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LDS DA Session 7: Activities on Computer-mediated Discourse Analysis (CMDA) and (briefly) Multimodal discourse analysis
Part 1: Computer-mediated Discourse Analysis (CMDA) Please prepare for the session by analysing these two computer-mediated discourse types, as outlined below: a) a sample of text messages on your mobile phone: Choose 8 messages: 4 sent by you, and 4 received by you (preferably from the opposite sex to you, but dont worry if not possible) b) a blog site: http://www.dinneralovestory.com/on-the-plus-side-of-winter/. 1. For each type of discourse, a) and b), comment on the social and cultural context, based on the data: Setting o Is time and place of communication shared by participants? o Is the communication public or private? Communicative purpose of the data o What is the general communicative purpose (e.g. to narrate/report, to describe/inform, to persuade, to entertain, to reveal self, to keep in touch)? What types of topic are covered? Intended audience? o Single, multiple? o Self, other? What is the relationships between participants? o relative status or power? o personal relationship, e.g. friends, colleagues, strangers? o degree of interaction? (e.g. high, medium, low) o shared background knowledge, values and understandings? What are the expectations, conventions and requirements of the genre? Does the text relate in any way to other texts and genres? In what way(s)?

2. For each type of data, comment on the use of linguistic features that reflect the contextual characteristics you identified above: Examples of linguistic features you could explore Interactive features such as conversational turn-taking, direct questions, minimal responses, first and second person pronouns, direct address forms (vocatives) Personal stance features such as pronoun + mental verb (e.g. I guess, I think/feel), adverbs (surely, of course, actually) Reference to time and place of communication (e.g. here, there, today, last week, tomorrow) Informational features such as nouns Narrative features such as past tense verbs

Evidence of real-time production (e.g. incomplete utterances, repairs, ellipsis, hedges such as sort of, kind of) Careful production and revision (e.g. complex noun phrases, complete sentences)

! See further, below, for an optional extension of this exercise. 3. Based on the above analysis, and your general understanding of text messaging, do you think it represents a new type of discourse? Why (not)?

Optional extension of Question 2: For the text messages, choose three categories for quantitative analysis from the following: i) ii) iii) iv) v) vi) vii) words per message number of messages containing a salutation (greeting) number of messages containing a farewell? typos and instances of non-standard English per 1000 words? first person pronouns per 1000 words? second person pronouns per 1000 words? lexical density, i.e. lexical words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) divided by number of words in message x 100

Examples: ii) messages containing a salutation: 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0 = 3 out of 8 messages vi) second person pronoun: 0, 3, 2, 1, 0, 0, 1, 2 = 9 instances in 120 words = 75 instances per 1000 words You could check Biber & Conrad (2009: chapter 7, on Blackboard) for comparison. For 2nd person pronouns, they estimate (2009: 183, 196): text messages: 62 per 1000 words email: 32 per 1000 words conversation: 31 per 1000 words academic writing:0.5 per 1000 words

Are there any gender differences for any of the above features? Are other variables (e.g. age, proximity) important than gender in shaping the message? Part 2: Multimodal Analysis Task: For the blog site you reviewed earlier, go to the page First time here?, http://www.dinneralovestory.com/first-time-here/, and comment on the images: Comment on the arrangement and representation of the objects in each image. In what ways does each image support the text of the website, in particular the social values of the owners of the site?