Spoken, Written and Computer-Mediated Forms Of

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Tereza Indrová

Spoken, Written and Computer-Mediated Communication: The Language of Online Discussion Forums Bachelor‟s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Mgr. Jan Chovanec, Ph.D. 2011

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Author‟s signature

Acknowledgement I would like to thank to Mgr. Jan Chovanec, Ph.D. for his patience and positive approach.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction ...... 1

2 Spoken and Written Communication ...... 4 2. 1 Searching for the Definitions ...... 4 2.2 Comparing Speech and Writing ...... 5 2.2.1 Spoken Communication ...... 5 2.2.2 Written Communication ...... 7

3 Computer-Mediated Communication ...... 10 3.1 Definition ...... 10 3.2 CMC in Comparison With Speech and Writing ...... 10

4 Online Discussion Forums ...... 15 4.1 Definition ...... 15 4.2 Types of Online Discussion Forums ...... 15 4.2.1 Non-Threaded Online Discussion Forum ...... 16 4.2.2 Semi-Threaded Online Discussion Forum ...... 16 4.2.3 Fully Threaded Online Discussion Forum ...... 16 4.3 Rules of Online Conversation - Netiquette ...... 17 4.4 Violating the Maxims ...... 18 4.4.1 Trolling ...... 18 4.4.2 Flaming ...... 19 4.4.3 Spamming ...... 19 4.4.4 Lurking ...... 20 4.4.5 Post Count Increasing ...... 20 4.4.6 Sock Puppets ...... 20

5 Language of Online Discussion Forum and Its Specific Features ...... 22 5.1 Word-Formation on the Internet – Geek-Speak ...... 24 5.1.1 Acronyms and Initialisms ...... 24

5.1.2 Replacement ...... 26 5.2 Paralinguistic Features ...... 27 5.2.1 Emoticons ...... 27 5.2.2 Graphical Emphasis ...... 31 5.2.2.1 Metaphorical Shouting ...... 31 5.2.2.2 Making a Pause ...... 32 5.2.2.3 Laying Emphasis ...... 32 5.3 Language Featuring Incorrect Grammar ...... 34 5.3.1 Misspellings ...... 34 5.3.1.1 Unintentional Misspellings ...... 34 5.3.1.2 Deliberate Misspellings ...... 35 5.3.2 Capitalization ...... 36 5.3.2 Punctuation ...... 37

6 Conclusion ...... 38

References ...... 39

Abstract ...... 44

Resumé ...... 45

1 Introduction

The present thesis aims at the communication via online discussion forums as a kind of text-based computer-mediated communication, standing on the borderline between spoken and written communication. To be able to characterize its typical features, I dedicate a part of the present thesis to the definition of spoken, written and computer-mediated communication.

In the first part of the thesis, I will deal with the classification of written and spoken communication from the linguistic point of view. I will continue by drawing a comparison between them, contrasting the differences in function, structure, relation to space and time, spontaneity, the possibilities of visual contact with the participants of communication and the richness of graphics and prosody of each of them, based on a comparison by Crystal (2001).

Further, I will apply the criteria used to compare spoken and written communication to computer-mediated communication in order to find out what linguistic features it shares with the spoken norm and what with the written norm of language.

In the fourth chapter, I will try to define the medium of online discussion forum from the point of view of its structure. Then, I will deal with the maxims of online communication, and subsequently with phenomena that violate these maxims.

In the final part of the present thesis I will concentrate on the language of online discussion forums, its specific features and departures from either spoken or written norm as defined in the first part of the thesis. For this section, I provided examples to facilitate understanding of the phenomena. To obtain the examples, I used quotations from two discussion boards: The Student Room and Kindle Forum. Since I reproduced

the quoted messages without changes, they may be grammatically incorrect (and often are as it is the reason for quoting them in one section of the fifth chapter). Similarly, the users‟ nicknames are spelled authentically, which in some cases means lowercase letter at the beginning.

To make it easier to trace up the messages quoted in the present thesis, I decided to identify them by their numbers rather than by the date of posting. That is to mean, every message posted to a thread on The Student Room, where most of the citations come from, is provided with a number according to the order of appearance. I decided to take this step for the reason that it is considerably easier to orientate in a thread with the help of message seriation.

To prevent the reader from being confounded, I have to note that while identifying some of the most common phenomena in the language of Internet-based computer-mediated communication, I could not avoid listing a few examples which contain coarse language.

Before continuing to the thesis itself, I would like to introduce the online discussion forums I will be quoting, and characterize them roughly. The Student Room is the largest student website in the United Kingdom and “the world's largest and fastest growing student community” (“FAQ”, 2010). As the title implies, it is dedicated to students and it covers practically all discussion topics that any user would like to choose. Quite in contrast with The Student Room, Kindle Forum is a minor fully threaded online discussion forum. It does not contain any informational features such as the FAQ (frequently asked questions) page or data about the number of members. The discussion topic is restricted to issues connected to Kindle (which is a portable e-book reader) and partially to self-published authors.

Having introduced the sources of my examples, I will proceed to the linguistic definition of spoken and written communication, which will be dealt in the subsequent chapter.

2 Spoken and Written Communication

2.1 Searching for the Definitions

It is evident that spoken and written communication work on different principles; yet the relationship between them has been discussed by many linguists with various results. De Saussure (1916) came to the conclusion that language and writing are two distinct systems of signs; the latter existing for the sole purpose of representing the former. By stating this, he deliberately claimed the superiority of spoken form of language over the written form. However, many other would argue that the contrary is the case. Vachek (1976) promotes the superiority of written language especially in cases in which the utterance takes form of a larger text (e. g. a book). To prove this argument, he asserts that the written form provides the reader with table of contents and other useful devices that make it easy to orientate quickly in the text and enable the reader to skip unhelpful passages.

While searching for the balance between spoken and written forms of language, we can rely on the two definitions provided by Vachek in his essay on written language, which concentrates on the spoken and written norm of language. As Vachek (1976) says,

the spoken norm of language is a system of phonically manifestable language

elements whose function is to react to a given stimulus (which, as a rule, is an

urgent one) in a dynamic way, i. e., in a ready and immediate manner, duly

expressing not only the purely communicative but also the emotional aspect of

the approach of the reacting language user.

