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Investigating Sentence Structure in ............ ميالديةميالديةميالديةميالدية 2012 ––––هجرية هجرية هجرية هجرية 1433لسنة لسنة لسنة لسنة ) ) ) ) 202 ((((العدد العدد العدد العدد ----االستاذاالستاذاالستاذاالستاذ

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Investigating Sentence Structure in Skype English Chat

Tahani Awad Jasim (MA)

Dept. of Arabic- College of Islamic Sciences

University of Baghdad

Email:[email protected]

Abstract

The prevalence of text-based computer-mediated communication (CMC) has enormous

impact on the growing amount of research into the distinctive features of the text-based CMC.

Recently, an urgent need arises to examine the linguistic features of this mode of

communication. The present paper investigates sentence structure, viz, sentence length and

sentence complexity, of 20 authentic Skype English chats. These sentential features have been

examined and quantified to determine the structural characteristics of Skype chat. It has been

found that short and simple sentences are the most frequent sentence types in this electronic

register. The higher frequency of short and simple sentences in the present corpus can be

attributed to chatters' tendency to save time and keystrokes, and thus speed up the

communication process. That is, considerations of linguistic economy may help to explain the

structural simplicity of this register. The linguistic economy of synchronous chats can result

from the temporal constraints of the medium, and this, in turn, can lend support to the speech-

like features of synchronous chat. Besides, Skype English chat is similar to other chat

systems, viz, Y! and IRC with reference to sentence structure. On the basis of these findings,

a number of pedagogical implications and future projects are suggested.

"سكايب"تقّصي ٌبنية الجملة االنكليزية في وسيلة التواصل االجتماعي

المدرس المساعد تهاني عواد جاسم

كلية العلوم االسالمية-قسم اللغة العربية جامعة بغداد

الخالصة

ئص اللغويـة الٌمميـزة أدى االنتشار الواسع للتواصل االكتابي بواسطة الحاسوب الـى زيـادة ُمطـردة فـي حجـم البحـوث والدراسـات للخصـايتقّصى البحث الحالي .لهذا النوع من وسائل التواصل االلكتروني و ظهرت توجهات حديثة لدراسة هذا الضرب االلكتروني وخصائصه اللغوية

عشـرين نصـا حقيقيــا بٌنيـة الجملـة االنكليزيـة وبالتحديـد طـول وتركيبـة الجملـة االنكليزيـة فـي وسـيلة التواصـل االجتمـاعي سـكايب ٌمعتمـداً علـى تم تحليل هذه الخصائص اللغوية وتبين أن هذا الضرب اللغوي االلكتروني يمتاز في ٌكثرة استعماله للجمل القصـيرة والبسـيطة مقارنـة .للتحليل

ل عمليــة مــع انــواع الجمــل االخــرى وان اســتعمال مثــل هكــذا ُجمــل ٌيســهم فــي تــوفير الجهــد والوقــت علــى عــاتق الٌمســتخدم وٌيســهم فــي تســهيوان اعتبارات االقتصاد اللغوي قد تساعد في تفسير البساطة البنيويـة لهـذا الضـرب اللغـوي ويمكـن ايعـاز االقتصـاد اللغـوي هـذا الـى .التواصل

وسـيلة ان بٌنيـة الجملـة فـي ,فضـالً عـن ذلـك.طبيعة القيود الزمنية المفروضة على هذا الضرب اللغوي وهذه الصفة تشابه الكالم الى حـداً كبيـروفـي ضـوء هـذه النتـائج تـم .)الياهو واي ار سي( التواصل االجتماعي سكايب ُتشابه تلك الموجودة في وسائل التواصل االجتماعي االخرى

.اقتراح عدداً من المضامين والتوصيات التعليمية باالضافة الى بحوث مستقبلية


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1. Introduction:

Rapid advancements in the communication technology during the last two

decades have had a demonstrable influence on language. The spreading of

electronic revolution, along with chat groups, e-mails, discussion groups, virtual

worlds, etc. which give in turn, definition of a new domain of language study

called variously computer-mediated communication, electronic discourse ,

netspeak , internet linguistics, etc. Computer-mediated discourse (henceforth,

CMD) is the communication produced when human beings interact with one

another by transmitting messages via networked computers. The study of

computer-mediated discourse is a specialization within the broader

interdisciplinary study of computer-mediated communication (henceforth

CMC), distinguished by its focus on language and language use in computer

networked environments, and by its use of methods of discourse analysis to

address that focus (Herring, 2001:613).

