Poem: TECHNOLOGY

Technology, Technology,

Our lives run with it,

From the morning alarm to evening TV,

Boring, Boring,

When we live without technology,

Our days are incomplete without it,

Backward, Backward,

Cave is no longer our place,

Technology makes us live better,

Knowledge, Knowledge,

What we get with technology,

To survive in the reality,

Friends, Friends,

Get connected,

And there will be more to come,

God, God,

Remember to stay in the right path,

Remember the creator of all things.

Reflection #14 - Blog Project

Praise to God, after a long hard work we managed to complete the blog and also the contents of the blog successfully. This will not be a reality if all of us did not put our efforts and dedication in finishing the entire blog. This beloved blog was built form scratch from the second week we attended the class. The guidance and comments given by Dr. Rozina was the main source of inspiration that helped us to correct and redo the part that we have done wrong.

At first, this subject was still a blur for us as this is the subject for the graduating students. Most of us still have two or three remaining semesters before we graduate. Most of the complementary subjects have not been taken by us so more efforts needed in order for us to understand the subject. However, as time flew we were showered by the blessing of God for giving a great lecturer namely Dr. Rozina. She has shed the light of understanding to us in completing this blog.

Throughout the processes of finishing this blog, we have got a lot of new knowledge which are useful for our future life later on. For example, the first task needed us to prepare a lesson plan to teach students. From this task, we learned how a teacher arranged their lesson plan by looking at the references from the websites and other sources. We made our own lesson plan where a lot of efforts were needed because we did not have the basic on it. However, after a fruitful discussion we finally managed to make one and presented it to Dr. Rozina. From the task we realized how hard the job of a teacher is.

The next assignment exposed us to the corpus that involved the medium that we use in our daily life such as the social network and many more. We realized that we have taken these social network for granted all these years. There are actually vast amount of aspects that can be analysed from these corpus. This have opened our eyes wide in thinking about all the things that exist around us.

If there is a start, the end will surely come . The task have been fulfilled by us in order to complete the course requirements. We hope that the knowledge that we got from the journey to finish this task will be the lesson that will make us more mature.

Reflection #13 - Forensic Linguistics

Have you ever wondered how important a word is? We often take things for granted on tiny matters in our lives. 

Some issues in the real world can be solved by using the knowledge of language. Language can be so powerful that its words, phrases and sentences can be studied to determine who actually uses it. Forensic linguistics is a branch of applied linguistics. It is a practical usage of language knowledge as it can be used to solve crime-related cases. Some of the areas in forensic linguistics are voice identification, author identification, and discourse analysis. Do you ever think for a second how easy for people to recognise a person's handwriting is? We might think that a handwriting has no deeper meaning to it but it definitely can lead to the identity of the owner. It will help the authority to investigate criminals and perpetrators as they can be tracked using forensic linguistics' discovery. 

There is this branch of knowledge in criminology which will focus on this knowledge. Those who frequently watch TV series like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Criminal Minds, and NCIS will definitely be familiar with such people. The jargons they utilise in finding the criminals are so interesting and can attract many people to get to know the programs better. Forensic linguistics is not a mere programme for posers to get involved into. It needs undivided passion, interest, and drive to help contribute in making world a better place. 

Reflection #12 - Computational Stylistics: Determining which era a poem is from

Today, we learnt that computational stylistics is useful in analyzing a texts, authors, genres and periods. Computational stylistics, or stylometry, is the process of applying computational approaches to assist in the distant reading of style, so that traditional approaches to critical arguments might be supplemented with quantitative evidence. It's a case of "what it says" vs "how it says it". The former is traditionally popular when someone wants to do a research of a topic covered in a text. The latter, however, is as important, if not more, when you want to study the style of a text. I mean, we all know the way people write speak so much about them. In our writing, or even in our daily conversation, the choice of words we use are always based on a reason. We might not realize this, but there's a reason we choose to say something in one way rather than the other, which will eventually sends the same message. Let's face it, "I'm not hungry" and "I'm still full" carry two different meanings pragmatically.

Okay, back to the point. One purpose of computational stylistics is to identify the period in which a work is written and I find this interesting because now you can guess the period a literature work is written based on their style of writing. For example, if the text gets really wordy when describing nature and relies heavily on emotions, you can quickly guess that it's from the Romantic era. To quote William Wordsworth, poetry should begin with "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings", which the poet then translate into writing. That's why if you notice, texts from Romantic era are always so beautiful in their choice of words, and really lengthy at describing landscape and nature too. To express these feelings, it was considered that the content of the art had to come from the imagination of the artist, with as little interference as possible from "artificial" rules that dictated what a work should consist of.