The written norm of language is a system of graphically manifestable language

elements whose function is to react to a given stimulus (which, as a rule, is not

an urgent one), in a static way, i. e., in a preservable and easily surveyable

manner, concentrating particularly on the purely communicative aspect of the

approach of the reacting language user (p. 414).

2.2 Comparing Speech and Writing

Having the definitions given by Vachek (1976) in mind, I will now concentrate on the differences between speech and writing. In the following comparison, I employ extensively the results of Crystal‟s study into language as presented in Language and the Internet (2001); nevertheless, I will refer to other linguists as well.

2.2.1 Spoken Communication.

First, I will comment on spoken communication. In the following table, I present

Crystal‟s criteria for speech, which will be contrasted with writing in the next subsection.

Table 1 Crystal´s criteria applied to spoken communication (Crystal, 2001, p. 26 – 28)

Criteria Speech space / time relation time-bound spontaneity spontaneous visual contact face-to-face structure loosely structured function socially interactive revisability immediately revisable richness prosodically rich

The table describes Crystal‟s approach to the distinction of the two forms of communication – speech and writing. The criteria include relation to time and space, spontaneity, immediacy of feedback, structure, function, revisability and richness.

According to Crystal (2001, p. 26 - 28), speech is defined as time-bound, dynamic and transient; the speaker usually addresses his speech to a particular audience which is present. There is no time-lag between production and reception, which entails spontaneity and speed of the communication. It is, as well, a consequence of the lack of a time-lag that the discourse is loosely structured and contains repetition, rephrasing and comment clauses. It is divided into smaller units by intonation and pause and not by punctuation, which makes the sentence boundaries often unclear. For comparison, the immediacy of the communication is coined as on-line processing of language by

Svartvik and Leech (2006, p. 201 – 203); whereas Chafe (1994, p. 42) refers to the evanescence of speech (meaning that visual stimulus leaves a deeper imprint in the receiver‟s mind than a sonic one).

Thanks to the fact that the speaker and the audience are usually in visual contact, they can employ extralinguistic features (such as facial expression and body language) in the communication. Further, speech is typical of common usage of deictic expressions, since it is probable that the listener will know what they are referring to and therefore will handle with the vagueness. Svartvik and Leech (2006, p. 201 – 203) sum these features up under the term shared context, in which the discourse is realized.

Examining the function of it, speech is socially interactive; it is performed to entertain oneself or someone else and to express opinions, attitudes and social relationships. The revisability of speech is facilitated by the possibility to adapt an utterance to the current development of one‟s thoughts (by reformulating the utterance or adding new information). Nevertheless, eventual errors cannot be erased after having 6

already been uttered. Interruptions and overlapping speech occur frequently and are a natural part of spoken (and especially informal) language. Thanks to its nature, speech is endowed with unique richness in linguistic prosody. Human ability to notice the slightest changes in intonation, rhythm or pitch of voice makes speech prosodically rich.

This leads me to an observation about speech and writing by Chafe (1994, p. 43 – 44).

While comparing these two, he gives special attention to the historical, evolutionary aspect; and thus comes to the conclusion that speech is a more natural device for communication. To put it briefly, the physical disposition of human body is more apt for speaking than for writing.

2.2.2 Written Communication.

Similarly as for spoken communication in the previous section, I adapted

Crystal‟s criteria for written communication as showed in the table below, providing further commentary.

Table 2 Crystal´s criteria applied to written communication (Crystal, 2001, p. 26 – 28)

Criteria Writing space / time relation space-bound spontaneity contrived visual contact visually decontextualized structure elaborately structured function factually communicative revisability repeatedly revisable richness graphically rich

Writing, in contrast with speech, is space-bound, static and permanent, with the writer being usually distant from the reader. Thanks to the permanence and transportability of writing (defined by Chafe [1994, p. 42]), the distance can be both in space and time. There is necessarily a time-lag between production and reception. The

interval between them gives the writer an opportunity to consider more carefully the organization and structure of the produced text. The units of discourse are very clearly designated by punctuation and layout of the text. Writing is, thanks to the time for preparation, lexically much denser than speech (Svartvik & Leech, 2006, p. 201 – 203).

Since the written communication does not take place face-to-face, there is no possibility to take in account any extralinguistic features or to react immediately to the reader‟s feedback. For the same reason the use of deictic expressions would not be sensible due to their ambiguity.

The written discourse is characteristic of its durable nature, which makes it a useful tool to communicate facts that are intended for remembering, analyzing and repeated reading. It can take shape of tables or graphs which demonstrate data more logically and organize the facts in a more comprehensible way than speech ever could.

The quality of repeated revisability of writing enables the writers to rearticulate their statements before letting the reader reach them. Interruptions in writing may occur quite frequently; nevertheless, they are not reflected in the final product.

In contrast to speech, writing is rich in graphics and not in prosody. Typical features of this graphical richness are as follows: spatial organization, capitalization, lines, pages and some aspects of punctuation.

Apart from the criteria used by Crystal, speech and writing can be compared on the base of senses used while processing the two means of communication. As Chafe claims, speech depends on sound, whereas writing on sight (1994, p. 42). I must dispute this statement for I do not consider the real situation that clear-cut. If it is agreed that extralinguistic features, such as proxemics and kinesics, are essential for spoken, face- to-face communication, it must consequently be agreed that while communicating face- to-face, people rely heavily on their sight. In fact, if people would omit or ignore the 8

visual signals given while a spoken discourse is performed, they would get on the level of computer-mediated communication (as the next chapter explains).

3 Computer-Mediated Communication

Having defined spoken and written communication, I can proceed to a detailed description of computer-mediated communication. It is the theme of this chapter and will recur throughout the rest of the thesis.

3.1 Definition

According to Herring (1996, p. 1), computer-mediated communication is

“communication that takes place between human beings via the instrumentality of computers”. Herring also refers to the more specified term computer-mediated discourse, which is “the communication produced when human beings interact with one another by transmitting messages via networked computers” (Herring, 2001, p. 612).

3.2 Computer-Mediated Communication in Comparison With Spoken and Written

Communication

In the present thesis, I will deal solely with text-based computer-mediated communication (CMC). Hence, I reduced the content of the table below to text-based

CMC only. Again, my approach is based on Crystal‟s (2001) work in this field.