Most CMC currently in use is text-based, that is, messages are typed on a

computer keyboard and read as text on a computer screen, typically by a person

or persons at a different location from the message sender. Text-based CMC

takes a variety of forms (e.g. e-mail, discussion groups, real-time chat, etc.)

whose linguistic properties vary depending on the kind of messaging system

used and the social and cultural context embedding particular instances of use.

Crystal (2003:426) states that dramatic evolution in CMC has left its impact

on all language levels including graphology, morphology, lexis, syntax,

semantics, and pragmatics. He suggests that CMD is a distinct language domain

with its own linguistic features, and when we examine the linguistic properties

of it, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that we have here is not simply a new

variety of English, but a whole new medium comparable to speech and writing

in its distinctiveness, and subsuming a great deal of linguistic variation. That is,


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there is a widely held view that CMD exists as a variety of language displaying

features that are unique to the internet arising out of its character as a medium

which is electronic, global, and interactive.

The 1990s era has been the rise of a wave of CMD research on this emergent

register that linguists and language scholars have began to take serious notice of

CMD, and to study its linguistic properties. Identifying the linguistic

characteristics of this mode of communication can have important consequences

for understanding the nature of computer-mediated language (cf. Werry, 1996;

Rumsien, 2004, amongst many). This argument has motivated the present

paper to examine this new electronic register to uncover some of its linguistic

features.

Thus the present paper attempts to investigate the sentence structure of a new

mode of English used in real-time internet chat (i.e., synchronous chat). More

specifically, it focuses on synchronous Skype chat with reference to its

sentential characteristics, namely, sentence length and sentence complexity. It is

intended to answer the following questions:

1. What are the sentential characteristics of synchronous Skype chat with

reference to its sentence length and sentence complexity?

2. What are the similarities and/or differences between synchronous Skype chat

and other synchronous chat systems, namely, Yahoo Messenger (henceforth, Y!)

and Internet Relay Chat (henceforth, IRC) with reference to sentence length and

sentence complexity?

3. What are the similarities and/or differences between the synchronous Skype

chat and speaking and writing modes?

To the best of researcher's knowledge, the present study is the first of its type

that investigates Skype English chat with reference to its sentence structure.


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2. Chat Communication: Theoretical Underpinnings

The internet is an electronic, global, and interactive medium, and each of

these properties has consequences for the kind of language found there. The

most fundamental influence arises out of the electronic character of the channel.

Despite the set of novel features of e-English chat, Crystal (2004:20) dismisses

the common view that online communication is illiterate and bad language. He

agrees that much of it is nonstandard, highly deviant from the usual rules of

language, tolerant of spelling errors, and full of new words. But he is fascinated

by its variety and innovation. He asserts that the phenomenon of netspeak is

going to change the way we think about language in a fundamental way because

it is a genuine new medium of language.

Electronic communications have affected language in three distinct ways.

First, they change the way language is used. Second, they have created a need

for a global tongue, and it has been demonstrated that English has filled that slot.

Third, they will influence the future of other languages which people will

continue to speak (ibid.:13).

When people interact via computers, their behaviour in front of keyboard and

screen very much resembles what they do when they are engaged in the

traditional task of writing. On the other hand, the nature of the interaction is in

many ways more similar of what they do when they are speaking- and terms

such as "conversation" and "chat" are used to characterize their variety. Crystal

argues that netchat is neither exactly like speech, nor like writing, it is an

entirely different medium. Its uniqueness is underlined when one considers its

properties which have no counterpart in either spoken or written language. He

outlines the main properties of netchat in comparison to speaking and writing as

follows:


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Netchat compared to speech Netchat compared to writing

Speech properties Netchat Writing properties Netchat

1- time- bound Yes; but in

different ways 1- space- bound

Yes; but with

restrictions

2- spontaneous Yes; but with

restrictions 2- contrived

No; but with

some

3- face- to- face No 3-visually

decontextualized Yes

4- loosely structured Yes 4-elaborately structured No

5- socially interactive Yes; but with

restrictions

5-factually

communicative variable

6- prosodically rich No 6- graphically rich No

Table 1: Netchat and speaking/writing modes (After Crystal, 2004:43-44 with some

modifications).

