Creation of Internet Relay Chat Nicknames and Their Usage in English Chatroom Discourse

In a chat discourse it is not always clear who is chatting with whom; automatic discourse analysis is especially problematic. It is important to identify the users' nicknames in the written discourse to find out the receivers of the chat messages. But the linguistic possibilities in nickname creation, and also of using them in the discourse, are various. To study how nicknames are created and used in the Internet Relay Chat (IRC), logs of 13 channels consisting of 8937 public chat messages and 7936 unique nicknames were analyzed in detail. The paper shows, among other things, the basic structure of IRC nicknames, of which parts-of-speech group nicknames are compounded, and which parts-of-speech of a nickname are omitted within the chat discourse. This knowledge leads to a better prediction as to whether there is a link between a current logged-in user and the examined word in discourse, which can be a shortened or creatively changed form of a nickname

Internet linguistics: a conversational analysis of online synchronous chat and face-to-face conversations of EFL undergraduate students in Jordan

This study aimed to shed light on Online Synchronous chat (OSC) on Facebook chatroom compared with Face-To-Face (FTF) conversations. The corpus was cumulated from the interaction of four groups consisted of (68) third-year English language and literature major students at Ajloun University College (AUC). The participants were selected purposively and distributed randomly into two OSCGs and two FTF groups. The interactions for FTF groups were video-recorded and the transcriptions were embedded line by line in each conversation. While the interaction on the two Facebook chatrooms were downloaded through a Facebook option called "download your information". Two instruments were used: a Speech Act Rubric Scale based on Grice's maxims, linguistics performance rubric checklist, and an open-end question had been just presented to the chatters. This study investigated whether interlocutors apply the four Gricean CPs and three linguistic aspects over seventeen turn-taking and repair acts. Thus, the comparison was a try to investigate the social and linguistic performance of OSC interlocutors. Results revealed the importance to improve chatrooms features regarding to speech acts theory and Grice's maxim. The analysis concluded that interaction on OSC still needs more investigation. More precisely, Facebook chatrooms neglects to some extent the two theories.Este estudio tuvo como objetivo arrojar luz sobre el Chatear Sincrónico en Línea (CSL) en el chat de Facebook en comparación con las conversaciones cara a cara (CAC). El corpus se recopiló a partir de la interacción de cuatro grupos, de 68 estudiantes de tercer curso del Grado de Lengua y Literatura inglesa en el Colegio Universitario de Ajloun (CUA). Los participantes fueron seleccionados deliberadamente y distribuidos aleatoriamente en dos grupos de chat sincrónico en línea y dos grupos cara a cara. Las interacciones de los grupos CAC se grabaron un video y sus transcripciones se incrustaron línea por línea en cada conversación. Mientras que la interacción en los dos chats de Facebook se descargó a través de una opción de Facebook llamada "descargar su información". Se utilizaron dos instrumentos: una lista de verificación de la rúbrica del acto de habla basada en las máximas de Grice, la lista de verificación de la rúbrica del rendimiento lingüístico y una pregunta abierta presentada a los interlocutores. Este estudio investigó si los interlocutores aplican los cuatro principios cooperativos de Grice y tres aspectos lingüísticos en diecisiete actos de reparación y toma de turnos. Por lo tanto, la comparación fue un intento de investigar el desempeño social y lingüístico de los interlocutores de CSL. Los resultados revelaron la importancia de mejorar las características de los chats según a la teoría de los actos de habla y la máxima de Grice. El análisis concluyó que la interacción en CSL aún necesita más investigación. Más precisamente, los chats de Facebook descuidan en cierta medida las dos teorías.Programa de Doctorado en Humanidades por la Universidad Carlos III de MadridPresidente: María Paloma Díaz Pérez.- Secretario: Linda Johanna Castañeda Quintero.- Vocal: Fernando Trujillo Sáe

