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<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm"><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm"><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Dear
Colleagues,</FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm"><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Below I present a brief
description of my research on Internet chat communication with the use of a
corpus. The research was a basis of my doctoral dissertation. </FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">I collected a corpus of Polish text-based Internet
chat conversations held between February 20, 2004 5:32 p.m., and March 27, 2006
10:54 p.m. The raw material needed editing, and so I removed all the expressions
by bots, all the software information, as well as time stamps at the beginning
of each line. I also edited the deformed letters with diacritic marks, which
occurred throughout the material. This resulted in a corpus of 1, 629, 823
running words. The average word length was 4.36 letters.</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">Then, I compared my corpus with a standardized
one. My corpus included a bigger number of shorter words than the standardized
one. I observed the highest frequencies for 2-3-letter words (compared to
6-letter words in the standardized corpus). Other statistics are as follows:</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">types:1,629,823</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">tokens:140,991</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">type/token:8.65</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">I also analyzed key words (those with unusually
high frequencies compared to standard). Those included:</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">a) forms without conventional meanings (ornaments
or emoticons)</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">b) forms spelled without diacritic marks (Polish
words)</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">c) users' nicknames</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">d) foreign words</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">e) short forms</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">f) onomatopoeic words</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">My research focused on three issues. First, I
analyzed spelling (esp. nonstandard spelling) of words and punctuation in the
chat room. Secondly, I studied, in detail,<FONT color=#000000><SPAN
lang=en-US><SPAN style="FONT-STYLE: normal"><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal">
the lexical elements utilized in speech acts in Internet-based chat rooms. The
research included words used in: greetings, farewells, thanks and apologies, as
well as vulgarisms. Moreover, foreign words and short forms were analyzed.
Furthermore, the nicknames of the users were studied. Thirdly, I also
investigated the potential hybrid of spoken and written communication in the
chat room, which resulted in my attempts to characterize the genre of Internet
chat with reference to the characteristics of speech and
writing.</SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">I made the following observations (in short).
First, <FONT color=#000000><SPAN lang=en-US><SPAN
style="FONT-STYLE: normal"><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal">nonstandard writing
is a purposeful action. Some of the utilized conventions are aimed at helping
the users to depict spoken communication by means of writing. There are also
word forms in which the users' hurry is visible (spelling without diacritic
marks, misspellings), since for the users it is more important to communicate
fast and expressively than to pay attention to proper spelling. The spelling
unconventionality is also a way of expressing one's group membership.
Furthermore, strong informality attempts may be observed in Internet chat
communication. These are manifested in, for example, shortening word forms,
language plays or interlarding with foreign words. Despite considerable level of
informality, relative politeness with little use of vulgarity may be found in
this type of communication. In addition to that, it was revealed that the
chatters include certain information about themselves in their nicks. The
information may include: the person's age, origin or the type of Internet
connection. It was also established that there is no hybrid of speech and
writing in chat room communication. I describe the Internet chat is a written
communication channel, which attempts to signal its informality. To my best
knowledge this research is the first empirical study of Polish Internet
chats.</SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm"><FONT size=2></FONT><FONT size=2></FONT><FONT
size=2></FONT><BR></P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm"><FONT color=#000000><SPAN lang=en-US><SPAN
style="FONT-STYLE: normal"><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal">Should anyone be
interested in the research, please do not hesitate to contact me directly via
email <A href="mailto:l_sz@poczta.fm">l_sz@poczta.fm</A>. My material and
dissertation are (unfortunately) only in Polish.</SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm"><FONT size=2><FONT size=3>Regards,</FONT>
</FONT><BR></P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm"><FONT color=#000000><SPAN lang=en-US><SPAN
style="FONT-STYLE: normal"><SPAN
style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal">Leszek</SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></FONT></P></DIV></BODY></HTML>
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