Stupid Anthro Document.
Feb. 7th, 2004 02:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dagas_isaNyar. It's a paper that I spent way too much time "researching" and way too little time writing.
Can an online forum qualify as it's own speech community? Is face to face interaction among members a prerequisite for a speech community? Hearts of Paradise (HoP) is an internet-based forum whose members gathered together through shared interests. While few of the members have face to face interaction, they engage in regular online exchanges, both on the message board and through AOL Instant Messenger chat rooms (AIM chats). In the short time that the forum has been running, the group has formed many of the traits inherent in a speech community, including its own special speech events, mutual intelligibility, and regular social contact among its members. Although it is still in formation, HoP is an example of an online speech community.
The ten regular members of HoP range in age from 15 to 21 years in age, with the majority of them either in their senior year of high school or their first year of college. With the exception of one person, all of the regular members are female, and all of them live in the United States or Canada. While there are a few members who know each other in person, most of themThe common interests for members of the forum are the video game Kingdom Hearts, writing, and role-playing. English is the first language of all the members, and all of the members share mutual intelligibility and are able to use their language to communicate meaningfully within their group.
Like the community of Teamsterville, which we read about in Philipsen, the members of HoP have specific places for speaking. The message board is for topics that directly relate to the common interests of the participants and role-playing while the AIM chats are more free form and cover a wide variety of topics ranging from real life issues such as school or work, to discussion about entertainment, literature, or message board gossip. AIM chats are also more exclusive than the message board because an invitation is required for anyone to join a particular chat. Unlike Teamsterville, where status is based on concepts such as gender and nationality, HoP members determine whether someone should be invited to a chat based on the behavior history on the message board and their outside connections with others in the group, although the members try to be as inclusive as possible.
To be included in the chats, one must follow the communicative conventions shared by the members of the community. Since all of the regular members are writers, proper spelling and grammar are the unspoken law on the message board, although colloquialisms and slang are acceptable. The conventions for AIM chats are less strict, allowing the participants to talk in fragments, use only lower case letters, and make more frequent typos. Typos, however, are usually corrected in a chat room by using the asterisk followed by what the speaker really meant to say. The use of Netspeak, that is, slang on the internet used to make talking on-line faster, is restricted to cases where a member is temporarily leaving the chat to take care of outside matters, when a member returns from a chat after temporarily leaving it, or to express amusement. "Brb" (be right back), "afk" (away from keyboard), "hb" (hurry back), and "wb" (welcome back) apply to the first two situations while "lol" (laugh out loud) and "rofl" (rolling on the floor laughing) apply to the last situation. Other uses of Netspeak, such as "ppl" for "people", and "u" for "you" are not acceptable in either the message board or the chats. While most use of Netspeak is discouraged, HoP members use other language conventions to speed up the use of language such as sandwiching the online ‘actions' of the speaker between asterisks, using emoticons, or faces made out of letters to express emotions, and pointing to oneself using arrows to give more information. The following excerpt from an HoP chat illustrates some of these conventions (4 February 2004):
Akai: *pets her Hoj plushie*
Squeak: teehee
Squeak: O.ox
Akai: *hojo, rather
In the first line, Akai uses the asterisks to denote action, which occurs frequently among all members of the chatroom. In the last line, the asterisk serve as a means to insert a correction. Each of the linguistic conventions helps to keep the fast-paced exchanges of the AIM chats coherent while allowing the participants to emulate face to face interactions.
These linguistic conventions allow the HoP members to use a speech event called "omake" for the entertainment of others in the speech community. "Omake," meaning "extra" interjects humorous content into the conversation by twisting the current subject of the conversation, which is usually accomplished through applying the subject to fictional characters that all the members of the chat are expected to be familiar with. According to Akai, who is the group expert, omake requires that one "takes a character and screws them up as much as one can." The fictional characters are the core of the omake, while relevance to the current topic of conversation is the unspoken trait required for an omake to succeed. The following excerpt from a chat on February 4, 2004, is an example of a successful omake:
Akai: I had a guy call in at work who sounded like Seymour!
Akai: it was so weird.
Squeak: O.Ox that must have been freaky.
Megumi: whoa
AkaiKitsunedono: it was...
Squeak: *kicks seymour* i hated him the moment i saw him.
Akai: you know how weird it is to order a pizza for a psychotic Guado??
Squeak: hahahaha
Squeak: i really need to beat that game...
AkaiKitsunedono: Seymour: I want extra cheese, and Spira on the side. *evil smile*
In the chat rooms, omake is a specific type of joke, one that serves to entertain and promote a feeling of solidarity among members. When the topic of conversation becomes too serious, the members use omake to change the subject to a lighter topic. A speech event that members of the HoP use mainly on the message board is role-play. Role-play requires that the member create an original character for use in a certain section of the forum and then write about that character's interaction with the characters of other members. Like omake, fictional characters are central to roleplay and is used mainly for entertainment and promoting solidarity; however, a successful role-play is not necessarily humorous, although it can be. Both are used almost exclusively online through written communication.
The HoP community shares a set of language conventions and speech events among themselves that helps identify them as a speech community. Although face to face communication among members is rare, the online nature of the community allows the members to maintain regular contact with each other, and may have allowed the community to form a strong set of speech conventions even though it has only existed since the beginning of 2004. With the advent of the internet, members of speech communities no longer need to have regular face to face contact, and HoP is evidence of this.
And I will follow this with another meaningless anthropost next time.
Over and out.