Strategies and Behaviors of Cyber Deviance and Internet Trolling

As society shifts towards making social media a center focus of contemporary life, trolls, are continually developing distractive dialogue. Although trolls may not be deviant in the sense of harsh online crimes, trolls do cause problems within online communities. Jonathan Bishop (2014) and Whitney Phillips (2015) have developed a foundation of internet troll research. Bishop (2014) studied the behaviors of trolls, while Philips (2015) investigated their techniques. However, neither researcher sampled from an online massive multiplayer Online game. Using one of the largest online gaming communities, World of Warcraft, this research examines the techniques and behaviors of trolling. Trolling was found to mainly be a response mechanism that consisted of heavy mockery and improvisation. This study indicates that trolls successfully disrupt and reroute conversations using a variety of mechanisms and techniques. General findings indicate that, while trolls may distract and derail public conversations, a clear majority of the activity reflected more juvenile and irritating behavior rather than significant threats to society. The research of strategies and behaviors of cyber deviance examined in this work creates a foundation for future examinations of trolling behavior. While this study inspects the strategies, future studies look to reveal the goals of trolls. Although trolling may be considered deviant, it has become an important aspect of the online culture that needs to be investigated

Turning Unstructured and Incoherent Group Discussion into DATree: A TBL Coherence Analysis Approach

Despite the rapid growth of user-generated unstructured text from online group discussions, business decision-makers are facing the challenge of understanding its highly incoherent content. Coherence analysis attempts to reconstruct the order of discussion messages. However, existing methods only focus on system and cohesion features. While they work with asynchronous discussions, they fail with synchronous discussions because these features rarely appear. We believe that discussion logic features play an important role in coherence analysis. Therefore, we propose a TCA method for coherence analysis, which is composed of a novel message similarity measure algorithm, a subtopic segmentation algorithm and a TBL-based classification algorithm. System, cohesion and discussion logic features are all incorporated into our TCA method. Results from experiments showed that the TCA method achieved significantly better performance than existing methods. Furthermore, we illustrate that the DATree generated by the TCA method can enhance decision-makers’ content analysis capability

Community and Social Interaction in Digital Religious Discourse in Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon

Since the advent of the Internet, religion has maintained a very strong online presence. This study examines how African Christianity is negotiated and practised on the Internet. The main objectives are to investigate to what extent online worshippers in Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon constitute (online) communities and how interactive the social networks of the churches are. This study shows that some important criteria for community are met by African digital worshippers. However, interaction flow is more of one to many, thus members do not regularly interact with one another as they would in offline worship. Worshippers view the forums as a sacred space solely for spiritual matters and not for sharing social or individual feelings and problems. However, the introduction of social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and interactive forums is an interesting and promising new development in religious worship in Africa

Livestreaming Vico: Imagination and the Ecology of Literacy in Online Gaming

The following research thesis seeks to understand the connection between Giambattista Vico’s conception of imagination and literacy in online spaces. This research delves into how users of the video game based live streaming platform Twitch.tv utilize imagination in written communication primarily through pictographs commonly referred to as emotes, and how broadcasters and moderators on the platform act as literacy sponsors for these unique language practices on the platform

Ellipsis as a Means of Cohesion

Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistikyDokončená práce s úspěšnou obhajobo

Emojis and the Neoliberal Coding of Diversity

This article focuses on the representation of ethnic diversity in multicultural emojis. Multicultural emojis are interpreted in this study as a neoliberal representation of diversity that has reincorporated white supremacist ideology traits, namely color classification, and the Vitruvian Man body design. Thus, I argue that multicultural emojis primarily reflect a typical Western worldview which supports a Eurocentric monoculturalism. Multicultural emojis can, therefore, be interpreted as serving as a set of body depictions whose façade shows diversity while keeping the privilege of the Caucasian body at its core. In the context of this article, code refers to both formulation in the form of symbols and signs, and the signs and signals of communication. The neoliberal coding of the human body, then, highlights how the human body is translated into neoliberal signals or symbols. Neoliberalism values a global market and embraces diversity within this rationale. I argue that instead of trying to eliminate racism by valuing diverse identities equally, neoliberalism lays the ground for the assimilation of diversity into the Western model of subjectivity, which, at its best, offers partial and biased perspectives. To discuss my point, I investigate two visual codes of multicultural emojis: color categorization and the Vitruvian Man body template. I propose that different ethnicities are displayed in emojis through a Jim Crow-type segregative mindset, which defines identity as ‘color.’ At the heart of this thinking, one can find the association of ‘whiteness’ with pureness, and ‘blackness’ with evilness. Second, the body template in multicultural emojis is limited to a Western body-drawing tradition rooted in the sketches of the Vitruvian Man; an illustration that has traditionally represented the Caucasian body model against whose proportions the body of others should be measured and considered normal/abnormal