Computer Mediated Communication and Language

It is indeed the fact of understanding how to ask a question , how to greet a person or how to say goodbye to somebody as dictated by certain socio cultural conventions . The failure to be aware of such conventions becomes a problem that frustrates linguistic exchanges . The conventions are recognized in language and in some cases they consist of wards that are represented by the intonations or accents which are only visible in face to face conversations (Shin , 2006 ,

.7 Any linguistic community is defined based on the competence notion . The

art of having common linguistic competence and communicative competence makes a group to be considered linguistic . In computer mediated conversation communication is based on text and in most cases it fails to offer such features unlike the communication that is conducted face to face . Nonverbal indicators such as expressions , looks , gestures and accent which occur when participants are present in similar physical environments cannot be detected in computer mediated communication . The major palliative that leads to the absence of non verbal indicators is the use of electronic paralanguage which offers interlocutors with the so called emotions . This kind of communication is palliative and communication is said to be synchronic . It bears only one advantage of being interactive in nature while the absence of a physical environment and the inability to have a face to face dialogue constitutes the major disadvantages . Therefore computer mediated communication denies the participants opportunities to engage in freer and egalitarian communication (Rooksby , 2002 ,

.9

Another aspect of language that is highly influenced by computer mediated communication is conversation . Conversation is said to be the prototypical manner applied in language . That is , the way we get exposed to language and the means through which we acquire language . It is a linguistic phenomenon which tries...