Transcript
Page 1: Digital Literacy and Language

Is Instant Messaging a type of spoken interaction?

Introduction

This project examines how we communicate across Instant Messaging and whether

these conversations class as a form of spoken interaction, by studying data collected

by interactions conducted across Facebook Chat and, to a lesser extent, Skype. This

project's answer to the topic question are relevant to the broader study of digital

literacy because it will contribute to the argument over 'technological determinism'.

This term is used to argue that technological change is the cause of social change, but

this is much debated as one of its assumptions is that online interactions are of less

quality than face-to-face interactions (Page et.al 2014).

In light of my data, collected by interviewing four people, three girls and a boy all of

my age, this project will answer the question by studying unique factors associated

with IM. Firstly, the amount of overlapping will be analysed and compared to an

authentic spoken interaction, but also how it still allows considerable time for a

person to respond in a way that suits them, leading to an IM conversation taking a lot

more time than a face-to-face interaction. Secondly, emoticons and acronyms will be

studied and how we may use these in IM, with age playing a big part in how often we

use them and that this usage has not transferred itself into spoken interactions, leading

the project to answer that Instant Messaging is not a form of spoken interaction.

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Literature Review

Research into face-to-face interactions over the last forty years have seen, as Graddol,

Cheshire & Swann (1994) observe, that there are certain mechanisms that are needed

in order to achieve smooth turn-taking. Sacks et al. (1974) used the phrase

‘projectability’ to describe how listeners can identify the type of turn being taken,

enabling them to estimate when the turn will end and promptly start talking. What

Sacks et.al (1974) lack however is describing how this projection is achieved, and

whilst they go on to say that the very existence of interruptions and overlaps show

that this ‘projectability’ is being used, other research has ‘identified interruptions as a

category of overlapping speech that indicates conversational dominance’ (Graddol

et.al 1994. p. 169). Zimmerman and West (1975) categorise interruptions as places

where we have simultaneous speech. Graddol et al. (1994) counteract this by

motioning that certain simultaneous talk is systematically understood by the speakers,

some is not. Whilst these theories have great relevance in asking if Instant Messaging

is a form of spoken interaction, this research does not specifically study online

language and its factors. Other research on face-to-face interaction, such as Duncan

(1972) has identified other signals between speakers such as gaze, intonation and

loudness, and information about these factors is not relevant, however we can take

into account that these factors cannot be achieved through Instant Messaging so this

does hinder its case for being a form of spoken interaction.

Overlapping in Instant Messaging research has found a broad range of research

including Crystal (2001), who says turn-taking is asymmetrical and unpredictable

which leads to many overlaps, typical of synchronous communication. Crystal goes

on to say (2001) that it’s inconceivable that both people can maintain a complete

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mutual understanding that they would be able to in face-to-face interaction. Garcia &

Jacobs (1999) identified that a key difference in IM is that a message can only be seen

after it’s been composed rather than during, so ‘overlaps in production are effectively

hidden from view since turns are always organised sequentially’ (Gillen 2014, p.99).

Herring (2010) adds to this by saying that while overlaps in production may be

hidden, there is no moment-by-moment feedback so turn-taking is comparatively

disrupted and overlaps increase. In IM, it can feel like a race for whoever can finish

their message first.

Research on emoticons has found that, as Crystal says (2001), that whilst emoticons

can be helpful in replicating facial expressions, their semantic role is very limited.

They can be risky as the addressee may misinterpret what is meant by the emoticon,

and regular users of the emoticon can find unmarked speech misunderstood because

they haven’t used any smileys to accompany what they’ve said. Crystal also says

(2001) that written language has always been ambiguous, and in contrast to traditional

writing where phrases can make attitudes clear, emoticons can make attitudes clear in

more informal writing such as IM. In Baron’s study (2008), she found, from original

data, that the amount of different emoticons used were very small. Only 3 people

accounted for 33 of the emoticons, meaning we can say that the use of emoticons and

their significance in IM can easily be overstated. Baron’s study (2008) showed that 31

out of 49 people’s favourite emoticon to use was the smiley, while Barton & Lee

(2013) note that emoticons mark the writer’s tone and intention, and because of

semiotic modes that are perceived, they can convey many different meanings to

different addressees. One of the faults in this research is that this study is based

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largely on Flickr, a photo-sharing website whereas my study looks at Facebook Chat,

a website where a lot more talk is created between people.

