Variation in Linguistic Characteristics Between the Types of Computer-Mediated Academic Discourse
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22364/BJELLC.02.2012.01Keywords:
applied linguistics, language in use, computer-mediated academic discourse, linguistic variation, multidimensional analysisAbstract
The article presents the results of empirical research investigating the specific linguistic characteristics of the types of Computer-Mediated Academic Discourse (CMAD) – the English language use by language teaching professionals in academic computer-mediated seminars (webinars), synchronous conferences (chats), asynchronous discussion fora, e-mails, weblogs and hypertexts. Six specialised corpora were complied to represent each type of CMAD. Multidimensional analysis of the variance of linguistic features (Biber, 1988) was applied as the main quantitative research method. Considerable differences have been revealed in the use of fifty-five types of linguistic features in the sub-corpora. The results of Scheffé’s test show that there is a significant statistical difference between at least one pair of the mean values on each dimension. This indicates that the studied types of CMAD are rather similar on one dimension but different on another. The author demonstrates that each type of CMAD has specific linguistic characteristics distinguishing it from other types. The findings obtained in the research may be of interest to researchers investigating varieties of computer-mediated language, language educators and other specialists in applied linguistics.
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