<p>Chatroom conversations often elicit an initial impression of chaos. This is probably chiefly due to disrupted adjacency sequences, but also a result of the language being rich in non-standard linguistic forms and grammar. This study explores chatroom conversations with reference to Grice’s (1975) cooperative principle and the maxims that accompany it, and compares them to real life conversations. The aim is to see whether they differ from real life conversations to the extent expected, and whether these differences give rise to any compensational strategies to ensure successful communication. The results reveal a slightly higher amount of maxim undermining in the chat room than in the real life conversations, but not as high as expected. Accordingly, few compensational strategies need be adopted. It is suggested that the main explanation for these findings is that chatroom users have adapted their conversation patterns to the medium.</p>

Chatroom conversations often elicit an initial impression of chaos. This is probably chiefly due to disrupted adjacency sequences, but also a result of the language being rich in non-standard linguistic forms and grammar. This study explores chatroom conversations with reference to Grice’s (1975) cooperative principle and the maxims that accompany it, and compares them to real life conversations. The aim is to see whether they differ from real life conversations to the extent expected, and whether these differences give rise to any compensational strategies to ensure successful communication. The results reveal a slightly higher amount of maxim undermining in the chat room than in the real life conversations, but not as high as expected. Accordingly, few compensational strategies need be adopted. It is suggested that the main explanation for these findings is that chatroom users have adapted their conversation patterns to the medium.

La tesi fornisce uno studio empirico relativo agli elementi linguistici caratterizzanti il parlato faccia-a-faccia e il parlato filmico americano, due domini conversazionali solitamente detti differire in termini di spontaneità, essendo il primo generalmente descritto come la quintessenza del linguaggio parlato (in quanto totalmente spontaneo) e il secondo come non-spontaneo (essendo scritto-per-essere-parlato) e, quindi, non adatto a rappresentare l'uso generale della conversazione. Entrambe le analisi (i.e. quella multi-dimensionale, che offre una panoramica generale dei due domini presi in considerazione, e quella più specifica relativa al comportamento linguistico dell’espressione you know) basate su esempi autentici tratti da corpora dimostrano che, nonostante quanto venga generalmente descritto dalla letteratura a riguardo, conversazione faccia-a-faccia e conversazione filmica hanno molti tratti in comune e confutano l’idea che il linguaggio filmico non possa essere rappresentativo dell'uso generale della conversazione. / The present dissertation examines empirically the linguistic features characterizing American face-to-face and movie conversation, two domains which are usually claimed to differ especially in terms of spontaneity. Natural conversation is, indeed, considered the quintessence of the spoken language for it is totally spontaneous, whereas movie conversation is usually described as non-spontaneous, being artificially written-to-be spoken and, thus, not likely to represent the general usage of conversation. In spite of what is generally maintained by the literature, both the Multi-Dimensional analysis and the micro-analysis of the functions of you know based on authentic data retrieved from corpora show that the two conversational domains do not differ to a great extent and thus confutes the claim that movie language has “a very limited value” in that it does not reflect natural conversation and, consequently, is “not likely to be representative of the general usage of conversation”.