Barton & Lee (2013) state that abbreviations are gradually being accepted as normal

in society and not just confined to online contexts. One of the reasons for this is

because the online language has been given marketable and economic value, with

some words such as LOL being given entry into the Oxford English Dictionary.

Barton & Lee (2013) also briefly refer to the fact that abbreviations had to be used

because of technological constraints on a mobile phone. While these restraints do not

exist anymore, we can relate this in the modern day to only having 140 characters on

Twitter, so the theory of restraints in technology enhancing the use of abbreviations

should not be discounted. Boyd (2006) suggests that a person can be considered

modern and up to date with cultural trends when using abbreviations which suggests

that abbreviations would most likely be used in the younger demographic of society

and this is backed up in the data. Research has also discovered that internet-based

abbreviations have further social meanings in foreign countries who see these English

expressions, showing that vernacular linguistics are valued in media settings and

backgrounds (Barton & Lee 2013).

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Data Analysis

‘Brief overlaps between speakers occur quite commonly in conversation’ (Graddol

et.al 1994, p.169), however, the data does not show evidence of any overlaps with the

interviewees. The dialogue is ordered in a well-structured way with no clear

interruptions across the IM platform, however, there are times during responses where

the interviewer responds to one small part of a large response by the interviewee, for

example, “nor do I! haha!” If in face-to-face interaction, this could have been said in

response to the prompting remark which would form an interruption, whereas in IM it

cannot if the prompting remark forms part of a larger piece of dialogue. If this

interruption had taken place in face-to-face interaction, the course of the dialogue may

have taken a different path. This backs up previous theories that overlaps are hidden

due to sequential turns (Garcia & Jacobs 1999; Gillen 2014). In the second interview,

there are some examples of utterance breaks where the answer is broken down into

two or three chunks. The majority were utterance pairs although there are two

examples of a set of three utterances in a row. These chunks could indicate a pause if

we were to compare it to face-to-face interaction, but analysis shows that the most

frequent grammatical type used to begin the second utterance in an utterance pair was

independent clauses (for example, “it’s usually one per message”). Of the ten

utterances that form an utterance pair or a set of three utterances, 80% of them were

independent, while the other 20% started the utterance with the coordinating

conjunction ‘but’. ‘The independent clause pattern is more commonly found in

writing’ (Baron p.68, 2008), and a reason why the interviewee felt the need for

utterance breaks could be because he felt the need to be clear and concise in what he

was saying. Baron (2008) also states that males were more likely to use utterance

breaks than women, and this is reflected in my data also.

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Time lag does not make IM a form of spoken interaction, as like Crystal says (2001),

a whole of a message has to be typed and sent before it can be read, and typing is

slower than talking to somebody. In my interviews, there is at least one minute

between having seen the message and being able to see the response, and at most

there is a break of seven minutes between correspondences. Naturally in spoken

interaction, we would not see this happen as we ‘anticipate precisely the point at

which the turn will finish’ (Graddol et.al 1994, p.163), and because we have heard the

content while it’s being spoken, we have had time to formulate what we are going to

say back. Some other reasons behind why IM takes longer is to do with multitasking

where my interviewees could be spreading their attention to other Facebook Chats or

different forms of communication (Jones & Hafner 2012), or they could have been

doing other things around the house. This indicates that the informality of IM means

that people perceive IM as not requiring their full attention, so a considerable time

delay emerges. In contrast, spoken interaction does require the full attention of the

speakers, and the speed of speech combined with our perception of politeness

meaning we answer back straight away shows spoken interaction to be a much more

authentic and quicker way of communicating. This is backed up by the fact that the

interviews conducted over Skype took 8 and 10 minutes, whereas interviews on

Facebook Chat took 21 and 28 minutes, more than double the time. ‘Delays in a

conversation between two people are annoying and ambiguous’ (Crystal 2001, p.32),

but in IM we accept this a lot more, showing IM is not considered formal enough to

be a form of spoken interaction.