Generally speaking, there are two kinds of netchat- synchronous and

asynchronous chats. Crystal (2003: 426) states that chatgroups are ongoing

discussions on a particular topic in which computer users interested in the topic

can participate. There are two types, depending on whether the interaction takes

place in real time (synchronous) or in postponed time (asynchronous). In a

synchronous setting, a user enters a chat and joins an ongoing conversation in

real time, sending named contributions which are inserted into a permanently

scrolling screen along with the contributions from other participants. In an

asynchronous setting (e.g., news groups, mailing lists), the interactions are

stored in some format and made available to user upon demand; so they can

catch up with the discussion, or add to it, at any time. As far as the present paper

is concerned, the synchronous English chat will be considered.

Crystal remarks that there are some linguistic properties that are pertinent to

e-English chat, and these properties are of lexical, graphological, grammatical

and discoursal types (ibid.: 428). First, as far as the lexical properties of chat are


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concerned, a great deal of the linguistic distinctiveness lies in its lexicon. The

following word formation processes are commonly employed in English chat:

i- Compounding: For example, "mouse" in such forms as "mouseclick";

"mouseover"; "mousepad"; "web" in "webcam"; "webmail";

"webster"; "webmaster".

ii- Blending: "Bugzilla" (a bug- tracking agency); "cybercide" (the killing

of a person in a virtual world game).

iii- Creative forms: the replacement of a word element by a similar –

sounding item, as in "ecruiting" (for recruiting); "e-lance" (for free-

lance); "net – citizen"; "net – legend"; "net – police".

iv- Affixation: "hyper" as a prefix in "hyperfiction", "hyperlink",

"hypertext"; "hyperzine".

Second, distinctive graphology is an important feature of netchat. The range

extends from an enhanced system (compared to traditional writing) using a wide

variety of special fonts and style to a reduced system with hardly no typographic

contrastivity (i.e., not even such "basic" features as italics or bold), as in many

e-mail and chatgroup conversations. Crystal points out that netchat has violated

the rules of capitalization, spelling and punctuation. Concerning capitalization,

there is a tendency to use lowercase letters, thus the whole sentences can be

produced without capitals as in "i want to go to see joe ". Chats also use

nonstandard spellings to reflect pronunciation such as "yep"; "yap"; "yay";

"nop"; "noooo" for "yes" and "no" respectively. Besides, punctuation tends to be

meager in most situations, and completely absent in some chat exchanges.

Unusual combinations of punctuation marks can occur, such as using ellipsis

dots (…) or repeated hyphens (---) to express a pause.

Third, grammar is the least noticed feature of the language of most netchat.

Crystal states that if we begin to notice the grammatical structure of chat, one

can notice the economical style of expression which is reflected in short


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sentences and paragraphs, and a great deal of abbreviation, minor sentences, and

block language, etc. (ibid.: 432) .

Finally, netchat has some discoursal distinctiveness, such that we have the

option of participating in several conversations simultaneously unlike the

traditional speech. And new conventions of greeting and farewell have evolved

in chat interactions by using, for example, emoctions.

3. Chat Communication and Related Studies:

Much notice has been given by researchers all over the world to the field of

chat communication recently. Most up-to-date research on electronic chat has

restricted itself to the written communication channel. Research has so far been

centered on the following three aspects: 1) the analysis of typographical,

morphological, lexical, and syntactic features which are seen as defining

characteristics of this new register; 2) the description of elements related to

written and oral language features, and 3) the emphasis on the artificial and

virtual character of the chatters' social relationships. Chat communication is

consequently seen as a final product in the aforementioned three

approaches (Dorta, 2008: 111).

