Graded Task 2: CMC

ENGL 4740 Computer Application for Language Learning

Analysis Paper on Computer Mediated Communication Mode

Phonetics and Phonology

Vlog

Siti Nazira Bt Zainal

Nur Safiya Talib

Nurul Sahidatul Amira bt Azizan 1010744

For

Asst. Prof. Dr. Rozina Bt. Abdul Ghani

Introduction

Asynchronous communication and activities take place outside of real time. For example, when someone sends you an e-mail message, you would be reading the message later before you can respond to it. There is a time lag between the time the sender sent the message and the time you replied to it, even if the lag time is short. It is not instantaneous as synchronous communication.

 You can read news on forums for example at your own leisure and the forum admin can add news or articles at any time he or she wants. You do not read someone else’s message as it is being created like synchronous mode but you can take as much time as you need to respond to the post. Asynchronous activities take place whenever learners have the time to complete them. For example, viewing videos linked to the course site, reading a textbook, and writing a paper are all asynchronous activities.

One of the benefits to asynchronous collaboration is flexibility. People can receive information whenever they want and when it is most convenient for them. There is less pressure to act on the new information or immediately respond in some way. People can take time to think and digest the information before sending feedbacks to the other person with proper context.

The downsides of asynchronous communication are they lack a sense of immediacy and drama because there is less immediate interaction. Sometimes it takes hours, days and even months to get a response to a message. The lack of immediacy means that information can be out of date by the time someone views it.

Research objective

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the differences in stress, words use, and vowel and consonant sounds of British and American accent by using asynchronous mode through a video blog on YouTube channel. The article reviewed is not directly in coherent with the paper but since flaming also involves language on YouTube, we decided to use the article.

Literature Review

Title of Article: Flaming on Youtube (2010)

Author: Peter J. Moor, Ard Heuvelman *, Ria Verleur

 URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563210001627#

Purpose of Study/ Objectives

The study aims to examine and explain flaming on You-Tube in greater detail. Flaming is defined as ‘‘displaying hostility by insulting, swearing or using otherwise offensive language” (Moor,

2007). This definition refers only to the behaviour without assuming anything about causes or contexts. While the term ‘‘flaming” is used to refer to the behaviour, the messages themselves are often referred to as ‘‘flames.” The first purpose of this study is to gain more insight into the presence of flaming on YouTube and how this is perceived by YouTube users who post videos and those who comment on these videos. Although one can easily find many examples of flaming when reading comments on YouTube, a survey involving actual YouTube users provides evidence for whether flaming is perceived being common. Therefore, the following research question is formulated:

Research Questions:

 RQ1: Is flaming common on YouTube?

RQ2: What do YouTube users think of flaming?

RQ3: Why do people flame on YouTube?

A survey was conducted among YouTube users. Posters of videos on which flames were given, referred to as ‘receivers,’ and senders of flames were invited to participate in the stud.The survey was conducted by means of three questionnaires. One questionnaire was for senders of flames, and one was for receivers. The third questionnaire was a general questionnaire aimed at a representative group of YouTube users. Dependent measures were the perception of flaming on YouTube and possible explanations for flaming. A comparison of the intended and interpreted meanings of flames made it possible to investigate whether miscommunication had occurred. The  questionnaires were sent to 95 Youtube users.

Among the findings from this research is that, firstly, flaming is common on YouTube. Although most YouTube users indicate that they themselves do not flame, they do regularly perceive it. Secondly, views on flaming are varied. Most YouTube users seem to think of it as something annoying that should be viewed as a negative side effect of freedom of speech rather than as an entirely evil phenomenon. While most users do not think of YouTube as a problem, a minority thinks otherwise. For some users, it is even a reason to refrain from uploading personal videos. Several causes or reasons for flaming were found to be plausible. Conformation to perceived norms and reduced awareness of other people’s feelings are two phenomena that may underlie flaming behaviour on YouTube. Additionally, while some YouTube users intentionally offend others for mere entertainment, most flaming seems to be meant to express disagreement or an opinion. Feeling disappointed by a video or feeling offended by either a video or another commenter were popular reasons for flaming. Miscommunication may also play an important role, although the results regarding this subject were inconclusive.

