Computer-Mediated Communication
(CMC) is defined as
any communicative transaction that occurs through the use of two or more
networked computers. It is an interesting way of
communication as it has two forms to communicate; the first one is by
synchronous where the communication is happening in real time, meaning it is an
instantaneous communication, for instance real time chatting and video conference.
The second one is by asynchronous where the communication occurs in non-real
time, such as the communications that occur in E-mail and bulletin board.
Through the second task, we not
only learn the definition and the types of CMC, but we also discover how
technology has evolved the methods of communication that we have so many
varieties of it. We find that CMC is interesting in a way that it is
somewhat like a verbal communication that is in written form. In areas or
situations where written communication can be misinterpreted due to the
lack of tone, CMC enables the use of emoticons (emotion icons) to express
emotions. Other gestures of written expression can be in the use of
punctuation, the use of capital or bold letters to express anger or to
emphasize a point, and many others according to out own creativity as well. In
the world of CMC, we also discovered that we people tend to commit the
grammatical crime to signify an informal communication, such as
over exaggeration expressed through incorrect spelling of words,
for example, by extra vowels and consonants such as ‘Noo!’ and
‘hunnggryy’.
What most of the class chose to do
was to study and describe the linguistic analysis of the corpus they collected
from a chosen CMC, as what we have mentioned before. As for us, we chose to
perform intertextual analysis which is more interpretative rather
than descriptive on our corpus, which were a set of comments collected from a
video posted on YouTube.
Looking back at the task we
completed, though the major part was on the study
of linguistic aspect of CMC, we personally learned beyond the types
of CMC and how language is used in the technological world. The video
we analyzed on was an Islamic video, concise, logical, and rather precise in
our view. Of course, this is open for discussion as we have discovered through
the comments we analyzed. Since we focused on interpreting the comments, it was
interesting to be able to get a picture of how people of different areas of the
world think about one subject and how they link it to other issues and
rationalize their discussion. Some seemed intellectual, tried to reason their
points with evidence from the Holy Qur'an or the Bible, some were just plain
emotional and spoke without any logical basis. And then we can see from the use
of language of how some may have gotten their message misread by being
grammatically incorrect, which effects the semantics of their explanation. All
these are linked to one another. The words, the thoughts, and the issue at hand
all compliment one another to form a thread of arguments and discussion that is
still on-going to this day. This has opened our eyes to see that as long as the
video stays, the conversation will never end. Somewhere out there there will be
someone who will stumble upon the video and would either share it to others,
leave a comment and join the discussion, or just simply be one of the million
of viewers. Either ways, it is a never ending discussion.
In short, what we are trying to
reflect is that, we find that asynchronous CMC allows it to be continuous depending on
the situation. For example, if the creator of the video decides to take
down the video then that would be the end of the discussion in the comments
thread. But otherwise, it remains in the world wide web and could be on going,
depending on its' popularity. And the technology of CMC has enabled for
everyone and anyone to be able to give out their opinions as they wish.
Intellectual argument is no longer confined within the realm of a spoken
seminar or a formal debate. Now everyone is able to form a discussion, be it
formal or informal, intellectual or not, and have it spread to the entire world
to be read. Those who have the will to explore and learn will get the
privileges, as what we have discovered through our study of one YouTube video.
Prepared by Muhammad Norshafiq