The present paper is going to review some related studies that are mainly

concerned with the first and second approaches of chat study. The findings of

such studies can be relevant and useful in one way or another in that those

findings can be compared and contrasted with these of the present study.

Crystal (2004) examines the language of synchronous IRC. He finds that

there are several signs of a marked trend towards succinctness in chat writing:

paragraph-like divisions are extremely rare; contributions tend to be single

sentences or sentence fragments; and word-length is reduced through the use of

abbreviations and initialisms. Moreover, spelling practice is also distinctive in


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that US spelling is more common than British, partly for historical reasons (i.e.,

the origins of the Internet), and partly for reasons of economy, most US

spellings being a character shorter than British ones (color vs colour, fetus vs

foetus, etc.). Spelling errors in chats would not be assumed to be an indication of

lack of education but purely a function of typing inaccuracy. And punctuation

tends to be minimalist in most situations, and completely absent in some chat

exchanges.

Al-Sa'di and Hamdan (2005) investigate the linguistic features of e-English,

relying on a large corpus of authentic IRC and Y! chat sessions. The study

concludes that economy is a salient attribute of e-English. Among the other

major linguistic features that are found in this study are: sentences are

characteristically short and simple, many words are distorted and truncated in

familiar and unfamiliar ways, abbreviations and acronyms are widespread, and

taboo words very likely to occur in most chat sessions.

Rumsien (2004) examines the lexical, syntactic, and morphological aspects

of IRC. He concludes that chat communication is unofficial and informal,

spontaneous and unconsidered, and full of abrupt phrases, self-correction,

bywords, ellipsis, inversion, various means of economy, etc. All these features

are typical of informal speech. The net language aims at simplification of the

traditional language code, but on the other hand, a language code is introduced

in order to prove that this specific code belongs to the net society.

Some studies have focused on the various strategies of linguistic economy

employed in electronic chat. For example, Murray (1990) identifies various

strategies of economical language use in synchronous CMC, such as ellipsis, in

particular, omission of pronouns and determiners, and clippings. Similarly,

Werry (1996) points out the frequent use of abbreviations, ellipsis, and

orthographic reduction (e.g., bb ppls for bye bye peoples) in IRC. He finds out


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that the temporal aspect of CMC is often linked to the concept of linguistic

economy.

4. Methodology:

This section details the selection and description of the study corpus. Then

the procedures of the study analysis are described, along with the criteria for

analyzing sentence structure in terms of sentence length and sentence

complexity. It is designed with an aim to achieve the aims of the

present paper.

4.1 Selection and Description of the Corpus

In order to get an eligible sample of corpus, the present paper has adopted

the following procedures. First, the corpus is based on a certain number of

authentic Skype English chats both private and public. It is believed that this is

necessary to ensure diversity of users and interests and to avoid emphasis on a

particular group of chatters with a limited set of topics. That is, the inclusion of

both types is justified as that the language of private chats may differ, to certain

extent, from that of public ones. Accordingly, the entire corpus comprises 20

authentic chats: 10 private and 10 public chats ranging in length from 4-8 pages

for each. The sample size is determined based on procedures followed by Biber

(1990). Biber has analyzed aspects of internal variation within texts, and

concluded that texts of from 2,000 to 5,000 words in the standard corpora are

reliably representative of linguistic categories for purposes of analysis (p. 285).

Accordingly, the study corpus exceeds the word counting suggested by Biber.

Second, the issue of language and gender is taken into consideration in the

selection of the present corpus. Thus, chat samples of both sexes are included.

Third, for ethical reasons, the chatters' identity of both private and


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public chats remains anonymous. Fourth, both private and public chats are

provided by net chatters voluntarily who have been assured that their chats will

be used for research purposes only.

Fifth, in getting the public chat sample, the researcher has used her own

Skype ID and to use a nickname to log into the public chat rooms, and she has

only logged in there without taking part in any discussion and ignored any

postings that she may receive from e-chatters while the recording of the session

is going on. This has been done to avoid incorporating the researcher's own

language into the present corpus.

4.2 Analysis of the Corpus

Sentence structure will be examined in terms of their length (i.e., the average

number of words in each sentence), and their syntactic complexity (i.e., simple,

compound, complex and compound - complex sentences).

