Graded Assignment 2 : Analysis on Idiolect of Chatroom Conversationalist

ENGL 4740 Computer assisted language studies : WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT

ANALYSIS ON IDIOLECT

BASED ON REAL TIME CHATROOM CONVERSATIONS

Prepared by:

Asma’ binti Ab.Razak 0921578

Aimi Farhein bt Ramli 0921742

Julaiha Shazmira bt Malizan 0923078

Section 2  

Dr. Rozina bt Abdul Ghani

INTRODUCTION

Computer-mediated communication, or best known as CMC is a communication that happen through the usage of two or more computers, or devices that are connected to the Internet or network, such as instant messaging, electronic mail (email), chat rooms and text messaging. As the technologies are getting more and more advanced and sophisticated, the communication varies thus encouraged the software engineers to create and invent software that can support the needs of the communication.

There are two types of CMC, synchronous and asynchronous modes. In synchronous communications all participants are online at the same time (e.g. chat room), while asynchronous communications occurs with time constraints (e.g. email). People choose synchronous communication for a fast responses and short messages while asynchronous communication like email for delayed, controlled and longer messages.

Chat room, being the synchronous communication, is chosen by many people as it provided fast responses and people from all over the world can easily access and be connected to other people without having to disclose much information about them. However, based on the language used, the place of origin of someone can be easily guessed. It is better known as the idiolect. A person has a different idiolect than the others. Idiolect acted like a language print where a person has a certain pattern in their speech and writing, thus indirectly provided information of their background.

This paper aimed to analyze the idiolect of the chatters in chat room and their language usage in terms of vocabulary and grammar structures.

OBJECTIVES

1.      To analyze particular idiolect belongs to particular language users

2.      To realize the diverse use of language in different countries

3.      To identify the choice of words and grammar structure in the conversations recorded

LITERATURE REVIEW

         Human and language are interrelated, very close to each other. People use language as to communicate within one place to another, one setting to another and one person to another. Different people possess different idiolect. The idiolectis based on their own preferences shaped by their speaking environment.

In the case of idiolect, people usually are either happy with their idiolect or they can be ashamed of it. According to Ridhwan (2011) as he quoted The Daily Mail, he said that children will try to adapt linguistically when in different environments. He also describe that the upper class’ dialect to have a more ‘grizzly’ base – lower frequency. This may be seen as a lack of confidence in the idiolect and accent. He noted that one does not speak very comfortably with people of higher intelligence or authority as he or she is always conscious of his or her idiolect and sociolect. Hence, one usually aware of the way he performs his idiolect.

The other matter in Ridhwan (2011) research stated that some people were encouraged to use of their body language, face gestures or paralinguistic language as they believed that it shows interest or they are interested whereas the use of phatic language did not leave one to an open conversation. This situation gives the idea that gestures play important role in language and communication. However, gestures cannot be identified in chatroom conversations. Thus emoticons play an important role in portraying the electronic gestures for the participants of the chat rooms.     

Panicheva (2009) made questionnaire and distributed them among several people that she regularly talk with. After those several people completed the questionnaire bases on her idiolect, she found that people can interpret her speech differently to how she thinks it sounds. This shows how idiolect gives different output to different person, particularly different to the speakers and specifically different to the listeners.

The use of idiolect can illustrate one’s place of origin, influences, and sometimes interest. However the conclusion made is under a very small sampling used in completing this research paper.

METHODOLOGY

The excerpt that we analyzed was taken from wireclub.com where the chatters usually discuss about music and fashion. They exchanged information about their favorite singers and their favorite songs. There are 22 participants in total with 15 male participants, four female participants, and 3 other participants with unknown gender. The dominant origin of the chatters is United States. There are some participants that chat from Canada, India, Ireland, Australia, Afghanistan and United Kingdom.

