CMC among multilingual students of English for academic purposes: linguistic and sociolinguistic communicative factors in online written responses

The present study examines linguistic and sociolinguistic factors in a Web-enhanced

The Topology of Auditory and Visual Perception, Linguistic Communication, and Interactive Written Discourse

In this article, it is shown that IWD incorporates topological perceptual characteristics of both spoken and written language, and it is argued that these characteristics should not be ignored or given up when synchronous textual CMC is technologically developed and upgraded.

A Faceted Classification Scheme for Computer-Mediated Discourse

This article describes a classification scheme for computer-mediated discourse that classifies samples in terms of clusters of features, or “facets”. The goal of the scheme is to synthesize and articulate aspects of technical and social context that influence discourse usage in CMC environments. The classification scheme is motivated, presented in detail with support from existing literature, and illustrated through a comparison of two types of weblog (blog) data. In concluding, the advantages and limitations of the scheme are weighed.

Effectiveness of an Online Social Constructivist Mathematical Problem Solving Course for Malaysian Pre-Service Teachers

This study assessed the effectiveness of an online mathematical problem solving course designed using a social constructivist approach for pre-service teachers. Thirty-seven pre-service teachers at the Batu Lintang Teacher Institute, Sarawak, Malaysia were randomly selected to participate in the study. The participants were required to complete the course online without the typical face-to-face classes and they were also required to solve authentic mathematical problems in small groups of 4-5 participants based on the Polya’s Problem Solving Model via asynchronous online discussions. Quantitative and qualitative methods such as questionnaires and interviews were used to evaluate the effects of the online learning course. Findings showed that a majority of the participants were satisfied with their learning experiences in the course. There were no significant changes in the participants’ attitudes toward mathematics, while the participants’ skills in problem solving for “understand the problem” and “devise a plan” steps based on the Polya’s Model were significantly enhanced, though no improvement was apparent for “carry out the plan” and “review”. The results also showed that there were significant improvements in the participants’ critical thinking skills. Furthermore, participants with higher initial computer skills were also found to show higher performance in mathematical problem solving as compared to those with lower computer skills. However, there were no significant differences in the participants’ achievements in the course based on gender. Generally, the online social constructivist mathematical problem solving course is beneficial to the participants and ought to be given the attention it deserves as an alternative to traditional classes. Nonetheless, careful considerations need to be made in the designing and implementing of online courses to minimize problems that participants might encounter while participating in such courses.

Chinese Internet language: A sociolinguistic analysis of adaptations of the Chinese writing system

This paper examines the adaptations of the writing system in Internet language in mainland China from a sociolinguistic perspective. A comparison is also made of the adaptations in mainland China with those that Su (2003) found in Taiwan. In Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC), writing systems are often adapted to compensate for their inherent inadequacies (such as difficulty in input). Su (2003) investigates the creative uses of the writing system on the electronic bulletin boards (BBS) of two college student organizations in Taipei, Taiwan, and identifies four popular and creative uses of the Chinese writing system: stylized English, stylized Taiwanese-accented Mandarin, stylized Taiwanese, and the recycling of a transliteration alphabet used in elementary education. According to Coupland (2001; cited in Su 2003), stylization is “the knowing deployment of culturally familiar styles and identities that are marked as deviating from those predictably associated with the current speaking context”. Within this framework and drawing on the data in previous publications on Internet language and online sources, this study identifies five types of adaptations in mainland China’s Internet language: stylized Mandarin (e.g., 漂漂 piāopiāo for 漂亮 ‘beautiful’), stylized dialect-accented Mandarin (e.g., 灰常 huīcháng for 非常 ‘very much’), stylized English (e.g., 伊妹儿 yīmèier for ‘email’), stylized initials (e.g., bt 变态 biàntài for ‘abnormal’; pk, short form for ‘player kill’), and stylized numbers (e.g., 9494 jiùshi jiùshi 就是就是 ‘that is it’). The Internet community is composed of highly mobile individuals and thus forms a weak-tie social network. According to Milroy and Milroy (1992), a social network with weak ties is often where language innovation takes place. Adaptations of the Chinese writing system in Internet language provide interesting evidence for the innovations within a weak-tie social network. Our comparison of adaptations in mainland China and Taiwan shows that, in maximizing the effectiveness and functionality of their communication, participants of Internet communication are confronted with different language resources and situations, including differences in Romanization systems, English proficiency level, and attitudes towards English usage. As argued by Milroy and Milroy (1992), a weak-tie social network model can bridge the social class and social network. In the Internet community, the degree of diversity of the stylized linguistic varieties indexes the virtual and/or social status of its participants: the more diversified one’s Internet language is, the higher is his/her virtual and/or social status.

Disrupted Turn Adjacency and Coherence Maintenance in Instant Messaging Conversations

This article reports on a study of coherence in text-based log files from 120 two-party Instant Messaging (IM) conversations among a group of international students at a design school. The goals of the study were to investigate whether disrupted turn adjacency was an obstacle to coherence and to identify the linguistic strategies employed to maintain coherence. Additional signs of problematic coherence creation were also investigated, focusing on explicit signs of miscommunication. In this particular context, disrupted turn adjacency was not found to be a problem. Whereas devices for textual cohesion can be important, links between utterances can also be identified based on timing and distinctions between different types of feedback, as well as sequencing. The additional signs of miscommunication were all related to different aspects of problematic grounding. The article concludes with suggestions for design improvements to the IM tool.

Spanish-English Codeswitching in Email Communication

While spoken codeswitching (CS) among Latinos has received significant scholarly attention, few studies have examined written CS, specifically naturally-occurring CS in email. This study contributes to an under-studied area of Latino linguistic practices by reporting the results of a study of CS in the emails of five Spanish-English bilingual Latinos. Methods are employed that are not often used in discourse analysis of email texts, namely multi-dimensional scaling and tree diagrams, to explore the contextual parameters of written Spanish-English CS systematically. Consistent with the findings of other studies of CS in CMC, English use was most associated with professional or formal contacts, and use of Spanish, the participants’ native language, was linked to intimacy, informality, and group identification. Switches to Spanish functioned to personalize otherwise transactional or work-related English-dominant emails. The article also discusses novel orthographic and linguistic forms specific to the CMC context.