Internet-based therapies are growing in number and popularity and cover a diverse range of practices for both individuals and groups. In concordance with the hyperpersonal theory and online disinhibition effect, people more readily disclose personal information when conducted via the internet. Due to technological constraints and social interactions, a non-standard language developed and has widely been termed “netspeak” (Crystal, 2006). Emotional words are processed differently to non-emotional words. Further, people do not connect with abbreviations on the same emotional level as they do when the words are written in full. Three studies were conducted: the first focused on assessing if a short emotionally evocative mini-biography had an emotional impact on participants. This material was then used in a second study which was a mass-testing of 62 young people on whether netspeak can change the impact on mood. The study used 3 conditions whereby participants re-wrote the mini-biography into either full English, using Netspeak or in their own words. A new vignette was created from the Netspeak condition to use as material for a third study. This final study was conducted via email into how much a psychological therapist understood what had been written in the Netspeak vignette. No differences were seen from re-writing an emotional biography in netspeak to English. Although psychological therapists demonstrated some understanding of the netspeak vignette, there was evidence of misinterpretation, presumption and misunderstanding suggesting that there may be some barrier to communication in internet therapy. The clinical implications of this research suggest that psychological therapists need to reflect on their practice in order to be aware of the level of assumption that can be made during therapy.

The aim of this thesis is to describe the language of electronic communication ('netspeak') as one of the present trends of the development of English. The thesis is based on the hypothesis 'netspeak' represents an independent multimodal linguistic variety sharing some features with informal face-to-face conversation. For this purpose, the language of selected samples of the texts of English-speaking students of British universities obtained from the social network Facebook was studied. The qualitative and quantitative analysis of these data and their comparison with spoken form of standard English, namely with the spoken demographically sampled part of the British National Corpus, confirmed the hypothesis. ! Key words: netspeak, CMC, Facebook, emoticons, face-to-face communication, informal conversation

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T18:23:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 dissertacaocompleta.pdf: 767861 bytes, checksum: 4d96dd54c607009b286463ad5c83c3f6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005-05-20 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Online discussion forums are often used in education. Due to their complexities, online forums can facilitate or not the learning, it will depend on how they are used. So they have been the target for many researchers like Anderson et al (1997), Garrison et al (2000), Crystal (2001), and Pawan et al (2002) who recognize in online forums an important tool for cognitive development. But, if the objective is that the participants involved in the discussions have a constructive and collaborative learning, it is necessary to give some attention to its use. So this research intends to collaborate with the studies on the use of this tool in education. The idea for this paper came from the observation of the online course Leitura Instrumental via Internet I, offered by the Edulang research group of the Catholic University of São Paulo. We noticed that there was little interaction among the participants in the discussion forums. That was considered a problem because interaction is very important so that a constructive and collaborative educational practice can be developed. Crystal (2001) says a new language, called Netspeak, is emerging with the online discussion forums tool. This made us think that, as most of the course participants are not expert in this kind of digital communication, one of the aspects that could be affecting the students participation in the online discussions was linguistic adequacy. In this way, this research is divided in two distinct moments: one in which the investigations are directed at the students participation and another in which we investigate the linguistic manifestations, from the Netspeak point of view. The intention was to make a comparison between these two aspects and check their relations during the discussions. To direct the Netspeak investigation, this research counted on David Crystal s (2001) studies and to investigate the discourse features of Netspeak, more specifically the coherence, this research used the systemic-functional grammar concepts (Halliday e Hasan, 1990; Halliday, 1994; Eggins, 1994). In the end, it was possible to have a discussion about some linguistic aspects that can affect the students participation in online discussion forums. They are: the activities instructions, greetings and closings, and the use of quotations and anaphoric references / A ferramenta assíncrona online fóruns de discussão, bastante utilizada na educação, vem sendo alvo de pesquisas devido seu caráter ambíguo: ora facilitador, ora dificultador do ensino-aprendizagem. Estudiosos como Anderson et al (1997), Garrison et al (2000), Crystal (2001), e Pawan et al (2002) reconhecem em fóruns online uma ferramenta importante que pode beneficiar o ensino-aprendizagem, no entanto é necessário que seja dispensada certa atenção a sua utilização se o objetivo for de que os participantes engajados nas discussões tenham uma aprendizagem construtiva e colaborativa. Dessa forma, esta pesquisa tem a intenção de colaborar com os estudos sobre a utilização dessa ferramenta na educação. A idéia para este trabalho surgiu a partir da observação do curso online Leitura Instrumental via Internet I, oferecido pelo grupo Edulang da Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo. Percebemos que não havia muita interação entre os participantes dentro dessa ferramenta, o que foi considerado um problema porque a interação é muito importante para que se desenvolva uma prática educacional construtiva e colaborativa. Segundo Crystal (2001), uma nova linguagem, denominada Netspeak, está surgindo com os fóruns de discussão online. Isso levantou-nos à hipótese de que, como a maioria dos participantes do curso são inexperiente nesse tipo de comunicação digital, um dos fatores que pudesse estar afetando a participação dos alunos fosse o da adequação lingüística. Dessa forma, o trabalho divide-se em dois momentos distintos: um em que as investigações são voltadas para a participação dos alunos e outro em que se investiga as manifestações lingüísticas do ponto de vista da Netspeak. A intenção era verificar como estes dois aspectos caminharam ao longo dos fóruns. Para direcionar as investigações da Netspeak, esta pesquisa apoiou-se no trabalho de David Crystal (2001) e, para investigar as manifestações discursivas da Netspeak no âmbito da coerência, esta pesquisa contou com o auxílio da gramática sistêmico-funcional (Halliday e Hasan, 1990; Halliday, 1994; Eggins, 1994). Ao final, foi possível elaborar uma discussão sobre alguns fatores que podem afetar a participação dos alunos em fóruns de discussão online. São eles: as instruções das atividades, a quantidade de tópicos, a participação da professora, a utilização de títulos, saudações e encerramentos e a utilização de citações e referências anafóricas.