The excerpt taken was analyzed in terms of the vocabularies, specifically the choice of words chosen by the participants and any abbreviation that occurs in the conversations. The other component analyzed is the sentence structures in the conversations, or the grammar, which includes omission of the verb, addition of particle and fragments or incomplete sentence.

Below is the table showing the details of the participants in the chat room and their place of origin;

Origin	ID	Total Number
Canada	Spitfireace ItchyMacDoogle VerbingTheNoun	3
United States	Brandonicusasaurus still-frame DEEP dysporia yeaginator Abigailvongoat	5
Ireland	Dodgeviper2010 GaZzZz27	2
India	Yeti finder arun-1234 Lovekush 1989	3
Afghanistan	Mobareez	1
Australia	michaelemphaty Don_Quixote-1	2
United Kingdom	kingseamonkey	1
South Africa	Princess storm	1
Netherlands	Just_pinkfloyd	1
No Data	Greeneyedblond20003 baby-fetishm beatlesarecool2010	3

TABLE 1

ID and Origin	Vocabulary		Grammar
	Choice of words	Abbreviation	Omission of verb	Adding of particle	Fragment (incomplete sentence)
Princess Storm (SA)	Simple	/	-	-	/
Spitfireace (Canada)	Simple	/	-	/	-
Greeneyedblond20003	Simple	/	/	-	-
Babyfetishm	Simple	/	-	-	-
Mobareez (Afghanistan)	Simple	/	-	-	-
Arun_1234 (india)	Simple	-	-	-	-
Beatlesarecool2010	Simple	-	-	-	-
Brandonicusasaurus (US)	Simple	/	-	-	-
Lovekush1989 (india)	Simple	/	/	/	-
Still-frame (US)	Simple	-	-	-	-
itchyMacDoogle (Canada)	Simple	-	-	-	-
DodgeViper2010 (Ireland)	Simple	/	-	-	-
VerbingTheNoun (Canada)	Simple	-	-	-	-
GaZzZz27 (Ireland)	Simple	-	-	-	-
Just_pinkfloyd	Simple	-	-	-	-

TABLE 2

FINDINGS

Table 2 Analysis

Looking from the table 1, most of the chatters use abbreviation.  The reason being is firstly for chatting purpose, they prefer shorter words that can be speedily typed. There is specific choice of words used by certain people from certain countries.

DodgeViper2010: At the moment I'm listening to a candian artist called Grimes ItchyMacDoogle: frank?

In this example, the chatter namely ItchyMacDoogle is from Canada. He used the word ‘frank’ to ask for clarification from one of the chatters. Instead of using ‘seriously’, or ‘are you serious’ which are commonly used, he prefer the work ‘frank’ which can be widely use in Canada. There is another example showing the use of words and abbreviation by the chatters in the chat room.

spitfireace : ya'll survivalists? greeneyedblond20003 : u talkin bout that looney tune in NK

           

The chatters in the example above use abbreviation for the word ‘you all’ which turns out to be ‘ya’ll’ and the word ‘talking’ was shortened into ‘talkin’. The choice of using ‘talkin’ instead of ‘talking’ might somehow show the origin of greeneyedblond20003 or his way of talking. Not to fall into generalization, but this chatter can be an African American or people from North America from the way he was chatting.

            The choice of words by the Greeneyedblond20003, ‘looney tune’ can be referred to someone who is not right in mind, but he chose a more polite word rather than directly using the word crazy. This situation shows how he is concern with the situation that he will be facing by directly pointing the word crazy to some people that he did not even know.

princess storm: so maybe I should change my profile pic lovekush1989: u from south Africa

           

In this example, lovekush1989 is from India. He is omitting the verb ‘are’ when he is making clarification whether Princess Storm comes from South Africa or not. English is India’s official language, but lovekush1989 does not use correct grammatical structure. This shows lovekush1989’s use of English language might be short compare to his usage of Hindustan in his daily conversation.

