There has been extensive literature on the subject of subcultures in the fields of criminology and sociology. The term has undergone decades upon decades of revisions and debate amongst scholars. Despite the vast amount of literature available on the term subculture, there is unfortunately no clear-cut definition of what a subculture is, especially after what many sociologists referred to as the Post-Subcultural Turn. While that is problematic in and of itself, the term subculture still has yet to be framed and understood in light of recent technological advancements and strides towards globalization. This thesis will attempt to shed light on the muddled conceptions of the term subculture, as well as expanding subcultural theory to include subcultural engagement in online settings. Chapter 1 will provide a chronological account of the term subculture, including many of its evolutions, revisions and interpretations based on different schools of thought. Chapter 2 will follow up by discussing many of the criticisms directed at past conceptualizations of subculture, and where the term subculture should be heading with regards to expanding its conceptualization without conflating it with other terms. Chapter 2 will finish by suggesting a new path towards conceptualization by adapting subculture to include how subcultures are being formed and maintained through the use of the Internet. To make sense of subcultures using social networking sites in future chapters, Chapter 3 will delve into some of the main technological developments of the Internet including computer-mediated communication, social networks, and how they function as virtual conduits for facilitating social interactions and the spread of knowledge. Chapter 4 will pick up from Chapter 3 by discussing deviance in online settings, as well as introducing a new Goffmanian approach to understanding the presentation of self in online settings. Lastly, Chapter 5 will seek to answer three main questions about subcultures and their existence in online settings: 1. How do social networking sites operate as virtual conduits for the presentation of self? 2. How do subculturalists use social networking sites to create a sense of online community and membership? 3. How do subculturalists employ presentation of self strategies? These questions will be answered by employing an adapted Goffmanian approach to the presentation of self in online settings while also rethinking the concept of subcultural style. Lastly, this thesis will seek to provide guidance on where gaps in the literature still exist and can be explored in the near future.

Magister Artium - MA / This study focuses on a story featured on Sowetan LIVE, one of South Africa’s online newspapers. The flexibility of the mode in which the newspaper is produced, enables users to comment on its articles as they are published. The online newspaper was preferred due to its socio-political history and the huge South African audience it seems to attract. This study looks at one particular story which appeared on Sowetan LIVE and generated much interest in South Africa. The story is about a painting depicting President Jacob Zuma with his genitals exposed, termed The Spear by Brett Murray. This painting triggered a high volume of comments and engagement among South Africans on the Sowetan LIVE website, making it a valuable resource of online discourse. Therefore, this study explored comments in response to the two articles published on the Sowetan LIVE namely, “ANC takes battle of The Spear to court” and “Will Zuma’s spear stay up?” which when combined, ‘generated’ 1358 comments. This study particularly investigates the identities that emerged from the discourses found in the data and analyses the type of linguistic practices evident in the comments. In this regard, the main objective of the study is not only to determine how users style their social identities, but also their ‘linguistic’ ones during online interactions. In terms of social identities, the findings illustrate a distinction between traditional and modern identities ‘represented’ by Jacob Zuma and Brett Murray, respectively. However, although a distinction is evident, contradictions exist among the respective identities which feed back into the notion of identity as performative and fluid. In this way, the study reveals that the identities emanating from these discourses provide a glance at South Africa’s intricate identity ‘battle’, a ‘battle’ which is no longer solely based on race or collective identity, but more on the creation of new identities and perceptions based on traditional ones or a complete divorce of traditional identities. With regards to linguistic identity, the findings indicate that hybrid linguistic practices are a norm among the participants. This is because all participants employ netspeak features such as phonetic spellings, letter / number homophones and creative use of punctuation / capitalisation for emphasis or stress. Interestingly, although netspeak is evident from the findings common in online linguistic practices, this study has found that the use of such features is not random. This is so because participants tend to strategically fuse these features into the linguistic practices as a means to avoid censorship. This fusion and, ultimately, censorship avoidance strategies, rely on the re-purposing of semiotic resources. In this vein, the most used censorship avoidance strategies in the study are discussed and analysed in terms of context and the discourses that inform them. Furthermore, upon analysing the usernames and avatars selected by participants as part of identity construction, the findings demonstrate that these are used as an extension of the participants’ identities. From the findings of the study, it can be concluded that the South African youth’s identity and their perception of identity itself is in flux – ‘norms’ are constantly being re-invented. In essence, this study adds to an understanding of how historical material is re-purposed through an exploration of an online interactive feature that is posting of comments on an article of interest. It also contributes to an understanding of the hybrid nature of online linguistic practices.