Before classifying sentences as either long or short, the following question

arises: How many words should a given sentence have in order to be considered

long or short? This question has been answered differently by different scholars.

For example, Al-Sa'di and Hamdan (2005) in their study of the linguistic

features of Internet Y! and IRC chats, adopt the number eight for words as the

dividing boundary between short and long sentences. They do not present any

convincing evidence for their argument that on what basis they have decided the

length of sentences. On the other hand, Werry (1996) suggests that long

sentences have six words and more, while sentences with less than six words can

be considered short. He justifies his defining criterion of long and short

sentences on the basis of perceptual complexity. To support his claim, he cites

some psycholinguistic experiments on sentence processing arguing that those

sentences containing six or more words are conceptually complex and need

longer time to be processed than those sentences of less than six words. That is,


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on the basis of sentence processing, he attempts to establish his argument. Due

to its unquestionable argument of sentence length, the present paper is going to

adopt Werry's model of sentence length to analyze the present study corpus.

What determines sentence boundary in e-English? is another question raised

in classifying sentences into long or short. Following Al-Sa'di and Hamdan

(2005), a sentence in writing is any well-formed and meaningful string of words

which starts with an uppercase letter and ends with a full stop. Of course, a one-

word piece of language containing a gap-filler, a brief response to a statement or

question, or an interjection (like yes, well, really, aha, etc.) will be regarded as a

full sentence in this paper. Nonetheless, this compromising solution does not

come to grip with the task of determining sentence boundary in e-English. This

may be due to the absence of punctuation marks in much of chat or to the use of

improper punctuation and spelling. In most posts punctuation is missing, which

makes unit breaks difficult to recognize. Therefore, it is quite logical to employ

the most accepted linguistic norms and reasoning in trying to divide stretches of

words into sentences.

As to sentence complexity, following Quirk etal's (1985) taxonomy of

sentence complexity; English sentences can be divided into four main types,

namely, simple (containing one clause); compound (containing two conjoined

clauses); complex (containing at least one embedded clause with a main clause);

and compound - complex sentence type (containing two or more main clauses

with at least one embedded clause). The four sentence types mentioned above

will be examined in this paper.

It is noteworthy that spelling errors, grammatical errors, and missing

punctuation marks are not taken into consideration in the present corpus

analysis. As far as the statistical tool is concerned, the present corpus results will

be calculated in terms of their raw frequencies and percentages as will be shown

below.


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5. Results and Discussion:

This section is intended to present the study results with an aim to answer the

questions of the present paper set forth above. First, the statistical results are

presented, and then discussed in some detail.

5.1 Sentence Length

As to sentence length, the entire corpus of the study has (4660) sentences

distributed as follows: (3993) short sentences, and (667) long sentences. All in

all, short sentences exceed long sentences in the whole corpus, and their

percentages are (85.69%), and (14.31%) respectively. Table 1 and Figure 1

show the raw frequencies and percentages of short and long sentences in the

entire corpus.

Table 1: Raw frequencies & percentages of sentence length types

in the whole corpus.

Short Sentences Long Sentences Total

No. % No. %

3993

85.69%

667 14.31%

4660

100%


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0.00%

10.00%

20.00%

30.00%

40.00%

50.00%

60.00%

70.00%

80.00%

90.00%

Short Long

Figure 1: Distribution of sentence length types in the whole corpus.

A closer look at the Skype corpus of private chat indicates that the total

number of sentences is (2150) sentences, (1900) of which are short sentences,

and (250) are long ones. On the other hand, the corpus of public chat includes

2510 sentences, (2093) of which are short sentences, and (417) are long ones.

This can lead to the ultimate conclusion that short sentence type is the prevailing

sentence type in e-English for both private and public samples. The statistical

difference between the two types is almost significant. These statistical results

can accord with those of previous research. The same finding has been reported

in Al-Sa'di and Hamdan's (2005) study on Y! and IRC chat. They have found

that simple sentences are more prevalent in their corpus than longer ones. Such

results can lead to the inference that e-chatters resort to short and succinct

sentences to save time and effort. Table 2 and Figures 2 and 3 below summarize

the distribution of both sentence length types in private and public Skype chats.


