Language and the Internet

5Thelanguageofchatgroups The Internet allows people to engage in a multi-party conversation online, either synchronously, in rea ...

130 LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET withmessage-exchangesoftenanonymous,continuingindefinitely, anddealingwithawideandunpredictableran ...

The language of chatgroups 131 260groups(referredtoasconferences)bymid-2000.^4 Thegroupson Usenet (referred to asnewsgroups) are ...

132 LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET point to the variety of approaches which already exist, and identify some of the linguistic issues ...

The language of chatgroups 133 The systems all operate in roughly the same way.^14 An organi- zation provides a set of group opt ...

134 LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET ‘metadiscussions’ about the role of the moderator are common- place. In all cases, moderators belo ...

The language of chatgroups 135 werecomingineveryday;inanother,overahundredmessageswere present, but spread out over a year; in a ...

136 LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET student conference they studied was over, it came to be read differ- ently: ‘topics become chapter ...

The language of chatgroups 137 explicitly refer to previous messages), that members of their con- ference read on average only b ...

138 LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET in binding theory’, then those who see such a group and decide to join in are likely to be members ...

The language of chatgroups 139 that their accompanying articles will be read. The same point ap- plies to chatgroup messages. Wi ...

140 LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET co-operates, of course. Some senders seem to be so little concerned with the status of their contr ...

The language of chatgroups 141 may in due course become a generic term: a message titled ‘more on Jeff’ does not have anything t ...

142 LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET writer, as in the last example above. Even when contributions do not start in this way, the body o ...

The language of chatgroups 143 you’. In a Stoppardian setting, I can imagine several lines of play dialogue being taken up in th ...

144 LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET available^24 end with a formal closure, though there is the occasional greeting and mid-body namin ...

The language of chatgroups 145 message;^28 20% of all messages were just 1 or 2 lines. The aver- age number of paragraphs per me ...

146 LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET Another conversation-like feature is the unpredictability of the subject-matter. Although a partic ...

The language of chatgroups 147 becomes as unfocused, rambling, and inconsequential as everyday conversation. A further feature o ...

148 LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET among others.^37 A very important feature is the use of rhetorical questions or tag questions both ...