Sociolinguistics and CMC

i haven't kept track of those huge threads debating these ideologies back and forth, but i've been keeping track of some nice tidbits for a paper i'll be writing next semester. snippets and links from said tidbits below:

http://vampirefreaks.com/forum/
comment.php?entry=211142
I can't stand these people that do it on purpose though. Like the people that are all "wat r u up 2" or something like that. It's like "Come on, you go to school and write normal everyday, why can't you capitalize your words, write WHOLE words, and end with a punctuation...the appropriate puctuation!" I don't know why it bothers me so. It just does I guess.

http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/forum/
showthread.php?t=432391&page=1&pp=20
dude u seriously miht be the gayest kid ive ever met..honestly WHO GIVES A FLYING **** IF I USE A DAMN PERIOD? god forbid i have improper grammar! whatever dude ure not even worth my time...ad FYI i already do have a rifle so STFU u dont even kno me and i have a gf which u probably dont....the only reason u would is that so u can wear her pants...the world would be a much better place if u would just go die. thanku have a nice day. PERIOD.

http://www.byroncrawford.com/2004/08/
usher_thinks_he.html
Furthermore, this twat can't even use proper grammar. Not only are there the typical numerous errors and typos in it ("jelouse" for example) there's this elipsis mark obsession. Apparently this cock-breath can't even use a period, nor even know exactly what the elipsis marks are use for.

http://www.superhonda.com/forum/
showthread.php?t=290718
Use a damn period every once in a while. That way your post will be legible.

http://boards1.wizards.com/
showthread.php?t=703753&page=3
Anyhow, enough random rambling there. One last thing to the original poster...please please please try using puntuation and captial letters. Also try running your topics through a spell check before posting

http://forum.explosm.net/archive/
index.php/t-2158.html
Why don't you shut it, learn to use fucking commas, and let someone express their opinion without you insulting them. Douche.

http://www.tribalwar.com/forums/
archive/index.php/t-311781.html
also CHILL OUT WITH THE FUCKING ELLIPSES
 

Dood, are you stealing my paper? Am I stealing yours? Thx.
 

y0, i've been into ling ideologies since 2002. i'm the original.
 

this is actually similar to my qualifying paper which is looking at language attitudes about "CMC forms". I have lots of in-game data (online RPGs) where these kinds of statements come out. The context is a bit different because people are usually playing the game, which is kind of an "excuse" for using the CMC forms. But even with this excuse, there are still strong opinions by people about their use. I've got a couple sweet examples of "healers" (people's who's only responsibility is to keep the other people in the game alive) who let their teammates die because they're making a repair on a capitalization or on some other "error" that doesn't interfere with communicability of the utterance. So in these cases, avoiding CMC forms is more important than hassling your teammates with death.

There are many examples of arguments that degrade to analyses of online linguistic competence. People will argue about in-game topics and then as the argument gets heated, i frequently see people critiquing the use of CMC forms as entailing a lack of intelligence and credibility. so you get things like "dude. you can't even spell 'tailor' right. how are you supposed to know where it is" . It's also interesting to note that when these arguments occur in public, others will join in on the argument and position themselves on one side or the other: the pro CMC people and the anti CMC people. What's also interesting is that even within the anti-CMC group, CMC forms are still present. There seems to be a distinction between the two groups as to the "quantity" and the "quality" (Grice) of the CMC forms used.

my qualifying paper isn't working very closely with the in-game data, rather i'm pulling out some of these kinds of examples to illustrate that there people are making connections between the use of CMC forms and personality traits. the data for my QP primarily comes from a questionaire and interview that asks participants to rate the interlocutors on a likert scale in 2 IM convos. The interlocutors increasingly use more CMC forms. So interloc 1 only uses standard forms, while interloc 4 uses CMC forms at every place where they would apply. The likert scale is constructed similarly to Milroy+Milroy (1983 i think), where the scale was based on affective and intellectual continuua. So they had to rate the interlocs in terms of intelligence, schooling, diligence, personability, friendliness, etc. (raclaw participated in the pilot for this study).

The preliminary analysis of the likert results shows that the participants rated the interloc 2 and 3 most positively on both the affective and intellectual continuua. This means that the extreme interlocs (1 and 4) were rated more negatively. This result fits in nicely with some of the observational data from message board communities and in-game dialogue because in both of those contexts, use of some CMC forms seem to be acceptable even within the groups that align themselves with anti-CMC arguments.

I've posed this kind of question directly to members of a message board community, and i got some pretty interesting responses. unfortunately, the MB is down right now for some reason. I have the posts archived, but it would be easier to just post the link. I'll post it once the board is back up.
 

Josh! This paper sounds amazing. I've been wondering when someone was going to pull the likert scale questionnaire on some CMC examples. When you've got (a) draft(s), I'd love to see. (I think I also remember glancing at the pilot questionnaire, but maybe I was unhelpful and didn't ever give you comments on it...)
 

oh yeah, i did participate in the pilot of that study.

dude, that paper really does sound awesome. i'm really glad to hear it's your QP! if you want a proofreader for a draft, i'd definitely be interested as well - it seems like ideologies are pretty common ground here.
 

i'll take both of you up on that proofreading. i'm hoping to have a complete draft in the next month or so. i'm also working on an annotated bib for it, and i'll pass that along as well. that'll be done by monday.

so here's a nother question i've been mulling over... what's the difference between "language ideologies" and 'language attitudes". I refer in the paper to language attitudes, but yall both talk of language ideologies. we're talking about the same thing though. is there a difference?
 

as i understand them, language attitudes seems to point more towards stances people take towards languages or language use, while language ideologies focuses more on the shared ideas of a community about languages or language use - so short of those conceptual differences, the terms are pretty synonomous. i'm pretty sure they just differ by field and individual researcher to some degree.
 

There is some equivocation within socio/ling/anth as to what constitutes "language ideology" (uh, as with every term??). Because "ideology," in social theory, generally relates in some way to power dynamics and maintenance of power relations/subject positions, "language ideology" includes beliefs about//practices of language that a) enact relations between social groups, and/or b) rationalize linguistic structure and use. Not to get too theoretical here, but Kroskitry (2000, ch. 1 in Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities) lays out nicely a definition of lg. id. as a cluster concept with the following features:

"1) Language ideologies represent the perception of language and discourse that is constructed in the interest of a specific social or cultural group (8)
2) Language ideologies are profitably conceived as multiple because of the multiplicity of meaningful social divisions ... within social groups that have the potential to produce divergent perspectives expressed as indices of group membership (12)
3) Members may display varying degrees of awareness of local language ideologies (18)
4) Members' language ideologies mediate between social structures and forms of talk (21)"

Of these, I think 1 and 4 are the most commonly utilized. How these differ from what you are considering "language attitudes," I am not sure. It would seem that ideologies encompass attitudes but not necessarily the other way around? Then again most people who study lg. id. would say that you can't have an attitude WITHOUT ideology. So.
 

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