Conversely, Victorian era for example, makes use of more restrained language and dwells on social concerns such as poverty. So, naturally, if you see a text dealing with this kind of topics, chances are they are from Victorian era.

The differences between Romanticism and Victorianism are apparent in the contrasting ways in which they use language. Because Romantic literature is emotionally expressive, you have to expect to see phrases such as "Oh!" to give the impression of a sudden onrush of feeling. The language in Romanticism is always so dramatic and free-flow. Meanwhile, because Victorian literature sought to document the world as it really was, it tends to use modern expressions and language, and makes less use of flowery metaphors and images. 

Below is an example of a poem. Enlarge it. If you know each era's literature characteristics, you'll know which era is this poem from: 

William Blake's The Little Girl Found

Reflection #11 - Mdm Mazni's CMD Presentation: Everyone needs to participate for scaffolding to work

A guest lecturer came and briefed us on her research project she presented in a symposium last year. It was on CMD and she analyzed the linguistic features used in this type of discourse. Instead of recapping what she already discussed in class, I'd like to point out one interesting bit she mentioned. Apparently, what she found out from this research was, CMD propagated a kind of learning style found in constructivism theory. Piaget, the one who came up with this theory, argued that humans generate knowledge and meaning from an interaction between their experiences and their ideas. 

As you can see, the discussion and exchange of ideas happened in CMD help people build up their knowledge. It's almost like you pick someone else's brain and extract their ideas. It's smart. You don't have to learn by yourself, instead, you just let someone else do the studying and get the knowledge from them. That is, of course, if you feel comfortable being a free rider not contributing anything to the discussion. I can relate to this. Guilty as charged. Sometimes when we have a test coming up and we want to gather for discussion, it's only natural that everyone does their reading prior to discussion. But I'd usually come vacant and empty-headed, taking advantage of what my friends have to say. 

But again, this is not healthy. Imagine not knowing anything and when you listen to your friends you can't even make sense of the discussion, you're doomed. Scaffolding of knowledge doesn't work this way. Which brings me to the question: How do we make sure everyone participates in CMD so that everyone can get the benefits of building up their knowledge? Scaffolding means you build up your knowledge based on your prior understanding and background knowledge about something, but if you do not have even the basic grasp of it, it'd be futile.

Reflection #10 - Lexicography

The topic on lesson 8 is focusing on the lexicography and forensic linguistic. Both of the fields have their own unique and interesting side of them that actually give us attraction to know more about them. 

Lexicography deals with the editing, compiling, writing or making of a dictionary. There are many good quality dictionaries that have been produced. One of them is Oxford English Dictionary as the dictionary is known as the world’s most comprehensive dictionary of the English language. The dictionary is referred by people because the words covered in the dictionary are from across the English-speaking world and it also traces the development of English from time to time. Furthermore, the arrangement of the words is systematic and makes it easy for the people to find words in the dictionary. They actually don’t need much time to find the words. Moreover, the dictionary provides the meaning and pronunciation of thousands of words, both present and past. As for the students, the meaning and pronunciation of words are vital as they are still learning and the need something to enhance their learning. Because of that, the Oxford English Dictionary is the best choice for them to refer as it gives a really helpful support for the students and even for the teachers.

Reflection #9 - Concordancer

Suggest The Relevance of Concordance in The Course of Your Studies?

In the midst of advance technology, education field also wanted not to fall behind. Since the invention of concordance, it manage to assist many scholars and students to do their research and assessments given by lecturers.

In English Language and Literature field, concordancer do help a lot especially when students need to find sources regarding topic in their studies. It also gives students various kind of sources to choose regarding the topic.

As example, in American Literature, we need to find certain issues regarding feminism in ‘Scarlet Letter’. By using concordancer, all articles regarding feminism in ‘Scarlet Letter’ can be traced.

Suggest a Good Dictionary That You Always Refer and Why Do You Like It?

Since learning English Language in Elementary school, I always used Oxford Dictionary, and my English teachers would also recommend the same dictionary. I, personally, also prefer to use the dictionary, since it is easy to navigate the words that need to be defined and understand the use per context.

Other than that, our education system also adopted UK Standard English in syllabus at school. Due to this situation, Oxford Dictionary also prepared voice pronunciation to guide the beginner and intermediate learners to learn the right and pronunciation of the word.

