Instant Messenger conversations in Spanish
Yolanda Pangtay-Chang
More and more people around the world communicate with others through the use of Internet (Crystal, 2001). Messages on Instant Messenger are written and sent to everybody participating in the communication. When we read and reply to those messages it seems we are having a conversation. Do these messages have written or oral characteristics? Writing and speech, each have different conventions. Writing conventions have to do with punctuation, capitalization, grammar, spelling, and organization of ideas. On the other hand, oral characteristics such as tone, intonation, silence, interjections, pauses, laughter, gestures, and facial expressions contribute to the interpretation of what is said.
The following Instant Messenger conversation shows punctuation marks, capitalization of some words, good spelling, and the use of standard Mexican grammar. We can also notice interjections, pauses, short answers, in other words an attempt is made to convey oral conversational features.
(1) A: ¿Qué tal tu día?
‘How’s your day?’
B: cansadón
‘tiring’
B: y el tuyo?
‘yours?’
A: Huy
‘oh’
B: mmmmh
‘mmmmm’
A: y eso que significa . . . bueno o malo?
‘what does that mean. . . good or bad?’
B: Bueno
‘Good’
With some exceptions (see Johnson 2007), there are almost no studies on the characteristic features of Instant Messenger speech, particularly in languages such as Spanish. The present paper will examine these features based on a corpus of MSN Instant Messenger.
The study focused on the use of connectors such as porque ‘because’, es por eso ‘therefore’, así ‘so’, y ‘and’, etc., as well as other discourse markers such as punctuation, entonation, gestures and/or representations of expressions such as laughter. Discourse markers help senders and receivers of a conversation to perceive the meaning or intention of the communication.
Twenty-five subjects participated in the research, all of them part of the researcher’s contact list on MSN messenger. All the participants are speakers of L1 Spanish, which they use to communicate with the researcher and with their family and friends in their own contact list.
Their ages range from 20 to 66 years old. The objective of this study was to observe grammatical and pragmatic phenomena and forms and functions of the language in the conversations. The researcher kept her MSN open, in order to be either contacted or to contact subjects. 273 conversations were analyzed, looking for: opening and closing, adjacent pairs, turn-taking, change of topics, use of irony or sarcasm, among other features in a conversation.
Results show how participants in an IM conversation follow oral strategies to understand their messages. The time of replication is done in seconds from one message to another. Certain words and expressions in the acts of speech seem to function as replacement of intonation and even facial expressions. In addition, whenever a message was not understood, users would ask for clarification or repair the misunderstanding..
Yolanda Pangtay-Chang
More and more people around the world communicate with others through the use of Internet (Crystal, 2001). Messages on Instant Messenger are written and sent to everybody participating in the communication. When we read and reply to those messages it seems we are having a conversation. Do these messages have written or oral characteristics? Writing and speech, each have different conventions. Writing conventions have to do with punctuation, capitalization, grammar, spelling, and organization of ideas. On the other hand, oral characteristics such as tone, intonation, silence, interjections, pauses, laughter, gestures, and facial expressions contribute to the interpretation of what is said.
The following Instant Messenger conversation shows punctuation marks, capitalization of some words, good spelling, and the use of standard Mexican grammar. We can also notice interjections, pauses, short answers, in other words an attempt is made to convey oral conversational features.
(1) A: ¿Qué tal tu día?
‘How’s your day?’
B: cansadón
‘tiring’
B: y el tuyo?
‘yours?’
A: Huy
‘oh’
B: mmmmh
‘mmmmm’
A: y eso que significa . . . bueno o malo?
‘what does that mean. . . good or bad?’
B: Bueno
‘Good’
With some exceptions (see Johnson 2007), there are almost no studies on the characteristic features of Instant Messenger speech, particularly in languages such as Spanish. The present paper will examine these features based on a corpus of MSN Instant Messenger.
The study focused on the use of connectors such as porque ‘because’, es por eso ‘therefore’, así ‘so’, y ‘and’, etc., as well as other discourse markers such as punctuation, entonation, gestures and/or representations of expressions such as laughter. Discourse markers help senders and receivers of a conversation to perceive the meaning or intention of the communication.
Twenty-five subjects participated in the research, all of them part of the researcher’s contact list on MSN messenger. All the participants are speakers of L1 Spanish, which they use to communicate with the researcher and with their family and friends in their own contact list.
Their ages range from 20 to 66 years old. The objective of this study was to observe grammatical and pragmatic phenomena and forms and functions of the language in the conversations. The researcher kept her MSN open, in order to be either contacted or to contact subjects. 273 conversations were analyzed, looking for: opening and closing, adjacent pairs, turn-taking, change of topics, use of irony or sarcasm, among other features in a conversation.
Results show how participants in an IM conversation follow oral strategies to understand their messages. The time of replication is done in seconds from one message to another. Certain words and expressions in the acts of speech seem to function as replacement of intonation and even facial expressions. In addition, whenever a message was not understood, users would ask for clarification or repair the misunderstanding..
