Computer mediated communication: changing the ways we talk to each other
In this blog Hilary Jaques, a subject associate at WJEC Eduqas, draws on her GCE English Language experience and the work she is doing for a Masters degree to discuss the effects technology is having on the ways we communicate with each other.
You’ve probably heard the well-used adage, ‘it’s not what you say, but how you say it’. This concept is recycled often, and statistical evidence is sometimes used to support it, usually citing the findings of work undertaken by psychology professor Albert Mehrabian. Mehrabian’s findings said that people tend to read only 7% of meaning from what people say, and that the rest of meaning comes from how it’s said (38%) and from paralinguistic features such as facial expressions (55%). This has been a reassuring back-stop for those people who may fail to prepare for public speaking but know that they look good in a power suit and give an enthusiastic fist pump. Sadly, these findings have been somewhat debunked, even by Mehrabian himself, who recognised that his findings could not be so straightforwardly applied – but it is a truism that prosody and paralinguistic features play a hugely significant role in the perception of meaning, and in how one person judges another when communicating. But how do extra-linguistic features and non-verbal cues manifest in computer-mediated-communication (CMC), where the keyboard is the only tool to hand?
CMC is an increasingly ubiquitous mode of communication. People connect via digital mediums more and more, whether through messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Messenger, or by taking part in polylogal (multi-participant) discourse in online forums, comment threads or microblogging sites such as Twitter; the list goes on. CMC nestles in between the written and oral modes of discourse, and retains characteristics of both. Its place on the continuum of formality and register (if such a thing exists) is unfixed and difficult to ascertain because there is such diversity in its purposes and its methods. However, as a result of developing technological provision such as 5G internet, unlimited text message allowances, the capabilities of mobile phones and other electronic devices, one of the potentials of CMC is as a method of synchronous social, informal communication that replicates informal spoken discourse. One that replaces spoken discourse, in some cases; where personal and intimate relationships are conducted by text or online chat, or professional discourse takes place via CMC technologies, or a text message is sent rather than walking all the way upstairs to speak to… just me? Okay. Now, personally and professionally, we’re expected to manage interpersonal relationships, convey subtleties of mood and tone and signal emotions from within the QWERTY confines of modern digital discourse.
However, digital interlocutors are a creative bunch, and since the origins of CMC (marked, perhaps by the first text message sent, ‘Merry Christmas’, on 3rd December 1992) there has been an imaginative and quickly-developing replication of non-verbal cues. These days, most keyboards do come with access to a library of emojis, memes and gifs, and emojis, of course, would seem to be the most likely contender for paralinguistic substitutes. Indeed, these have become an important linguistic unit used frequently to help speakers to disambiguate their messages by indicating the tone in which an utterance should be read or the meaning that is intended. If the validity of emojis was ever in question, the fact that an emoji (‘face with tears of joy’) was Oxford Dictionary’s 2015 word of the year should signal its clout in common vernacular. But the myriad of non-verbal cues is a far more diverse palette than emojis alone. Phonetic spelling, the creative use of punctuation, capitalisation, lexical surrogates (‘hmm’), and letter repetition are just some of the ways that communicators convey meaning that might previously have been indicated with a look, a tone of voice, a smile. Even the most banal of punctuation marks, the full stop, can have weighted meaning in CMC. A study conducted by Binghampton University in the USA found that the use of a full stop in one-word text messages made the message appear more abrupt and less sincere - a pattern that was not replicated when the one-word message with a full stop was handwritten in a note. The use of exclamation marks in emails also been a topic of some discussion, whereby the absence of exclamation marks can create a downbeat expression, and too many can be, well, ridiculous. How does one convey a positive tone without sacrificing professionalism? How do you exclaim without sounding hysterical? How can we practice appropriate diplomacy in CMC while navigating the choppy waters of appropriate punctuation?
The replication, or substitution, of paralinguistic features and prosody in CMC is a developing discipline. It’s one that is being determined by its users, and one that changes, as do so many aspects of digital technology, dizzyingly quickly. This may be to the horror of linguistic prescriptivists, who recognise only deterioration and decay in the manipulation and corruption of existing linguistic forms for digital use. However, the creativity and innovation evident in CMC indicates not just the linguistic prowess of the users, but also the dizzying speed at which they can adapt their language in order to contextualise meaning and communicate effectively. The imagination, innovation and invention of digital communicators is something at which to marvel, and with which we can simply try to keep up (!).