we can haz blog?

On the continued quest to come up with a topic for my senior comp, I have switched topics completely and am now focusing on spoken language differences in gender. Understanding differences in our everyday communication with others is a relatively new field of study that continues to gain a lot of focus. When searching for articles, I found a meta-analysis of research done looking specifically at how talkative a person was, assertiveness, and affiliation. The researchers predicted that men would be both more talkative to women and assertive where as women would make more affiliative speech when communicating. The previous studies that the researchers looked at where based off of 1.) studies testing gender effect's on adult's language behavior 2.) only studies using quantitative observational measures and 3.) studies in research journals or books. In attempting to explain potential gender differences, Leaper and Ayres focused on three explanations for gender differences. The first is socialization which accounts for the stress on children to participate in gender-typed activities and groups. The second is social constructionist which considers social power and status given to men. The last is biological which says that women and men differ in brain organization. The results of looking at the research done on these areas of communication showed that men actually talk more than women, particularily in mixed-gender interactions agreeing with the social constructionist model that men tend to dominate and overpower women. Men were also more assertive especially in same-sex interactions proving the socialization model that men compete for dominance with other men. Lastly, women had more affiliative speech in same-sex groups also following the socialization model.

I like the way the Crystal started off this chapter "Why do they do what they do?" because it is the first time that we see the answer technology is all about. When previously we have talked about how this technological world has controlled our lives, we now see a simple answer as to why we do it, simply put, it is fun! This idea allowed Crystal to bring up the idea of playing with language which goes beyong speed and efficiency to creating difference and distinction between language. It is not as if playing with language is a new thing, as Crystal's example shows, the Gadsby novel written by Ernest Wright in 1939 left out the letter e throughout the entire book. This shows that texting is just another form of language playing and that it continues to be competitive because players are continually 'upping the ante.' The only difference is we get to be a part of this language game and each individual can create their own rules to follow.

I really enjoyed the part of the chapter on text-poet Norman Silver. First off I thought it was interesting to even hear the term text-poet because I have never heard of such a thing and I also really enjoyed his 'txt commandments.' #7. "u shall abbrevi8 & rite words like theyr sed" was one that I liked because there is such a stigma against abbreviations when really it is just new creative ways to write out (type out) words in unique ways that do not change our spoken language.

I was fascinated by the new world that Crystal opened up for me in Chapter 4 of Txting. Who knew that an entire genre existed just for works using SMS? I didn't that's for sure. A lot of the works he discussed in the chapter were from other countries, so I decided to do some yahooing and see what I could discover.

As I sit here in pajamas and sweatpants with un-brushed hair, hunched over my computer with an energy drink, I am able to appreciate the convenience that CMC and computers in general offer.

It has been a commonly used joke that you can surf the net or go shopping in your pajamas, or even underwear, etc, if that is your desire. The ability to use the internet for communication allows us to remain in the privacy of our own living spaces if we so choose, which I think is a valuable tool. Also, I can do it any time, day or night. I don't have to blog at a normal hour of the day; I could do it at 4 am if I wanted to.

The study done about computer-mediated communication in students who were enrolled in face-to-face courses was an interesting one. I thought it was a good area to study, because CMC is definitely not something just used for distance learning, though I do see a lot of those "Earn your degree online in just 6 months!!!" ads.

This seems like a study that will become outdated quickly, and I wonder if the data collected today, only 3 years later, would be much more swayed towards CMC as it has increased in integration.

Before you go to the main part of my blog entry, though, I think you should check out this wonderful illustration I found about CMC.

As you can see, CMC involves kindness, wise thoughts, comparisons, investigation, and everyone involved has a smile on their face. What could be better?!

A huge part of sarcasm in research is something called common ground. Common ground is the shared belief, ideals, and past situations shared by two or more persons that create a relationship between the people. This common ground helps irony be correctly interpreted. In the article "Does Irony Go Better with Friends," the researchers are focusing on common ground shared by, you guessed it people who have a "close, familiar, supportive, and liking relationship" or friends (144). In the study, participants were presented with a scenario between two people with either a friendship or a nonfriendship setting that finished off with a statement that was the focal point of the example. The participants were then asked questions such as "Is the speaker being ironic?" and "How certain are you that you correctly interpreted the speaker's intent?" (151). It was found that there was a positive correlation between the use of irony and certainty it would be understood. As the researchers expected, the ironic statements made to someone who was a friend was considered to be funnier and more appropriate than ironic comments made to someone who was not a friend.

In "Emotional Expression Online, Emoticons Punctuate Website Text Messages", I was not really surprised to find out that emoticons were placed in normal conversation breaks where punctuation, breathing or laughter would normally go. Since it would be a huge interruption to conversation to laugh in the middle of a sentence and emoticons represent an emotion such as laughter, it would be an obvious interruption to the flow of a statement to put an emoticon in the middle of a phrase. Was anyone else thinking the results should have turned out differently?

At the beginning of Provine et al. the punctuation effect is described which is used to help explain laughter in conversations as being "filled with laughter." The difference in speech then as they suggest, is that laughter is not randomly distributed. In this way, when having conversations through CMC, emoticons occur where punctuation would normally occur. This study observed emoticon usage in three different placements including alone, before or after a statement, or during a phrase. After analyzing emoticon usage on certain message boards, the most frequent use of these emotions was at phrase breaks.

The question that I was wondering is why are these emoticons used and why is the placement so important? This article addresses these questions in an interesting way by referencing laugh tracks in television shows. Laugh tracks are added in shows most often after sentences or during phrase breaks. This idea is related to the emoticon placement in computer mediated communications. The use of these emoticons is to let the audience or other party know that the comment is supposed to elicit humor or an emotional feeling. However in face to face conversations do we use these somewhat awkward emotional responses as much as it seems we do in CMC?

These symbols as Derks et al suggests do not tell us what a person actually emotionally experiences but rather the motive behind the comment that is being made.

Why is there such an urge for people to share emotions and since we do not know how the opposite party reacts, are these emotions actually just reassuring the sender of their own emotion? Do you think that people who use emoticons for an emotion such as laughter are actually received as funny people in person as well or are they more often trying to be funny.

The Provine et. al article about :) ;) :( emotional expression was very interesting. :) The study itself was pretty standard, :-/ but they got extremely :-D robust results. (which were semi-expected?) But what I really :-))) enjoyed about it were the parts :-P which didn't really deal with the experiment itself :-O.

Alright, looking back at that, I want to kick myself in the face. Ugh... that's so awkward and terrible. I definitely understand the whole punctuation thing...especially because I read this in my head as me speaking it and all the emoticons just keep interrupting the flow of what's happening. I guess I could see an occasional smiley after a phase break at mid-statement such as with a comma, but other than that... Ew... that was rough.

The article brought up a lot of different applications and examples which I thought were valuable, such as the use of canned laughter on TV shows to indicate to people when they should be laughing or when something is funny.

The idea of higher-order versus lower-level processes was also cool. Even though deaf individuals were not limited in their actual vocal tracts to limit them from laughing, they still placed their emotional content as punctuation, rather than something in the middle of statements.