ID and Origin	VOCABULARY		GRAMMAR
	Choice of word	abbreviation	Omission of the verb	Addition of particle	Fragments (incomplete sentences)
DEEP dysporia United States	Simple	-	-	/	-
michaelempathy Australia	Simple	/	-	-	-
abigailvongoat United States	Simple	-	-	-	-
Yeti Finder India	Simple	/	-	-	-
CopyyyCattt No data	Simple	-	-	-	-
yeaginator United States	Simple	-	-	-	-
kingseamonkey United Kingdom	Simple	-	-	-	-

TABLE 3

Table 3 Analysis

Even though most of the chatters learned English as their mother tongue, they are still cannot prevent themselves from making mistakes. For example,

michaelempathy: theres going to be a world wide shortage of chocolate in the next 2 years Yeti Finder: gm deep how are u good to see u”

The word “theres” in the phrase should be written as “there’s”. However, the chatter omitted the (‘) mark, which means that he is not abided to the punctuation mark. Also, the “world wide” should be “worldwide”. But the sentence produced is a complete sentence. So does the chatter called “yeti finder”. He used an abbreviation for good morning (gm). And the sentence does not have the correct punctuation mark. The sentence is supposed to be,

Good morning Deep. How are you? Good to see you.

In addition, the chatters seemed to make up their own rule, where they used extra alphabet to highlight their message. Consider the following sentence, the chatter added suffix ‘-es” to the word “no”, to highlight that she did not want the chocolate to be out of the stock in the next two years.

DEEP dysporia: ooh, noes

            There is a chatter called “abigailvongoat” who constantly produced complete sentences instead of just fragments.

abigailvongoat: I will perish abigailvongoat: I'll just binge on my stocks... abigailvongoat: well at least you have something to look forward to! abigailvongoat: hmm why isn't this chat room discussing Plato's Republic or something? abigailvongoat: heh, it's been a long while for me

The sentences produced are complete sentences. Most of the times she even used the correct punctuation marks, thus the process of delivering the meaning to the other chatters happened faster than the others who do not use the correct punctuation marks.

Generally, the word choices of the chatters are simple and easily understood by the others. Considering that they are discussing about music, the sentences are short and complete, and depicted the colloquial style of English is being used. What is being written on the chat room page resembles the style of verbal communication by the people.

ID & origin		VOCABULARY			GRAMMAR
		Choice of word	Abbreviation		Omission of the verb	Addition of particle	Fragments (incomplete sentences)
VerbingTheNoun. Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Female		/	-		-	-	-
DodgeViper2010,Cork, Cork, Ireland. Male	/			-	-	/ -ish	/
still-frame. Tucson, Arizona, United States. Male	/			-	-	-	-
Spitfireace Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Male	/			-	/	-	-
just_pinkfloyd Schiedam, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands. Female	/			-	/ Whodere? Still there?	-	/
ItchyMacDoogle Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Female	/			-	-	-	/
Pineapple Lumps Unknown details	/			-	-	-	/

TABLE 4

Table 4 shows another set of analysis involving a few new chatters who joined the chat room later. The conversation revolves around their preferences in music and they  noticed that among the users of the chat room, some have the same music flavour and so they decided to be friends rather than just one-time chat buddy.

User still-frame, from Arizona, United States shows a tendency to use ‘–ah’ as a filler in the conversation.  Aside from using filler, this particular user also uses complete albeit informal sentences and he uses the correct punctuation mark when typing.

still-frame.: Ah, excellent. still-frame.: night itchy! still-frame.: itchy, verb, is it cool if I add you guys?

Another user, just_pinkfloyd, from Holland, Netherlands shows very little of her idiolect inclination as she only participate once in the conversation in page 5 and 5 of the data. In it, she does not use a sentence but stated only her facts. Her point is set across in correct punctuation. This can be seen in the table below.

just_pinkfloyd: Marillion - Script For A Jester's Tear

From the example, it is evident that she applies the right punctuation marks in delivering her message. She capitalizes each and every letters in her sentence indicating that it is a title of a song. It cannot be generalized that people from Holland most likely use perfect grammar, but it this case, just_pinkfloyd is very comfortable using correct grammar showing that she must somehow frequently speaks with grammatically correct sentences with the people around her to be able to be comfortable with it.