Table 3 Crystal´s criteria (with minor changes) for speech and writing applied to computer-mediated communication (2001, p. 42 – 43)

Computer-mediated communication Criteria (discussion forums) time-bound in different ways, space / time relation space-bound with restrictions spontaneity variable visual contact visually decontextualized structure loosely structured socially interactive with restrictions, variably factually function communicative revisability immediately and repeatedly revisable prosodically rich in different sense, variably graphically richness rich

As the table implies, writing stands in stark contrast with speech in many repects. Computer-mediated communication, then, is on the borderline between these two means of communication. Crystal (2001, p. 42 - 43) divides computer-mediated communication into four units: web, e-mail, chatgroups and virtual words communication. Since his concept of chatgroups1 approximates the nature of online discussion forums, upon which the present thesis focuses; I adopted the rules stated for chatgroups only and omitted the other three units in the table.

According to Crystal‟s research (2001, p. 30 – 48), computer-mediated communication is time-bound, but in other ways than speech. Here, Herring‟s (2001) distinction of synchronous and asynchronous communication will make it clearer.

Synchronous communication is typical of the necessity of immediateness of reactions.

That means that both the sender and the receiver must be logged on simultaneously. The messages are not saved; they exist only until newer messages replace them

1 Crystal classifies chatgroups as a „generic term for world-wide multi-participant electronic discourse, whether real-time or not“ (2001, p. 129)

on the users‟ screens (Herring, 2001, p. 615).2 However, online discussion forums work as asynchronous messaging systems; that means that they do not require simultaneous online presence of the users; instead, the messages are stored for later reading and reaction (Herring 2001: p. 614). Therefore, there is an assumption of a time-lag between production and reception in this kind of computer-mediated communication. The length of the time-lag is usually unknown in advance and may take anything between seconds and years (Crystal, 2001).

Comparing computer-mediated communication with writing, Crystal claims it to be space-bound, but not in the way that writing is. For instance, the visual character of the text may have changed from the receiver‟s last visit thanks to some graphic changes on the website or because the author updated the data. Similarly, the messages are not really permanent since they can be deleted anytime, but they tend to be long-term (at least in asynchronous communication), so that the recipients could read it and react even after a period of time.

The answer to the question whether computer-mediated communication is contrived or spontaneous is ambiguous. The language of websites is contrived and elaborately structured to the same extent as writing is; however, the language of chat rooms is spontaneous due to the necessity to react as quickly as possible. The language of online discussion forums stands somewhere in between and it depends mostly on the authors whether they decide to write as spontaneously as if chatting or to take as much care as if writing a letter. Furthermore, although the messages may seem spontaneously written, the authors had the possibility to revise and rewrite them before sending, which

2 As Crystal (2001) notes, the production and reception of a computer-mediated message are never really simultaneous; not even in the case of synchronous computer-mediated communication, since it always takes some time to type and send the message.

is not possible for speech. Therefore, I had to change the result for revisability in the table by Crystal. Although I agree with his conclusion that it is not possible to revise repeatedly a text communicated via chatgroups, I cannot apply it to online discussion forums, since the authors can revise their message immediately after being written (that is to mean, before posting them on the Internet); and in case of many forums, the messages can be edited later and thus are repeatedly revisable.

As Crystal further shows (2001, p. 40), computer-mediated communication in discussion boards has various features in common with speech, such as loose structure and short constructions. At the same time, it lacks some of its crucial features; particularly because the fact that on the keyboard, there is no space for reaction signals and comment clauses; neither for prosody, paralanguage, kinesics and proxemics.

Nevertheless, other devices to convey tone and emotions emerged. Specific features such as emoticons or graphical markers of emphasis became essential to the online communication and will be dealt with in the chapter about language of online discussion forums. For the ambiguity, it is considered socially interactive, but with restrictions.

Further on, the table shows that computer-mediated communication is visually decontextualized. This entry is valid only from the viewpoint of immediate feedback, which is lacking. Still, the text is often supported by visual materials such as photographs, videos or animations, so that there is certain visual context within the message itself.

The question of factual communicativeness of computer-mediated communication is as ambiguous as the one of its spontaneity. Definitely, it communicates facts; but the amount of factual information transferred from the producer to the receiver is dependent on various consequences; for instance, the purpose

of the communication. The more academic a discourse, the more factually communicative it gets.

Finally, the last criterion is richness. The prosodical richness attributed to speech has been already discussed above; thus, I will proceed to the graphical richness, which is typical for writing. The quality of graphics of computer-mediated communication varies significantly from example to example. Again, the text can be neatly arranged, properly organized and easy to orientate in; or the graphic form can be seriously neglected. Therefore, I consider the entry for the computer-mediated communication rather prosodically rich in different sense and variably graphically rich than neither prosodically nor graphically rich, unlike Crystal.

4 Online Discussion Forums

This section introduces online discussion forum as a mean of Internet-based communication. At the beginning, I concentrate chiefly on the structural varieties of forums. In the latter part of the chapter, I comment on maxims of Internet-based communication – netiquette. At the end, I try to spot cases of users‟ behaviour in communication that violate netiquette in one way or other.

4.1 Definition

An online discussion forum is “any online „bulletin board‟ where you can leave and expect to see responses to messages you have left” and which enables users to

“share and discuss information and opinions” (Whatis.com, 2008). As the Glossary of technical terms defines it, a forum is “a script on a web site with a submission form that allows visitors to post messages […] for others to read” (2010). It is an asynchronous system for communication with many-to-many participation structure (Herring, 2004).

4.2 Structure of Online Discussion Forums

Online discussion forums can be divided into three groups according to their display format: non-threaded, semi-threaded and fully threaded forums (“Non Threaded vs. Semi Threaded”, n.d.). To begin with, a thread is “a sequence of responses to an initial message posting” (“Definition: Thread”, n. d.). The display format has significant influence over the discussion development for it determines to a considerable extent the ease with which the conversation flows.

4.2.1 Non-Threaded Online Discussion Forums

Basically, non-threaded forum does not encourage discussion and serves rather as a notice board. There is no topic-based division of the messages; they usually appear in chronological order (most recent on top).