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Table 2: Raw frequencies & percentages of sentence length types in the private and

public chat.

Chat Type Short Sentences Long Sentences

Total No. % No. %

Private 1900

88.37 %

250 11.63 % 2150

100%

Public 2093

83.39%

417 16.61 % 2510

100%

0.00%

10.00%

20.00%

30.00%

40.00%

50.00%

60.00%

70.00%

80.00%

90.00%

100.00%

Short Long

Figure 2: Distribution of sentence length types in the private chat.


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0.00%

10.00%

20.00%

30.00%

40.00%

50.00%

60.00%

70.00%

80.00%

90.00%

Short Long

Figure 3: Distribution of sentence length types in the public chat.

The followings are illustrative examples extracted from both private and

public chats of the present corpus:

1. I SAID NOOOO

2. Y’know, I think you’re wrong

3. think I ll sit this one out

4. yeah good question

5. We’re all democrats at heart?

6. I was living in a different universe

7. do stay a little longer nickshicks

5.2 Sentence Complexity

On the basis of Quirk etal's (1985) taxonomy of sentence complexity,

mentioned above, the total frequency of sentences is (4660) distributed as

follows: (4055) simple sentences, (302) compound sentences, (257) complex

sentences, and (46) compound-complex sentences. These statistical results

indicate that simple sentence type exceeds significantly other sentence types,

i.e., the percentages of simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex


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sentences are (87.01%), (6.48%), (5.51%), and (0.98%) respectively. It is

noteworthy that the compound-complex sentence type comes least in

comparison with other sentence types. Though compound sentences exceed

complex ones in the present corpus, one can notice that differences in the

frequencies and percentages of compound and complex sentences are

statistically insignificant. This finding lends support to Quirk etal's (1972: 795)

argument that in spoken English, which electronic English presumably has much

in common with, compound sentences enable better comprehensibility than do

complex ones, and therefore the former type outnumbers the latter. So, it can be

presupposed that simple sentences in e-English are the vast majority, whereas

the other types, which often require more effort and time in processing, typing

and reading, are naturally so meager. See Table 3 and Figure 4 below for the

total distribution of sentence complexity types.

Table 3: Raw frequencies & percentages of sentence complexity types

in the whole corpus.

Simple Compound Complex Compound-

Complex

Total No. % No. % No. % No. %

4055

87.01%

302

6.48%

257

5.51%

46

0.98%

4660

100%


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0.00%

10.00%

20.00%

30.00%

40.00%

50.00%

60.00%

70.00%

80.00%

90.00%

100.00%

simple compound complex compound-complex

Figure 4: Distribution of sentence complexity types in the whole corpus

A careful look at the distribution of sentence complexity types in private and

public corpus can indicate that simple sentences significantly exceed other

sentence types. It has been observed that there is no statistically significant

difference between compound and complex sentence types, and compound-

complex sentences are meager in both types of corpus. All in all, simple

sentences type stands out in comparison with other types in both corpus

samples. Table 4 and Figures 5 and 6 below display the distribution of sentence

complexity types in both the private and public corpus.

Table 4: Raw frequencies & percentages of sentence complexity types in the

private and public chat.

Chat

Type

Simple Compound Complex Compound-

Complex Total

No. % No. % No. % No. %

Private

1856

86.32%

150

6.97%

122

5.67%

22

1.02%

2150

100%

Public

2199

87.60%

152

6.05%

135

5.37%

24

0.95%

2510

100%


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0.00%

10.00%

20.00%

30.00%

40.00%

50.00%

60.00%

70.00%

80.00%

90.00%

100.00%

simple compound complex compound-

complex

Figure 5: Distribution of sentence complexity types in the private chat.

0.00%

10.00%

20.00%

30.00%

40.00%

50.00%

60.00%

70.00%

80.00%

90.00%

100.00%

simple compound complex compound-

complex

Figure 6: Distribution of sentence complexity types in the public chat.