Lastly, Oxford Dictionary has been very useful to me while learning English Language at school, and university.

Topic for Master Students

How concordancer can be a tool to teach University students in Research Methodology.

Reflection #8 - Corpus Linguistics

Corpus linguistics is the study of corpora, or texts, which can be obtained from the real-world samples. The emergence of computer technology has opened up the opportunity to study the texts easily. The analysis can be done to investigate the structure of texts, uses, their nature, occurrence, or pretty much everything you wish to 'see' what's in a text. The process can bring out various new knowledge that can contribute in the study of linguistics.

The computer can help to sort our, retrieve or list out the texts you wish to study. Being able to do has enabled linguists to utilise the advancement of the technology in a very meaningful way. Now, everyone can incorporate the contribution of corpus linguistics to further analyse how a text can be sorted out. The availability of corpus can enrich BENL students' studies by using the advantage of knowing how corpus linguistics works. It can help the students to find articles which are more suited for their needs. Analysing real-world samples can be more convenient as the technology of the computer will effortlessly do the job without us sweating ourselves out doing it manually.

As BENL students are expected to be so critical in their thinking, one is expected to be able to see that there's more in a text. Let's say a person wishes to see how repetitive certain words in a speech or a writing. The repetition can signify certain characteristics and way of thinking. This blog post uses a repetition of the word "anaylyse", it dawned on me maybe I should actually really start using my knowledge of corpus linguistics to broaden my style of writing.

Reflection #7 - CMC: How social media is changing language use

“I like the sound of you not talking.”

So the other day we were having a discussion on CMC – Computer-mediated Communication. When the class ended, I was asked to go home and reflect on it, and instead of dwelling on how these gadgets actually create a bridge between users instead of connecting them, I’d like to focus on how these platforms change the language we use.
From unfriend to selfie, social media is clearly having an impact on language. I’m aware of not only how fast these online platforms change, but also of how they influence the language in which I write.

The words that we use are undeniably affected by the words that surround us every day. It’s a fact. Notice how if you hang out with someone for far too long and you unconsciously pick up some of their frequently used vocabularies? This is the same case. We spend a lot of our time daily reading words from computers, smartphones to the point that language now evolves partly through our interaction with technology. We generally use informal writing to communicate with other users and the fact that most of the people communicate this way is a starting point for rapid language change. Language is nothing if it is not used.

Social media is really making its presence felt with the introduction of new words and new meanings for old words. Social media is making it easier than ever to contribute to the evolution of language. You no longer have to be published through traditional avenues to bring word trends to the attention of the masses. I mean, look at Miley Cyrus, she basically invented the word twerking and at one point it became so overused it's deafening. And Beyonce fans can take pride in making the word slay famous. Now you read the comment section on a singer's video and you'd see SLAAAYYYY everywhere. Slay used to mean literally to kill a person in a murderous way, but now in this computer-mediated era, slay means something else. Slay, now, means "succeeded".
Not entirely surprising, Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year for 2015 is...

Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year (2015) 

That's right. With this, we should expect more new words (or it doesn't necessarily be a word at all) to emerge as a result of the way people use language to communicate using computers in social media.


Reference: Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year

Reflection #6 - Basic Criteria for a Good Language Learning Site

In a language learning classroom, students will expect the teacher to provide them an interesting approach to enhance their skills. Being able to utilize technological advancement provides broader spectrum in teaching language. Teachers may choose many websites and application tools from the internet to assist them. 

However, there is still a need for the teachers to carefully pick a good language learning site before using it. There are some criteria one must adhere to while doing so. One of them is to look at the origin of the site. Choosing a website is like buying your clothes. We most definitely will buy our clothes according to the brands. A brand tells a customer the validity and quality of the clothes most of the time. Similarly, by knowing the origin of the site, we can confirm the developer's credibility in assisting a language learning process. Besides that, the accessibility must also be easy. A good language learning site should not be complicated to access. Then, the teacher must also pick an appealing site's design. Utilizing a site that is visually appealing will enhance the learning process. The students are likely to grasp the contents of the site more as well. Another criteria for a good language learning site is to look at the content itself. A teacher must know how to differentiate a good website to a bad website. The contents should be suitable to the learners and it should comply to the teaching's educational needs and goals. Lastly, to have a good language learning site to teach is by using websites that are current. As the internet is a fast-moving contents provider, a teacher needs to use an up-to-date site to fulfill the current generation's needs.

Reflection #5 - IOK: Does every single thing really have to be Islamicized?

