| Computer-mediated communication (CMC) has been of great interest in recent years due to the unique "testing ground" it offers to language and gender researchers. This thesis examines the broader issues of CMC on the narrower scale of chat within a sociolinguistic perspective, paying particular attention to gender. Previously observed gender issues found in real life (RL) interactions are reviewed as well as those found in other forms of CMC (e.g., listservs) to determine if they are found in chat, and to what degree. The focus of this investigation is one channel in particular, one that is typical of the social meeting places that abound in Internet Relay Chat (IRC). The examined variables are participation, emoticons, emotext, and actions. In addition to traditional gender theories, newer approaches to the study of gender and language, such as the notion of "gender as performance" and the concept of the "community of practice," are also applied to the findings obtained from the chat medium. |