4.2.2 Semi-Threaded Online Discussion Forums

The most widely used format is the semi-threaded (for instance, The Student

Room uses it). A semi-threaded forum displays the initial message on the top and enables the user to reply to it (commonly, by clicking a “reply” button at the bottom of the initial message). The replies then line up one under another in below the initial message. The reply order is chronological, with the most recent messages appearing under the older ones. Users who intend to react to one of the later messages can indicate it either by linking or quoting (Herring 2001, p. 612). The former is performed by using an initial linking phrase (e. g. “I would like to comment on A‟s opinion about […]”, A being the linked message‟s author‟s name); whereas the latter is realized by generating a quotation of A‟s message and pasting it at the beginning of the reaction. In that case, there must be a “quote” button at the bottom of each message.

4.2.3 Fully Threaded Online Discussion Forums

The difference between semi-threaded and fully threaded forums lies in the possibility to reply to replies. The basic layout is the same for both formats. However, users of a fully threaded forum (like in case of Kindle Forum) are allowed to react to the replies on the initial message, not only to the message itself. This format draws the closest to a face-to-face discussion format in the respect that it supports turn adjacency: 16

the reaction does not appear at the end of the reaction list, but indented under the original. On the other hand, the system may cause the replies to the very initial message to be displaced from the screen view by replies to replies.

4.3 Rules of Online Conversation - Netiquette

It is commonly agreed that with entering into a conversation, one confirms to abide by certain, perhaps unconsciously perceived, rules. In spoken conversation, people act in accord with the cooperative principle (Grice, as cited in Wardhaugh, 1992, p. 290), which encompasses several basic maxims. Grice names them as follows:

The maxim of quality binds the speakers to say only what they believe is true

and can be supported by evidence.

The maxim of quantity makes speaker‟s contribution as informative as required.

The maxim of relation, if followed, makes the contribution relevant.

And lastly, the maxim of manner guarantees that the contribution would not be

ambiguous or obscure (in Wardhaugh, 1992, p. 290).

In addition to Grice‟s maxims listed above, Wardhaugh (1992, p. 290) introduces the maxim of politeness. It is closely related to Goffman‟s term face-work, which means

“presenting faces to each other, protecting our own face and protecting the other‟s face”

(as cited in Wardhaugh, 1992, p. 293); which is accomplished (besides other means) by being polite and respecting the other‟s self-presentation.

Although the Internet is often considered to be a place of absolute freedom of speech, it is not the case. Most of online discussion forums have a set of rules for participating to the discussion, available for the users to read before joining (usually in the FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions – section, or in a section about terms of service). The obedience to the rules is overseen by moderators and administrators of the 17

forum. Should the participants of an online discourse violate some of its maxims (even if they were not emphasized beforehand), they may get punished; for instance, by having their message edited, removed, or even by having their forum accounts deleted.

Although discussion forum administrators articulate the rules themselves, the maxims tend to be very similar for all types of computer-mediated communication and are commonly called netiquette. Moreover, the users themselves feel what is and what is not appropriate and would fight against unruly participants. Following a tutorial for online discussion forum users and other sources (“How to behave”, 2009; Beal, 2010), I recognized all four Grice‟s maxims of conversation. In the following section, I will deal with those computer-mediated communication phenomena that violate netiquette.

4.4 Violating the Maxims

For some reason or other, the feeling of anonymity given to users of the Internet often encourages them to deliberately disregard generally followed maxims. The cases of inappropriate behaviour, developing against the unique background of computer- mediated communication, were so many that they were classified as new terms. I listed some of such practices below. It is worth noting that all of them disrupt the discussion flow by neglecting the principle of cooperativeness, which underlies all maxims of conversation and is essential for successful and meaningful communication to happen

(Wardhaugh, 1992, p. 290).

4.4.1 Trolling

User who trolls, posts deliberately “derogatory or inflammatory comments […] in order to bait other users into responding” (“Troll”, 2011) and his specific aim is to initiate “a hate-filled and overly-argumentative thread” (“How to Behave”, 2010). Such 18

behaviour clearly violates the maxims of quality (the user‟s posts are very probably based on information which the author considers untrue), relation (such messages are irrelevant for their very purpose, whatever the exact informative content is) and politeness (clearly, it is impolite and improper to distract the flow of discussion deliberately). Trolls are generally suggested to be ignored.

4.4.2 Flaming

Flaming is similar to trolling for the aggressive character they share. Yet, a troll only offers bait to all users, whereas a user,who posts a flame directs the attack against a particular user in personal terms (“Flame”, 2011). Such messages violate the maxims of quality, relation and politeness in the same manner as trolling. Moreover, they disregard

Goffman‟s concept of face-work (1955, as cited in Wardhaugh, 1992, p. 293), since they intentionally damage the other participant‟s face.

4.4.3 Spamming

Spamming means “flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it” (Mueller, n. d.). As Mueller further claims, most of the discussion forum spam is aimed at lurkers, who do not subscribe to the forums (and thus do not give their address away and cannot receive spam by e-mail). Obviously, spamming violates the maxims of quantity and relation, as the content of spam, which is not related to the rest of the discussion, is forced upon the readers against their will.

4.4.4 Lurking

The practice of lurking consists in reading posts and not contributing to discussion. By some, lurking is regarded as a violation of users‟ privacy

(Crystal, 2001, p. 53), particularly if the discussion deals with personal issues; yet it is mostly encouraged in order to find out how the particular discussion forum works and what has been already said to the discussed issue. Actually, the tutorial “How to

Behave” explicitly advices to lurk before posting (2010).

4.4.5 Post Count Increasing

This practice emerged as a consequence of the division of online discussion forum members on account of the number of messages they posted. I will show it on the example of The Student Room. It works on the principle that the more posts users send, the more respectable status they get.3 Thus, some users post unrelated messages of unimportant content only to improve their status title. Apart from decelerating the course of conversation and being annoying, it violates the maxims of quality and relation.