CONCLUSION

The analysis of the users of Wireclub chat room shows a variety of styles in communicating. Despite using English as a medium of communication, different users employ different ways to deliver their message. These influences can be considered as a part of idiolectal grammar. As the conversation happened in a non-formal manner, most users are more inclined to use colloquial English in their conversation. For example, the use of ‘hey’ as a greeting instead of ‘hi’.  Also, instead of typing in full sentence, users either use abbreviation of write only the fact without further elaboration as portrayed by the user from The Netherlands. Since this study is done using a sampling method with very minute data, the results cannot be overgeneralized to representing the whole community of their origin but it is safe to conclude that through their preferred choice of words, their grammatical structures and vocabulary aspects distinguishes their idiolects from one to another. CMC makes it possible for linguists to conduct studies on this matter by way of making data collection and analysis easier and systematic.

Graded Assignment 2 : Article Summary on CMC

Journal Summary on Computer Mediated Communication (CMC)

This summary is based on an article entitled ‘Individual Usage: a corpus-based study of idiolects’ by Michael Barlow from University of Auckland, New Zealand. Idiolect is a popular idea among linguists distinguishing alarge gap between the familiarity of the concept and lack of empiricaldata on the phenomenon. Insufficient data to properly consider the issue of regularity and stability of individual grammars, although there are signs of a surprising consistency over a period of a year or so is a problem to this study and many other studies pertaining to this issue. As such, studies done can only be regarded as a representation of a very minute example of the real-time situation. Hence, results of this study cannot be made as suggestion as to whether the idiolects or sociolects are the primary unit of language. Undoubtedly, the variation of individual grammars are quite extensive and it seems unlikely that the view of an idiolect as an individual's share of the sociolect can be upheld, taking into account the lexical and syntactic usagefound in the analysis presented.

This study examines the speech of five White House Press Secretaries and show that individual differences involve a wide range of core grammatical constructions instead of just the use of a few idiosyncratic phrases. Results obtained suggest that idiolectal patterns are consistent and valid for a certain period of time.

The working hypothesis for this investigation is that the variation that distinguishes individual speakerslies in the profile of the central components of lexico-grammar, and not only in some idiosyncratic peripheral phraseology. Taking a cognitive sociolinguistic position and exploring the issue of variation in idiolectsempirically from the standpoint of usage-base account of language. Frequencies of use of lexical and syntactic patterns show that individual patterns appear to be stable over a period of at least a year or two, individual patterns of variation are maintained despite differences from general usage within thecommunity, inter-speaker variation is typically greater than intra-speaker variation based on samples taken over different time periods or idiolectal variation is based on core aspects of language and not on peripheral idiosyncrasies.In order to reduce the likelihood of priming from one day to the next, transcripts from consecutive dayswere not chosen, giving a time interval of two or three days between speeches. The five press secretaries chosen for the study are: Mike McCurry (1994-98), Ari Fleischer (2001-03),Scott McClellan (2003-06), Tony Snow (2006-07), and Dana Perino (2007-08). The choice was madeon the basis of the length of their tenure since one goal of this study is to work with reasonably largesamples of idiolects taken over the course of several months at a minimum. The sampled data coversaround a year or more of speech output for each speaker.