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According to Jones & Hafner (2012), emoticons are unique features used simply as

substitutes for cues found in face-to-face interactions. Whilst they are able to convey

certain readings, such as happiness, sadness or anger, emoticons ‘can forestall a gross

misperception of a speaker’s intent’ (Crystal 2001, p.36), hence the addressee

misinterprets what is being said to them, which could lead to potential damage in

relations further down the conversation. In my data, there are no emoticons used at all

and there is no evidence of misunderstanding the mood or concept of what has been

said. In contrast, facial expressions could be seen at all times during the Skype

interviews, giving a much clearer and genuine message regarding the mood and tone

of what the addressee was really feeling. The reason behind the lack of emoticons in

the IM data is because of the formal setting of a question followed by an answer,

instead of the ‘informality and playfulness’ (Jones & Hafner 2012, p.71) that can be

associated with IM. Gee (2008) uses the phrase ‘social languages’ (Jones & Hafner

2012, p.71) to describe different writing styles that are associated with different

people, and with the data discovered from talking to friends of my age, emoticons are

not part of our social language as we are of a more mature age. Another point to note

in emoticons is that, whilst they have been around for a long time, they have not

appeared in ‘other contexts, such as print media, formal education’ (Page et.al 2014,

p.37). This suggests that they are considered by society as far too informal and should

be restricted to social media platforms, and despite their enhanced use on these

platforms, not every person uses them so this indicates that emoticons are not a form

of spoken interaction.

When acronyms first appeared, it was considered a ‘new linguistic code’ that only the

young seemed to know’ (Baron 2008, p.46). It is used partly because of technological

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constraints, firstly on mobile phones but more recently on Twitter with its 140

characters. Once again, there is no evidence of acronym use in my data, and this is

because of similar reasons to the lack of emoticons, however, acronyms have survived

in the world due to its indexing of modernity in the world today (Boyd 2006). Unlike

emoticons, acronyms can be expressed in spoken interaction and throughout the world

market as even foreign tongues can recognise what an English acronym means. While

acronyms have crept into spoken interaction society more than emoticons, its indexing

of modernity means it’s more specific to younger generations. The data confirms this

with no use of them in Instant Messaging, or the Skype data which features spoken

interaction. There are too many age groups from 21 and above who do not understand

the range of acronyms in order for us all to be on an equal platform when using these

acronyms, so its ability to become common with younger people isn’t enough to call

it spoken interaction.

Conclusion

In conclusion, my data has shown that Instant Messaging is not a form of spoken

interaction. In my data, there were responses to a small part of the overall text, which

if they occurred in spoken interaction, could have taken the direction of the dialogue

down a different path, as the response would form an interruption. In IM there are

more sequential turns, and more utterance breaks which we would not find in spoken

interaction. The time delay in writing on IM is much more than in spoken interaction,

and this is due to people perceiving IM to be much more informal and not requiring as

much attention as if we were talking face to face. Both emoticons and acronyms have

a high level of usage on IM, but emoticons can easily be misinterpreted online

whereas in spoken interaction we can judge the person’s mood much more clearly.

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Acronyms can be used in spoken interaction, but they, like emoticons, are not known

well enough by the spoken society to be considered as part of the universal language

that makes up spoken interaction.

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Baron, N.S. 2008. Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World. New York: Oxford University Press.

Barton, D. & Lee, C. 2013. Language Online. Investigating Digital Texts and Practices. Abingdon: Routledge.

Boyd, D. 2006. A Blogger’s Blog: Exploring the Definition of a Medium. Reconstruction 6(4). S.l. s.n.

Crystal, D. 2001. Language and the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Duncan, S. 1972. Some signals and rules for taking speaking turns in conversations. In: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (23) pp. 283-292. S.l. sn.

Garcia, A.C. & Jacobs, J.B. 1999. The eyes of the beholder: understanding the turn-taking system in quasi-synchronous computer-mediated communication. In: Research on Language and Social Interaction 32 (4), pp. 337-367. S.l. s.n.

Gee, J.P. 2008. Social linguistics and literacies. Ideology in discourse. 3rd edition. London: Routledge.

Gillen, J. 2014. Digital Literacies. Abingdon: Routledge.

Graddol, D., Cheshire, J. & Swann, J. 1994. Describing Language. 2nd edition. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Herring, S.C. 2010. Computer-mediated Conversation: Introduction and Overview. Language @ Internet, 7. Available online: https://learningcentral.cf.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-3204954-dt-content-rid-4733442_2/courses/1415-SE1405/Herring%2C%20intro.pdf Accessed 31st December 2014.

Jones, R.H. & Hafner, C.A. 2012. Understanding Digital Literacies. A Pracical Introduction. Abingdon: Routledge.

Page, R., Barton, D., Unger, J.W. & Zappavigna, M. 2014. Researching Language and Social Media. A Student Guide. Abingdon: Routledge.

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