Honestly I’m not proud to admit that I was one of those people who questioned the need to Islamicize everything. Being an IIUM student, you can’t run away from that. It gets really overwhelming at some point. I was supposed to sign up for Islamic elective courses, all 8 of them. And as if that’s not enough, these Islamic values were intertwined with everything I learnt for my core courses. You’d think that learning English had nothing to do with Islamic teachings. I mean, let’s face it, for literature subjects, almost all the materials were from the West, no Islamic authors and all that. But somehow, to my dismay, my lecturers just managed to turn these English subjects into an Islamic discourse. That was until I came across a poem by W.B. Yeats titled The Second Coming, which was included in my 20th Century and Contemporary Literature. 



Surely some revelation is at hand; 
Surely the Second Coming is at hand. 



The poem, of course, was not talking about the Christian belief regarding the return of Jesus to Earth. But rather, it talks about the coming and awakening of something dark and powerful. It has all these violent imagery and terrifying ritualistic language that send chills down your spine upon reading it. How does this relate to the Islamicization of knowledge, you ask? So when I was reading it, almost instantaneously I was reminded of the Day of Judgment. The similarities described were eerily unsettling. Then it dawned on me, yes, Islam is everywhere. There’s no escaping it. 


I remember hearing one of my IRK lecturers saying that Islam is all-inclusive because it’s more than just a religion or a belief; it’s a way of life. Hitherto I TRY to relate everything I see or read to Islam. I read a lot of science, especially when it involves the galaxy. It’s one of my favorite things. So recently, you know how they say the Sun is going to come out from the West instead of the East as a sign that the hour is approaching, and I was having a hard time believing that because there’s no logical explanation as to how would that happen. And then, being curious as I always am, I searched for a scientific explanation. Eventually I found this one video from Youtube and it explained away how it is possible for the Sun to appear from the West. I’ll let you into a little secret, my little secret, I've always felt a tint of joy for sort of achieving to prove that everything can be related to Islam if I dig deep enough, and that’s really satisfying. It’s a therapy. You should try it.

W.B. Yeats' The Second Coming

Reflection #4 - Lesson Plan + Assignment 1

We found that technology is immensely helpful in teaching of listening skills. It is more fun and more effective with the aid of technology. For example, teachers can use video and Powerpoint Presentation in induction to explain to the students about the today’s lesson. The assistance of technology in the classroom makes the students pay more attention to the lesson than the traditional way. The lesson will be carried out smoothly and effectively as technology enhances students’ motivation in learning.

It has been found that by using video will improve students’ comprehension and listening skill. The video would make the students attracted in learning the lesson. The video would be neither too hard nor too easy to support skill development depends on the context of the video. If the students were given complicated video as a tool to improve comprehension and listening skill, it may demotivate them in learning as the video might be too hard to some students. Hence, introducing them with the video is surely more enjoyable as compared to the traditional way of teaching.

However, there are some disadvantages in using technology as teaching aids. Some students may have been found that they are not proficient in using computer. This would distract the learning progress as teachers need to teach students how to use computer first instead of teaching the lesson as planned.

In the matter of lesson plan, we found that it took much time to plan what should be taught to students. It is tiring as we need to be more critical what students should benefit from the lesson. If the lesson plan did not go as planned, the lesson will be distracted. Thus, it may interfere the period of teaching. This is because using technology as teaching aid might be new to some people and they need time to adapt and learn this new method of learning.

The struggle of finishing this assignment makes us aware how difficult our teachers had to deal with their lesson. Their effort to make the lesson becomes interesting, fun and most important is to make us understand the subject. It has given us a thought that being a teacher is not that easy as teachers need to prepare a lesson plan to ensure that the class goes smoothly and effectively.

Reflection #3 - CALL In Language Skills

Discussion on CALL in language skills. It covers 5 different aspects of learning which are listening, speaking, grammar, writing, and literature. Many students were participating in the session in class in order to complete all those five skills. Our lecturer has briefly explained about self-concept. In my opinion, it is very amazing to know how we can use computer in enhancing our language skills.

This topic is very informative as it explain that a teacher cannot cover speaking and listening as the same way as writing because these are receptive skills. However, computer has been very useful for students to enhance their skill.

Reflection #2 - 3 Questions on CALL

BENL is a course about language and literature. Typically, people would think English majors only learn about how to write essays, read and listen. So yeah, they are definitely wrong.

Our experiences in this course have taught us a lot of things. Critical thinking is part of the result that we have gained throughout the process of learning. What more when it comes to understanding old complicated poems, functions of language and more. Sounds difficult already? Not yet, not until we have to integrate our learning with Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) techniques. Yup, now you can say, "That sounds intriguing and complicated!"

In the previous post, we have posted about what CALL is, the types of CALL and more. So, we don't think it is necessary for us to elaborate more on that topic.

It is a modern world, we could say that each course that we have taken actually has integrated the learning of language with the help of computers. For instance, one of our courses, Pragmatics, requires a lot of examples taken from surrounding of our daily life. Mr Ridzwan had done a good job in integrating the computer, the internet and teaching aids (power point presentation) to show real examples taken from the internet from all over the world. Sounds cool right?

Error Analysis meanwhile requires us, students, to conduct an interview with international students and present them as creatively as we can to the class. Yes, with the help of the computer, some video editing, power point presentation and more have helped us to get more marks. Thank you, Dr. Nora, you're an awesome lecturer.

It is almost impossible not to use CALL nowadays. Technology makes work easier and life simpler. But we hope it does not make us lazier.

Reflection #1 - History of CALL

In topic 'History of Computer Assisted Language Learning', we learnt that the use of computer in language learning has undertaken three main stages of educational theoretical cycle, which are:

• Behaviourist CALL 
• Communicative CALL 
• Integrative CALL 

Each of the stages have their own advantage and limitations. For further information, these three stages used different approaches from each other and language teaching and learning field. Computer can assist language-learning process in the classroom. It benefits the teacher and the students, and the learning session will make the class becomes more interesting and effective. The students usually enjoy learning by using computer. The lessons delivered by the teacher will also be clearer for the students to be able to understand.

I hope in the future there are more advancement in technology to assist language-learning. Imagine the endless possibilities of being able to learn more effectively. I bet we can improve the condition of our education system with the help of those technologies.

Assignment 2 - Linguistic Features In Youtube Channel: Grice's Four Conversational Maxims

Chapter One: Introduction


Background


When we communicate, we assume without realizing it, that we, and the people we are talking to will be conversationally cooperative- we will cooperate to achieve mutual conversation ends. This conversational cooperation even works when we are not being cooperative socially. For example, we can be arguing with one another angrily and yet we will still cooperate quite a lot to achieve their argument. This conversational cooperation manifests itself, according to Grice in a number of conversational maxims as he calls them, which we feel the need to abide by.


It is vital to understand these maxims as unstated assumptions we have in conversations. It is a given that we expect people to provide appropriate amount of information; we anticipate that they are telling the truth, being relevant and try to be as lucid as possible. However, in reality, people do not actually adhere to the maxims, at least not consciously. The flouting of maxims is even more rampant in social media conversation. So, we attempt to apply Grice’s framework to analyse the frequency of flouted maxims which occurs in one asynchronous social medium; Youtube. We are focusing on the comment section to bring forward the occurrences of violation of the maxims.


Research Questions


1. Do young generations frequently use profanity while conversing in social media?


2. Do the community use social media in the right way?


3. What is the contribution social medias give to the society?


4. Why young generation is much more upfront in virtual world than in real life?


Scope of Study


In this paper, we are going to investigate on occurences of the foulting maxims only in youtube comment section. We are using the approach of Grice’s four maxims in order to prove this.


Purpose of Study


To know the linguistic fearures which is most used in Youtube comments section.

Chapter Two: Methodology


Framework


Since this paper is looking into pragmatics perspective; Grice’s four conversation maxims, of of linguistic features found in the Youtube comments, which has not been previously researched upon, we decided it would be best to employ a mixed method between qualitative and quantitative approach as it would give a better understanding of the phenomenon and to provide a basis for possible further research that may be done in this particular area.


This research will use participant observation as a study design. It will be conducted on a sample of those commenting on Youtube account over certain topics. The data will be dissected by us, since we are using Grice’s approach to uncover this field. The data will comprise mainly on the usage of profanity and how people use social media to opine over certain things.


Sample


The sample will be selected based on convenience. Convenience is useful in a population where a sampling frame is not easily identifiable. As for the sample, we select around 1000 words of video comments in Youtube channel. This is due to the nature of this research as it aims to know on how people use language on social media. The researcher will dissect the data based on Grice’s four maxims approach.


Corpus


This paper use comments from comment section in Youtube channel as our main corpus. We select up to 1000 words of comments in the Youtube comment section.


Type of Research


This paper employs the mixed method by combining qualitative and quantitative research to improve an evaluation by ensuring that the limitations of one type of data are balanced by the strengths of another. This will ensure that understanding is improved by integrating different ways of knowing. 

Chapter Three: Literature Review


Benson, P. (2015). Commenting to learn: Evidence of language and intercultural learning in comments on YouTube videos. Language Learning & Technology 19(3), 88–105. Retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/issues/october2015/benson.pdf


1) One important development with strong implications for research on Internet-based language learning is online communication takes place in various modes like YouTube.


2) YouTube videos create environments for comment on language and culture that are rich in terms of information exchange and negotiation of meaning.


3) The similarities lie mainly in the sequential organisation of turns and exchanges.


Varga, T. (2009). Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis: Language of YouTube Video Comments.


1) The more tones and senses conveyed through CMC, the more informal its language is.


2) Acronyms are among important formal aspects of the language of YouTube video comments, and that the most frequent acronym by far is LOL.


3) The third group of widely used Internet language features has been to a great extent discussed already because textual representation of laughter sounds can have many forms which partly overlap with acronyms and emoticons, which is called laughter variants. These include acronyms, such as LOL, ROFL and LMAO.


Semantically Enriched Machine Learning Approach to Filter YouTube Comments for Socially Augmented User Models


Ahmad Ammari , Vania Dimitrova , Dimoklis Despotakis


School of Computing, University of Leeds {A.Ammari, V.G.Dimitrova, scdd} @leeds.ac.uk


1) The Social Web, or Social Media, stores huge amount of social media data that is likely to be uncontrollable by the users in using the social media.


2) People nowadays produce highly noisy content that is irrelevant or spam while using the social media more than potentially valuable social contributions.


3) A research roadmap is sketched toward augmenting user models with key user characteristics derived from social content. It has seven steps and the first step is the most vital stage: identifying and filtering noisy content to create data corpus about a specific activity.


4) The noisy and relevant comments will be will be recorded with their computed scores.


5) There are also a few works that have used machine learning to find quality contents from the user comments on the social space and this will be easier for the researcher to analyze the corpus.

Chapter Four: Findings


Maxims of Quality


As for maxims of quality, according to Grice, is to be truthful. In which, we cannot say anything that we believe is false and lack of evidence. While dissecting the comments from Youtube comments, numerous of remarks were violating the maxims of quality. Below are the examples of comments that violating maxims of quality:

KidRaph:


Sia is one of the most original singers out there and also I can`t believe that Kanye produced this track, his diversity in music is amazing.


stinkinburrows


+KidRaph She's so good anyone would love to produce her music, he just goes where the money is, don't give him too much credit, give the credit to Sia.

As for the above, stinkinburrows stating a statement which is untrue in real time, where the commentary on Kanye just goes where the money is, is flouting from the maxims of quality. As the commentator, giving an answer which is untrue and lack of evidence is violating the maxims of quality.

DojoMuppet:


+stinkinburrows uh you dumbass no one does it for free. he prob was passionate thats why its a great beat

While, DojoMuppet violating the maxims of quality as he provide inadequate answer, which is just probability and lack of evidence. Probability is a notion that imply guessing which can led to the false argument.

Charles Njapa (88-Keys)


+yeahIhave actually, the beat was for himself first.

As for Charles Njapa, his answer also violating the maxims of quality, as it is just an assumption without concrete evidence. In addition, it is just a personal opinion, but was expressed as it is the truth. When proposing an idea using a lexical ‘actually’, it somehow shows high degree of understanding. However, in this context, it is untrue as he telling false statement.


Maxims of Quantity


Grice suggested that conversation is based on a shared principle of cooperation. “Make your conversational contribution what is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.” This principle was fleshed out in a series of maxims. This paper will illustrate all four types of conversational maxims violated by users as in the Youtube comment section to analyze to what extent does a person normally abide or try to be cooperative during a conversation.


