Page 118 - Cyberculture and New Media

Rita Zaltsman 109
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As to the groupwork I found it very hard to bring together
all group members and in the end I spend the entire sunday
to ‘organise’ the final paper ..... There once again I spent
more time than expected .....
· paraverbal methods (a descriptive presentation of an emotional
reaction in written discourse): <hehe>, <smile>, <grin>:
... are there any left??? hehe.

All of these types of e-writing are commonly used in online
communication to save time and space. They serve as substitute emotions (or
their textual description) because of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic deficits
of online communication and learning. It is significant that both cultural
groups have made an extensive use of non-animated/animated smileys or
emoticons expressing positive/negative emotions: energy/sadness,
optimism/depression, etc. In general, participants have no problems with
decoding computer graphics. Text compression, in their view, is even
obligatory as “the writing is taking up so much more time and care.” Notable
is the correlation between the number of language substitutes and the level of
emotional distance between communicants: the higher emotional contact
between participants, the greater the number of language substitutions.
The same is true in relation to the use of “multilanguages” -
Genglish, Spanglish, Chinglish, Swenglish or other “Englishes”:

Funnily, it is easiest for me to communicate with someone
who speaks both languages because we (my friends and
colleagues) usually speak a combination of the languages (2
words in Arabic and 2 in English per sentence)! even on
MSN or email!

Why do online students feel comfortable when speaking both
English and their native language? The given discourse contains the answer
to this question: the students seem to greatly enjoy an exciting experience of
belonging to the community of co-thinkers. For them, interacting online
means talking, they communicate as if it were speaking face to face: (“I’m
writing what I would say... Looking forward to ‘talking’ to you soon again!
...”). Hence, some misspelled words, wrong punctuation or the use of hybrid
forms - e.g.: “feber” (Genglish: German - “der Fieber”, English - “a fever”).
The latter shows that while writing in English, students might be thinking in
their native languages, which does not seem to have destructed
communication. The response: “I hope your fever is better already!” (a
respond to the posting where “feber” has been used) shows that the message
was unerroneously delivered. For them, it is evidently more important to