Magister Artium - MA / The last few decades have seen the development of a large body of scholarly work on drag queens and performances of femininity by men (see Barrett 1995, 1999). However, performances of masculinity by women have largely been overlooked. Research by scholars like Judith Halberstam (see Halberstam 1997, 1998) on female masculinity and the drag king performer has attempted to address this imbalance, but the phenomenon has yet to receive any attention from sociolinguists. This study aims to bring attention to performances of masculinity by women in the South African context through a multi-sited ethnography of the country’s first known drag king troupe, Bros B4 Ho's. The study will examine not only the group's stage performances, but also their activity on the online social networking platform of Facebook, using multimodal critical discourse analysis. The internet has revolutionised the way we communicate and share information, and has provided interesting new arenas for individuals to explore identity performance. In extending the investigation to include the group's online activity, the study will give a more complete picture of the negotiation of drag king subjectivities across different spaces.

Computers afford an environment in which use of communication tools can promote deep learning. This may be ascribed to the creation of a varied learning environment, and to the induction of active, collaborative and self-directed learning. A quantitative study was performed based on the results of a questionnaire developed to evaluate the students experience of web-supported learning. The association between presumed active use of communication tools, and perceptions concerning learning principles (varied and challenging learning environment, application of higher order thinking skills, and lecturer feedback and encouragement to interact frequently), was evaluated. The results indicate that in general, learners associated a varied and challenging learning environment with the lecturer’s feedback and encouragement to interact frequently (e.g. with discussions; e-mail contact etc.) and with perceived active communication via the bulletin board and e-mail facility. It appears that CMC using all communication tools, excluding the calendar, was dependent on encouragement by the lecturer to interact frequently. Perceived active use of e-mail and the chat facility was significantly associated with recognition of the need to apply higher-order thinking skills in order to do well in the course. These findings support previous reports that CMC promotes deep learning. It is recommended that · The e-mail facility is used for deeper problem analysis and where alternate solutions and strategies are to be generated. · The bulletin board is used for application, analysis, evaluation, and synthesis. · The chat facility is used to build attitudes, beliefs, confidence and motivation. · The challenge of an environment should be created in which communities of learners are formed. Opportunity should be provided for socialising as well, as this promotes interdependence and collaboration. · Feedback to individuals and groups and encouragement is provided timely and continually via e-mail and the bulletin board. / Dissertation (MEd (CIE))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Curriculum Studies / unrestricted

This article provides a case study account of the language functions of tipo, which is a pragmatic feature of Argentine Spanish vernacular, as used by 10 young adult native speakers of the language (ages 18-25), in the context of oral face-to-face and synchronous technology-mediated written interactions with young adult Spanish L2 learners. An examination of naturally occurring and self-reported language awareness data suggests that tipo has acquired a wide array of pragmatic functions it is a marker of hesitation, exemplification, reformulation, vagueness, and quoted speech. In its non-pragmatic marking uses, it can refer to an unspecified man, preface a hyponym, and be used to make a comparison. Participants' usage patterns, in conjunction with their understanding of sociopragmatic variability in the use of tipo, are discussed as a direction for research in colloquial features of youth vernacular.

This study examined how social anxiety, gender, and mode of presentation influenced miscommunication and perception of negativity in children’s interpretation of computer-mediated messages. The initial phase of the research involved developing and validating the stimuli for emotion recognition via presentation of various emotionally toned messages. Following preparation of the stimuli, the 98 participants (aged 8-12 years) in the main study were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: audio-visual, audio-only, and text message. The same emotionally toned messages were presented in each of these three conditions. Participants were instructed to select from a list of six emotions (happy, sad, disgusted, angry, surprised, scared) which emotion each message conveyed. Participants then rated how positively or negatively they perceived each sentence, using a 5-point Likert scale that ranged from very negative to very positive. Following the emotion recognition and Likert rating task, participants completed questionnaires that gathered information about social anxiety and attribution bias. Findings revealed that additional nonverbal and paralinguistic, as in the audio-visual or audio-only condition, allowed participants to more accurately identify the emotion being conveyed in the message, compared to the text message condition. This advantage was found for all emotions with the exception of happiness. For happy messages, participants were able to identify the intended emotion at above-chance levels regardless of mode of presentation. When making interpretations about angry messages, a significant three-way interaction was observed between sex, condition and social anxiety. Likert rating analyses revealed that condition, sex, and social anxiety played important roles in the interpretation of both ambiguous and unambiguous emotions, such as surprise and happiness.

