Hurricane Floyd)
|
Reading Response Theory |
Web of authorship,
readership & subjectivity |
2-readings: title
of chatroom & text.
Reading as fact. ?? Author-Reader same |
45 |
279 |
2001
Avg. 7.17/per turn |
|
2.
Case Study 2 Data Location http://se.unisa.edu.au/a2.html
Instant
Messenger (two-person conversation) |
CMC |
Introduces the technology
into the communicative act, and reveals the multi-layeredness of the chat |
Real time
conversation to many people in different locales. Talk in more than
one chatsite at one time. |
2 |
34 |
385
Avg. 11.32/per turn |
|
3. Case
Study 3 Data Location http://se.unisa.edu.au/a3.html
Celebrity
chat (adolescent chat) |
Semiotic Analysis |
Introduces a
socially-embedded reading of communication
regarded as symbolic activity. |
Emoticons, virtual
chats[26][1],
avatars (author as sign/symbol) Celebrities as
titles of chatrooms |
17 |
70 |
294 Avg. 4.2per turn |
|
4. Case
Study 4 Data Location http://se.unisa.edu.au/a4.html
Astrology
– purpose chat |
Speech Act |
What a 'speech act'
is when it is conducted in written form: an altogether different coding. |
Disruption: Timed
interruption from server’s ads. Threads and
discontinuity Chatrooms as
created places |
16 |
85 |
297
Avg. 3.5//per turn |
|
5. Case
Study 5 Data Location http://se.unisa.edu.au/a5.html No
set topic chat |
Discourse Analysis |
Symbolic (language)
and the (embodied) social/cultural, as linked within practice. |
Fleeting text Chatroom graffiti |
11 |
89 |
285 Avg. 3.2/per turn |
|
6. Case Study 6 Data Location http://se.unisa.edu.au/a6.html
Topic (3D animation) chat |
CA |
|
Lurking Collaborated-Selves as The Author |
8 |
511 |
2248 Avg. 4.4/per turn |
|
7. Case Study 7 Data Location http://se.unisa.edu.au/a7.html
Topic – baseball chat |
(linguistic schools) |
|
Abbreviation, spelling and grammar errors. |
13 |
151 |
1011 Avg.
6.7 /per turn |
|
The above table shows that users of multi-voiced chatrooms,
whether they are working with a stated topic, produce fewer utterances than
users in a chatroom with only two
people speaking, as in an Instant
Messenger environment. The Instant Messenger chat that I ‘captured’ had 11.32
words per turn compared to other chatrooms that averaged 3.2; 3.5; 4.2; 4.4;
6.7 and 7.17 words per turn.
1) Purpose chatroom (Hurricane Floyd) Avg. 7.17/per turn 2) Instant Messenger (two-person conversation) 11.32/per turn 3) Celebrity chat Avg.
4.2per turn 4) Astrology – purpose chat Avg. 3.5//per turn 5) No topic chat - Avg. 3.2/per turn 6) Topic (3D animation) chat
Avg. 4.4/per turn 7) Topic – baseball chat - Avg. 6.7 /per turn |
This
implies that more is said when only two people are in a chatroom. With several voices seemingly all speaking,
it is difficult, unless one is a very fast typist, to respond before someone
else does. The “reading” time on a busy board, allied to the waiting time to
have your own turns attended to with a directed response, cut back on the ratio
of postings from each participant. Online
chat and intimacy: public conversation and personal expressiveness.
Many
of the findings of the uniqueness of chatrooms can be seen in the table below
which highlights differences between
asynchronous online communication (chatrooms) and synchronous electronic
formats (e-mail, Discussion groups).
Synchronous |
Asynchronous |
time-bound
conversation – or real-time communication |
on-going
conversation – not necessarily the same day |
must
arrange a specified time to participate to meet |
can
communicate any time |
can
interact only with those presently online |
can
interact with people not presently online |
fast
and free-flowing conversation may be hard to follow (much chat is very
informal and relaxed) |
slow
paced conversation allows more time for understanding and formulating
thoughts (more opportunity for formal, thoughtful discussion) |
multiple
conversations occurring simultaneously may be difficult to follow |
conversations
are usually arranged by topics |
one-to-one
(IM) allows for individual conversation; IRC is “public” chat |
private
conversation on a one-to-one basis in email, but not on Noticeboards |
messages
are fleeting; can't be referred to later except if saved; scrolling back to
capture past comments means missing ongoing talk |
messages
are permanent for later reference |
Chatrooms display many of the features of offline “friendship” gatherings and their talk-formats, including the necessity to display “notable” qualities in the talk performance, to be noticed within the group; to meet the norms of the particular group in order to be an acceptable group member; to know the codes, preferred topics, and specialized locations of chat types, and to be prepared to “meet” and talk regularly, to keep these skills honed and updated. Online chat appears to demand much the same commitment to sociality as its offline equivalent.
Chat-types have however already differentiated within the
IRC community generally, and can be further defined by the following chat-behavioural
categories:[27];
1. Initiating messages which
successfully stimulate a new discussion.
Chatters begin discussional threads with the
anticipation that others will continue. Continuity stops if no one responds.
2.
Initiating messages which fail to stimulate further discussion,
If no
one responds, a chatter may attempt to re-introduce the thread, but if no one
responds then the thread dies, unless
someone else reintroduces it.
3.
Continuing messages which cause further discussion.
Responding
successfully requires the sorts of w/readerly sensitivity to issues and form
which enables chatters to create utterances suited to the group norms – or if
possible, extending them further, in the right ways. Responses which simply
approve or confirm are acceptable, if for instance indicating approval in
chat-abbreviation form: “lol” or “J” – but the most responded to
are those postings which move a thread forward, whilst also displaying
chat-form expertise and creativity.
4.
Continuing messages
which create branching branches.
A
thread can have several thread nodes branching from the root branch, which will
then have an overall topic but with sub-discussions. For example in Case Study
1 there is the main thread of Hurricane Floyd with several branching threads
that are still about the storm but a different aspect of it – such as the
discussion about Mexican roofers or the thread about sizes of buildings.