4.4.6 Sock Puppets

The puppet represents a false online identity “through which the puppeteer posts follow-ups to their own original message to give the appearance that a number of people support the views held in the original message” (“Sock puppet”, n. d.). Basically, there are two reasons why a user wants to take advantage of a sock puppet account. Either to defend or praise the real identity account in a discussion or to gain access to an online

3 A new member‟s postcount equals zero, and hence is labelled as “New Member”. However, as the participant becomes more involved, his status title makes progress with increasing number of his posts to Full Member, Adored and Respectable Member and so on (“FAQ”, 2010).

discussion forum after being banned for breaking rules (Manik, 2010). Such behaviour violates harshly Goffman‟s face-work concept, which stands on the assumption that participants of a conversation really are what they claim to be so that the others may present their true faces without fear and suspicion.

5 The Language of Online Discussion Forums and Its Specific Features

The language of computer mediated communication is specific in many respects, one of them being its great variability. It is caused by the high number of variables influencing the context in which the communication takes place (Herring, 2004, p. 67).

These variables are either technological or situational. As Herring claims, technological variables include for example synchronicity, persistence of transcript and degree of anonymity; among situational variables can be found participation structure, purpose, topic, norm, tone and participants‟ characteristic concerning demography and amount of experience. (2004, p. 67). Some of these variables do not change only from forum to forum; they change user from user and even message from message.

I will now return to the introduction, where I have presented a few basic facts about the discussion forums I will be quoting. I will characterize them a little more deeply now, as it will show the variability of the communication more clearly. Although they have many features in common (they both are public asynchronous communication systems with the messages being persistent unless deleted by the author [or administrator]), they also differ in many aspects.

As I have noted, The Student Room is a student community of enormous proportions. Since there is such a great number of participants (over 250 000, according to The Student Room’s FAQ, 2010), the discussion flows remarkably swiftly (in the threads that I will be quoting, it was about a message per minute). The users act under anonymous identities, choosing their nicknames as they wish and preferring a user profile picture featuring whatever else but their true appearance. The purpose of

The Student Room is to create a community of students who will be given room to socialize online. Tone of conversation is friendly and informal. The forum has a set of 22

animated emoticons (eighteen basic and over 250 auxiliary) incorporated in the space for writing messages, which enables the users to insert them to the text.

Although I am not able to tell the exact number of participants, the Kindle

Forum community is evidently smaller. The discussion is self-governed, as opposed to

The Student Room‟s system of moderators and administrators. The users operate under their own names, generally choosing a profile picture featuring their face. Kindle

Forum‟s purpose is to share experience with the e-book reading device and to search for advice in case of problems with its functioning. The discussion flows considerably slower than in The Student Room (up to ten messages a day in the thread I will be quoting). Tone of conversation is friendly, but rather formal; and strikingly more polite

(users employ greetings, appreciation phrases, farewells and signatures in their messages).

The variability of computer-mediated communication results also in innovativeness of the language. The computer-mediated communication‟s vocabulary grows so dramatically that there were attempts to recognize it as an official language at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in the United Kingdom; a language growing the fastest of all European languages in the present: the Nerdic, or the Geek-Speak

(“Opinion: Nerdic”, 2008). Apart from the world-wide expansion of terminology for the most recent products of electronics, the language of computer-mediated communication includes new features, unknown for spoken and written communication. The most striking is the development in word-formation. An enormous number of new acronyms and abbreviations had emerged recently, taking place of both common conversational phrases and phrases referring strictly to the surroundings of computer-mediated communication. Further, users of text-based computer-mediated communication

developed new ways to articulate various paralinguistic features in a written form in order to make the communication feel more like a direct face-to-face encounter. In the next section, I will deal with both abbreviations and paralinguistic features, providing evidence from online discussion forums.

5.1 Word-Formation on the Internet – Geek-Speak

The word-formation taking place on the Internet is characterized by the tendency to reduce the necessary amount of characters that must be typed in order to express one‟s ideas; and accordingly, to accelerate the process of communication. The reduction is done by two means; one being the creation of acronyms and initialisms, the other replacement of words by letters or numbers (Sun, 2010).

5.1.1 Acronyms and Initialisms

As Horak (as cited in Taylor & Metzler, 2008) claims, acronyms and initialisms are “special forms of abbreviations comprising the initial letters of other parts of several words that constitute a term”. He further provides the readers with a definition of acronym as “a pronounceable word formed of the initial letters or other parts of several words”, usually written in capitals; whereas the term initialism stands for “an unpronounceable abbreviation comprising the initial letters of a term and commonly used in place of that term” (Taylor & Metzler, 2008). With the definitions in mind, one finds out that most of the abbreviations used in computer mediated communication are initialisms mistakenly identified as acronyms by the general public. Comparing various lists of the most popular abbreviations (Maughan, 2011; “100 Most Popular”, 2011;

“Top 20 Most Popular”, 2008; “Top 50 Popular”, 2011; “Twitter Dictionary”, 2011)

and taking into account my own experience about what abbreviations I have really encountered, I compiled the following table.

Table 4 Examples of popular abbreviations

BRB Be right back BTW By the way IMO, IMHO In my opinion, in my humble / honest opinion LMAO Laughing my ass off LOL Laughing out loud OIC Oh, I see OMG Oh, my God ROFL, ROTFL Rolling on (the) floor laughing TX, THX Thanks TTYL, TTYS Talk / type to you later, talk / type to you soon WTF, WTH What the fuck, what the hell SUP What‟s up? ASAP As soon as possible BF, GF Boyfriend, girlfriend JK Just kidding FB Facebook PPL People Y Why U You R Are

In his contribution “roflmao iamgine if i got that wrong, hope im right!! ” to thread “IPL chat society L0L” (message 6) on The Student Room, user Manesh2468 combines two commonly used initialisms (ROFL and LMAO) into one. The bizarreness of the visualized behaviour of the user (rolling on the floor laughing his bottom off) suggest that these initialisms serve as an unconventional way to say that one is amused rather than as a real description of the user‟s current activity.

Another initialism that is used mostly to express user‟s attitude rather than his behaviour is LOL, as in The_Timepasser‟s post “Lol would be a fitting start to an epic thread ” (“IPL chat society L0L”, message 8), which does not suggest that he would really be laughing out loud.

Two further examples of initialisms used in practice are found in

CherryCherryBoomBoom‟s comment “OMG, I just put this in another thread” (“What's the worst book”, message 25), standing for oh my god; or Jonah Ramone‟s “I don't like you. TBH“, meaning to be honest (“I am bored”, message 5).