  In a nutshell, although flaming do take place on YouTube, there are also other things that YouTube users gain.

Methodology

  The CMC mode we chose to focus on in this research paper is asynchronous mode. We had decided to analyze the asynchronous mode in the form of video blogging or vlogging. Vlogging is one of the many types of Youtube videos where people make their own videos by talking to the camera, usually from the comfort of their own bedrooms, about almost everything they like. They could be complaining about the society, sharing their fun trips to Disneyland, shooting their daily lives on camera or just talking with friends among many others. We have taken our corpus from a famous Youtuber, Tyler Oakley’s channel for our data analysis.

Our participants in this study are Tyler Oakley, an American Youtuber, and Louise who is a British Youtuber. The video we selected for analysis is entitled ‘The times we’ve pooped ourselves’. This is a collaboration video that Tyler made where he invited Louise to be his guest for the day. The topic they were discussing on was stories of them accidentally pooping themselves in public.

The methods that we used for this study is to first transcribe the video into written words so it will be easier for reading. We then watched the video carefully, giving full attention to their pronunciation and focused on finding the differences in the way they talked.

Findings/ table

Different Words Use

American	British
Elevator	Lift
Underwear	Pants
Panties	Knickers
Freshman	First Years
Normal	Standard
Cab	Taxi

                                                                                                                       

Different stress on syllables

American	British
Shower	Shower
Control	Control
Diligent	Diligent
Moment	Moment

The use of  /a/  for the sound for “o” vowel

American /a/	British /ɒ/
Lovely	stop
Other	everybody
Not	love
Everybody	not
	dollar
	solid
	convention
	vomit

The use of /ʃ/

American	British
Says it normally	Says with emphasis

The pronunciation of /t/

American	British
Voiced alveolar tap or flap	Voiceless alveolar plosive
little	glitter
shitting

The pronunciation of ‘Of’

American	British
/ʌv/	/əv/

The pronunciation of ‘No’

American	British
/oʊ/ diphthong	/nəʊ/

The pronunciation of ‘out’

American	British
/æʊt/	/əʊt/

The pronunciation of ‘fart’

American	British
/fɑrt/	/fɑːt/

The pronunciation of ‘moment’

American	British
/məʊmənt/	/ moʊmənt/

Summary of analysis of the data table

There are six words that we found used by both accents that although they may represent the same meaning but were uttered in different words. Both accents also have different stress on syllables when they were talking. We found six different way of stress on syllables in the video. We also noticed that the American in the video pronounces the words which have ‘o’ in it with the sound of /a/ while the British woman pronounces it as /ɒ/. Furthermore, the way both pronounce the word ‘shit’ is different. The American says it normally while the British put an emphasis on the /ʃ/ consonant. The American also pronounces the consonant /t/ with voiced alveolar tap or flap // while the British pronounces it using the RP pronunciation which is through voiceless alveolar plosive. Both accents also have different pronunciations for the word ‘of’, ‘no’, ‘out’, ‘fart’ and ‘moment’.

Conclusion

  We have concluded that both American and British accents differ from each other. They use different words on certain things and the main difference is the way they pronounce their words. The differences are found mostly in vowels and the variety in stressing syllables. Through the asynchronous mode of CMC, we can also conclude that vlogging encourages spontaneity thus providing us with unscripted conversation where it leaves no room for rehearsals or a practiced way of talking. In other words, the data we gathered was raw and gives us a better corpus for analysis. However, it does not mean that vlogs are synchronous because it is impossible to receive immediate feedback or response by the time the video was recorded. The vloggers in the video would have spent time editing the video before it could be uploaded in Youtube thus giving no room for the viewers to provide comments.