As my
research dealt with the formal aspects of online chat, it did not attempt to
explore how the users felt about their time online. Studies have been done that
show that a majority of chatters; ‘felt like they could jump right in and
chat’, or that ‘chat discussions are too superficial’, or that ‘chat went too fast because he or she could
not keep up with the conversation’, or that ‘14 out of 15 felt a moderator was
needed’.[28] My own
research has not identified what people think, but is still able to show that
users can indeed “jump right in and chat” – but that most in fact consider the
prior postings before doing so. To “write” is to “read” first.
Are
these then the major features of online chat across all domains, all languages,
and into the future? Certainly the technologisation of this form of talk
appears to have spread across language groups and cultural behaviours.
Chatrooms
currently provide one of the most universal forms of communicating. By late
2002 there were 4206 Internet cafes in 140 countries[29]
and wherever there is an internet café there is the opportunity to chat online.
In the Middle East there are many chatrooms available and most have translating software for the language of the
chatters to be translated into the user’s native language. On the chat-server, http://www.chatinternational.com the following chatrooms are currently
available (as of December 2002);
Afghanistan (5) Armenia (5) Azerbaijan (5) Bahrain (4) |
Iran (9) Iraq (5) Israel (9) Jordan (4) |
Lebanon (7) Pakistan (15) Syria (7) Turkey (9) |
The universality of
chat-styles can be demonstrated by examining a chatroom on the Iraq-Net domain,
which has similarities to the
chatrooms in all of my case studies.
Since this is a JavaScript chatroom the
log could not be captured as text.
(Iraq-Net
chatroom on the day the US invaded Iraq – March 2003
This type of chatroom shows all the users who are logged on,
whereas in the chatrooms I used in this study only when someone made an
utterance did their username appear. In the chatrooms in my case studies it is
easier to lurk without anyone knowing you are there. In this chatroom there is
no time posted for when the users enter therefore it is impossible to note
whether there are pauses between speakers as I showed above with CA transcripts
of oral utterances. In the twenty-minutes I was in this chatroom[30]
there were three chat participants who spoke English and in the ‘captured’
screenshot above <Soso> is responding to <moz>. As I have discussed throughout this
study, the title of the chatroom often influences the content of the chat – in
the chatroom on “Iraq-Net” above the talk is about war (this chat was
‘captured’ the day the United States attacked Iraq, March 2003).
Comparing this mixed language chat to another non-western
site, a Lebanon-based chatroom, which has an instant translator, the speaker in
this chat is not demonstrating good command of English. But it is still clear
that <semsem> wants to speak with someone.. It is possible that this chat
was translated into English as the user wrote. Common abbreviations are used
that would be found in any English-speaking
chatroom such as <how r u>, and the emoticon < :) > is used.
One of my findings of this study into chatrooms is that titles
sometimes had a bearing on the username, such as in Case Study 1, Hurricane
Floyd,<IMFLOYD>; Case Study 3, ”Britney Spears
Cha” <baby_britney1>; Case Study 4, ”astrochat”, <AquarianBlue>,
< TheGods>, <Night-Goddess_>; Case Study 6 <web3dADM>,
<gordon (Web3DCEO)> and Case Study 7, ”baseball chat” <MLB-LADY>
(major league baseball). Usernames both
identify how the user views himself or
herself and also his or her place within the particular chat milieu.
Another
finding that this study has shown is that online chat communities do take on
social agendas as much as they would in person-to-person meetings. Communities
of practice can be communities marked by acceptable and non-acceptable
behaviours registered at the level of the doubled speech of chat, with its
semiotic loadings of meaning and familiarity. In Case Study 1 it was apparent
that there was an ease among the speakers in discussing Mexican roofers in the
midst of a discussion of a national emergency. In Case Study 7 the baseball
chatroom has a community of practice where the participants are comfortable
with their specialised sports talk. In this case study the participants have
not developed an in-depth discussion but there are the same practices of
greetings as shown in face-to-face meetings.
5.2 Research Questions and
answers
My
approach to examining online chatrooms began with the posing of the following
five questions[31]
as a starting point toward analyzing a culture of
electronic-talk:
Question
1. How is turn taking negotiated within
chatrooms?
There
is no set protocol or netiquette regime outlining turn-taking negotiations
online. ‘Rules’ of engagement common to
interaction in offline conversation are deployed in chat sessions – but there
are both obstacles and creative variations to this. The list[32]
below appears on many chatroom sites, with suggestions on how to use
chatroomseffectively.
Latecomers
to the session should scan the previous 10 -20 posts to get oriented before
submitting a post.
Upon
entering the chat session, greet everyone and announce yourself.
If you do
not wish to contribute to the discussion, you should still make your presence
known by announcing that you are lurking. This is considered polite, especially
if you join in the discussion later.
Wait for
others to respond to your initial post before joining the discussion.
Address
individual people you are responding to by name so they know you are talking to
them.
Do not post
more than three sentences at a time.
Allow a few
moments for others to read and respond to your message before posting again.
This turn taking strategy will allow the dialog to flow between you and the
others and avoid crossed messages.
Break
lengthy messages into short segments, each ending with "More…" then
continue the message in the next post.
Be as clear
and concise as possible - if you think you have been misinterpreted, reword
your message and post it again.
Ask for
clarification if you do not understand something posted by someone else.
Capitalize words only to
highlight an important point, otherwise it is considered SHOUTING and is rude.
When you are ready to leave the
chat session, announce that you are leaving but stay long enough to respond to
final messages directed to you.
Say good bye when you are ready
to log off. Your last message should end with an indicator such as
"LP" (last post).