5.1.2 Replacement

The practice of replacing a part of a word or a whole word by letters or numbers rapidly accelerates the process of typing a message since the amount of characters is reduced. The replacing can be done only on condition that the letter or number is pronounced the same way as the unit replaced (Sun, 2010, p. 100). I found an example in a message by user The_Timepasser who wrote to The Student Room: “okay? maybe u should ” (“IPL chat society L0L”, message 11), replacing the pronoun you with u.

Surprisingly enough, in a later post (message 16) - “Yep urs is pretty nice as well” - he transforms the pronoun yours into urs by replacing the very same unit as in u, although the pronunciation condition is not satisfied.

To illustrate the replacement by numbers, I chose a message by user av2606, posted to the “What's the worst book you've ever read” thread on The Student Room:

“wots that serposed 2 mean???”, meaning what’s that supposed to mean.

There is no strict borderline between word forms created by replacement and by abbreviating; thus, these two practices often combine in a single abbreviation. I listed several examples of popular abbreviations containing numbers in the following table.

Table 5 Examples of popular abbreviations containing numbers (Maughan, 2011; “Top 20 Most Popular”, 2008; “Top 50 Popular Text”, 2011)

Abbreviation Meaning b4 Before gr8 Great l8, l8r, cul8r Late, later, see you later 2 To, too, two 2day, 2moro, 2nite Today, tomorrow, tonight B4N Bye for now F2F Face to face

5.2 Paralinguistic Features In contrast with spoken communication, in text-based computer-mediated communication it is necessary to add paralinguistic features deliberately for the reason that its written nature does not allow immediate visual contact between sender and receiver of the information. The extent to which users are able to incorporate paralinguistic features to their messages depends strongly on the user interface that an online discussion forum employs. For instance, the interface of Kindle Forum does not allow the members to change font, colour, or size of letters in their message, unlike The

Student Room‟s interface; neither it is possible to insert animated emoticons. Since

Kindle Forum‟s interface does not give much room for paralinguistic features, I draw most of examples in this section from The Student Room.

5.2.1 Emoticons According to the Lexical Database for English of Princeton University, an emoticon is “a representation of a facial expression (as a smile or frown) created by typing a sequence of characters” (“Glossary”, 2011), used in computer-mediated communication in order to add certain attitude or emotion to a text-based message.

They can also suggest the writer‟s mood. I present some of the most commonly used emoticons and their meaning in the following table. 27

Table 6 Examples of common emoticons (“List of emoticons”, 2011)

Emoticon Meaning :) :-) Smile, happy face :( :-( Frown, sad face ;) ;-) Wink :P :-P Sticking one‟s tongue out, cheeky, playful :D :-D laugh :/ :-/ :\ :-\ Undecided, sceptical, annoyed : | :-| Straight face, disgust, disapproval B) B-) 8) 8-) Sunglasses (indicating pride), glasses :-o :-O Shocked, surprised :* :-* Kiss

Yet on online discussion forum websites, there is often a set of animated emoticons which can be inserted to the message so that users can post even those emoticons which they cannot create with keyboard characters (for instance, The Student

Room offers emoticon called rolleyes). Since there is no visual contact with the receiver of the message, the use of emoticons is a truly unique way to provide the text with more subtle nuances of meaning than can be expressed by the text. The inappropriateness of emoticons for elaborately written texts shifts the language of discussion groups towards the spoken norm of language, since the discourse containing emoticons reminds colloquial speech rather than formal writing (Provine, Spencer &

Mandell, 2007, p. 305). Emoticons can be used to express attitude, like in monyacar‟s message from The Student Room:

I know, Jai was like..."I don't want to think you can't eat around me 'cos I'll

think you're a fatty, eat how much you like"

I'm like "I don't care, I'll eat how much I like" (“IPL chat society L0L”,

message 489).

The user shows that for her, it is a matter of no importance when she says she does not care; without the emoticon for laughter and for tongue sticking out, her answer could be interpreted as angry or offended.

Another reason to include emoticons may be to express irony or sarcasm, as in the following example:

You'll last long on here.

But yeah...

You seem like fun, make sure you link me everytime you make a new thread.

(“What's the worst book”, message 5)

The message is a reaction to a contribution which was considered as improper. The first emoticon ( ) reads rofl, or rolling on the floor laughing, indicating that the author laughs at what has been written. I have already mentioned the second one ( ), which stands for the face gesture of rolling one‟s eyes. The author added the emoticon after the sentence “You‟ll last long on here” to indicate he is being sarcastic and does not really think so. By inserting the third, winking emoticon ( ) he adds the feeling of joking and irony to the last sentence.

Apart from the widely used emoticons, the users of The Student Room can take advantage of some rather peculiar as well; as user Jonah Ramone did in his post “Do you pronounce Moscow `moss-co´ or `moz-Cow´? ”, with the emoticon read as holmes, suggesting he is addressing someone with a delicate, investigatory or tricky question.

As a study by Provine, Spencer and Mandell (2007) suggests, the purpose of emoticons is not limited to the emotional function. The researches examine whether the

use of emoticons has the same punctuation effect as laughter has in speech. Provine‟s term punctuation effect refers to the tendency of laugher to occur “at those places in the speech stream associated with pauses, phrase boundaries, and the beginnings and ends of statements and questions” (Provine, et al., 2007, p. 301). Their research brings evidence that emoticons of smile or laughter (being the most frequent ones used in their sample) “occurred at highly predictable and linguistically significant positions”

(Provine, et al., 2007, p. 301), which confirms their hypothesis. I chose an example posted to The Student Room‟s thread “IPL chat society L0L” by user monyacar, who put emoticons at phrase boundaries to define clearly to which part of her message the emoticon relates:

Wow, genuinely shocked

Speechless

LOL, joke, you didn't hurt my feelings...I'm not a wus

Now I'm going to sleep, 'cos I'll be grumpy tomorrow if I don't go now

Gooooooodnight

LOL time for my pathetic dreams (Message 62).

Monyacar‟s message also supports the results of the research done by Provine et al., for out of 7 emoticons contained, two represent smile, two stand for laughter, yet another two express a smiley winking face and the very last is an emoticon which is smiling and sticking its tongue out.

