Online Community Discourse and Style
There are many different ways to communicate on the Internet. One of the oldest discussion forums on the Internet is a newsgroup. There are thousands of these groups going on almost every conceivable topic imaginable. For this past month I chose to follow one particular group "Sweet Home Alabama". I observed the way that they communicated with one another such as the formalness of the language used, any slang or jargon used within group, and the sort of subject discussed.
The subject that was discussed throughout the month that I followed my newsgroup was the recent movie, "Sweet Home Alabama". The conversation was about the movie, how it did in the theathers and who Reese Witherspoon is as an actress. For those of you who have not seen the movie I will give you a short overview of the movies plot. Melanie, who is played by Reese Witherspoon is a big designer in New York. Her boyfriend, who is the son of the New York Senator proposes to her. The only problem is that Melanie is still married to her high school sweetheart. She goes down to her small howetown in Alabama to get a divorce, but to her surprise her husband refuses to do so. This gives Reese Witherspoon the chance to rethink her life and what she really wants. I chose to follow this newsgroup because it is one of my new favorite movies and Reese Witherspoon is my favorite actress.
Throughout the months that I researched my newsgroup I looked at the way that they communicated to one another. There were not many people that chose to actually discuss on the Internet, but those that did all seemed to talk the same way. The formalness of the language that took place in my online community was that of everyday use. They did not use words that were too intense for a someone that was just visiting this newsgroup to understand. The people that participated used complete sentences with the right puncuation and captializtion. Another thing that helped with the understanding of the newsgroup was that if I missed a day or two I could always see what they were talking about from the days before.
My "Sweet Home Alabama" newsgroup did have their own jargon that they used throughout the discussions. As they got further into their discussions they referred to Reese Witherspoon as "RW" instead of spelling out her whole name. They did give you a chance to understand who the person they were talking about was before they started to refer to her as "RW". Another form of jargon that was used by my newsgroup is that used "Sweet" for the movie instead of the whole name because everyone that was participating understood the underlying meaning. Overall, the use of jargon was not too hard to understand and if you knew what they were talking about then you understood the meaning of the abbreviations used for Reese Witherspoon and the movie's title.
The newsgroup seemed to stay on the same topic throughout the discussions. This helped that the group did not jump from subject to subject so that if someone that was not following on a regular basis knew what being discussed day to day. Most of the discussions were about Reese Witherspoon and how she always makes a common movie better than it normally is. Movies that they believed to be stupid turned out to do well in the theathers because she made the movie or so they thought. The group even said that Reese is becoming such a good actor that she is making more money than her husband Ryan Phillippee, who is also a major actor. Reese does not go into these movies thinking that they are going to be big hits, but in the end that is what happens. Some of the times the people that participated on a regular basis would drift away from the topic, but then another person would always bring them back to the intended topic.
In conclusion, "Sweet Home Alabama" was an overall great group to follow because they made it easy to understand the topic being discussed. They were welcoming to new people into their discussions and did not critize anyone opinion. The group did not bounce from topic to topic so you could always follow what they were discussing throughout the entire month. Although there were not a huge amount of people that participated in the newsgroup I got the chance to participate in something that I did not know even existed on the Internet.
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