In seven case studies looking at hundreds of
turn taking events I have found that turn taking is negotiated in only one
standard way: that is, the response is
entered into the chatroom by pressing the enter button. This is true
in all unmoderated chatrooms, where there is no control over the text one puts in. Content, format and style are all “controlled” only to the extent
of exerting the power of conventional practice over individual chat
participants. Although such conventions have proven capable of exerting
considerable power, in a range of ways, the relative indeterminancies in the
conversational flows, which arise from the technologisation of online talk,
leave many problems within chat. For example in the chunk of chat below (from
the 911 chat), within four seconds four turns were taken. Although they were all on the same topic
none were answered. Given that they
arrived in a timeframe of under five seconds, and the normal
response-reply-posting time appears to be closer to twice that, these entries
only appear as consecutive because of the software. There is no conversational
control operating: no turn-taking relation, in CA terms – and no clear
emergence yet of a discursive ordering under way.
|
15:12:25
|
<England>:
ne one here in nyc or washington? |
|
15:12:27
|
<1Bone!!>:
please, say ricght |
|
15:12:28
|
<MissMaca>:
nuke bomb, i don't thinks so! |
|
15:12:29
|
<oscar>:
Camp david? estas seguro? |
My case studies have shown that
as chat continues, given time there is both topic-sensitivity and turn
negotiation – for instance, in the case of the group excluding some
players in Case Study 5, when
participants in the astrology-chat group did not respond to
<B_witched_2002-guest>, or in Case Study 1 when some in the chatroom did
not want to continue the discussion on Mexican Roofers because of the racist
flavour of the utterances. But only those chat participants able to “perform”
chat almost immediately within the discursive frames and chat relational forms
of the given chatroom – or at least within commonly established regulatory
codes established for IRC as a whole – can expect to command response and
maintain threads.
Question
2. With the taking away of many cues
to participant identity (gender, nationality, age etc.) are issues
of cultural sensitivity, such as racism, sexism and political correctness generally, as relevant as in face-to-face talk?
In unmoderated
chatrooms (e.g. case study 1, 3, 4,5, 7 and two from the 911 events) there
seems to be a “free for all” stream of conversation, where anything anyone
wants to say is said with little restraint. However as has been shown in these
case studies, others in the group will respond to someone who is being
“difficult”: not continuing with the
immediate topic or flow of discussion, or displaying attitudes or behaviours
unacceptable to the majority.
Other
chatters can and will both criticize and seek to correct and control a person
who is annoying them - but they are not
able to make them leave a chatroom
unless they are the systems operator for the server. People will, however,
leave voluntarily because of how others are reacting. An example of this occurs in Case Study 5 when [OHI] is repeated
37 times in 89 turns by <B_witched_2002-guest>, and other chatters
comment directly on the unacceptability of this behaviour. The response can
also escalate into the online equivalence of physical violence. Borrowing from
the action-direction techniques of MUDs and MOOs online chat participants may
use verbal formulae to indicate how they would like errant fellow-chatters to
be “punished”.
*** proplem_IN_RAK (213.42.1) has been kicked by BoOoOosS!
( bad ) |
In
the example below in the unmoderated chat on 911 [fRANKIE] comments directly on another chat
participant: ,
<fRANKIE> gina i s a stupid butch (turn 18) |
Table
Discussion:2 gina i
s a stupid butch
This
is a response to <gina>’s posting – maybe a reaction to the politics, or
perhaps to the “shouted” formatting:
<gina> I WANT EVERYONE TO RECOGNIZE US AS A CARING
AND INTELLECTUAL PEOPLE LIKE OUR
GREAT LEADER AHMAD SHAH MASOOD |
Like the Mexican roofers chat thread in Case
Study 1, such exchanges appear more
common in chat operating during offline crises. Ethnographic inquiry could work
to establish whether chat participants enter chat topic spaces deliberately at such moments, seeking
to organize their thinking on events, and so are pre-disposed to argument and
even to online “violence”. But at the level of language and text selected for
this study, such moments tell us only that even in unmoderated chat
disciplinary action does occur.
<SWMPTHNG> THERE'LL BE PLENTY OF MEXICAN ROOFERS IN N
CAROLINA NEXT WEEK |
<EMT-Calvin>
and those folks will be sent back to mexico |
Table
Discussion:3
In a
moderated chatroom a person’s statements are vetted before full-display entry.
The moderator acts as a filter, and the moderator’s ‘rules’ are applied, on
behalf of a consensual community standard. For example, sexual or racial
content may be ‘moderated’ out. Moderation also occurs in these chatrooms as
‘self’ moderation. Words are entered
more carefully in a moderated chatroom, where the community standard is more
carefully crafted into the language, with less variation demonstrated. There
are therefore two types of control operating in these chatrooms, self-control
and control by the moderator. Chatroom control by community standard is evident
in Case Study 1. When <SWMPTHNG> says,
Turn 77. < THERE'LL BE PLENTY OF MEXICAN ROOFERS IN N
CAROLINA NEXT WEEK>
and
begins a thread, this new topic focus is
challenged by <guest-MisterD1> 16 turns later - but it is <Zardiw>
in turn 125 who achieves a powerful censure:
<smptthing................go back to your SWAMP>. It is this
posting which brings this line of talk to an end with <SWMPTHNG> making
only one last remark in turn 130. While it is difficult to calculate the
relation of cause and effect here: turn
130 could have been typed before <Zardiw> had entered his or her turn and
<SWMPTHNG> could have pressed the enter key without reading
<Zardiw>’s comment – but whatever the case there is no more mention of
Mexican Roofers in this segment.
<SWMPTHNG> THERE'LL BE PLENTY OF MEXICAN
ROOFERS IN N CAROLINA NEXT WEEK |
82. <EMT-Calvin> and those folks will be
sent back to mexico |
85. <EMT-Calvin> the locals will be the
ones to get jobs |
88. <playball14> they work hard here |
89.
<SWMPTHNG> WHOSE GONNA SEND THEM - THEY'LL BE CLIMBING ALL OVER EVERY
HOUSE ON THE COAST SE HABLO ESPANOL |
91.
<guest-MisterD1> sigh... |
96. <EMT-Calvin> folks need to be careful
for con artest after the storm |
101. <KBabe1974> i agree with emt-calvin |
102. <guest-MoreheadCityNC> Fortunately our
best friend is a roofer! |
103. <playball14> everybody out for a buck
unfortuneately |
104. <SWMPTHNG> YOU AINT TALKING ABOUT MEX
ROOFERS ARE YOU? |
106. <KikoV> you mean carpet baggers |
114. <SWMPTHNG> i SAW A BUS LOAD HEADING
ACROSS THE GEORGIA STATE LINE THIS MORNING |
125.
