Svitlana Chaykivska
Dr. S. Chandler
Eng.
3029
03/28/2012
Discourse Analysis
Essay “ Chat Room “
I understand Discourse Analysis
to be one of the methods of research analysis,
built on true stories or events. Everybody has the same opportunity to
examine the
same discourse and reach his or her own conclusion on its meaning. The Chat Room
is a very
interesting transcript, composed of two excerpts in which a conversation is
developed between two
people with different points of view and age. It takes place in
a chat room where person A tells
about her childhood experiences using the computer.
I shall
discuss in my Discourse Analysis essay the question: How does person A
grow
through her experiences, positive and negative, by using technology,
language
and her social life skills? The conversation between person S and person A goes from
one topic to another, from the unfamiliar and “scary” to the unusual and funny in
excerpt two. Person
A shows that she is humorous, friendly, curious, more know-
ledgeable about computer use, protective
of siblings, trusting, yet afraid in excerpt 1.
Person A
shows her enthusiasm as a child with what she could do with techno-
logy, when
she says “ I loved it – I loved it because when I discovered
what AOL
was…” She also recognizes now the dangers that technology can present. She also
tells the interviewer that she realized how dangerous misuse of technology by a
child could be. As a fifth grade
student she was able to check e-mail and chat with
strangers. These statements prove that person A
was curious but afraid. Person A
was brave enough to talk to strangers and even gave telephone number
to a possible
pedophile. When the person called, fear struck her and she “hung up”. The realization
that what was so dangerous that she kept this incident to herself for many years. She
didn’t tell parents what had happened and she “didn’t go on WebTv for a long time”.
During her interview person A
mentioned four times the word “dangerous” and three
times the word “scary”. This underlines that a
person A is the fear that she had and
realization that one must be must be careful in the use of technology.
At the end
of excerpt one person A admitted how frightened she was. This
caused her to become strict with her younger sister and brothers. Her
awareness of
the danger that she faced and that her siblings could face resulted in her becoming
more
knowledgeable in the use of technology. Her story show a development from
the naïve to the more knowledgeable. Person A continued growing in high school.
She
became more literate than she was before “ I was able to email who ever I
wanted, and research, very familiar with the internet.”
In excerpt
two person A shows her big improvement in continuing to develop
her computer
use skills and social skills by going into chat rooms to “chat
with our
friends, exchange pictures with people that lived in
our area that was our age.” But
did she remember her old story that caused her
to see the danger in chat rooms? Her
“adventure with technology”
in excerpt two, shows that she did not remember. She
willingly sent a pictures to her friends. Then
she sent a picture to a stranger. If this
had not happened to be her pastor’s son will not recognized the photo, this could
have
been very dangerous.
The two excerpts show that person
A made progress in computer skills.
She did not learn to use the computer responsibly. No matter how great your
computer skills are, you need to use the computer responsibly, because of the danger
lurk in
cyberspace.
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