The Use of Politeness in Public Chat Room

Research Objective

The objective of this study is to know on how politeness elements appear in Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) specifically in public chat room.

Source of sample corpus

We have chosen one sample of public chat room known as ICQ Chat Rooms. We also selected one of the channels which are ‘asia’ (# asia). http://chat.icq.com/icqchat/chatroom.php?c_id=18

Literature Review

Instant Messaging (IM) enables participants to engage in multiple one on one conversation, chat rooms allow multiple users to converse with one another in groups (Herring, 2004). Chat rooms have dual origins: in Internet Relay Chat (IRC), begun in the late 1980s, and in multi-user dungeons (MUDs). Both of these allowed real time text-based online conversations among participants. Online chat rooms appear to be an activity in which many young adult Internet users take part as well. Toward the mid 1990s, many chat systems began to incorporate graphics and multimedia elements into what had previously been text-only communication environments. According to the estimate of one recent study (Madden & Rainie, 2003), about 29 million people used chat rooms online in 2002 and about 5 million of them participated in a chat room on a typical day. The same study also indicated that, in general, chat room participation appears to be less popular than IM. Consistent with IM use, the study also found that teens and young adults create most of the traffic to chat rooms and online discussions.

According to one of the articles ‘Politeness and Online Communication’ by Michael Petitti from Marist College, he asked whether one’s dual needs for appreciation and freedom from imposition (according to Brown and Levinson) able to be sufficiently achieved during this age of overwhelming CMC? The answer may be surprising. He argued that through e-mails and in IM conversations, chat rooms and list serves one’s use of negative and positive politeness to mitigate face-threatening acts increases due to the lack of aforementioned physical and/or verbal cues.

Also interesting to consider is the extent to which the loss of a physical presence or voice during CMC levels the playing field for those typically shy or insecure, and how the negotiation of politeness and impoliteness during online interaction affects identity construction and the negotiation of face (Locher, 2010, p. 3). Will these individuals grow more confident during email, IM, chat room and list serve conversations, especially if with whom they are communicating is physically unknown to them? Will this shift in attitude thus create a greater urge to push for, and exchange, mitigation of positive and negative face-threats? (Petitti, 2010).

From the article by Lynn Westbrook entitled, “Chat reference communication patterns and implications: applying politeness theory” ”, she has conducted a research by examined the syntactic and content markers of formality levels employed by both the user and the librarian in reference chat sessions in an effort to understand the nature of the relationship over the course of the exchange. The finding shows that brevity was one of the most consistent patterns, employing chat conventions that emphasize interaction rapidity through the use of shortcuts such as abbreviations, contractions, emoticons, acronyms, and sentence fragments. Vocalizations were equally employed is a part of negative politeness.

Formal language choices indicate social distance, seriousness, and respect for the addressee (Westbrook, 2007). Librarians who can actively help resolve those concerns must go well beyond simply providing information. In order to do so, they must make effective use of politeness theory to build the relationship between the librarian and the users.

Nancy Schimelpfening (2008) stated that we have to respect each other and the hosts while chatting via chat room. Strong language, vulgarity and crude sex words are prohibited because might be inappropriate to other chatters. Nancy also mentioned that politeness is not only in language use but also the topic being discussed.

Analysis

Politeness means employed to show awareness of another person’s face. In this sense, politeness can be accomplished in situations of social distance or closeness. Showing awareness for another person’s face when the other is socially close is often described in terms of respect or deference. Showing the equivalent awareness when the other is socially close is often described in terms of friendliness, camaraderie, or solidarity. In everyday social interactions, people generally behave as if their expectations concerning their public self image, or their face wants, will be respected. (Yule, 1996, p.60)

Based on the corpus, it observes that the chatters are quite friendly and polite because they greet each other by saying ‘hi’ or ‘hello’ when they just log in to the chat room. They also thanks other by saying “thank you” and asked for apologise by saying “I’m sorry”. Also, they do not use harsh or curse words which might insult others. It examines that when one say “thank you”, another party will reply it with “very welcomes” those words are categorized as adjacency pairs. This shows that they apply positive politeness in their discussion via chat room. Most of the participants who participated in the conversation seem to use more positive politeness rather than negative politeness. Even though each of them comes from different part of the world and from different background, they seem to be connected and try to create solidarity among them.

From the conversation in the chat room, they tend to use formal language because they do not know each other and they are strangers to each other. The communication norm for strangers tends towards greater use of formality in order to establish a basic level of trust and rapport.

In this chat room, they were exchanging information on their country. All of the chatters were Asian so they are discussing about their culture. In terms of turn taking, it shows that the aspects of politeness are being used by some chatters. In the beginning part, the transition of the conversation was in relevance place. When the chatting goes on, some of them try to interfere and establish new topic by asking question.

Besides that, it also can be detected by the using of emoticons during the conversation. The use of emoticons such as; :)) (long smile) :) (smile) shows that they more likely to use positive face which means the need to be connected or to belong to a group. The use of emoticon helps to alert other chatters to the tenor or temper of a statement, and can change and improve interpretation of plain text.

Other than emoticons, the words that indicate positive meaning also have been included in the corpus, for example; ‘Thank you’,’ha ha ha’, ‘lol’, ‘wassup’ and others. By using these kinds of sign or words in the conversation, we can see that they were trying to find similarities among each other and try to build common or same interest. There is no face threatening act (FTA) and face saving act (FSA) in this discourse.

Conclusion

Based on the corpus that we have analyzed which is public chat room, it shows that politeness is being applied during conversation. They used adjacency pairs, formal language and emoticons because of one main factor which is they do not know each other. Generally, all people tend to be polite to strangers either in spoken or written discourse. It happens because they want to gain trust, respect and solidarity from others.

References:

Darics, E. (2010). Politeness in computer-mediated discourse of a virtual team.
Journal of Politeness Research. Language, Behaviour, Culture. Volume 6, Issue 1,
Pages 129–150.

King, J.N. (2010). Various Uses of Chat Rooms. Retrieved on February 8, 2011 from
http://ezinearticles.com/?Various-Uses-of-Chat-Rooms&id=5573450

Nancy. S. (2008). Chat Room and Forum Rules. Retrieved on February 8, 2011 from
http://depression.about.com/od/onlinesupport/a/chatforumrules.htm

Westbrook, L (2007). Chat reference communication patterns and implications: applying politeness theory. Retrieved on February 3, 2011 from
www.emeraldinsight.com/0022-0418.htm

Yule, G. (1996). Introduction to Pragmatics. Oxford University Press: Oxford.