<Zardiw> smptthing................go back to your SWAMP |
130. <SWMPTHNG> WHAT AABOUT THE CONTRACTORS
WHO HIRE THEM?? THEY OUGHT TO BE TRIED FOR TREASON DURING A NATIONAL
EMERGENCY LIKE THIS |
Question
3. Will chatroom discourse become a universally understood language?
The
Word Wide Web provides text-based chat facilities which permit Internet users
to communicate with others in Iceland, Azerbaijan, Senegal, East Timor,
Madagascar or any one of hundreds of countries[33] with live broadcast feeds from
every country in the world and text-based chatrooms to ‘speak’ with others.
Many text-based sites offer instant translation, meaning that everyone writes
in their native language and it is translated into the language of the
chatroom. On 17 January 1996 Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, PLO
Leader Yasser Arafat, and Philippines President Fidel Ramos met for ten minutes
in an online interactive chat session[34].
Other
than the technologisation, which aspects of chat are observable as common
across language groups and cultures? As I have shown in my research, some
emoticons are already common to a number of languages. Here are examples of a
Dutch and a German list. In Case Study
3 I have shown how emoticons represent feelings. Examples from Dutch, Spanish and Japanese chatrooms show that
emoticons have become a universally understood language.
Figure
Discussion:1 Dutch
emoticons
Die Standard-Emoticons: |
|
:-) |
lachendes
Gesicht, "nicht-alles-so-ernst-nehmen" |
:-( |
trauriges
Gesicht, "find' ich schade!", unglücklich, ... |
;-) |
Augenzwinkern,
"War nicht so ernst gemeint", ... |
:-O |
"Oh!",
Erstaunen, Erschrecken,"Aaa" beim Zahnarzt... |
|
|
Table
Discussion: 4 German
emoticons[35]
En
attendant je fais du gros boudin pour pas dire
d'autres choses moins polies |
Table
Discussion: 5 French
chat
<ÇÞæáå>
ããßä ÈäÊ
ãä ÇáÞØíÝ Êßáãäí ÇÐÇ ããßä ¿¿ (^_^) |
Table
Discussion:6 Arab
chat see http://www.qatifkids.com/
Question
4. How is electronic chat reflective of current social discourse?
This was
one of five questions I asked at the start of this project in early 1998. After
five years of research into text-based Internet chat I suggest that the
question should be closer to how electronic communication itself is changing
all forms of social discourse. How far
and in which ways is all current social discourse now influenced by electronic
chat? One answer is that electronic chat has in itself become a dominant form
within current social discourse. As
people, at least in Western societies, who have access to communicative devices
from cell phones (mobile phones) to computers in all sizes and modes of
portability discourse modes are taking on many of the features that have been
discussed in this section. As devices become smaller, texted-messages will need
to be shorter and the use of abbreviations and emoticons will need to take less
space. The more people go online the more such texted conversation will need to
be understood in the electronic environment – at least until, or maybe unless,
the voice-activation mode is perfected.
One
of the problems with online conversation is with understanding what is being
said when the traditional physical cues are deleted. Can conversation even
exist without knowing anything about the participants or who the audience is?
My research says yes! People are fully
able to communicate, as long as there are structures to communicate within.
These online structures have an increasingly well defined specialist linguistic base, which “stands in” for our
categorisation of speakers, as demonstrated
in the case studies. It is the
shared language and the rules of e-chat that
make online communication
meaningful.
People
are communicating with online social groups as never before, as shown by the number of people online worldwide
(see
Case Study 1.4 Online usage) - close to one in six people
being connected.
The
growing universality of online chat practice is clear in a comparison
made below with chat from Case Study 7, a US based baseball chatroom and
a Chinese language chat session. The chat in the left column is enacted as play
with numbers, while the chat on the right uses letters, and except for chatter <wu~yuan~you>
in the last line, who uses the English-language abbreviation-expressive “hehehe” after a series of words in Pinyin,
the romanised version of Mandarin,
there are no words ‘spoken’.
Case
Study 7 – baseball chatroom |
Chinese
chatroom[36] |
<NMMprod>
if you like the yanks press 3 <dhch96>
1111111111 <smith-eric>
5555555 <CathyTrix-guest>
2I hate the Yankees <Pizza2man>
12456789 |
<wu~yuan~you>
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ <h-h-h-h-h->o-o-o-o-o-o-o--o-oo-o--o-o-o-o-! <wu~yuan~you>:
guy ni bu shi dui bu qi wo. ni dui bu qi ziji
hehehe |
In
each case however the conversation is perfectly meaningful, on its own terms:
within the conventions of chat itself.
Question
5. Is meaning communicated within Chatrooms?
I
suggest then that each of the case studies above have shown plentiful, evidence
that meaning is communicated within chatrooms – both in terms of conventional
conversation, and within the new techniques established to firstly compensate,
and then creatively extend, the repertoires of online texted talk in its own
right. As I have shown throughout this study, and especially in Case Study 3
emoticons provide added meaning to what is ”said”. Abbreviated forms add both efficiency, and a mode of witty play,
adding to topic or semantic load, the capacity to enact and read back technical
proficiency at online chat: an “online credibility” for skilled users, which
appears to be used to assess and rank utterances and threads in the sorts of
social ways found in offline conversation and communication. In other words
“meaning” online is conveyed in different ways, but for the same reasons, as
offline. Both instrumental and social-relational, it operates both as language
and as discourse: directed to both linguistic systems and social-regulatory
systems. It is, to that extent at least, a fully-fledged communicative
apparatus – even if, as this study shows, it is still very much under
development.
5.3 Assumptions at the beginning
The
current study however presents no overarching hypotheses, beyond the view that
the texted talk emerging in Internet chatrooms has so far remained undescribed,
and requires a very broad review of all possible analytical approaches, in
order to isolate which features of existing techniques best address its
particular properties. This study is, to that degree, entirely empirical. It has sought only to capture examples of
online chat, examine all of the features which existing linguistic and discourse
analytical methods allow us to detect, and suggest wherever possible new
avenues for inquiry.
