Week 7: Reflection on Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC)

On 19 March 2013, we learned about Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC). Back then, CMC was referred to the communications that occur via computer-mediated formats for example, instant messaging, e-mail, chatrooms and text messaging. Now, the scope is wider. It includes Skypes, Blogs and all form of Social Network Sites (SNS) like Facebook, Twitter and etc. Other researchers have used CMC to refer to a wider scope of communication activities that include e-mail, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), bulletin boards, and World Wide Web.

CMC can be divided into two categories which are synchronous and asynchronous. Synchronous is a real time, instantaneous communication. Synchronous mode of CMC allows the participants to communicate in the same session, thus allowing the rapid exchanges between them. The language used in this mode of CMC is more of spoken conversation. In SCMC, emoticons or smiley, emotes and cryptic language are used. The examples of SCMC are real time chatting nd video conferencing. Asynchronous CMC is a non-real time and non-instantaneous communication. This means that the message is read and responded by others at a later point in time. Thus the participants do not need to be on-line at the same time when the message is being conveyed. Examples of this form of CMC are e-mails, bulletin boards, blogs as well as SNS.

Then, the lecture goes on with the introduction to bulletin board, e-mails and World Wide Web. Some findings on synchronous CMC were presented. Synchronous communication focuses more on content and communicative skills than on form (Leahy (2001:20). This means that people do not really concern on the grammatical errors that are made during the communication because the mistakes do not necessarily point the lack of knowledge of the language. The mistakes can be caused by the nature of this communication which requires more speed, thus shorten the time for people to draft and edit their conversation. This is supported by Sullivan (1998, 52) who sees error corrections as the wrong point of focus in this type of CMC.

By learning about CMC, we come to know that there are two forms of CMC. We are so used to social network sites like Facebook and Twitter, e-mail, blogs and etc. We all know that they are means of communication. We often categorize them as a ‘fast’ or ‘slow’ medium to communicate with people without realizing that they actually a different form of computer-mediated communication. By knowing these two forms of CMC, we can somehow understand why people do not respond immediately on e-mails and other SNS and do not feel angry about the late response, especially if important and urgent matters are involved.

At the end of the lecture, we were given the second graded assignment that consists of two parts. In part 1, we have to make a summary of one empirical research done on CMC. In the second part, we are asked to analyze on a data (synchronous or asynchronous) based on the aspects of linguistics course that we have chosen. Since we are doing phonetics and phonology, we will be analyzing the data based on the stress and intonation of a person in one of the Youtube videos available online.