Can an online forum qualify as it's own speech community? Is face to face interaction among members a prerequisite for a speech community? Hearts of Paradise (HoP) is an internet-based forum whose members gathered together through shared interests. While few of the members have face to face interaction, they engage in regular online exchanges, both on the message board and through AOL Instant Messenger chat rooms (AIM chats). In the short time that the forum has been running, the group has formed many of the traits inherent in a speech community, including its own special speech events, mutual intelligibility, and regular social contact among its members. Although it is still in formation, HoP is an example of an online speech community.
The ten regular members of HoP range in age from 15 to 21 years in age, with the majority of them either in their senior year of high school or their first year of college. With the exception of one person, all of the regular members are female, and all of them live in the United States or Canada. While there are a few members who know each other in person, most of themThe common interests for members of the forum are the video game Kingdom Hearts, writing, and role-playing. English is the first language of all the members, and all of the members share mutual intelligibility and are able to use their language to communicate meaningfully within their group.
Like the community of Teamsterville, which we read about in Philipsen, the members of HoP have specific places for speaking. The message board is for topics that directly relate to the common interests of the participants and role-playing while the AIM chats are more free form and cover a wide variety of topics ranging from real life issues such as school or work, to discussion about entertainment, literature, or message board gossip. AIM chats are also more exclusive than the message board because an invitation is required for anyone to join a particular chat. Unlike Teamsterville, where status is based on concepts such as gender and nationality, HoP members determine whether someone should be invited to a chat based on the behavior history on the message board and their outside connections with others in the group, although the members try to be as inclusive as possible.
To be included in the chats, one must follow the communicative conventions shared by the members of the community. Since all of the regular members are writers, proper spelling and grammar are the unspoken law on the message board, although colloquialisms and slang are acceptable. The conventions for AIM chats are less strict, allowing the participants to talk in fragments, use only lower case letters, and make more frequent typos. Typos, however, are usually corrected in a chat room by using the asterisk followed by what the speaker really meant to say. The use of Netspeak, that is, slang on the internet used to make talking on-line faster, is restricted to cases where a member is temporarily leaving the chat to take care of outside matters, when a member returns from a chat after temporarily leaving it, or to express amusement. "Brb" (be right back), "afk" (away from keyboard), "hb" (hurry back), and "wb" (welcome back) apply to the first two situations while "lol" (laugh out loud) and "rofl" (rolling on the floor laughing) apply to the last situation. Other uses of Netspeak, such as "ppl" for "people", and "u" for "you" are not acceptable in either the message board or the chats. While most use of Netspeak is discouraged, HoP members use other language conventions to speed up the use of language such as sandwiching the online ‘actions' of the speaker between asterisks, using emoticons, or faces made out of letters to express emotions, and pointing to oneself using arrows to give more information. The following excerpt from an HoP chat illustrates some of these conventions (4 February 2004):
Akai: *pets her Hoj plushie*
Squeak: teehee
Squeak: O.ox
Akai: *hojo, rather
In the first line, Akai uses the asterisks to denote action, which occurs frequently among all members of the chatroom. In the last line, the asterisk serve as a means to insert a correction. Each of the linguistic conventions helps to keep the fast-paced exchanges of the AIM chats coherent while allowing the participants to emulate face to face interactions.
These linguistic conventions allow the HoP members to use a speech event called "omake" for the entertainment of others in the speech community. "Omake," meaning "extra" interjects humorous content into the conversation by twisting the current subject of the conversation, which is usually accomplished through applying the subject to fictional characters that all the members of the chat are expected to be familiar with. According to Akai, who is the group expert, omake requires that one "takes a character and screws them up as much as one can." The fictional characters are the core of the omake, while relevance to the current topic of conversation is the unspoken trait required for an omake to succeed. The following excerpt from a chat on February 4, 2004, is an example of a successful omake:
Akai: I had a guy call in at work who sounded like Seymour!
Akai: it was so weird.
Squeak: O.Ox that must have been freaky.
Megumi: whoa
AkaiKitsunedono: it was...
Squeak: *kicks seymour* i hated him the moment i saw him.
Akai: you know how weird it is to order a pizza for a psychotic Guado??
Squeak: hahahaha
Squeak: i really need to beat that game...
AkaiKitsunedono: Seymour: I want extra cheese, and Spira on the side. *evil smile*
In the chat rooms, omake is a specific type of joke, one that serves to entertain and promote a feeling of solidarity among members. When the topic of conversation becomes too serious, the members use omake to change the subject to a lighter topic. A speech event that members of the HoP use mainly on the message board is role-play. Role-play requires that the member create an original character for use in a certain section of the forum and then write about that character's interaction with the characters of other members. Like omake, fictional characters are central to roleplay and is used mainly for entertainment and promoting solidarity; however, a successful role-play is not necessarily humorous, although it can be. Both are used almost exclusively online through written communication.
The HoP community shares a set of language conventions and speech events among themselves that helps identify them as a speech community. Although face to face communication among members is rare, the online nature of the community allows the members to maintain regular contact with each other, and may have allowed the community to form a strong set of speech conventions even though it has only existed since the beginning of 2004. With the advent of the internet, members of speech communities no longer need to have regular face to face contact, and HoP is evidence of this.
And I will follow this with another meaningless anthropost next time.
Over and out.
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no subject
Date: 2004-02-07 08:03 am (UTC)That paper rocks, Dagas. I wonder what your TA will think?
Tee-hee...omake in a paper for school. Who ever would have thought?
no subject
Date: 2004-02-07 08:04 am (UTC)Gundam Wing as evidence that eternal peace was impossible.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-07 09:02 am (UTC)Awesome paper, though. That's definitely a keeper. You should get a great mark, if the teacher has any brains.
*quietly saves her omake definition* I can't believe I actually wrote that...