I
posed five assumptions at the beginning of this research, based on the reading
of the literature on discourse theory and how it might be applied to examination
of text-based chatrooms. The following questions were asked in the methodology
chapter (3.2), as a way to explore assumptions uncovered the literature review
(2.7). Online communication, like all new communicative modes, has raised
issues not only for researchers, but for society more broadly, many of them
frequently discussed in the media, as societies and communities react to the
new communicative relations and their influence on communicative conventions
and cultural traditions. Since these have in turn influenced the early academic
research into online behaviours, my own research data also needs to be
scrutinized to examine whether evidence has been found to confirm, or allay,
some of these socio-cultural concerns.
Assumption 1. That people create a different ‘textual
self’ for the chatroom environment they are in.
This was my original assumption when I
begin looking at text-based chatrooms in mid-1997, before putting in a proposal
to begin this research. It appeared to
be the popular wisdom at the time – only two years into the “Internet
Super-Highway” moment – that online chat was largely about concealment of
“true” identity, and even that it was largely a space of “identity play” at
best, and criminal intent at worst.
When I visited a dozen chatrooms I found
that there were indeed quite different
“speech” styles being carried on in different rooms. This would seem
reasonable, since in person-to-person offline (p2p-off) conversation is also
different in different social settings. I therefore expected to see this
online. But does this mean that users adapt their texted-talk repertoires to
enter the chat-conventions of each chatroom – and that, in the absence of the
usual offline physical verification checks on identity, this actively promotes
identity disguise: that simply by changing rooms and enacting a new discursive
technique, chatters can “play” with identity? Certainly, it remains impossible
to tell exactly who is in a given room. If “judythejedi” or “prettyjenny” say
they are female, unless they present the sorts of talk-texting behaviours which
work by Coates and others suggests marks hyper-masculinity in communication, we
are unlikely to doubt them. And since online communication is so heavily
invested in representing its own special markers of expert talk-texting, we are
even less likely to be easily able to read back markers of other categories
contributing to utterance-form preferences. Without some form of observational
ethnography which can actually contact online communicators physically to
verify their identity, it is difficult, and maybe impossible, to amass reliable
information on the issue of online identity play. I have asked this question of
my students at the University of South Australia over a two-year period. I
asked four classes of 20 students each in both 2001 and 2002, 160 students in
total, if they had ever created a different ‘textual self’ in various chatrooms
and the overwhelming consensus was that they had. I defined the ‘textual self’
as the self a person wanted others to believe they were. This included gender
swapping, language change; i.e. from informality to sounding academic, and
changing their nationality, age, beliefs and name. For example, only a very few
students, 12 out of a survey of 127, used the same username in more than one
chatroom.
It is difficult then to know who a chatter
“is”. Some chatters have a link to their 'homepage' from their username which
may contain more information about the person - but this information too could
be false. As Daniel Chandler says in his "Personal Home Pages and the
Construction of Identities on the Web" (http://www.aber.ac.uk/~dgc/webident.html):
the
created 'textual self' is how the author wishes others to see them. The medium
of web pages offers possibilities both for the 'presentation' and shaping of
self which are shared either by text on paper or face-to-face interaction. I
suggest that the username or icon depicts how the chatter wants others to see
him or her.
This
does of course suggest that the “textual self” presents itself as less of a
constructed "reality" in the more spontaneous and speedy exchange of
on-line presentation. There identity is often a fleeting one that is created
purely for the chatroom that one is temporarily in. Even while in a chatroom a
user can change names or icons - but the chatter retains the same identity in
real-life. This new identity can then also assume a new role and change the
type of talk. For example one can change gender, age or nationality or alter an
avatar or icon, perhaps from an animal to an object. Because the user is logged
into the chatroom there may be an indicator in the chat space which signals
that the user has changed: <boomrat> is now known as <sillycat>.
Others in the chatroom have the information that the chatter is still, in
real-life, the same person – and that even online, they have made a visible
identity-switch. The chatter may now
switch from being aggressive to being passive, or from loving to hateful,
textually acting out the new username.
What remains to be seen is what impact this public-presentational work –
conducted as either concealed or open disguise - will have on longer term
communicative behaviours.
Assumption 2. That conversation within chatrooms will
change how we come to know others.
Traditionally we have come to know others through meeting
them person-to-person. People now meet through chatrooms as well, work through
problems, meet in person, get married, or else learn about someone’s culture as
well as they would if they were together in person. Within the text-based chat
form there appears to be only mind present and people are attracted initially
to another person or group based solely on the written text. How far a more embodied
presence – the “hexis” bearing self of Bourdieu’s account of culturally defined
social identity – is also present in online texted talk is only partially
analyzable within these texts themselves – and even then it may be a carefully
enacted “disguised” self. How far then are we likely to be under pressure to
evolve new ways of discerning “self” within “text”?
Misunderstandings
can easily occur due to the absence of verbal cues or body language; in
addition, such communicative strategies as sarcasm or irony can be easily misinterpreted. Emoticons, now acting as
“tonal” indicators, if not fully understood can add to confusion – however,
standard emoticons such as a smiley are understand by most who use the new
electronic media for communication. But even this simplest of all codes has had
to undergo confirmation within widespread usage before it could communicate
anything at all. It remains possible to communicate only to the extent
that participants have some common ground for shared beliefs, recognize
reciprocal expectations and accept rules for interaction which serve as
necessary anchors in the development of conversation (Clark and Shaefer, 1989).
Our
meeting of others in a social context has of course already changed because of
the various technologies of communication (Meyrowitz, 1985). The influence of
social context on the construction of identity is beginning to change,
especially in younger people, as reference communities like the family, school
or church, which in the past anchored social contexts in shared sets of rules,
gradually lose their appeal and their power, and as what Castells (1996) calls
“legitimizing identity” gives way to “project identity”. A description of what
this world could be is by William Mitchell in his “City of Bits” (1995)[37]:
"a worldwide, electronically mediated environment in which networks are
everywhere, and most of the artifacts that function with it (at every scale,
from nano to global) have intelligence and telecommunications capabilities.
Commercial, entertainment, educational, and health care organization will use
these new delivery systems as virtual places to cooperate, and compete on a
global scale" (pp. 167-168). If this becomes the new reality: Castells’
“real virtuality”, then the sorts of communicative strategies we have seen
already developing online are likely to become intensified, subtler, more
complex, and far more widespread.