The prevalence of simple sentence type in the present corpus has been

confirmed by previous research. Crystal (2004) has found that simple sentences

are so frequently employed by e-chatters to seek brevity in their use of e-English

of IRC. Similarly, Al-Sa'di and Hamdan (2005) have found the dominance of

simple sentence type in the IRC and Y! chats in comparison to other sentence

types. More precisely, compound and complex sentence types are less frequent,

and compound-complex sentences are the least in their corpus. Economy of

effort seems to be the motivating force behind using simple sentences in the


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present corpus. Murray (1990: 44) has observed that e-chatters using

synchronous CMD have a general tendency to economize on typing effort, and

mimic spoken language features.

The followings are some illustrative examples from the data:

1. wanna know why coz i got enuf

2. I look 4ward 2 hearing more on THIS

3. coz nobody wants 2 buy any?

4. thank u but the chat is crowded I dont know if anybody will read it

5. if i had remembered before i would have told u.

6. plz less text at once, nobody can read t in detail

7. u have already sent the link four times in2 chat, any essential changes?

5.3 Electronic Chat and Speaking/Writing Modes:

The present section is intended to examine whether synchronous chat can be

best situated as more speech-like or as more written-like. The higher frequency

of short and simple sentences in the present corpus can lead to the inference that

online chat may be logically perceived as a simulator of real life face-to-face

conversation. To justify this argument, Werry (1996: 57) argues that the

structure of unplanned speech reflects cognitive constraints on real-time

language encoding, for example in length of information units, lexical density,

and degree of syntactic complexity, so too the synchronous modes of CMC

impose temporal constraints on users that result in a reduction of linguistic

complexity, i.e., seeking linguistic simplicity. In same vein, Ko (1996:20)

asserts that the relatively low frequencies of certain complex linguistic features

can be due to temporal constraints that the different modes of CMC place upon

its users. Thus, it would be reasonable to expect most e-chatters resort to short,

simple and succinct sentences to save time and effort, and this, in turn, makes

synchronous e-chat resembles, to great extent, spoken English.

Crystal (2004: 41) asserts that electronic discourse taking place in real time is

more speech-like than this taking place in non-real time. In synchronous chats,

chatters are expected to produce information for others more rapidly. This

requirement may help to explain why e-chat shows evidence of temporal

pressure towards linguistic economy. Chatters are often in a hurry when they

type and send posts, and they may have learned from experience that a more


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readable post is the one that is clear, uses shorter sentences. Such posts are more

likely to be read and to receive a response in an environment in which many

posts compete for the addressee's attention. From this perspective, chatting

exchange can be seen as a cooperative process of facilitating information

transfer and processing. E-chatters, like language speakers, do their best not to

prolong their share of speaking, and instead seeking linguistic brevity.

6. Conclusions:

The universal application of computer technologies has led to the

development of a new electronic register known as electronic chat. E- English

chat is better viewed as a newly emerging register with its own characteristics

and uses. Many attempts are urgently needed to uncover the linguistic

characteristics of this register.

So far it has been found that short and simple sentences are the most

predominant types in the present corpus. These sentences types are employed by

e-chatters for brevity sake, i.e., to save time and effort on their own parts.

Besides, Skype English chat is similar to other chat systems, viz, Y! and IRC

with reference to sentence structure.

The chat communication is, in some of its features, very close to face to-face

interaction, and this is true especially for the briefness of the sentences.

Linguistic economy may help to explain its structural features, especially when

users are trying to type at a conversational speed, as in the case of real-time chat.

Structural simplicity, viz, short and simple sentences in the present corpus, can

save time and keystrokes and thus speed up the communication process. The

speech-like features of synchronous chat are typically claimed to result from the

temporal constraints of the medium.

The study results have practical implications for the use of text-based

synchronous computer-mediated communication in educational settings. The

finding that the interactive chat communication disfavors elaborated forms of

expression calls into question its suitableness for use in high-level academic

discussions. At the same time, the interactive nature of this mode may make it

well-suited for class discussion in which widespread participation is the desired

outcome. Future research can be suggested to examine other linguistic features

of this electronic register at all of its linguistic levels including orthography,

morphology, syntax, semantics, etc.


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