<p>This essay is predominantly a qualitative piece of research by which I mean it is mainly based on my own observations and analysis of the material. To do this I will cover the theories of <em>communities of practice</em> together with gendered language and apply it to the community and language of the online game World of Warcraft.</p><p>Through using collected chat logs, I will analyse conversations held in World of Warcraft with a specific focus on gender and identity, I will then compare these to examples of face-to-face conversations. My analysis will draw on the works of theorists such as Holmes (2006), Sunderland and Litosseliti (2002), Eckert and McConnel-Ginet (1992) amongst others. This study will show that although Netspeak within World of Warcraft is written and not spoken, the strategies for creating gendered identities are not very different from real life discourse. The essay will be a general study of gendered language in a virtual community and will discover that there is an extremely nuanced language within the limited communication medium of <em>chat</em>, and lays the ground for more extensive research on the subject.</p>

<p><p>The Internet is in many cases our primary source for communication. As more communicative options online are introduced and become a part of our life, the language of the Internet, so called Netspeak, becomes a part of our language. The aim of this paper was to find out whether there is a difference in the use of Netspeak between teenagers and adults. The investigation was based on two message boards, one where the majority is teenagers and one where the majority is adults. Four different features of Netspeak were studied: exaggerated use of punctuation; exaggerated use of capital letters; abbreviations; and emoticons. All features are substitutes for paralanguage.</p><p>The results show that teenagers are more likely to use features such as exaggerated use of punctuation and capitals, and abbreviations. Adults are, however, more likely to use emoticons than teenagers.</p></p>

<p>The aim of this study is to examine the language from a small sample of texts from the chat channels of World of Warcraft and analyze the differences found between World of Warcraft English and Standard English. In addition, the studywill compare the language found in World of Warcraft with language found on other parts of the Internet, especially chatgroups. Based on 1045 recorded chat messages, this study examines the use of abbreviations, emoticons, vocabulary, capitalization, spelling, multiple letter use and the use of rare characters. The results of the investigation show that the language of World of Warcraft differs from Standard English on several aspects, primarily in the use of abbreviations. This is supported by secondary sources. The results also show that the use of language is probably not based on the desire to deliver a message quickly, but rather to reach out to people. In addition, the results show that the language found in World of Warcraft is more advanced than a simple effort to try to imitate speech, thereby performing more than written speech.</p>