Assumption 3. That observational study of chatroom conversation
can capture some of the adaptations of conversational behaviours
Community
for persons living in a technological environment, using textual chat forms as
a major or even primary communicative means, is shifting from culture-defining
mass media to a proliferation of interactive media as sources of mediated
experience. This shift into person-computer interaction is beginning to orient
chat users to forms of interaction based on new psycho-social and
conversational models, but at the same time it has introduced new types of
interactional structuration, which both build on and differ from traditional
psychosocial descriptions of interaction. Even in telephonic communication,
which predates digital computer technology, there can be no doubt that interlocutors
do interact, even though they cannot see each other. CA analysis shows clearly
that regulatory systems developed in and for natural off-line conversation are
being adapted to online texted talk – but that variations have been forced by
the technologisation of CMC, and have in turn provided outlets for new and
creative use of these adapted conventions.
By adapting some of the elements of linguistic and socio linguistic
analysis not conventionally used in CA, it is already possible to detect and describe
some of these new techniques. Further studies – including ethnographic studies
of chat users in action – will help to establish how chat participants
themselves react to and create their talk-texts, so that methodologies such as
CA can perhaps be formally extended into electronic forms.
Assumption 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.
The
purpose of this study has been to establish at least some of the means by which
to construct a theory of online communication. I chose chatrooms over other
forms of electronic discourse firstly because of its wide spread usage and the
amount of data that is collectable. Unlike email that is private, chatrooms are
a public viewable platform in which to do work. Even as electronic chat moves
from desktop computers to Palm computers and cell phones (mobile phones) with
Short Message Service (SMS)[38]
text, the origins of these textual communication forms will remain the
chatrooms of IRC systems. Instant
Messaging emoticons and abbreviations are already clearly the same as those
used in chatrooms on computers – and there is evidence from media reporting
that these texted talk forms are already appearing in other communicative forms
– such as children’s school essay writing. Both the degree of expertise in
online communicative forms illustrated by this study and others, and the
suggestion that these specialist skills appear to be expanding and constituting
new relational forms and expressive techniques, suggests that IRC is not a
devalued and disempowered form of talk, but something asserting its own
cultural space and powers. To understand better what this new form is, and how
it works, is not only to prevent ourselves from being overly critical of it, or
regarding it as some deficit form, but to permit expert intervention at the
point of future IRC or related CMC design. By knowing how users operate in
electronic talk spaces, we can improve the technologisation as a communicative
mechanism of enablement, rather than as an engineering-centred system. At the
same time, by discovering, as this study has begin to do, the different range
of uses and styles in IRC, we can select and allocate systems more carefully and
more consciously. The kinds of institutionally appropriate communicative
services often projected within both technophile literature and Government
policy may then become possible.
Assumption 5. That 'chat' does not differ from
natural conversation.
My findings are that chatroom conversation
is strikingly similar to ‘natural language’ in many ways but unlike my original
assumption, there are clearly “conditions” for such similarities.
1. In
natural language or face-to-face conversation there is an exchange of meaning.
In chatrooms meaning is similarly exchanged, via turn-takings of written text.
As I have shown in this study, chatters will for instance ask to be re-informed
on a topic if they are unsure of what a prior participant is saying, and a chatter will “re-pair”
their utterance to make it clear if someone questions what he or she has said.
Case
Study 4 |
57)
<IroquoisPrncess> hey Judy did a get my car inthe link thingy |
63)
<judythejedi> car in the link? |
66)<IroquoisPrncess>card |
In
such ways continuity is established with natural conversational techniques –
despite the intervention of other “turns”, caused by the technologisation of
chat, which does not separate responding threads. Chat, in relation to the
basic CA technique of turn taking, is both like and unlike natural conversation
– and this discovery holds up across all of its other features.
2.
Chatters in a chatroom will ask for clarification of an utterance, as in face-to-face chat.
Case
Study 1 |
105) <SWMPTHNG> YOU AINT TALKING ABOUT
MEX ROOFERS ARE YOU? |
This
both continues a conversation, and opens it to a new thread – thus operating as
precisely the sort of consensual strategy central to developing natural
conversation, within a context of anticipated and “tested” social or cultural
consensus. Here the chat participant believes he or she sees a commonly held
attitude, and pushes deeper into the topic, to launch their own views. The fact
that they ultimately prove wrong in this belief in no way weakens the attempted
community formation in this chat – instead, strengthening it, if in a negative
way, as this participant is openly reprimanded by others.
3.
Chatters that are of the same community can easily converse in a similar
“culture-bound” text base, which is similar to a group’s “anti-language” or
slang[39],
98.
|
<NMMprod>
|
if
you like the yanks press 3 |
99.
|
<dhch96>
|
1111111111 |
100.
|
<BLUERHINO11>
|
got
it |
101.
|
<dhch96>
|
1111111 |
102.
|
<smith-eric>
|
5555555 |
103.
|
<dhch96>
|
11111111 |
104.
|
<dhch96>
|
111111 |
105.
|
<CathyTrix-guest>
|
2I
hate the Yankees |
106.
|
<smith-eric> |
don't
have a 3 |
107.
|
<Pizza2man>
|
12456789 |
108.
|
<CathyTrix-guest>
|
2blech |
4.
Turn-taking can take place as it would in a face-to-face conversation, however,
it is easier to maintain in an Instant Messenger service chatroom than in a
multivoiced chatroom, where turn-taking can make conversational exchange seem
more like a random event.
As
one of the latest interaction communication forms through which to exchange
meaning , chatroom ‘talk’, despite being
regulated by techniques still in development, is beginning to be uniform. Behaviours expected of chat
participants are becoming clearer and more defined. As has been discussed in the individual case studies, different
chat environments may well have different rules of ‘talk’. And just as every social grouping has rules
of conversational engagement, online ‘talk’ has to have some order, sometimes
exacting it more strictly than others, for discourse to continue. Examples of
rules that would be considered standard protocol can be found on the Xena chat site (http://se.unisa.edu.au/phd/xena.html) as well
as on many other sites which discuss Netiquette (a comprehensive one is at: http://www.fau.edu/netiquette/net/netiquette.html).
