Features of electronic synchronous communication: A comparative analysis of online chat, spoken and written texts

Scope and method of study. In recent years, computer mediated communication, particularly Internet chat, has become a common mode of interaction. However, the language produced by online chatters has remained relatively unstudied. The objective of the present research was to investigate linguistic features of online chatting using comparative analysis. Language data were gathered from three politically oriented communication venues, a television talk show providing spoken data, newspaper editorials providing written data and a popular online discussion group providing the chat data. After transcriptions were made, chat was compared to spoken and written language by noting the frequency of a number of grammatical (functional) features. Additionally, the manner in which chatters, conversationalists and writers interact was compared by examining the number of both direct and indirect insults. The data were then analysed and discussed.;Findings and conclusions. When the frequencies of all categories were examined, it was found that chat data exhibited variable tendencies, sometimes mimicking spoken language, sometimes mimicking written language, sometimes falling somewhere between the two, and sometimes exhibiting features distinct from both spoken and written language. The following broad conclusions can be made regarding chat: (1) Chat language is produced in a cognitively more demanding environment than written language, but the processing demands are reduced when compared with spoken language production. (2) Chat language contains a number of features that illustrate the confrontational nature of chat (in political discussion), and although the texts in spoken and written environments showed evidence of confrontation, chat data showed more of these features. (3) Chat language is affected by the medium necessary to produce chat language (i.e., the computer and the software). For example, turns are limited in length and, moreover, can be constructed simultaneously by as many chatters that are logged on to a particular channel. (4) Chat language is affected by the volume of traffic that is online; the number of chatters logged on at any one time affects turn length, addressivity, syntactic integration and clarity of input, which is essential for successful communication.