I found an exception to Provine‟s theory in a message by user

CherryCherryBoomBoo. In her message “I found this book in the library, but after reading a few pages, I was like boring” (“What's the worst book”, message 25), she places the emoticon for yawning in the middle of a phrase and not at its border. Yet, it is

properly situated in the sense that it is exactly where one would make the yawning gesture if saying the sentence aloud.

5.2.2 Graphical Emphasis

Since the participants of text-based computer-mediated communication have no capability to express emphasis by sonic means as pitch, intonation and rhythm, they invented a clever way to place emphasis via written text.

5.2.2.1 Metaphorical Shouting

By analogy with spoken discourse, where it is offensive to shout at other participants to the discussion, it is obvious that shouting is not approved of in computer- mediated discussion either. In this case, it is represented by using all-uppercase lettering. Authors of messages written in all capitals are harshly criticized by other participants to the forum; and are generally found annoying, whatever the actual content is (“How to behave”, 2009). Nevertheless, using all capitals in order to lay special emphasize on the most important part of one‟s message is widely accepted. The capitals for emphasis can be seen in Svenjamin‟s message: “Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger /

NOTHING HAPPENS!!!! I was waiting for something to happen, and […]” (“What's the worst book”, message 16). Here, the capitals serve to accentuate Svenjamin‟s surprise and disappointment; whereas later in the same thread, I found an outstanding example of a metaphorical shout in a message by FranticMind, which consists of capitals and non-letter characters: “WHATATAHTWFHTWAFDHWAKYGY!HUHJ£!

UI£Y!UI£!GH"!?"!"!?>"?!"” (Message 128), suggesting that the author became so upset that his shouting gradually transformed into something that could be interpreted as inarticulate howl. 31

5.2.2.2 Making a Pause

As I indicated above, the rhythm of speech is one of essential sonic paralinguistic features, helping the listener to convey the slightest nuances of meaning and identify the most important information communicated. Pauses occur when the speaker needs time to formulate ideas or to lay extra emphasis on what is waiting to be said. In written communication, pauses are represented by dots (Chovanec, 2009, p.

117). To illustrate this phenomena, I chose a message by user jai_:), saying “i used to like cricket...till i met her ” (“IPL chat society L0L”, message 124). If he would have written it with a comma between the two phrases instead of the dots, the explanation conveyed in the latter part of the message would have lacked a great part of its surprising nature; and the whole message would have lost its tension that is built by the pause. Formulated this way, it is perfectly obvious that she (whom he met) is the reason why he does not like cricket anymore.

Similarly, when The_Timepasser posted the message: “Whats that supposed to mean...Pindu? “ (“IPL chat society L0L”, message 16), he was making a pause before writing an unknown term, just as he probably would have paused while talking, to gain time to recall an unknown word correctly.

5.2.2.3 Laying Emphasis

In addition to emphasizing a part of one‟s utterance by writing it in all capitals, which may be considered rude in certain consequences; the sender can use several other devices to achieve desired emphasis. The devices include repeating characters (Crystal,

2001, 89): either letters, as in monyacar‟s message “LOL at how me being a girl is soooo important only 'cos it's sports” (“IPL chat society L0L”, message 43); or

punctuation signs, as in Svejnamin‟s message “NOTHING HAPPENS!!!!” (“What‟s the worst book“, message 16). Further, users can employ letter spacing as in harleygrant‟s message “T w i l i g h t “ („What‟s the worst book“, message 111). The users do not appear to particularly favour only one means of emphasizing and frequently combine them within a single message, as reflected in the following two examples. In thread

“What‟s the worst”, user BunnyS:) wrote:

Lord of the Flies I so wanted to like it, but...well, I could go on, but I don't

want to be horrible. Other books do a farrrr better job at dealing with the

questions it half-heartedly tries to raise. SOrry and....OSCAR AND

LUCINDA by Peter Carey! Nooooooo, it is ter.rib.le (message 172).

In this text, the author employs all-uppercase lettering to highlight the title of the book

(OSCAR AND LUCINDA), though he writes Lord of the Flies without special emphasis. Moreover, to build dramatic tension in this part, he keeps the information about the title from the reader by adding dots, suggesting a break in the utterance.

Further, he repeats characters in fatttr and nooooooo, as if crying it out in a loud voice; and at the very end, he uses a variation of space lettering, using dots to accentuate every single syllable of the word terrible.

Similarly, user rrea436 uses multiple devices for emphasis in her message:

what noone meantioned TWILIGHT?!?!?!

also that lord of the rings... i forced myself throught that one...two...THREE!

omg that's where my summer went” (“What‟s the worst book”, message 166).

The title Twilight is emphasized by all-uppercase lettering; while in the following case, the word three is capitalized to add gradation to the list (of volumes), creating the feeling of heavy and time-consuming reading (to which contributes the use of dots for

pause as well). After the first phrase of the message, the author inserts three couples of punctuation signs ?!, suggesting tone of great shock and disbelief.

5.3 Language Featuring Incorrect Grammar

The form of the message that is being conveyed is from a great part shaped by the grammar and its correctness. In the language of online discussion forums, departures from standard grammar often occur. This fact is particularly interesting for the reason that the communication via online discussion forums is asynchronous and thus, the sender had the opportunity to revise and correct their messages. It is chiefly the case of youth discussion forums; all my examples in this section come from The Student Forum and I did not encounter any in the Kindle Forum. I will concentrate on three areas: misspellings, incorrect capitalization and errors in punctuation.

5.3.1 Misspellings

Misspellings encountered in online discussion forum discourse can be divided into two major groups: unintentional and deliberate.

5.3.1.1 Unintentional Misspellings

Unintentional misspellings originate from imperfect typing skills, when the writer does not coordinate the fingers to a satisfactory degree. They usually contain a typo that the writer omitted to correct because of lack of attention to revision, as in the case of user Manesh2468‟s message “roflmao iamgine if i got that wrong” in thread

“IPL chat society L0L” (message 6), who misspelled the word imagine; or in

BunnyS:)‟s message (172) to the “What‟s the worst book” thread, where he spelled

Sorry as “SOrry”.

