Date of Award

1-1-2001

Thesis Type

Masters

Document Type

Thesis

Divisions

Faculty of Languages and Linguistics

Department

-

Institution

Universiti Malaya

Abstract

This study first examined the language convention features (emoticon and typographic) employed by the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) participants. Second, it examined the code-switching patterns and the communicative purposes in Malaysian IRC. Third, it analysed whether the strategies of the openings and closings are transferred from face-to-face communication to IRC. Six extracts, one-hour chat each, from the #mamak channel were analyzed to identify the above. Moreover, questionnaires were administered to five faculties in University of Malaya to support some of the findings. Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson's (1974) adjacency pair model and sequential location mod􀀤I were used as the framework to analyze the phases of opening and closing of the IRC conversations. The findings indicated three main points. Participants employed more typographic features than the emoticon features in their chat. The typographic features found were capitalization, spelling, and punctuation. The pronoun /, nicknames, and the initial letter of, every sentence were uncapitalized. 17 .9% of the spellings were modified by simplifying and extending it. Moreover, 8.4% of the punctuation marks were simplified and multiplied._ Participants commonly code­switched the ending particles and three lexicals: verbs, nouns, and adjectives while chatting. 52.1% participants did not greet and 81.3 % did not bid farewell. Only a small percentage of participants greeted (47.9 %) and bade farewell (18.8 %). It is concluded that the typographic and emoticon features together with the opening and closing strategies managed to maintain and attract participants to use the IRC as a mean of communication in the CMC field.

Initial

snms

Additional Information

Dissertation (M.A) -- Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, Universiti Malaya, 2001.

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