Conversation Analysis Of Netspeak In Internet Chatrooms

With the rapid development of the Internet in the modern society, more and more people communicate on the Internet. A new language variety, which is defined as Netspeak, came into being. Netspeak belongs to sociolinguistics. It is a novel, peculiar and special language form. Its occurrence has provided a new field for research in linguistics and attracted many linguists and scholars'attention. This thesis discusses Netspeak in Internet chatrooms on the basis of three aspects of Conversation Analysis (i.e. turn-taking, adjacency pairs and preference organization). People (esp. netizens) mostly communicate with Netspeak in a virtual world (Internet chatroom), therefore, the conversational structures are very complex, and quite different from the ones in face-to-face communications.The data is collected from several chatrooms of ICQ (http://web.icq.com/icqchat). The transcript is an exact copy of the conversation that takes place within the chatroom that I study. It includes all spelling, grammar, and factual errors that are present in the original conversation. Having entered a chatroom, the author just remained silent (lurking) and tracked the conversations between two or more chatters and then analyzed parts of their conversations.The thesis first offers a general view of the Internet and Netspeak, introduces the development and influence of the Internet, and states the definitions of the Internet, Netspeak and chatroom respectively. Meanwhile, the author also discusses the external and internal causes for the occurrence of Netspeak, including social background, cultural factor, technological foundation and psychological factor.This thesis bases on the previous studies about Netspeak from different perspectives of linguistics by other linguists and scholars. It makes application of research findings in CA (such as turn-taking, adjacency pairs and preference organization) to the study of Netspeak in Internet chatrooms so as to understand it better.The study reveals that there is a common phenomenon in Internet chatrooms—intertwining streams of conversation. The topic of each stream of conversation is different. The chatters often take part in different streams of conversation at the same time and the chatting partners change frequently. Furthermore, the turn-taking system of online conversations is quite complex, having its special patterns and rules. Turn-taking is organized by means of adjacency pairs. And online conversations also include adjacency pairs. Because of the certain external circumstance, adjacency pairs in Internet chatrooms have their special features, that is, either"adjacent"or"disadjacent".At last, the author points out some problems of Netspeak and proposes a few suggestions about the standardization of Netspeak. Besides, the survey that the author conducts on Netspeak covers only a limited number of studies, so it is impossible for the author to study the subject in an exhaustive manner. Therefore, more detailed research has to be left for future studies.