5.3.1.2 Deliberate Misspellings

I found examples of some of the most common deliberate misspellings

(according to the “How to Upgrade Your Webslang” tutorial, 2008) on The Student

Room and present them in the subsequent paragraph. The most popular spelling changes are the following:

Evar for ever, as in kimoni‟s comment “The best album. evar.” (“Picture

Thread”, message 43)

Teh for the, as in “it does excatly teh same thing” by Fly By (“Is there anyone

using Netscape“, message 3)4

Moar for more, as in CommunistHamster‟s message “which is still not bad... but

I want moar.” (“Would you consider”, message 25)

Several other examples of often encountered misspellings are these:

Luv for love, as in “great songs, luv them too” by KandyKendy (“What are you

listening”, message 155)

Birfday for birthday, as in “pee birfday” (meaning happy birthday) by

ThornsnRoses (“Birthdays”, message 25)

And wot or wut for what, as in miannick‟s “wot can i do?” in thread “Help”

(message 1), and in 2710‟s “Wut is the difference, graphically?” in thread

“Domain as a function” (message 1)

Further, some users deliberately misspell words only for the sake of it, waiting for acrimony from the readers (and thus are a kind of a troll, as described in the section

4 Interestingly enough, this one was originally an unintentional misspelling, but became popular especially among the teenagers and is done intentionally as well from then on („How to upgrade your webslang“, 2008)

about violating the maxims of communication). In The Student Room, such an unruly user, for instance, operates under the nickname av2606. His message “lol fam alow reeding baysickly a slow verzion of tv.. u ppl crac me up lmao” (“What‟s the worst book”, message 3), posted to a thread about reading, raised a wave of reaction in disapproval of his grammar. To be honest, I managed to decode his message only partially, the basic information being that reading is basically a slow version of TV...you people crack me up LMAO.

5.3.2 Capitalization

The capitalization errors can be divided into three groups: lowercase letters at the beginning of a sentence, a name and in the pronoun I. I present an example of each of them: In “okay? maybe u should” (The_Timepasser, “IPL chat society L0L”, message 11), the author omits twice to capitalize the beginning of the sentence. Rrea436 ignores the capitalization of a name in her message “also that lord of the rings...”

(“What‟s the worst book”, message 166). And finally, Manesh2468 twice neglects capitalization of I in “roflmao iamgine if i got that wrong, hope im right!!” (“IPL chat society L0L”, message 6)

The users of The Student Room who omit capitalization, omit it altogether and use only lowercase letters, unless they want to stress a part of their message. Thus, for these users, capitalization gains new function – a paralinguistic one - in place of the grammatical one. Notwithstanding the trend in The Student Room, users of Kindle

Forum use standard capitalization, as illustrated by a message by Jeffrey Marks: “Hi I wrote a book called Intent to Sell: Marketing the Genre Novel, and it has lots of ways to promote mystery, science fiction, romance etc.“ (“Book Promotion”, message 2).

5.3.3 Punctuation

Incorrect use of punctuation occurs under very similar consequences as capitalization and is found in contributions by the same users. For instance, the message by Manesh2468 cited above “[…] hope im right!!” lacks an apostrophe in I’m. The apostrophe frequently drops out of the contracted forms, as in The_Timepasser‟s

“Whats that supposed to mean” (“IPL chat society L0L” message 16).

6 Conclusion

The present thesis aimed at commenting on the language of online discussion forums in relation to the spoken and written norm of language. Even after examining the language in detail and returning to the definitions given by Vachek (1976), I come to the conclusion that within these criteria, the language of online discussion forums can be defined rather vaguely. It really stands somewhere in between speech and writing.

Like written language, it employs “a system of graphically manifestable language elements” (p. 414), but its preservability is disputable as messages posted to a forum can be deleted by their authors or administrators. And similarly to speech, it expresses not only “the purely communicative but also the emotional aspect of the approach of the reacting language user” (p. 414), but only if the sender of the information wants the emotional aspect to be included.

The problematic issue of the language of online discussion forums is that it is far from uniform and therefore difficult to define. Herring‟s (2004) contextual variables prove that even within the borders of online discussion boards, the character of communication varies considerably.

Notwithstanding the variability, the same maxims of communication are valid for the conversation that takes place within a discussion thread (as I have noted in the section on online discussion forums) as for that happening face-to-face, which shifts it towards the norm of spoken communication.

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Abstract

The thesis is concerned with the language of online discussion forums as a form of computer-mediated communication. It is based on an approach that compares the features of the language of computer-mediated communication with written and spoken norm of language, stating the Internet-based computer-mediated communication on the borderline of these two.

I further concentrated the thesis on the media of online discussion forums and their structure. Moreover, I applied Grice‟s and Goffman‟s maxims for communication on Internet-based communication to show that they are valid for computer-mediated communication as well as for face-to-face conversation.

In the latter part of the thesis, I introduced concrete examples of messages from online discussion forums, containing various specific features. I was most interested in the emergence of newly formed acronyms and initialisms and their purpose. Further, I shifted the attention to paralinguistic features employed in Internet-based computer- mediated communication, particularly the use of emoticons and means of expressing emphasis. Lastly, I concentrated on departures from standard grammar.

Resumé

Tato práce se zaobírá jazykem online diskusních fór jako jednou z forem počítačově zprostředkované komunikace. Je založena na definování pojmu počítačově zprostředkovaná komunikace pomocí jeho porovnávání s psanou a mluvenou jazykovou normou. Tímto způsobem v práci ukazuji, že počítačově zprostředkovaná komunikace se z lingvistického hlediska nachází na pomezí mluveného a psaného projevu.

Práce dále zkoumá online diskusní fóra jako prostředek pro komunikaci z hlediska struktury. Následně aplikuji Griceovy a Goffmanovy zásady komunikace na jevy vyskytující se na diskusních fórech, čímž prokazuji jejich platnost i ve virtuálním rozhovoru.

V druhé části práce se soustředím na konkrétní příklady zpráv z diskusních fór, které obsahují některé prvky, specifické pro tento druh komunikace. Především se zaměřuji na vznik nových akronymů a iniciálových zkratek; dále potom na paralingvistické prvky (emotikony jako způsob, jak dodat textu emocionální náboj; a grafické ztvárnění důrazu) a jejich zakomponování do online komunikace. Nakonec se zaměřuji na odchylky od standardní gramatiky v online komunikaci.