The present study examines typical features of internet language found in user-generated comments collected from commenting groups from four online magazines aimed at different readerships: (1) adult women (Working Mother and Mothering), (2) adult men (Esquire), (3) young women (Seventeen) and (4) young men (Gameinformer). Approximately 5,000 words from each commenting group were collected, creating a 21,087 word corpus which was analyzed with regard to typographic (emoticons, nonstandard typography of and, personal pronouns you and I) and orthographic features (abbreviations, acronyms) as well as syntactic and stylistic features resembling spoken language (contracted forms, ellipsis of subject and/or verb and commenting tone). The results show that adult men wrote the longest comments, followed by adult women, young men and young women in descending order. Furthermore, as for the typical features regarding typography and orthography, it was found that among the four commenting groups, adult men and adult women used them very sparsely, young men used them occasionally and young women used the features most frequently. The analysis of tone showed that adult men mostly used an aggressive or neutral tone, while adult women, young women and young men mostly used a friendly or neutral tone. Young women used an aggressive tone more often than adult women and young men. Moreover, regarding the syntactic and stylistic features, results revealed that the young men were the most frequent users of ellipsis of subject and/or verb, followed by adult women, young women and adult men. Contracted forms were used extensively in the potential places of contractions, regardless of commenting group. Since young men used the ellipsis of subject and/or verb most frequently of all commenting groups and also used the contracted forms in all potential places of contractions, the conclusion is that the young men used a style that is closer to spoken English than the three other commenting groups. / Den här studien undersöker språkdrag som är typiska för språk på internet. Det material som har undersöks har hämtats från användarkommentarer i nättidningar som är riktade till fyra olika läsargrupper: (1) kvinnor (Working Mother, Mothering), (2) män (Esquire), (3) unga kvinnor (Seventeen) och (4) unga män (Gameinformer). Cirka 5 000 ord hämtades från kommentarsfälten för varje tidning, vilket resulterade i en korpus som omfattade 21 087 ord totalt. Korpusen analyserades med hänsyn till typografiska språkdrag (smileys, ickestandardiserad stavning av personliga pronomen I och you samt and) och ortografiska språkdrag (förkortningar, akronymer) samt syntaktiska och stilistiska språkdrag som påminner om talspråk (sammandragningar, ellips av subjekt och/eller predikatsverb, tonläge). Resultaten visade att män skrev de längsta kommentarerna, följda av kvinnor, unga män och unga kvinnor i fallande ordning. Vad gäller typiska typografiska och ortografiska språkdrag visar resultatet att de återfanns mycket sparsamt i kvinnornas och männens data, att de återfanns då och då i de unga männens data och att de unga kvinnorna var de som använde dessa språkdrag mest frekvent. Analys av tonläge i användarkommentarerna visade att män oftast använde en aggressiv eller neutral ton, medan kvinnor, unga kvinnor och unga män oftast använde en vänskaplig eller neutral ton. Unga kvinnor använde en aggressiv ton oftare än kvinnor och unga män. Utöver detta visade resultatet att ellips av subjekt och/eller predikatsverb var mest frekvent i de unga männens användarkommentarer, följt av kvinnornas, de unga kvinnornas och männens. Sammandragna former användes näst intill undantagslöst i hela korpusen. Eftersom pojkarna uppvisade mest frekvent användning av ellips av subjekt och/eller predikatsverb samt använde sammandragna former i full utsträckning, kan slutsatsen dras att de unga männens syntax är mer påverkad av engelskt talspråk än syntaxen hos de tre andra kommenterande grupperna.

<p>The language used in Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (or MMORPGs) is a form of computer-mediate communication. It consists of elements from both written and spoken language, but it is a highly abbreviated and innovative form of written language. This study focuses on the English language used in a MMORPG called Warhammer Online. The aim of this study is to identify abbreviations, interpret their meanings and to analyze the word formation processes and semantic changes that are involved in new words. The method used in this study is a qualitative case study of the English language in a MMORPG from a synchronic point of view. The secondary sources used in this study include previous works on morphology and semantics. The material used is based on logs acquired from the game Warhammer Online as a subscribed player. The results presented in this study show new and unique words created by players in Warhammer Online, along with other semantic changes that have taken place. It is concluded that the English written language has not seen such a major change in its entirety before, within one community.</p>

This thesis examines the variety of English spoken in East Dorm at Harvey Mudd College. It describes aspects of the syntax and phonology of Eastspeak, focusing in particular on how Eastspeak has been influenced by the language of the internet. This includes tendencies toward brevity and language play, as well as the use of specific constructions used on the internet, and playful pronunciations that are influenced by creative misspellings used online. Specific Eastspeak phenomena discussed include conversion, deletion, and unusual determiner and quantifier use.

The Internet is in many cases our primary source for communication. As more communicative options online are introduced and become a part of our life, the language of the Internet, so called Netspeak, becomes a part of our language. The aim of this paper was to find out whether there is a difference in the use of Netspeak between teenagers and adults. The investigation was based on two message boards, one where the majority is teenagers and one where the majority is adults. Four different features of Netspeak were studied: exaggerated use of punctuation; exaggerated use of capital letters; abbreviations; and emoticons. All features are substitutes for paralanguage. The results show that teenagers are more likely to use features such as exaggerated use of punctuation and capitals, and abbreviations. Adults are, however, more likely to use emoticons than teenagers.