But beyond these protocols, chat participants can be seen to be demanding and
commanding, consciously or otherwise, many subtle variations to offline
communicative practices. This study has shown how some of these might be
captured and examined, but also how creative users are in achieving these
variations.
[1] See http://se.unisa.edu.au/phd/ethics.htm for my original proposal to do this thesis in 1998 and http://se.unisa.edu.au/this2.html for the original work started in February 1998.
[2] Below are a small selection of historical timelines on the Internet. Viewed 9-28-2001
Global Networking: a Timeline1990-1999 http://www.ciolek.com/PAPERS/GLOBAL/1900late.html
Brief history of the Internet http://allsands.com/Computers/briefhistory_wqe_gn.htm
Hobbes' Internet Timeline http://www.funet.fi/index/FUNET/history/internet/fi/HIT.html
History of the Internet http://www.specialistepr.co.uk/manual_history.htm
[3] An example of graphical conversations is available in Judith Donath's course on graphical conversations. Designing Sociable Media, is at http://smg.media.mit.edu/classes/SociableDesign2001/GraphicalConv.html viewed 9-3-2001
4. <TIFFTIFF18> DO U MOW IF ITS GONNA HIE JERSEY AT ALL |
5. <Werblessed> Where your hous thilling |
6. <Kitteigh-Jo> near Princeton |
7. <RUSSL1> right over my place |
8. <ankash> New Jersy in under Tropical Storm Watch now Right? |
[5] I refer to a thread as two or more utterances by two or more participants on the same topic.
15. <mahmoo> brb.......gotta go get
me some chocolate |
23.
<mahmoo> dark chocolate |
25
<playball14> chocolate
and carmel oh yeah |
163.
<mahmoo> 33.5 oz Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate |
171
<mahmoo> oops 3.5 oz |
177
<KikoV> mahmoo, you send spices, I send Hershey's ...even steven |
[7] Some of the definitions used in CA can
serve as a starting point to describe what happens in between these turns.
Three terms in common CA practice are gap, lapse and pause. A gap does not
"belong" to anyone. It is a place of transition. A gap is a silence;
the speaker has stopped speaking, and the next speaker ‘self selects’. In
chatrooms this silence may be occupied by others reading the chat.
When there is a
silence, the next speaker has not been selected, and no one self selects, we
have a ‘lapse’. It is only possible to distinguish a gap from a lapse after the
event. Again in chatrooms, the next speaker may already be writing the
response, reading the previous response, or there may simply be a silence in
the same sense as the CA definition.
A pause is silence when the current speaker has selected the next speaker and stopped talking, but the next speaker is silent. A pause is also silence that occurs within a participant’s turn. A pause "belongs" to the person currently designated speaker.
[8] I know who the speakers are in this Instant Messenger example hence I am able to identify them as male and female. In most cases this would be impossible on the Internet.
1. |
gina2b |
4 |
2. |
dingo42 |
11 |
3. |
AquarianBlue |
19 |
4. |
Seoni |
5 |
5. |
judythejedi |
22 |
6. |
Nicole528 |
24 |
7. |
kilya |
3 |
8. |
TheGods |
3 |
9. |
IroquoisPrncess |
5 |
10. |
Night-Goddess_ |
7 |
11. |
poopaloo |
1 |
12. |
*
sara4u |
1 |
13. |
jijirika |
5 |
14. |
safetynet10 |
6 |
15. |
tazdevil144
|
3 |
16. |
tazzytaz1o1 |
6 |
[10] For further studies in gender and cyberspace and indentification in chatrooms see Flanagan and Booth, 2002; Shade, 2002; Turkle, 1984, 1985. See also GENDER AND PARTICIPATION IN SYNCHRONOUS CMC: AN IRC CASE STUDY at: http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~ipct-j/1999/n1-2/stewart.html viewed March 29, 2001.
[11] HAPPY NEW YEAR WITH LOL AND ABUNDANT
BLESSINGS
12/11/02 HAPPY NEW YEAR WITH "LOL" LOTS OF LOVE WITH JOY
AND PEACE AND ABUNDANT BLESSINGS ALWAYS!! MAY YOU HAVE A VERY JOY FILLED,
HEALTHY, SUCCESSFUL AND MOST PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR!! From all of "US"
at 'VILLE DeTROIT'with "LOL" Lots Of Love Always!!! Viewed at
http://www.new2u.com/classified_detail.cfm?classified_ID=2919
Viewed March 04, 2002
[12] ‘Learning-on-line’ http://www.learningonline.org/
Viewed March 04, 2002
[13] ‘Liechtenstein on-line’ http://www.lol.li/
Viewed March 04, 2002.
“lots of luck! LOL the one time we
tried to have a pic made of the 4 kids, 2 were crying, one was rolling her eyes
and the other looked totally irritated!” Viewed at http://www.momsview.com/discus/messages/23/9571.html
March 04, 2002
[15] ‘THE LOL AND THE VIP’ Most people
know what a V.I.P. is, (Very Important Person), and many know what an L.O.L.
is, (Little Old Lady). http://www.trainweb.org/oldtimetrains/Various/lolvip.html
Viewed March 04, 2002.
[16] "Britney Spears chatroom" lists 63 sites as of November 23, 2001 on the Google Search Engine.
[17] (see, http://www.britneyspears.ac/chat.html, http://www.britney-spears-portal.com, http://www.sterlins.com/britney-spears/chat.html, http://www.britneyfans.com/chat.shtml, http://britney-spears.sterlins.com/, http://www.brachman.com/more-britney.htm, http://www.superosity.com/britney/home.htm)
[18] To make this observation I have had to make the assumption that a chatroom with a name like Britney Spears is likely to attract a younger group of participants than a chatroom on 3D animation (Case Study 6) for example. Though it is impossible to verify this, it is I believe a reasonable assumption based on the research of Hamman (1996, 1998), Rheingold, (1994, 1999), Spender (1995), Turkle (1995, 1996).
[19] This is a page from several pages of a CA workshop held on Fridays in 2002 at the State University of New York at Albany.
[20] For example
in the Postscript discussion of the 911 chat during the World Trade Centre
destructions there were 644
turns and 4833 words of spoken text covering 80 minutes or an average of 8.05
turns per minute. Often there were utterances logged at the same second.
