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 knowledgeable 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
technology, 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment