‘Thank you so much Mystery Solved’: Online Expressions of Gratitude by IMDb* Members

Abstract

The majority of research on expressions of gratitude has generally examined data gathered from discourse completion tasks, corpus, and questionnaires, while a few studies have analyzed data from naturally occurring talk or text (Yuan, 2001). Expanding the research on expressions of gratitude to a computermediated communication (CMC) context, this study investigated the discourse-pragmatic characteristics of 100 messages from one of the Internet movie database (IMDb) discussion boards, ‘I Need to Know’. Drawing on the speech act theory (Searle, 1976), and relational work (Locher & Watts, 2005), this study aimed to explore users’ expressions of gratitude when closing conversation as an indicator of polite (if not, politic) behavior of relational work within a potentially “impolite” asynchronous online context as compared to corpora data from Global Web-based English (GloWbE) for other CMC genres and to Contemporary Corpus of American English (COCA) and British National Corpus (BNC) for spoken examples.Accordingly, thanking formulae were found to be in line with GloWbE, COCA, and BNC, though there were differences in terms of the frequencies of use. As for strategies and functional sequences, the findings support the literature on face to face (Eisenstein & Bodman, 1986; 1993) and CMC politeness (Darics, 2010). Lastly, the current study underscored that regardless of the lack of close social ties between the interactants and highly anonymous nature of the context, relational work is still significant for IMDb members.

Keywords

• Çevrimiçi Şükran İfadeleri
• Bilgisayara Tabanlı Söylem
• Çevrimiçi Teşekkür Kalıpları
• Çevrimiçi Söz Edimleri.

Çok teşekkürler! gizem çözüldü: IMDb kullanıcılarının çevrimiçi şükran ifadeleri

Öz

Şükran ifadeleri üzerine yapılan araştırmaların çoğu söylem tamamlama görevleri, derlem, ve anketlerden gelen verileri incelemişken, az sayıda çalışma da doğal olarak gerçekleşen konuşma ya da metinleri bu açıdan incelemişlerdir (Yuan, 2001). İlgili araştırma alanını bilgisayar ortamlı iletişime uygulayan bu çalışma İnternet Film Veritabanı’ndaki(IMDb) tartışma odalarından çekilmiş 100 mesajın söylemsel ve pragmatik özelliklerini incelemiştir. Bu çalışmanın teorik temeli Searle’ın Söz Edimleri Kuramı (1976) ve Locher ve Watts’ın ilişkisel çalışma (2005) kuramlarına dayanmaktadır. Bu kuramlardan yola çıkarak, bu çalışma kullanıcıların bir sohbeti kapatırken kullandıkları çevrimiçi şükran ifadelerini bir kaç (GlowBE - Küresel Web Tabanlı Derlem Güncel, COCA - Amerikan İngilizcesi Derlemi ve BNC - Britanya Ulusal Derlemi) derlemden alınan veriyle kıyaslayarak potansiyel olarak kaba olarak adlandırılabilecek bir ortam olan eşzamansız çevrimiçi bağlamda örneklenen ilişkisel çalışma örneği olarak incelemiştir. Bulgular teşekkür etme kalıplarının kullanım sıklığı dışında derlem verileriyle pek çok benzerliğe sahip olduğunu göstermektedir. Çalışma, ayrıca, anılan çevrimiçi verilerin söz dizilerinin stratejik ve işlevsel özellikleri açısından da gerçek zamanlı yüz yüze iletişim ve diğer bilgisayar tabanlı iletişim biçimleri ile pek çok ortak noktaya sahip olduğunu belirtmektedir. Son olarak, bu çalışma, yakın sosyal bağların eksikliğine ve anılan bağlamın anonim doğasına bakmaksızın ilişkisel çalışmanın IMDb kullanıcıları açısından önemi vurgulamaktadır.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Çevrimiçi Şükran İfadeleri
• Bilgisayara Tabanlı Söylem
• Çevrimiçi Teşekkür Kalıpları
• Çevrimiçi Söz Edimleri.

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