595
|
16:14:08 |
tippybond: can someone field me to another
other chats for ny |
596
|
16:14:08 |
Gary: i woke up to this and i just cant belive it....my
heart goes out to all who have been injured |
[21] Active Worlds, a Virtual-Reality experience,
lets users visit and chat in 3D worlds that are built by other
users. Viewed 12-2002, http://www.activeworlds.com/
ATMOSPHERE,
with Adobe® Atmosphere™. With Atmosphere, users add a third dimension to their
Web experience by creating realistic and immersive environments that offer a
revolutionary approach to content, navigation, community, and communication.
Viewed 12-2002, http://www.adobe.com/products/atmosphere/
EXCITE
CHAT, Text-based and graphics-based chat, events, and web content. Viewed
12-2002, http://www.excite.com/
HABBO
HOTEL, Graphics-based chat where the user visits different hotel rooms or
creates his or her own room. Viewed 12-2002, http://www.habbohotel.com/habbo/en/
Moove
German-created 3D visual chat program. Viewed 12-2002, http://www.moove.com/
A
continually updated list of other 3D chatrooms are at
http://www.thescarletletters.com/Blah/LipSync.html Viewed
12-2002.
[22]
Mann (1997) suggests five characteristics of a wearable computer:
(1.) it may be used while the wearer
is in motion;
(2.) it may be used while one or both
hands are free, or occupied with other tasks;
(3.) it exists within the corporeal
envelope of the user, i.e., it should be not merely attached to the body but
becomes an integral part of the person's clothing
(4.) it must allow the user to
maintain control;
(5.) it
must exhibit constancy, in the sense that it should be constantly available.
Mann, S. (1997) Conveners report of
CHI '97 Workshop on Wearable Computers, Personal Communication to attendees.
Viewed 12-2002 at http://www.bham.ac.uk/ManMechEng/IEG/w1.html
[23] Cognitive radio, a radio that is
programmable to send messages on its own is part of the array of devices for
wireless providers, for voice and data communication for the fourth-generation,
or 4G, wireless services beginning in 2004. Viewed 12-2002 http://www.techextreme.com/perl/story/20731.html
[24] Electronic Performance Support System
Viewed 12-2002 http://wearables.gatech.edu/EPSS.asp
[25] There are two claims for the origins of the smiley. One is that in 1972 Franklin Loufrani a journalist created a simple concept for France soir and other European newspapers, he displayed icons to communicate news and especially good ones. He gave this original icon the name of Smiley, it was published for the first time on Jan 1st 1972. Under Loufrani's supervision, SMILEY quickly spread across the world, easily crossing political, social and economic boundaries with his ever-increasing vocabulary of instantly recognizable emotions. (See, The Smiley World at http://www.smileyworld.com/). The other claim for the origin of the smiley is that artist Harvey Ball created the first "smiley face" around December 1963 for one of his clients. He designed a yellow pin with the smiley face. This pin was handed out to company employees and clients and soon became a big hit. In a short time the "smiley face" appeared on all sorts of products. By the end of the 60's "smiley" had spread around the world. (see World Smile Corporation at http://www.worldsmile.com/). World Smiley Day has been proclaimed for October 03, 2003.
[27] (See, four possible types of message posted to a mailing list McElhearn, 2000[27], and Gruber, 1996)
[28] The results cited are from a survey on
Assessing Student Learning Outcomes online at http://www.csusm.edu/acrl/imls/Q3Report.htm
Sited online October 21, 2000. Other online surveys and viewers responses are;
Test of an internet virtual world for teen smoking cessation online at http://www.trdrp.org/PageGrant.asp?grant_id=2423;
Hispanics in the U.S. 16 years of age and older, 38 percent are using the
Internet on a regular basis, according to a new study released by AHAA and 43%
are using the Internet for chatrooms, http://www.ahaa.org/Mediaroom/Roslow%20Research%20Study.htm.
INTERNET USE AND THE SELF CONCEPT:
LINKING SPECIFIC USES TO GLOBAL SELF-ESTEEM College freshmen at a
mid-sized university in the mid-Atlantic of the USA were surveyed on chatroom
behaviour - http://www.uiowa.edu/~grpproc/crisp/crisp.8.1.html
[29] Cybercafes worldwide are added constantly to at http://www.cybercafes.com/ Sited November 30, 2002
[30] This was ‘captured’ 7 March 2003 shortly before the US invasion of Iraq.
[31] I have also begun each of the seven Case Studies in
Chapter 4 with questions that I answer
in the Case Study.
[32] This same list has also been sited on other
chatroom sites, such as; http://dragon.minopher.net.au/WebEd/protocol.htm;
Florida Atlantic University http://www.fau.edu;
Kapi'olani Community College http://www.kcc.hawaii.edu/;
Illinois Online Network http://illinois.online.uillinois.edu
and on the University of Illlinois site http://www.uiuc.edu/
[33] Many countries have chatrooms, one mega chatsite is http://www.europeaninternet.com/ http://www.europeaninternet.com/
[34] Global Networking: a Timeline1990-1999 http://www.ciolek.com/PAPERS/GLOBAL/1900late.html
Brief history of the Internet http://allsands.com/Computers/briefhistory_wqe_gn.htm
Hobbes' Internet Timeline http://www.funet.fi/index/FUNET/history/internet/fi/HIT.html
History of the Internet http://www.specialistepr.co.uk/manual_history.htm
[35] Die Gewinner des O`Reilly 'best new smiley' Wettbewerbes. Hier zum ersten Mal in einer deutschen Übersetzung: http://www.heisoft.de/web/emoticon/emoticon.htm
[36] Chinese chatroom at: http://zhongwen.com/chat.htm viewed 8-12-2001
[37] See http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-books/City_of_Bits/ for information on this.
[38] SMS was created when it was incorporated into
the Global System for Mobiles (GSM) digital mobile phone standard.
A single short message can be up to 160 characters of text in length using
default GSM alphabet coding, 140 characters when Cyrillic character set is used
and 70 characters when UCS2 international character coding is used.
[39] An online slag dictionary of words common to social groupings is at http://mrspock.marion.ohio-state.edu/behan/271slang_dictionaries.htm
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