The first one is maxim of quantity. There are two components that fall under this maxim. Firstly, make your contribution as informative as required; in other words, do not say too little that people will be left clueless. This can be seen in the first reply in the comment thread chosen. The thread begins with Sia is one of the most original singers out there and also I can’t believe that Kanye produced this track, his diversity in music is amazing by KidRaph. The reply to that is what we considered as too little information when Ted Sayan says yeezy season. This, of course, is clear as day to people who are used to the pop culture terms where one can grasp that Yeezy refers to the rapper Kanye West, and that Yeezy Season normally refers to his clothing line. But looking at it in a pragmatic sense, the reply intends to imply that this is the time for Kanye to shine, what with him producing great music and having just launched his new shoes collection Yeezy Boost. Notice how this might be not understandable to some who have no background knowledge of what Yeezy Season means. This is a case of the quantity maxim being violated. Secondly, do not make your contribution more informative than is required which essentially means do not say too much. To illustrate this, let’s analyze a reply made by John Plat to the original comment which reads Yeezy, is officially taking over 2016, you can book it. Haters, should turn a new leaf………. He’s back. This is what the first commenter is trying to reach at, at least for the first clause of the sentence. But the remaining …you can book it. Haters, should turn a new leaf……….. He’s back is arguably an unnecessary piece of information and does not in any way contribute to the original comment.


Maxims of Manner


The occurrence of cooperative principle in a social media conversation assumes the understanding of the context from one commenter to another. The maxim of manner in a conversation is applied when there is distinct clarity of the expression. Those who flout this maxim do not obey the rule in being clear and to be easily understood while conversing in social media.


Out of the 41 comments, there are 6 comments that violated the maxim of manner. A comment from a user named Ted Sayan replied “yeezy season” to a comment by Kid Raph when the user commented “Sia is one of the most original singers out there and also I can’t believe that Kanye produced this track, his diversity in music is amazing”. Ted Sayan provided ambiguous feedback where it needs to be understood by getting out of the context of the comment. ‘Yeezy’ refers to the singer who co –produced the song Reaper by singer-songwriter Sia.


Another example of a violated maxim is seen from the user Ozymandias, where he commented “And I’m ‘bout to tear it up. Haters start your engines. I hear ‘em gearing up. People talk so much shit about me in barbershops. They forgot to get their haircut”. We believe he quoted a song lyric but the expression is very obscure. Such evidence portrays how a maxim of manner is flouted throughout the conversation. The same can be said when another user, Mondra Hawkins, contributed to the conversation by replying “at the end of the day it’s just about the music. Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan were a bit arrogant as well. But they dominated basketball and boxing”. The unnecessary mention of Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan is showing a flouted maxim in this conversation.


A conversation that does not disobey the maxims cooperates to produce a nice flow of understanding and cohesiveness. One clear comment that flouted the maxim of manner is when the user 6sam6lol6 interrupted the conversation by replying “That’s my uncle Juan”. The comment shows ambiguity and obscurity, so it flouts the maxim of manner. Besides that, another evidence is when Christian 0000 replying “L” to Van Litespeed. The user flouted the maxim as it serves no direct connection to Van Litespeed’s comment.


Maxims of Relation


The maxim of relation can be applied in conversation when there is a phrase that is not relevant to the context. In social media, people usually write only according to what they want to write. They tend to not bother on the relevance of the sentence and sometimes it leads to misinterpretation because there are people who will understand the sentence in the other way.


Based on the YouTube comments, there are some comments that violates the maxim of relation. The first comment is from Ozymandias, which the person replies to First name greatest Last name ever that reads “And I’m ‘bout to tear it up. Haters start your engines. I hear ‘em gearing up. People talk so much shit about me in barbershops. They forgot to get their haircut”. People are talking about an artist producing music for a singer but this person suddenly replies with lyrics from the said artist. There is no direct correlation to the first comment that he replies to.


A comment from CTHEWOLF777 also violates the maxim of relation. The comment is “yeah but he is going for president facepalm”. It doesn’t relate to the context of the argument. The first commenter is talking about Kanye’s music diversity and suddenly this user leaves a comment saying he’s running for presidency. This also simultaneously violates the maxim of manner as it is not made clear what it means by the use of “but”. To make it clearer, this comment is made to reply to the original thread saying “…Kanye produced this track, his diversity in music in amazing”. There is another random comment in the comment section. A YouTube user with the username of 6Sam6lol6 suddenly commented “That’s my uncle Juan!” There is no relation to what the people are arguing in the comment section, not to mention very random.


The last comment that violates the maxim of relation is from Clash of Clans. The comment is also not a direct reply, rather, it is just a promotion about games. The comment is “Yo! I found this really crazy promotion that’s also going pretty damn viral now lol. https://sites.google.com/site/giftcardspromotion99/?696583 Now you can get tons of vouchers of steam, XBox, PSN and more, all for nothing.haha. It takes around 3 mins to get it. I have got 2 so far, they’ve launched this last week. You can get it every 2 days, it’s AWESOME!” It goes without saying that this comment is not, in any way, related to the main discussion topic, which is regarding Kanye West.