Data were analysed by collecting bigrams, which are used as indicators of grammatical patterns and distinguishes one speaker from another.The outline of the structure of the discourse is retained only with respect to turn taking. The actualcontent of the speech of the reporters or other administration officials has been removed. Thus the datahas only one use: the analysis of the utterances of each press secretary. All interactions not involvingthe press secretary are indicated by <Q>, even in those cases where the contribution is a statement by aWhite House Official and not a question. Eliminating the contributions of the interlocutors makes thengram and concordance analysis quite simple and robust.The speech samples were split into text files containing 200,000 words each. For two speakers there is just a single 200,000 word file, but for the other speakers there are three, four and six such files,enabling comparisons between the speech of one individual at different times and the speech of different individuals.The files were tagged for POS using the CLAWS7 tagset and for semantic tags using the USAS tagset.The tagging was performed using the tools at the Wmatrixsite,http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/wmatrix/,(Rayson 2008). The files were analysed using the concordance program MonoConc Pro and thecollocationor n gram analyser Collocate.

Through the study, we can say that speech pattern is recognisable and differences in idiolects are not due to a few idiosyncratic phrases, but are due to differences inthe preferences in the use of grammatical constructions in addition to differences in the use of common phrase. The use of CMC in data collection and analysis help linguists and researchers to support the view that frequency of use of constructions is an integral part of idiolectal grammars.

Source : http://www.academia.edu/213885/Individual_usage_A_corpus-based_study_of_idiolects

Task 2 : Questions on CMC

Assalamualaikum w.b.t

How has CMC transform the dynamics of interaction?

How has this transformation shape society?

Is this mode of communication in sync with Islam?

(We will now compile the answers for all three questions in one essay.)

            

With the existence of CMC, communication is no longer a minus point to an introvert. It is a lot easier to communicate, even when you have no confidence at all! CMC replaces face to face interaction, the thing that even an extrovert has problems with, sometimes. CMC requires shorter time as thousands of people can notify their opinions in just a second, without the need to wait for another second. With CMC, information transfer rate increases and became a lot more efficient. Within few minutes, people can exchange information worth years of studies. Moreover, we would say that the information is “honest”. By “honest” we mean that people would consider many things before spilling their opinion, and might not be sincere with what they were saying as they might hurt others’ feeling with their frank opinion. As cliché and as literal as it may sound, information is indeed at the tip of your finger with CMC, but some limitation exists in within.

The society has turned to be so much technology savvy as much as people in Facebook nowadays. This communication transformation shapes the society into a so-called cyber generation. The people in the community have also become a lot more expressive in their words, of course with the help of acronyms of written expressions and emoticons. To quote Dr. Rozina, the one that she likes the most is “ROTFL” which stands for “Rolling On The Floor Laughing”, indicates great amusement at something, usually in a discussion group. As people are now so carefree to give opinions on everything, the society has become so much opinion-oriented behind the screen. It is a good thing to offer our insights on something that might bring better outcome to some people, but to quote Dr. Mahmudul Hasan in his research paper as he quoted Salmawy,

“Every man has the right to stretch his arms,

but not to the extent that he hits the face of the person next to him.”

With this, it means that in Islam, our freedom of expressions shall not invade the space of others, or hurt them in any ways possible. Thus, keep our opinion sheer clear, but in the most polite way, as Rasulullah has taught us.

Islam is an ethical religion. Islam promotes communication under the name of spreading da’wah and welfare, as well as to end conflicts in people. CMC in a way is responsible for the information given to people, whether it adhere the Islamic principle and preach the true message of Islam or not. As mentioned above in a quote from Dr. Mahmudul Hasan, Islam gives complete freedom of expression to everybody, but on the provision of spreading da’wah, peace, and welfare instead of vulgarity and unfaithfulness. Islamic concept of the frredom of expression is totally different from Western concept of freedom of expressions. Denying the rights of people in against the laws of Allah, and preventing people from wrongdoings and vulgarity is indeed the best thing to do for the ummah.

Sahih International

O you who have believed, if there comes to you a disobedient one with information, investigate, lest you harm a people out of ignorance and become, over what you have done, regretful.

        

Sahih International

And do not argue with the People of the Scripture except in a way that is best, except for those who commit injustice among them, and say, "We believe in that which has been revealed to us and revealed to you. And our God and your God is one; and we are Muslims [in submission] to Him."