This thesis presents a series of cross-cultural experiments, which investigate the role of self-awareness on self-disclosure in computer-mediated communication (CMC). The thesis is split into two parts, detailing the results of four separate experiments. In Part 1, the two experiments focus specifically on British participants who are considered to be from an individualistic culture. Experiment 1 investigates how private and public self-awareness affects their breadth, depth and accuracy of self-disclosure in CMC. Experiment 2 then attempts to simplify Experiment 1 to try and focus more specifically on personal motivations of self-disclosure. The results of the first two experiments clearly illustrate the importance of both private and public self-awareness in intimate self-disclosure in CMC. More specifically, they indicate that increasing private self-awareness increases depth of self-disclosure, whilst increasing public self-awareness reduces the accuracy of the self-disclosure. In Part 2 of the thesis Experiments 1 and 2 are replicated on Singaporean participants, who are considered to be from a collectivist culture. Members of collectivist cultures are consistently reported to self-disclose less than members of individualistic cultures. It is however found in Experiment 3 that in a typical 'real-time' interaction the Singaporeans report themselves to self-disclose to a greater depth than the British participants. Cultural differences are also found in the participants' reactions to certain manipulations of self-awareness. More specifically, a manipulation that increases public self-awareness greatly reduces the British participants' self-disclosure. Whilst the Singaporeans are more affected by a manipulation that increases their private self-awareness, which greatly increases their depth of self-disclosure. It is concluded that there are cultural differences in the way that people react to manipulations of self-awareness in CMC and this raises philosophical discussion about how culture drives self-disclosure which, in turn, drives the pursuit of self-knowledge, and ultimately the construction of the cultural self. Finally it is concluded that CMC may allow an exploration of the self outside of cultural norms, and that this could potentially change the boundaries of the private and public self in the future.

Researchers have studied adolescent bullying behavior since the 1970s, however, today's technological advances have opened the door to a new form of abuse. Teens can no longer escape the wrath of their bullies once they have left the school grounds, because bullies are following them home. Cyberbullying is a new phenomenon in which bullies use computer-mediated communication (CMC) to torment their victims. This research project focused on uncovering some of the mysteries surrounding this new means of bullying. A grounded theory analysis of stories written by victims revealed cyberbullies often use synchronous chat tools, e-mail, web sites, and cell phone text messages to reach their victims. Data analysis also revealed victims use of contextualization, descriptions of their bullying episodes, and discussions of their responses and outcomes to characterize their experiences. Interestingly, the researcher found victims of cyberbullying generally were also victims off face-to-face bullying as well.

The lack of physical communication cues, such as facial expressions, in text-only communication has prompted the creation of emoticons to represent feelings. Moreover, the emoticon has become a new “cultural” language adopted by a community of users who find emoticons useful for expressing an emotional state during their online communication. Using emoticons in computer-mediated communication (CMC), which includes any means of communication on the Internet, especially instant messaging (IM) programs, helps users convey and enhance the underlying emotional aspects of their communication facilitating user communication by providing non-verbal cues and clues to clarify a message. Although many researchers have studied the differences in the use of emoticons between males and females and different age groups and some even report cross-cultural differences and similarities between CMC and face-to-face (FTF) communication such research is not sufficient to understand the effective use of emoticons. The current research explores three categories of emoticons - textual, pictorial, and animated emoticons – to ask the broad question: Do North Americans and South Koreans use emoticons differently? The research examines the cross-cultural differences involved in using emoticons, focusing on the visual aspect of online communication that provides emotional cues to understand the differences in their use. Textual emoticons and pictorial emoticons of MSN messenger are used in this study's questionnaires. The results indicate the cross-cultural differences of emoticon use and recognition between North Americans and South Koreans.

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