As the maxims stand, there may be an overlap, as regards the length of what one says, between the maxims of quantity and manner; this overlap can be explained (partially if not entirely) by thinking of the maxim of quantity (artificial though this approach may be) in terms of units of information. In other words, if the listener needs, let us say, five units of information from the speaker, but gets less, or more than the expected number, then the speaker is breaking the maxim of quantity. However, if the speaker gives the five required units of information, but is either too curt or long-winded in conveying them to the listener, then the maxim of manner is broken. The dividing line however, may be rather thin or unclear. For example, the reply Yeezy season by Ted Sayan can be categorized into these two maxims, both for being obscured and unclear while at the same time being not as informative as required.

Chapter Five: Discussions


The conversations in social media are diverse in terms of their topics and backgrounds of the users. Benson (2015) mentioned on the variety of users that participate in the conversation as one of their ways of language learning medium. A social media like Youtube serves as one of the many Internet-based tools in helping their research development. The event of users providing cooperative principle while conversing can be seen throughout the process. However, the violated maxims happen when the differences of the users come into play. Any differences can disturb the entire flow while maintaining the implied meaning. Benson also said YouTube videos create environments for comment on language and culture that are rich in terms of information exchange and negotiation of meaning. The violated maxims can naturally occur as some of the intended clear meaning got interfered in the way.


Benson also specified on the turns and exchange in commenting. These similarities allow us to investigate the differences, which lie in interference to the turn-taking rule caused by asynchronous sequences of interaction. The maxims can overlap where a maxim of manner can be flouted together with the other maxims. The turn-taking system can exhibit the possibilities of the flouting of maxims where a comment can showcase an ambiguous and irrelevant feedback at once.


Based on the literature reviewed, it is found out that one of the characteristics of the linguistics feature employed in Youtube comments section is the use of acronyms. Acronyms are among important formal aspects of the language of YouTube video comments, and that the most frequent acronym by far is LOL. To relate it to the Grice’s conversational maxim framework, we found that the use of acronym L to be violating both the maxim of quantity and manner in that it gets in the way of communicating a clear and informative message. Now, considering L is not the most commonly used acronym among users, and that only certain people who are well-exposed with the popular culture terms would get it, it is obvious that the use of it violates the conversational maxims. It violates the maxim of quantity in the sense of being too short of an acronym that it does not give enough information of even clue as to what it means. Meanwhile, the maxim of manner is violated when the acronym used is obscured and not clear. An example of how the use of this will create confusion is given below, taken from the Youtube comments analyzed:


Keith Thomas: stfu bitch L
Christian 0000: L
Sharathedog: I don’t get this “L” thing


L means loss, according to these people, but in a simpler explanation it is used to refer losers. Basically, they are calling each other names. Other than this, there common acronyms used mostly pertaining to laughing style namely LOL and LMAO.


In addition, it is argued that people nowadays produce highly noisy content that is irrelevant or spam while using the social media more than potentially valuable social contributions. Ammari, Dimitrova, and Despotakis (2011) have stated the conversations in social media are susceptible to unwanted comments or replies. The violation of maxim of relation is likely to occur due to the nature of Internet that is borderless. Being so open and have no limitations in terms of the participants and topics can lead to interference from irrelevant parties.


Social media can be uncontrollable in terms of participation of extraneous users and data. As cooperative principle is a way to make a conversation to be understood, this possibility is can restrict the linear course of a conversation. They mentioned this occurrence as the nature of social media conversation, so the Internet users will come across violation of maxim of relation all the time. At the same time of such incidents, it is also very likely that the users will violate other rules of cooperative principle. Maxim of relation can overlap with maxim of quality in which they can be violated simultaneously.

Conclusion


YouTube video comments are an asynchronous type of computer-mediated communication which allows the users of the Internet to respond to the viewed videos. Their asynchronous nature consists in the delay between the time of posting the comment and the time of it being read by other users. It was, however, found out that they also come with synchronous-like characteristics which include the quick disappearance of the comments to the frequently commented videos from the first page, and the low average number of 23 words per comment in the corpus under investigation.


Many of these observations demonstrate that YouTube is diverse both in its audiovisual and linguistic content and that not only in different types of CMC, but also within its specific type, the Internet language is not uniform and needs to be studied in relation with all its contexts.

APPENDIX

Total of comments: 41

Maxims	Frequency
Quality	9
Quantity	11
Relation	6
Manner	6
Total	32