The language of chatgroups 157
80% of the utterances being 5 words or less.^48 The words them-
selves are short: nearly 80% of 300-word samples of direct-speech
taken from logs (excluding proper names) were monosyllabic; in-
deed, only 4% were words longer than 2 syllables. This places syn-
chronous chatgroup utterances a little behind everyday conversa-
tion, which is even more monosyllabic, and ahead of journalism,
which is much less so.^49 Certainly, such short utterances help to
promote rapid distribution and enable the conversations to take
on more of a real-time dynamic.
Thefactthatmessagesaretypicallyshort,rapidlydistributed(lag
permitting), and coming from a variety of sources (any number
of people may be online at once) results in the most distinctive
characteristic of synchronous chatgroup language: its participant
overlap. This example from a study by Susan Herring illustrates
the textual character of overlap in a short interaction between five
participants:^50
hi jatt
- ∗∗∗Signoff: puja
kally i was only joking around
ashna: hello?
dave-g it was funny
howareujatt
ssa all
kally you da woman!
ashna: do we know eachother?. I’m ok how are you
(^48) Typical extracts are reproduced in Werry (1996), Bechar-Israeli (1996), and Paolillo
(1999). ‘Direct speech’ here excludes activity descriptions (e.g. ‘P has left channel Z’),
reports of nickname changes (‘X is now known as Y’), and other formulaic statements.
In such cases, the sentence length is somewhat longer – 6.08 words per statement (for a
sample of 100). Werry (1996: 53) also found an average of 6 words in his data. Direct-
speech contributions in virtual worlds are longer still (see p. 187), but this is because of
a greater proportion of longer utterances; about a half of the contributions there are still
49 5 words or less.
The conversational data in Crystal and Davy (1969: ch. 4) showed 84% monosyllabic
and 11% disyllabic. The two journalistic extracts (1969: ch. 7) showed (for theDaily
Express) 63% and 25% respectively, with words up to 5 syllables in length, and (forThe
Times) 62% and 18% respectively, with words up to 7 syllables in length. The main point
of contrast is in trisyllabic words, whereThe Timeshas four times as many trisyllables as
50 IRC.
Herring (1999: 5)