Communicative Situations 1: Computer Mediated Communication

大家好,

In today’s seminar, we were taught about computer mediated communication (CMC), whereby people interact or communicate via the use of computers. For myself, I feel that there are indeed many advantages that CMC may provide to facilitate the communication process. For example, as compared to face-to-face meetings, CMC is more task-oriented and helps reduce socio-emotional communication. In this way, it decreases the likelihood of one party dominating the meeting and encourages more “equal” member participation.

Furthermore, while some may comment that CMC lacks a “human touch”, we can also see how emotions may be presented in CMC setting although we are unable to see the facial expression or body language of the person that we are having a conversation with. For example, this may be presented by typing in CAPS to emphasise on a word/expression or using emoticons which are more engaging in showing how you feel.

At the same time, while it is true to say that CMC does help people to communicate more effectively especially when face-to-face communication is not possible, it also brings with it certain issues such as the impact on language use, advantages & disadvantages of anonymity and the use of CMC to avoid face-to-face confrontations etc.

I believe the case of CMC’s impact on language use is fairly evident in our everyday lives through the use of instant messenging and SMSes. Take for example, a phrase such as ‘Do you want to go for the lecture tomorrow?’ in a proper language use style may have been presented as ‘Do u wanna go 4 lect tml?” in a CMC scenerio. In this example, we can see how keystrokes have been cut down and simplified in such a way which will definitely be unacceptable in the context of proper language use.

Next, the issue of anonymity also present a case in mind which may affect the use of language in a CMC setting. For example, someone who may be very polite in real life might use more vulgar language in a CMC setting because he may choose to remain anonymous or use a fake identity. Hence, the type of language used, word choice, sentence structure etc may not be the same in CMC and real life.